I tend to acrue rather large late fees as well. Blockbuster makes more money off me in late fees than in rental fees, I'm sure.
Read that last sentence again... go ahead, I'll wait. (dum dee dum dee dum)
Oh, back? Then maybe you've realized something -- Blockbuster, and most other "bring them back before end of rental period or pay a fee" video stores have no economic incentive to stock these Destructo-DVDs in their stores. They make too much in late fees.
Very very few video stores would carry them, and very very few customers would want them. So there's little market, and this whole idea will crumble just like DIVX did.
It's a self-correcting problem. So don't worry 'bout it.
I disagree, mostly because what one person finds hostile another will find invigorating. While any individual site may not be able to accomodate both points of view, the web is far larger than any one site! Your "all one way or all the other" arguments are ignoring the reality that on the web, unlike in real life, radicially different "communities" are just a click away.
It makes no sense to construct and maintain commercial websites that exclude most of humanity, or punish them when they try to join communal discussions. Women have a right to speak publicly; so do older people, foreigners, newcomers, newbies.
If you are discussing commercial websites that are essentially setting up "communities" in order to profit from discussions, then your point is correct. However, many "communities" are NOT profit oriented, and IMHO can seek to exclude whosoever they see fit. There are many discussion boards devoted to women's interests where men are not exactly invited to join in -- and there's nothing wrong with that.
Inclusion of everyone helps to maximize profits for commerical "communities", but there are plenty of places on the web that don't give a crap about profit. Trying to impose your personal ideas of what rules of non-hostile discussion should be on ALL of these communities seems to me to be completely absurd.
The Internet was never conceived as the sole preserve anyone as a the sole preserve of technologically skilled young white men.
Was it? Wasn't it? Even if it was or wasn't, who cares? I don't. I'm amazed that you, Mr. Katz, can not see the connection between this issue and your wonderful Hellmouth series of discussions.
To spell it out: I'm a technologically skilled white man. Young is a relative term; I'm 34, to some that will be young, to most (including me) it's incredibly old. I was a sterotypically geeky kid, and paid for it. Growing up, I fit in nowhere. In college -- before the net was everywhere, mind you -- I fit in only with fellow geeks, and was shunned by everyone else. I don't fit in really at the job I'm at, since I amazingly care more about the actual work than going out and getting drunk with the others night after night. On the net, though, I can find places where -- unlike almost all of the rest of my lifetime -- I can pretty much fit in.
And now you come along and say I have to let the clueless millions play in the sandbox -- the same ones that have shunned and abused me throughout my life, the ones that have unjustly accused me of being all kinds of things simply because I have pale skin and a penis -- I have to adjust what I do HERE because they want to play too? SCREW THAT. No. I don't agree with you that this is a "white males only" club, but even if it is, I don't care. Everywhere else I've had to give way, to knuckle under, to be suppressed -- here I don't have to be and I WILL NOT BE. I don't care if you, or anyone else, doesn't like it. If you don't like it you're free to go create your own sites and run them as you see fit. If you take this one over, *I'm* free to go create another one and run it as *I* see fit. With all this incredible freedom available to everyone on the net, I don't understand why you're whining instead of going to go build something else yourself.
If we want to be hostile here, we're going to be hostile here. Like it? Fine. Don't? Begone with ye to a place more to your liking. If you fight to change this place to one where bunnies run free and butterflies flitter and everyone is nice and sings songs and hold hands -- I'm outta here, and your real goal of changing my mind and my behavior will have failed.
You remark that in real life, people who are hostile on the net are surprisingly timid. I'm not surprised a bit. In real life, a lot of geeks have been taught that if they speak up they run a real chance of getting the crap beat out of them. Or of their school punishing them. Here they FINALLY have freedom to say what they want -- and you want to take it away from them, AGAIN?
The FBI, on the other hand, is a large federal law enforcement agency, and everything they do is just as open to the public as whatever your local police may do, i.e. whatever you do not know is to most likely to protect the privacy of the defendants and the integrity of case.
Oh, I understand now. We exist in different reality tunnels.
It must be nice in your reality tunnel... mine kind of sucks.
Well, if there are reasonable searches, there must be an ability to execute that search. Since and the courts must determine which ones may be searched. it's impossible to predetermine which communications can be reasonably searched, all must be made searchable, At least, that's how the argument goes. Where's the flaw in it?
If I may take a stab at this...
