My school in Venezuela was about all of these things, and a lot of the school provided textbooks only had partial imfo so it was key to do actual research (even if it meant using online sources) and parsing all of it to determine what information is accurate and pertinent, sifting through biased or spotty information, speculation by the author etc. It was really hard work but invaluable experience.
This vs when i studied in the US in HS i saw that 100% of the information was readily provided to students. Sometimes in handouts with all of the info condensed, and students routinely had problems learning the topics at hand and would do poorly in tests. Hell i took quite a few open book/note tests and would see students struggle.
I didn’t say that, though. My general meaning was that we’re still operating under a mid-20th century mindset regarding education. It’s not helpful and it doesn’t address the changing economy where service work and information is the backbone of the economy instead of manufacturing. We should be accepting that and trying new ways to prepare people for the current economy instead of doubling down on what we’ve done before.
This. Stuffing information into your head just means you’re going to association learning with cramming and that you’re probably going to forget much of what you learned later. Active learning, where you have to research and figure things out for yourself is more likely to stick (in my experience, anyway).
You did note that I was talking about public schools yeah?
I’d very much like to fix the public school system rather than eliminate it, especially since I teach students who come out of public schools. I don’t believe in vouchers or any of the crap that DeVos spews, and I don’t think I said anything to indicate that I do. I’m actually kind of offended that you think I’m doing so, in fact. Being critical of how public schools often operate is not the same thing as advocating for an elimination of public schools.
Me too! I was just indulging in black humor. Poorly, I guess!
I think the only way to fix the US public school system is to insist that all children in the USA must attend one. Close down the charter, magnet and private schools and bring the rich and privileged back to the commons - everyone, including the children of the rich, will benefit.
If they want to send a kid to private school, they can go ahead - on weekends or evenings, just like Hebrew School or Sunday School. It should not get them out of attending and supporting the public school system.
That is true, I’m just saying that interacting with technology alone has set this generation and the next ahead in terms of being better educated than the previous - and your thoughts about how to make even better educated people is in the future as well, because the world moves forward. Whereas a century ago education was only for the white and rich, it’s now in a much better place with a long way to go.
I just get tired of the idea that younger generations are inherently more stupid when the trend tends to go the other way which is how humanity progresses.
I suspect the bad will publishers create with these kinds of tactics are a) not widely known, b) mostly known by the kinds of people who ultimately are driven by interests in the games rather than principles (or were never customers to begin with). I see a lot of gamers threatening to boycott various publishers for one or another action, then turn around and buy the next game because it’s the hot new game. Whereas perceptions that a game is riddled with cheaters will kill its business even with fairly casual players, so that’s to be avoided at all costs.
I’ve turned down buying a long list of EA titles, hell i’ve turned down free games i would’ve liked to play because it required me using their Origin service. Other gamers might not have the same follow through, that’s not for me to judge as i’m only concerned with what i believe in. So far i still don’t think EA has improved how they view their customers or how they treat their developers so my longstanding stance of “Fuck EA” stands.
I’m not so sure - it can be a part of the solution, for sure, just not the whole answer. There is the effect of distraction to consider, too. I don’t want to discount the positives technology can have, but it’s no panacea either. Some of the things we need to learn how to do need us to also be disconnected from technology. Thinking deep isn’t always aided by our interconnectedness via technology, I think. Sometimes, you need to step away and just think, without distraction. But this is not really a problem of the current two generations, it’s a problem of all generations born in the age of mass media.
I agree. It’s not really a thing, as much as each previous generation wants to make it a thing.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell on the internets… sorry if snapped.
I think that could help, because it would push people to want to fix the problems of public schools. But it’s also not likely to happen (at least at this point). There are plenty of great public schools across the country that are worth taking a look at and emulating. And there are bad private/charter/magnet schools, too. I think we’re dealing with a capitalism problem as well as a bureaucracy problem. The private schools that do well, do so because they have much more freedom to experiment with different educational models. That’s attractive to people.
Speaking from experience, it definitely sucks to try out a game and then get banned from it because they falsely think you are cheating / trying to cheat. Didn’t you know rule 4986? You can’t put a less than symbol in your name. That being said, cheaters suck and ruin games for people trying to enjoy them. A lot can be said of actually moderating communities online, and both ends of it frequently suck.
License agreements are very interesting overall, in the sense that they frequently are used to create some extensive vaguely enforceable legal stipulations. I think after a certain point the law becomes particularly nebulous. The law really doesn’t work well for “don’t be a dick” kind of realities. I think that conceptually, people think of these things as singular “objects”, and that would best inform how things should be protected. That is to say, you can buy a singular “object” and can do what you want with it until the point that you get rid of the “object”. If you rent an object, your obligation is the same as owning an object, except that you need to return it near the condition it was given to you. If you are not actively using an object, you could let someone else use the object. I think that we’ve moved away from the idea that copies are primarily for using an “object” and that a “copy” is no longer an accurate representation of “object” use. We’ve shifted a lot into “cloud usage” where you don’t even actually have a copy, but now are used to having a copy in many different format shifted places. It feels like there are volumes of bullshit stipulations about copies, which can go into fair use, but the nebulousness goes thermonuclear when a party starts making money. Even if people are dicks, I think a line has to be drawn about what conceptually is protected commercially. It is a strange legal fiction that is being written when copyright goes well beyond the concept of ownership of an “object” and into the realm of advanced commercial agreements that regulate the freedom of a person from using an “object” as they see fit. Beyond that I think we enter into a world of complex contracts that restrict consumer behavior and really make no damn sense in B2C economies. Giving the business the right to cover its ass with a contract and waiver is one thing, it’s another to give businesses the right to come after and fuck over consumers in court with these contracts, even if the consumers are teenage hooligans.
