Last I heard, all the features were being removed, and that it required an insane machine to run.
Dude, what are you talking about?! Vista is gonna have some sweet new DRM! We can finally quit messing around with our PCs and just let Microsoft run them for us! Think of all the time we spend on the computer that we can now spend doing... umm... other stuff? I think there's supposed to be other stuff we can do anyway... not real clear on that...
Upon reading the decision, it becomes abundantly clear that the real problem seems to be massive overreaching on the part of the state. The statute placed many irrational, arbitrary restrictions on the procedure which were not based on medical science. They repeatedly refer to the physicians best medical judgment being important, and then repeatedly undermine it with restrictions that no other procedure is encumbered by, and which second and third-guess the physician's judgment. Now if they had crafted it more narrowly, and perhaps targeted only late-term abortions, and given reasons for the restrictions they were putting in place, along with exceptions for certain types of cases, then they might have had a chance. But by trying to restrict all abortions and by creating obstacles that serve no medical purpose, and are only a thinly veiled attempt to prevent those seeking an abortion from ever being able to obtain one, they shot themselves in the foot.
Much of the debate over abortion is based on belief. Belief that can't be substantiated, and will therefore remain subjective. This means that there will probably never be a real solution to the problem, but people will have to learn to live with some sort of compromise. Until and unless a compromise can be reached, abortion opponents will continue to craft overreaching legislation, and it will continue to be shot down. Abortion proponents will continually have to fight in court to maintain the right to an abortion. I don't think it's going to get any easier.
This isn't the sort of game that's likely to attract cheaters. It's a primarily single-player game with cooperative multiplayer. What's a cheater going to do? Pwn n00bs by, uh, using an aimbot to kill more of their enemies and thereby help them get through the game faster?
The following is from a Gamespy preview (emphasis mine):
For the most part multiplayer will focus on cooperative play. Small teams of adventurers will venture into the Streets and sewers of London to massacre demons as a team. Flagship is planning on setting character limits for each region in order to keep balance: some areas will only be for two or three players, while other special areas may be able to accommodate large groups.
On top of adventuring, there will also be special challenge areas set up for online players. The team is kicking around ideas for scavenger hunt zones, or an area where teams will see how long they can hold a safe zone against ever-increasing waves of demon assaults.
One thing that Flagship definitely wants to concentrate on is allowing players to really invest in the online part of the game. Buoyed by the success of StarCraft tournament play overseas, the team wants to build-in tools to allow people to observe games or watch replays with commentary. They're also setting up leader boards and ladders, tracking dozens of stats including most demons killed, wealth accumulated, etc. etc. Details on the multiplayer might be hazy, but it's clear that the company is committed to making it a great experience.
Where there are stats, there will be cheaters. Additionally, you should never underestimate the ingenuity of griefers. They'll go to great lengths for the opportunity to piss people off, if only for the moment, and having access to the source can only help their efforts.
The only possible use it could have would be to crack the game before it even comes out, but as it is so unfinished, even that is pointless.
It's much easier to devise cheats for the game if you've had a good look at the source too. That can be very detrimental to a game if cheating becomes rampant. So a code leak could seriously impact this game's sales and popularity.
Maybe I don't feel that most politicians were as corrupt back then as they seem to be now, which would make their concessions more like the cost of building a country instead of the advancment in society that politicians use it as today.
I think you're quite probably right about the level of corruption. I believe this is due to the fact that the government had less power and control over the everyday lives of people back then. There was less power, and therefore less corruption. That's one of the reasons I'm in favor of reducing the power of government in many areas, and preventing it from meddling in things that it shouldn't (separation of church and state is a big one for me).
The first two quotes you use both reference the Kellerman study, which has been widely debunked for numerous errors in its methodology. By other doctors no less.
As for the third quote, I could list several other causes of death that greatly outnumber gun-related deaths. You're not really making any sort of point there.
They also had the problem of appeasing some of the lower colonies who thrived on slavery. They may have felt morally opposed to it but they had to make some concessions to get all the colonies onboard.