Even with easily tappable communications, there is nothing preventing the parties trying to communicate from encrypting the communication. In this case, being able to tap it gains the police nothing. Having the legal right to tap a communication does not guarantee the actual ability to listen in.
That (I think) is the flaw. Since it's impossible to predetermine which communications can be actually searched, why make any of them searchable? It's all a matter of whose life is going to be made easier: the police or the citizens (both good and bad). The police vote for the police. I myself favor the citizens.
I already have relatives who refuse to share certain political beliefs over the phone, due to the possibility of police wiretaps. Even though expressing such beliefs is supposedly protected as free speech, the climate in this country is already to the point where people are afraid to speak. Is giving the police another avenue to monitor everyone more important than having a climate where people aren't afraid to speak their minds?
Unless you are a criminal, and quite a significant one, you have nothing to fear from the FBI.
Bullcrap. The FBI has a historical record of using wiretaps, sometimes illegal ones, to gather information on people deemed by them to need watching. The embarassing info thus gathered was used (please note that: it was used) to pressure people into toeing the FBI line. Hoover kept himself in his job for years by gathering info on the politicans who were supposed to be his bosses. Has that kind of thing stopped now... or have they gotten better at hiding it?
The argument that only people breaking the law have something to fear is simply not true. Having an affair isn't illegal, but it's probably not something you want everyone to know about either. The FBI has already proven themselves to be abusers of this kind of power. They do not deserve to be given even more power.
What I could never figure out was why a God who could create the entire universe would care if he/she/it was worshipped. Does God really have such deep-seated self-esteem issues that God insists that everyone worship him/her/it? And if you don't you're gonna pay?
Seriously, I don't get it. Maybe God needs a shrink.
I was promised a three year commitment for $N/year. Of those three years, I would have to work my ass off for the first year to finish the system,
I paid for all of their new computer equipment (bunch of new Dell machines running Linux) out of my pocket
I really hate to dump on someone when they're down, but you're an idiot. Someone *promised* you a 3 year job -- and you didn't get it in writing? You paid for a company's computers out of your own pocket? You're fired the week after you deliver a working system?
That CEO knew exactly what you were doing, he was just screwing you out of everything he possibly could. From what you've said here, you were so busy building the system that you didn't cover your ass. That guy is still chucking at what a fool you are.
If you paid for those computers, and still have the receipts, and have not in some way transferred ownership of them to the company (ask a lawyer; who knows what little thing would count as transfer of ownership) -- go get those computers right now. They're yours; back the pickup truck to the front door and carry them out. They try to stop you, have them arrested for theft.
I didn't "make things up". The American colonies did originally ask England for seats in parliment, not for independence. This is fact. They wanted those seats for different reasons than Scotland got them, that much is true -- but then I never claimed otherwise. Implying that I'm making things up is really offensive, but that seems to be what you're shooting for anyways.
I don't need to use such a thing as justification for the American Revolution (the "American Civil War" refers, at least in the U.S., to a completely different war) -- the people at the time thought it and other things was justification enough. Blame them, I wasn't there.
The context of my reply was in response to the silly statement that Australia just had to ask England for freedom, which completely ignores the fact that over 200 years lay between the American and Australian seperations from the English Empire.
Hmm./. is owned by a company now -- a company going IPO soon. Companies make money off web sites by enticing people to visit the site often, which makes the site more worthwhile to advertisers to advertise on.
Having very controversal interviews on/. helps make them money, which is what companies do. Just sort of what happens... [shrug]
I wonder why a judge competant enough at business law to teach courses in it, would wind up deciding juvie cases?
The media can never be trusted to provide enough significant information about any event or subject. But perhaps there are things you can't learn about a person by taking a class from them, as well.
Okay, you don't want the parents to sue. But should the principal and teacher receive NO punishment for their stupid actions? Should the cops who jailed the kid, apparently without any charges being filed, have nothing done to them?
When the school board is going to "support" their employees, and no one is willing to bust the cops' chops... heck, I say sue 'em. There has to be some form of feedback to instruct these institutions that their behavior is not correct. If it doesn't come from within the school or the police force, it's got to come from somewhere.
I agree that the whole society is lawsuit happy, but I think a lot of it started not from the desire to get money, but from people being so frustrated at seeing those in positions of "authority" abusing their power without any way of punishing them.