I think the argument would go something like this:
The mom knew that her son played Fortnite. The mom, being a reasonable human being, knew that Fortnite, like every piece of software on the planet, included a EULA. Because she didn’t forbid her son from playing the game until she read the EULA, … ??? Profit?
But if you cheat durjng a soccer game, they just throw you out of the game, they don’t call the cops. you can’t change physics to prevent the cheating, so any game you want to be played clean, you have to invest in a ref. If you’re going to play economies of scale and have huge games and not hire refs, then it’s up to you to change the physics or suck it up. You can’t call the cop (or your lawyer)
ETA:
…although, then there were the congressional hearings on juicing in baseball…so…yeah, my model may have some flaws. The stakes of the game do matter I suppose…
That assumes too much about what she knew her kid was doing (previous to the legal action) and that a game would necessarily have a EULA. (I mean, it would require her to know that games, which I’m sure she sees as entirely for children, have EULAs that prevent children from playing them…)
Huge assumption? I think it’s a very small and logical one but let’s entertain that line of thought… I am not a lawyer or expert but:
The relevant legal concepts are copyright, contract law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. You are liable to be sued by the people affected for damages and/or be prosecuted by the government for the felony under either or both laws.
Let’s start here: “I bought a game”. No, you didn’t; you bought a licence to use the software in accordance with the terms of service (licence) that you freely agreed to. All modern ToS will not allow you to reverse engineer the software.
If you breach those terms of service then you have broken a contract - that is what allows them to sue you. They will no doubt argue that the prevalence of cheat routines developed by people like you reduce the number of people willing to play the game - say 100,000 users x $10/month * 12 months = $12,000,000. They will also ask the court to impose punitive damages to discourage this sort of thing.
Which brings us to the copyright violation. You are allowed to copy their software provided you comply with the ToS. But you didn’t. Therefore you are in breach of the Copyright Act and subject to additional civil and criminal sanctions.
Finally, your “cheats” access their servers in a way that the ToS doesn’t authorize. This puts you in breach of the CFFA - breaking this carries serious jail time penalties. Not to mention that in the US, a criminal conviction will preclude you from many jobs, including, naturally, any with access to company computer systems.
Putting aside the illegalities, cheats are unethical and ruin the game experience for hundreds of thousands of people who don’t use cheats.
Also depending on what country in question some places have specific laws in place to punish online cheating, creating and distributing cheats.
It’s safe to say that most developers/publishers do not take cheaters to court because likely they have not committed an illegal act, they’ve only just violated the terms of service. But to say that cheating cannot be illegal is false, there are documented circumstances where such things have and do happen. Little timmy from down the street cheating in Fortnite is unlikely to run afoul of the law but if he were to be financially motivated to create or distribute cheats, or making money off streaming while using cheats its a different thing from what i understand reading some articles online. Again, i’m not an expert… just my layman’s interpretation of what i can find. If you have a different interpretation i don’t mind having my view changed
And rightly so. I would go even further and say TOS is generally bullshit for everyone. A firm can maybe terminate the service when someone doesn’t feel obliged to honor their made up rules , but legal action should be out of the question.
A TOS is a contract without a signature, a one-sided agreement. “But if you don’t like the TOS/EULA, don’t buy the product.” is a fake validation, you could just as easily turn it around: “If you don’t like how people use your product, don’t take their money for it.”
And this whole ‘cheating’ debacle is even worse, because they try to fix a programming ‘error’ (though admittedly one that is hard to solve) by legals means. Which is neither desirable, nor does it ever work.
From long long ago when I did some programming work on a MUD I learned you should always assume the clients use all the info the server sends them.
When COPPA passed back in 1998, my cat had to give up her Hotmail account. She was three years old, and Hotmail hadn’t asked for “species” or provided an option for “cat years”, so they kicked her off for being under 13. I think her Juno account stuck around a while longer, but I don’t remember.
The one specific case I know of like that, the Amateur Action case, involved a Tennessee prosecutor not only viewing material online (which was legally hard to prove was illegal), but also ordered videotapes by mail, which provided tangible objects that “violated community standards” in TN (which they might not have in CA.)
Having a prosecutor get a kid to press the buttons on a BBS site would have potentially exposed the prosecutor to prosecution and entrapment issues in ways that the common practice of sending underage cops or borrowed teenagers to buy booze or cigarettes doesn’t.
That’s what “tort reform” is for, to prevent all sorts of lawsuits that would otherwise be just waiting to happen, or at least to limit how much they cost the tortfeasors.