Ok, but how is that so different from today's politicians pandering to the religious folks in order to keep their offices? It compromises the integrity of the government in order to hold together a coalition. They either saw blacks and others as unequal to white men, or they just didn't feel that their rights were worth fighting for.
Unfortunately change takes time. If given the opportunity, would you rather be a typical woman for a week from the late 1800s or from today?
I understand that, and I agree. My point is that the government has never even gotten within sight of perfection, so to claim that things were better back then than they are today is just wrongheaded. Things are different today than they were then. While I have many many problems with the way things are going now, I have to admit that more people have more freedom today than they did back then. That is a good thing. That said, we still have a very long way to go, and we have taken some steps backwards in some areas which need to be rectified.
This is voluntary censorship, though. Suppose I've bought Kill Bill and want to see it, but not the violent bits, I could've sent it to this company. No one would've forced me to, though.
There is nothing wrong with people viewing censored material when they asked for it to be censored for them. This decision is effectively censoring censorship!
Once again, this decision has nothing to do with censorship. Copyright law forbids the distribution of a derivative work without permission. These folks didn't have permission from the copyright holder to distribute derivative works. End of story. You don't like it? Tell Congress to fix copyright law.
In private you can do as you want and I therefore think this ruling is stupid (as long as people are aware that they are buying a modified product) - but in public freedom of speech must prevail.
All this ruling does is agree with the status quo which means that copyright law trumps free speech. You simply don't have the right to distribute derivative works. You may disagree with copyright law, but that's another battle.
1. Buy the original. 2. Copy and modify it (assuming they haven't invented a way of modifying the original, physical media). 3. Sell the copy.
Steps 1 and 2 are legal. Step 3 isn't, even if they also provide the original disc.
Actually, according to existing law, step 2 is illegal as well since it requires them to bypass the encryption on the disc. That's illegal under the DMCA.
Give me a reason why the nudity or language is 'essential' to the story (and couldn't be avoided artistically), then I have no real problem with the inclusion, although I may choose to avoid the story altogether. But when there is nudity that is gratuitous (as is frequently the case), then why should I have to put up with it? Personally, Titanic is the prime example of this: the nudity added very little to the story, and the sex added even less. It could have been reasonably omitted without any damage to the story.
Actually, no it couldn't. It would then be a different story than the one that the writer was telling. You could argue that the story would still be just as good, or even better, but that's purely subjective and a personal decision. I, for one, do not find nudity to be offensive. It's just someone's body and I don't find anything offensive about that. Sex can be a very intimate experience that can help to form an emotional bond between people, so I wouldn't say that it can't add something to a story. It might be tough for the writer to convey exactly what it adds to the audience though. That said, I don't personally see any reason why someone shouldn't be able to sell the service of removing unwanted bits of a movie when they have paid for a legitimate copy. However, it would be illegal to do so under the DMCA I believe since you would have to bypass Macrovision or CSS encryption in order to edit the work. But then I have many issues with the DMCA too.
What was a government that represented everyone equally has been swayed to give bias to special interest groups. It's not the government our founding fathers envisioned.
Umm.. everyone? Women? Blacks? Non-land-owners? Might want to reconsider that.
That's simply unacceptable. If you did this, you'd just force homosexuals who want to marry into specific religions. That proselytisation through law.
I think you're misunderstanding him, though I may be reading more into it than he meant. He's saying that "marriage" is a religious institution, versus civil union which is (or should be) a governmentally recognized union, but I think it really could be extended beyond religion even, but I'm not sure who would be interested in such a thing. Basically, marriage is a ceremony performed by someone not representative of the government, and is not legally recognized. A civil union is granted by the government and is legally recognized. So it doesn't really matter whether a marriage is religious or not.
This is the devil in the details. Mental health is included in the definition of health. If a woman tells the doctor that the pregnancy is causing her too much stress, she can have the abortion.
Got a link to any evidence to back that statement up?
Will the MPAA go after me now since I have admitted censoring their movies to my children? Let's hear it for "Fair Use", oh yeah, the MPAA/RIAA and some courts don't believe in it.