What gets me is all the posts saying, "the kid obviously has something wrong with him." Look, with the school staff obviously being hypersensitive about the previous school shootings, I would not be at all surprised if they've done various things there to "improve security". And as part of that, they've probably made sure the students know that they're "taking steps". At the same time, the media is harping on this same theme over and over and over.
So, during school -- which has been advertised by the staff and the media as being a potentially deadly place -- a kid is asked to write a scary story. What's scary to a kid in school these days? School shootings. It's an obvious topic, and one that probably is scaring the kids -- including the one who wrote it -- already. The point is, it wasn't the kid's inner feelings that (probably) brought the idea into his head, it was the school itself with the help of the media.
Most pre-teen boys, when writing a story for school, use the first person and make themselves the protagonist. It's because their still ego-centric; they think about themselves most of the time. So he wrote a story about himself doing a school shooting. But in the current hysterical environment, writing such a story is likely to have much more to say about his environment than about his inner feelings.
The kid needs to be sat down and talked to, to make sure he's not on the verge of cracking up. And then the school staff need to be sat down and talked to, to find out why they're scaring the kids like this. And then the judge needs to be disbarred for being a moronic fool (IMHO).
"(Perhaps a bit ingenuously, Beamon told reporters he spent his time in jail reading the Bible)."
It may be that the Bible was the only book his jailers would permit him to read. If I were trapped in a cell with nothing else to do but flip through the Bible, I'd probably do it too. It's always good for a laugh or two, if nothing else.
Historical reasons mostly: had to kill the natives to take the land, had to kill the British to get away from them, had to kill the animals to eat, etc. We're a bloody group of people.
Why do so many of you seem to think that the only way to achieve and maintain freedom is by force of arms?
Mostly due to a historical (and still current) complete lack of trust in our own government. Some of us view the U.S. government agencies as a bunch not far removed from the Nazis, and distrust both their motives and their methods. Periodically the government provides various events as evidence to continue this distrust.
Are you completely impervious to the lessons of history, in places like India (everyone seems to revere Ghandi as some kind of demi-god, but they conveniently forget that he taught people a way to achieve freedom _without_ using force), and in Australia, too.
Impervious, no... just not as selective as some. Violence has been part and parcel of the history of mankind -- part of the reason Ghandi is so rightfully revered is that he was such an exception to the usual violent methods used by so much of mankind. But gaining freedom from a far off empire is a completely different story from keeping freedom from your moronic next-door-neighbor who isn't going to go away. Oh... and wasn't Ghandi murdered?
We were once a penal colony, ruled by Britain; now we're a free, sovereign nation who are on the verge of cutting the last of our ties with Britain. Did we ever even dream of fighting a war _against_ Britain? No. You see, we didn't need to - all we needed to do was ask them, and provide them with what we considered to be a good constitution, which they gladly ratified and set us free to follow our own course.
Gee, we didn't even want freedom from Britian at first, we just wanted a few seats in Parliment -- like they'd given to Scotland a few decades before that. Funny, they weren't so nice to us... amazing what a difference a couple of hundred years can make.
Please, will someone explain to me why this kind of thing is so hard for Americans to accept? Is there something in your psyche that makes you blind to the possibility that things do not have to be done exactly as you did them? That there might be other ways of life that are just as valid, and possibly more so, than your own?
Well, *I* accept that. The world would be a boring place if everywhere and everyone were like the U.S. Ugh.
Why in gods name do you have to try and force your morals, your ideals, your way of life onto the rest of the world?
I don't. Most Americans don't either... most don't care about anything beyond the borders, really. It's just that the ones that DO care tend to go into the government (see why a lot of us don't like our government?) and go bother a lot of people overseas. I don't understand it either, really. They give the rest of us a bad name. But may I ask this: why do you listen? When an American comes to tell you how to live, laugh in his face and tell him to bugger off. (Or whatever local cursing is most effective.)
Please, leave us to make our own way, without having to slavishly bow down before _your_ gods and heroes. We are not part of your country, nor do we want to be - we want to make our own decisions, and do things the way that we see fit. I'd prefer to live with my own mistakes than yours.
[shrug] Fine by me. Just please don't confuse what Americans want with what the American government wants. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, they are NOT the same.
I've heard much complaining for several years about how America forces other countries to do this or that... I've always wondered why. Seriously. Tell our government to shove it, and do as you see fit. The world *would* be a better place.
...but the modern army could whip any populace into submittion. Even a modern police force could do that.
The French and American "modern armies" thought they could whip the Vietnam populace into submission. They were incorrect.
When pondering whether governments are held in check by gun ownership, what you really need to consider is whether the leaders of the government think that various policies might result in a large number of individual people trying to kill them, personally. For example: would a President, Congress, or Supreme Court (that's a specific group of just under 700 people) that supported a gun ban in the U.S., survive more than a year? Most of them might... but certainly not all of them (outside of cowering in a bunker somewhere). *That* is the thought that stops would-be dictators far more effectively than anything else.
If political pressures and other things work well in other countries to stop such excesses (althought frankly the long-term track record isn't very good), fine and more power to you. The U.S. simply is much more blunt and direct about the matter -- try to take over the country and millions have the means to kill you.
Since/.'s new corporate owners are in a pre-IPO "quiet period" mandated by the SEC, there are certain things they can't talk about. If they do talk about them, the SEC will come down on them *very* hard.
I have no idea if an article casting doubt on the accounting practices of M$ and the supposed lack of response on the part of the government agencies who are supposed to prevent this kind of thing would transgress against the "quiet period" rules... and I doubt if anyone at/. knows either. I'd play it very very safe myself, just like Rob did.
There are times for humorous comments, and times to zip your lip.
While I'm all for punishing Amiga Inc. for all they've done (and not done), I don't see how this could possibly work. Did Amiga Inc. ever sign any documents that specifically promised the dealers anything, anything at all? I have to doubt that you can sue someone for a press release that promised something Real Soon Now...
A "real prorgammer" is somebody who does it day in and day out, 40 hours a week.
That's an interesting distinction. In my own experience working on Unix/C systems, we spent a lot of overtime getting the system done. When I switched to VB, I quit working overtime... because I didn't need to anymore.
It seems (IMHO) that the "gee wiz, look at that pretty logic structure!" guys are the ones staying late and working their lives away, because they love the stuff. Most VB guys, even those who have previous experience in other languages, seem to leave at quitting time and go live their lives. Or is this just my experience?
Either way is a valid life-choice, of course... I wonder, though, how much of it is cause and effect... do the VB guys leave early because they're sick of looking at VB, or because they're more efficient and can go live their lives instead of being chained to the desk? Do the gee-wiz guys have to stay and grind out the code, or do they like what they do so much that nothing else seems attractive to them?
I just wonder about these kind of things sometimes... usually it means I've overdosed on the allergy medicine again...
Comdex isn't the end of the world. Lying may get him in, but it's still wrong.
If Comdex isn't the end of the world, then why is lying about his age to get in so wrong?
I can't even imagine how much stupidity I've gotten around in my lifetime by lying about unimportant things like this. I'm just wondering what your justification for such a blanket statement is, since it's so different from my own point of view.
I don't know if they're on crack... but, at best, some very sloppy research went into this article.
I've seen many technical slip-ups from Salon when they try to do "techie" articles, which is why I simply don't believe them anymore. It makes me wonder what they're screwing up in their other articles. Salon's good for political and culture opinion pieces, if you like that kind of thing, but not much else (IMHO).
I, too, was very surprised at the claim that Power Stone was the only well-reviewed game -- a claim that anyone visting any Dreamcast-oriented web site would know is completely false. The author of the article has a game available on a Sony site... perhaps that is the source of the obvious bias?
The article also continues the humorous comparisons of the Dreamcast, which is available now, to the Playstaton2 and Dolphin, which are not available, on the basis of their chips' supposed graphics capabilities. First of all, the latter 2 machines are still vapor... specs have a way of changing right up until release. Second, it's not the ops per second that are going to matter as much as what the software guys do with it. If a console's hardware is better, but the games suck, the console won't do well. That's why hardware comparisons make me chuckle... it's the games that count.
Sheesh, so many people around here have NO sense of humor. The article wasn't supposed to explain how to get rich -- it's was supposed to be funny. That's all, nothing else. If it didn't match what YOU consider to be funny, them's the breaks, but some of us DID find it funny.
Just move on with your life, plotting to get rich somehow... we'll won't miss ya. Honest.
Slashdot Mirror
I tend to acrue rather large late fees as well. Blockbuster makes more money off me in late fees than in rental fees, I'm sure.