Apparently what it comes down to is, are you profiting from doing that? Are you selling the service? If not, I'd guess you're safe. I don't really like this decision, but I also don't see it being extended to personal use.
Yeah, sure we all spew the statistic about how the gamer population is aging, but seriously, those are people who play zork, king's quest, and fucking tetris (or their modern equivalents).
Whoah there buddy. I think you're generalizing bigtime there. I don't think tetris players are even considered gamers. That's like calling Solitaire players gamers. A lot of us older gamers (i.e. those of us who at least grew up with Coleco and Atari and C64, and went on from there) still play the latest twitch games either on PC or the consoles, or both. Don't be so quick to dismiss the older gamers. We may be getting older, but we still like good games and still want to play new ones.
-Racist Advertising Campaign (Whether or not it was intentional, people are screaming.)
Only complete morons with nothing better to do are screaming about that one. Some people just like to scream about things, so they'll use any excuse, however flimsy. But yeah, Sony fucked up on the rest.
It's still illegal, whether you press charges or not. To press charges is to insist on enforcement of penalties due to contravention of a criminal act, the fairness of which can then be contested in a court of law.
It's not just the fairness of the penalties that are contested in court, it's whether an illegal act was committed at all. Innocent until proven guilty.
Re:And a moment of Silence for...
on
Five That Fell
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Don't forget Bullfrog, though. They made the original God game, were a key player in the Sim game field and always had an air of wit around them that made all of their games comedy gold, as well as good fun.
They made Syndicate!! While Populous was cool, nothing compared to Syndicate at the time. They could recreate it today and it would probably still be regarded as a fantastic game.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, what are you talking about?! Vista is gonna have some sweet new DRM! We can finally quit messing around with our PCs and just let Microsoft run them for us! Think of all the time we spend on the computer that we can now spend doing... umm... other stuff? I think there's supposed to be other stuff we can do anyway... not real clear on that...
Depends on whether they actually work significantly better or not.
Upon reading the decision, it becomes abundantly clear that the real problem seems to be massive overreaching on the part of the state. The statute placed many irrational, arbitrary restrictions on the procedure which were not based on medical science. They repeatedly refer to the physicians best medical judgment being important, and then repeatedly undermine it with restrictions that no other procedure is encumbered by, and which second and third-guess the physician's judgment. Now if they had crafted it more narrowly, and perhaps targeted only late-term abortions, and given reasons for the restrictions they were putting in place, along with exceptions for certain types of cases, then they might have had a chance. But by trying to restrict all abortions and by creating obstacles that serve no medical purpose, and are only a thinly veiled attempt to prevent those seeking an abortion from ever being able to obtain one, they shot themselves in the foot.
Much of the debate over abortion is based on belief. Belief that can't be substantiated, and will therefore remain subjective. This means that there will probably never be a real solution to the problem, but people will have to learn to live with some sort of compromise. Until and unless a compromise can be reached, abortion opponents will continue to craft overreaching legislation, and it will continue to be shot down. Abortion proponents will continually have to fight in court to maintain the right to an abortion. I don't think it's going to get any easier.
The following is from a Gamespy preview (emphasis mine):
Where there are stats, there will be cheaters. Additionally, you should never underestimate the ingenuity of griefers. They'll go to great lengths for the opportunity to piss people off, if only for the moment, and having access to the source can only help their efforts.
It's much easier to devise cheats for the game if you've had a good look at the source too. That can be very detrimental to a game if cheating becomes rampant. So a code leak could seriously impact this game's sales and popularity.
You can tick a checkbox in the options to tell it not to automatically download license files.
I think you're quite probably right about the level of corruption. I believe this is due to the fact that the government had less power and control over the everyday lives of people back then. There was less power, and therefore less corruption. That's one of the reasons I'm in favor of reducing the power of government in many areas, and preventing it from meddling in things that it shouldn't (separation of church and state is a big one for me).
The first two quotes you use both reference the Kellerman study, which has been widely debunked for numerous errors in its methodology. By other doctors no less.