Read that last sentence again... go ahead, I'll wait. (dum dee dum dee dum)
Oh, back? Then maybe you've realized something -- Blockbuster, and most other "bring them back before end of rental period or pay a fee" video stores have no economic incentive to stock these Destructo-DVDs in their stores. They make too much in late fees.
Very very few video stores would carry them, and very very few customers would want them. So there's little market, and this whole idea will crumble just like DIVX did.
It's a self-correcting problem. So don't worry 'bout it.
Do hostile environments matter? Sure.
I disagree, mostly because what one person finds hostile another will find invigorating. While any individual site may not be able to accomodate both points of view, the web is far larger than any one site! Your "all one way or all the other" arguments are ignoring the reality that on the web, unlike in real life, radicially different "communities" are just a click away.
It makes no sense to construct and maintain commercial websites that exclude most of humanity, or punish them when they try to join communal discussions. Women have a right to speak publicly; so do older people, foreigners, newcomers, newbies.
If you are discussing commercial websites that are essentially setting up "communities" in order to profit from discussions, then your point is correct. However, many "communities" are NOT profit oriented, and IMHO can seek to exclude whosoever they see fit. There are many discussion boards devoted to women's interests where men are not exactly invited to join in -- and there's nothing wrong with that.
Inclusion of everyone helps to maximize profits for commerical "communities", but there are plenty of places on the web that don't give a crap about profit. Trying to impose your personal ideas of what rules of non-hostile discussion should be on ALL of these communities seems to me to be completely absurd.
The Internet was never conceived as the sole preserve anyone as a the sole preserve of technologically skilled young white men.
Was it? Wasn't it? Even if it was or wasn't, who cares? I don't. I'm amazed that you, Mr. Katz, can not see the connection between this issue and your wonderful Hellmouth series of discussions.
To spell it out: I'm a technologically skilled white man. Young is a relative term; I'm 34, to some that will be young, to most (including me) it's incredibly old. I was a sterotypically geeky kid, and paid for it. Growing up, I fit in nowhere. In college -- before the net was everywhere, mind you -- I fit in only with fellow geeks, and was shunned by everyone else. I don't fit in really at the job I'm at, since I amazingly care more about the actual work than going out and getting drunk with the others night after night. On the net, though, I can find places where -- unlike almost all of the rest of my lifetime -- I can pretty much fit in.
And now you come along and say I have to let the clueless millions play in the sandbox -- the same ones that have shunned and abused me throughout my life, the ones that have unjustly accused me of being all kinds of things simply because I have pale skin and a penis -- I have to adjust what I do HERE because they want to play too? SCREW THAT. No. I don't agree with you that this is a "white males only" club, but even if it is, I don't care. Everywhere else I've had to give way, to knuckle under, to be suppressed -- here I don't have to be and I WILL NOT BE. I don't care if you, or anyone else, doesn't like it. If you don't like it you're free to go create your own sites and run them as you see fit. If you take this one over, *I'm* free to go create another one and run it as *I* see fit. With all this incredible freedom available to everyone on the net, I don't understand why you're whining instead of going to go build something else yourself.
If we want to be hostile here, we're going to be hostile here. Like it? Fine. Don't? Begone with ye to a place more to your liking. If you fight to change this place to one where bunnies run free and butterflies flitter and everyone is nice and sings songs and hold hands -- I'm outta here, and your real goal of changing my mind and my behavior will have failed.
You remark that in real life, people who are hostile on the net are surprisingly timid. I'm not surprised a bit. In real life, a lot of geeks have been taught that if they speak up they run a real chance of getting the crap beat out of them. Or of their school punishing them. Here they FINALLY have freedom to say what they want -- and you want to take it away from them, AGAIN?
Go to hell, Mr. Katz.
The FBI, on the other hand, is a large federal law enforcement agency, and everything they do is just as open to the public as whatever your local police may do, i.e. whatever you do not know is to most likely to protect the privacy of the defendants and the integrity of case.
Oh, I understand now. We exist in different reality tunnels.
It must be nice in your reality tunnel... mine kind of sucks.
Well, if there are reasonable searches, there must be an ability to execute that search. Since and the courts must determine which ones may be searched.
it's impossible to predetermine which communications can be reasonably searched, all must be made searchable,
At least, that's how the argument goes. Where's the flaw in it?
If I may take a stab at this...
Even with easily tappable communications, there is nothing preventing the parties trying to communicate from encrypting the communication. In this case, being able to tap it gains the police nothing. Having the legal right to tap a communication does not guarantee the actual ability to listen in.