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/ benefits.html#43times
http://www.building-tux.com/dsmjd/rkba/kellerman.
http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Suter/med-lit
http://www.thegunzone.com/rkba/rkba-43.html
As for the third quote, I could list several other causes of death that greatly outnumber gun-related deaths. You're not really making any sort of point there.
Ok, but how is that so different from today's politicians pandering to the religious folks in order to keep their offices? It compromises the integrity of the government in order to hold together a coalition. They either saw blacks and others as unequal to white men, or they just didn't feel that their rights were worth fighting for.
I understand that, and I agree. My point is that the government has never even gotten within sight of perfection, so to claim that things were better back then than they are today is just wrongheaded. Things are different today than they were then. While I have many many problems with the way things are going now, I have to admit that more people have more freedom today than they did back then. That is a good thing. That said, we still have a very long way to go, and we have taken some steps backwards in some areas which need to be rectified.
Once again, this decision has nothing to do with censorship. Copyright law forbids the distribution of a derivative work without permission. These folks didn't have permission from the copyright holder to distribute derivative works. End of story. You don't like it? Tell Congress to fix copyright law.
All this ruling does is agree with the status quo which means that copyright law trumps free speech. You simply don't have the right to distribute derivative works. You may disagree with copyright law, but that's another battle.
That, and the fact that you aren't bypassing any security features in order to alter the content.
Actually, according to existing law, step 2 is illegal as well since it requires them to bypass the encryption on the disc. That's illegal under the DMCA.
Actually, no it couldn't. It would then be a different story than the one that the writer was telling. You could argue that the story would still be just as good, or even better, but that's purely subjective and a personal decision. I, for one, do not find nudity to be offensive. It's just someone's body and I don't find anything offensive about that. Sex can be a very intimate experience that can help to form an emotional bond between people, so I wouldn't say that it can't add something to a story. It might be tough for the writer to convey exactly what it adds to the audience though. That said, I don't personally see any reason why someone shouldn't be able to sell the service of removing unwanted bits of a movie when they have paid for a legitimate copy. However, it would be illegal to do so under the DMCA I believe since you would have to bypass Macrovision or CSS encryption in order to edit the work. But then I have many issues with the DMCA too.
Umm.. everyone? Women? Blacks? Non-land-owners? Might want to reconsider that.
I think you're misunderstanding him, though I may be reading more into it than he meant. He's saying that "marriage" is a religious institution, versus civil union which is (or should be) a governmentally recognized union, but I think it really could be extended beyond religion even, but I'm not sure who would be interested in such a thing. Basically, marriage is a ceremony performed by someone not representative of the government, and is not legally recognized. A civil union is granted by the government and is legally recognized. So it doesn't really matter whether a marriage is religious or not.
Got a link to any evidence to back that statement up?
Well that was pathetic. Try again and maybe give a reason this time.
Apparently what it comes down to is, are you profiting from doing that? Are you selling the service? If not, I'd guess you're safe. I don't really like this decision, but I also don't see it being extended to personal use.
Whoah there buddy. I think you're generalizing bigtime there. I don't think tetris players are even considered gamers. That's like calling Solitaire players gamers. A lot of us older gamers (i.e. those of us who at least grew up with Coleco and Atari and C64, and went on from there) still play the latest twitch games either on PC or the consoles, or both. Don't be so quick to dismiss the older gamers. We may be getting older, but we still like good games and still want to play new ones.
Only complete morons with nothing better to do are screaming about that one. Some people just like to scream about things, so they'll use any excuse, however flimsy. But yeah, Sony fucked up on the rest.
It's not just the fairness of the penalties that are contested in court, it's whether an illegal act was committed at all. Innocent until proven guilty.
They made Syndicate!! While Populous was cool, nothing compared to Syndicate at the time. They could recreate it today and it would probably still be regarded as a fantastic game.
Do both of them work? If not, then yes, they'll pay less taxes by filing jointly. If they both work, they'll probably pay more.
If he had stopped working there, then he wouldn't care if they knew. Point stands. It wouldn't come up during an appraisal.