That (I think) is the flaw. Since it's impossible to predetermine which communications can be actually searched, why make any of them searchable? It's all a matter of whose life is going to be made easier: the police or the citizens (both good and bad). The police vote for the police. I myself favor the citizens.
I already have relatives who refuse to share certain political beliefs over the phone, due to the possibility of police wiretaps. Even though expressing such beliefs is supposedly protected as free speech, the climate in this country is already to the point where people are afraid to speak. Is giving the police another avenue to monitor everyone more important than having a climate where people aren't afraid to speak their minds?
Unless you are a criminal, and quite a significant one, you have nothing to fear from the FBI.
Bullcrap. The FBI has a historical record of using wiretaps, sometimes illegal ones, to gather information on people deemed by them to need watching. The embarassing info thus gathered was used (please note that: it was used) to pressure people into toeing the FBI line. Hoover kept himself in his job for years by gathering info on the politicans who were supposed to be his bosses. Has that kind of thing stopped now... or have they gotten better at hiding it?
The argument that only people breaking the law have something to fear is simply not true. Having an affair isn't illegal, but it's probably not something you want everyone to know about either. The FBI has already proven themselves to be abusers of this kind of power. They do not deserve to be given even more power.
What I could never figure out was why a God who could create the entire universe would care if he/she/it was worshipped. Does God really have such deep-seated self-esteem issues that God insists that everyone worship him/her/it? And if you don't you're gonna pay?
Seriously, I don't get it. Maybe God needs a shrink.
I was promised a three year commitment for $N/year. Of those three years, I would have to work my ass off for the first year to finish the system,
I paid for all of their new computer equipment (bunch of new Dell machines running Linux) out of my pocket
I really hate to dump on someone when they're down, but you're an idiot. Someone *promised* you a 3 year job -- and you didn't get it in writing? You paid for a company's computers out of your own pocket? You're fired the week after you deliver a working system?
That CEO knew exactly what you were doing, he was just screwing you out of everything he possibly could. From what you've said here, you were so busy building the system that you didn't cover your ass. That guy is still chucking at what a fool you are.
If you paid for those computers, and still have the receipts, and have not in some way transferred ownership of them to the company (ask a lawyer; who knows what little thing would count as transfer of ownership) -- go get those computers right now. They're yours; back the pickup truck to the front door and carry them out. They try to stop you, have them arrested for theft.
I didn't "make things up". The American colonies did originally ask England for seats in parliment, not for independence. This is fact. They wanted those seats for different reasons than Scotland got them, that much is true -- but then I never claimed otherwise. Implying that I'm making things up is really offensive, but that seems to be what you're shooting for anyways.
I don't need to use such a thing as justification for the American Revolution (the "American Civil War" refers, at least in the U.S., to a completely different war) -- the people at the time thought it and other things was justification enough. Blame them, I wasn't there.
The context of my reply was in response to the silly statement that Australia just had to ask England for freedom, which completely ignores the fact that over 200 years lay between the American and Australian seperations from the English Empire.
Hmm. /. is owned by a company now -- a company going IPO soon. Companies make money off web sites by enticing people to visit the site often, which makes the site more worthwhile to advertisers to advertise on.
/. helps make them money, which is what companies do. Just sort of what happens... [shrug]
Having very controversal interviews on
I wonder why a judge competant enough at business law to teach courses in it, would wind up deciding juvie cases?
The media can never be trusted to provide enough significant information about any event or subject. But perhaps there are things you can't learn about a person by taking a class from them, as well.
Okay, you don't want the parents to sue. But should the principal and teacher receive NO punishment for their stupid actions? Should the cops who jailed the kid, apparently without any charges being filed, have nothing done to them?
When the school board is going to "support" their employees, and no one is willing to bust the cops' chops... heck, I say sue 'em. There has to be some form of feedback to instruct these institutions that their behavior is not correct. If it doesn't come from within the school or the police force, it's got to come from somewhere.
I agree that the whole society is lawsuit happy, but I think a lot of it started not from the desire to get money, but from people being so frustrated at seeing those in positions of "authority" abusing their power without any way of punishing them.
I can assure you, the major cities are VERY different than the rest of Texas. Especially Austin. Completely different worlds.
I thought America was supposed to be the land of the free???
No, that's just what we put in the tourism brochures. Lure the suckers in, don'tcha know.
IANAL, but it seems to me that it is against the law to hold anyone for seven days without a charge.
Unless you're a minor. Minors under the U.S. legal system have very few rights.
What gets me is all the posts saying, "the kid obviously has something wrong with him." Look, with the school staff obviously being hypersensitive about the previous school shootings, I would not be at all surprised if they've done various things there to "improve security". And as part of that, they've probably made sure the students know that they're "taking steps". At the same time, the media is harping on this same theme over and over and over.
So, during school -- which has been advertised by the staff and the media as being a potentially deadly place -- a kid is asked to write a scary story. What's scary to a kid in school these days? School shootings. It's an obvious topic, and one that probably is scaring the kids -- including the one who wrote it -- already. The point is, it wasn't the kid's inner feelings that (probably) brought the idea into his head, it was the school itself with the help of the media.
Most pre-teen boys, when writing a story for school, use the first person and make themselves the protagonist. It's because their still ego-centric; they think about themselves most of the time. So he wrote a story about himself doing a school shooting. But in the current hysterical environment, writing such a story is likely to have much more to say about his environment than about his inner feelings.
The kid needs to be sat down and talked to, to make sure he's not on the verge of cracking up. And then the school staff need to be sat down and talked to, to find out why they're scaring the kids like this. And then the judge needs to be disbarred for being a moronic fool (IMHO).
"(Perhaps a bit ingenuously, Beamon told reporters he spent his time in jail reading the Bible)."
It may be that the Bible was the only book his jailers would permit him to read. If I were trapped in a cell with nothing else to do but flip through the Bible, I'd probably do it too. It's always good for a laugh or two, if nothing else.
What is it with guns and Americans?
Historical reasons mostly: had to kill the natives to take the land, had to kill the British to get away from them, had to kill the animals to eat, etc. We're a bloody group of people.
Why do so many of you seem to think that the only way to achieve and maintain freedom is by force of arms?
Mostly due to a historical (and still current) complete lack of trust in our own government. Some of us view the U.S. government agencies as a bunch not far removed from the Nazis, and distrust both their motives and their methods. Periodically the government provides various events as evidence to continue this distrust.
Are you completely impervious to the lessons of history, in places like India (everyone seems to revere Ghandi as some kind of demi-god, but they conveniently forget that he taught people a way to achieve freedom _without_ using force), and in Australia, too.
Impervious, no... just not as selective as some. Violence has been part and parcel of the history of mankind -- part of the reason Ghandi is so rightfully revered is that he was such an exception to the usual violent methods used by so much of mankind. But gaining freedom from a far off empire is a completely different story from keeping freedom from your moronic next-door-neighbor who isn't going to go away. Oh... and wasn't Ghandi murdered?
We were once a penal colony, ruled by Britain; now we're a free, sovereign nation who are on the verge of cutting the last of our ties with Britain. Did we ever even dream of fighting a war _against_ Britain? No. You see, we didn't need to - all we needed to do was ask them, and provide them with what we considered to be a good constitution, which they gladly ratified and set us free to follow our own course.
Gee, we didn't even want freedom from Britian at first, we just wanted a few seats in Parliment -- like they'd given to Scotland a few decades before that. Funny, they weren't so nice to us... amazing what a difference a couple of hundred years can make.
Please, will someone explain to me why this kind of thing is so hard for Americans to accept? Is there something in your psyche that makes you blind to the possibility that things do not have to be done exactly as you did them? That there might be other ways of life that are just as valid, and possibly more so, than your own?
Well, *I* accept that. The world would be a boring place if everywhere and everyone were like the U.S. Ugh.
Why in gods name do you have to try and force your morals, your ideals, your way of life onto the rest of the world?
I don't. Most Americans don't either... most don't care about anything beyond the borders, really. It's just that the ones that DO care tend to go into the government (see why a lot of us don't like our government?) and go bother a lot of people overseas. I don't understand it either, really. They give the rest of us a bad name. But may I ask this: why do you listen? When an American comes to tell you how to live, laugh in his face and tell him to bugger off. (Or whatever local cursing is most effective.)
Please, leave us to make our own way, without having to slavishly bow down before _your_ gods and heroes. We are not part of your country, nor do we want to be - we want to make our own decisions, and do things the way that we see fit. I'd prefer to live with my own mistakes than yours.
[shrug] Fine by me. Just please don't confuse what Americans want with what the American government wants. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, they are NOT the same.
I've heard much complaining for several years about how America forces other countries to do this or that... I've always wondered why. Seriously. Tell our government to shove it, and do as you see fit. The world *would* be a better place.
...but the modern army could whip any populace into submittion. Even a modern police force could do that.
The French and American "modern armies" thought they could whip the Vietnam populace into submission. They were incorrect.
When pondering whether governments are held in check by gun ownership, what you really need to consider is whether the leaders of the government think that various policies might result in a large number of individual people trying to kill them, personally. For example: would a President, Congress, or Supreme Court (that's a specific group of just under 700 people) that supported a gun ban in the U.S., survive more than a year? Most of them might... but certainly not all of them (outside of cowering in a bunker somewhere). *That* is the thought that stops would-be dictators far more effectively than anything else.
If political pressures and other things work well in other countries to stop such excesses (althought frankly the long-term track record isn't very good), fine and more power to you. The U.S. simply is much more blunt and direct about the matter -- try to take over the country and millions have the means to kill you.
Since /.'s new corporate owners are in a pre-IPO "quiet period" mandated by the SEC, there are certain things they can't talk about. If they do talk about them, the SEC will come down on them *very* hard.
/. knows either. I'd play it very very safe myself, just like Rob did.
I have no idea if an article casting doubt on the accounting practices of M$ and the supposed lack of response on the part of the government agencies who are supposed to prevent this kind of thing would transgress against the "quiet period" rules... and I doubt if anyone at
There are times for humorous comments, and times to zip your lip.
While I'm all for punishing Amiga Inc. for all they've done (and not done), I don't see how this could possibly work. Did Amiga Inc. ever sign any documents that specifically promised the dealers anything, anything at all? I have to doubt that you can sue someone for a press release that promised something Real Soon Now...
A "real prorgammer" is somebody who does it day in and day out, 40 hours a week.
That's an interesting distinction. In my own experience working on Unix/C systems, we spent a lot of overtime getting the system done. When I switched to VB, I quit working overtime... because I didn't need to anymore.
It seems (IMHO) that the "gee wiz, look at that pretty logic structure!" guys are the ones staying late and working their lives away, because they love the stuff. Most VB guys, even those who have previous experience in other languages, seem to leave at quitting time and go live their lives. Or is this just my experience?
Either way is a valid life-choice, of course... I wonder, though, how much of it is cause and effect... do the VB guys leave early because they're sick of looking at VB, or because they're more efficient and can go live their lives instead of being chained to the desk? Do the gee-wiz guys have to stay and grind out the code, or do they like what they do so much that nothing else seems attractive to them?
I just wonder about these kind of things sometimes... usually it means I've overdosed on the allergy medicine again...
Comdex isn't the end of the world. Lying may get him in, but it's still wrong.
If Comdex isn't the end of the world, then why is lying about his age to get in so wrong?
I can't even imagine how much stupidity I've gotten around in my lifetime by lying about unimportant things like this. I'm just wondering what your justification for such a blanket statement is, since it's so different from my own point of view.
I don't know if they're on crack... but, at best, some very sloppy research went into this article.
I've seen many technical slip-ups from Salon when they try to do "techie" articles, which is why I simply don't believe them anymore. It makes me wonder what they're screwing up in their other articles. Salon's good for political and culture opinion pieces, if you like that kind of thing, but not much else (IMHO).
I, too, was very surprised at the claim that Power Stone was the only well-reviewed game -- a claim that anyone visting any Dreamcast-oriented web site would know is completely false. The author of the article has a game available on a Sony site... perhaps that is the source of the obvious bias?
The article also continues the humorous comparisons of the Dreamcast, which is available now, to the Playstaton2 and Dolphin, which are not available, on the basis of their chips' supposed graphics capabilities. First of all, the latter 2 machines are still vapor... specs have a way of changing right up until release. Second, it's not the ops per second that are going to matter as much as what the software guys do with it. If a console's hardware is better, but the games suck, the console won't do well. That's why hardware comparisons make me chuckle... it's the games that count.
Sheesh, so many people around here have NO sense of humor. The article wasn't supposed to explain how to get rich -- it's was supposed to be funny. That's all, nothing else. If it didn't match what YOU consider to be funny, them's the breaks, but some of us DID find it funny.
Just move on with your life, plotting to get rich somehow... we'll won't miss ya. Honest.