That's why our current legal system exists, in theory.
To make sure that people in general are best represented and that the laws aren't abused.
This is all in theory and ideally of course. In practice that doesn't exactly happen all the time.
What worries me in a sense is that if this went to court... who would be arguing what? Obviously certain elements within our own government that upholds our laws, would like to see this bid for protection under the first amendment succeed, yet our own government would be arguing against it in court? I'm not so sure. It seems like a conflict of interests at first glance.
I can't say I personally know the legal grounds upon which they as a company do it, or argue this...
But I will say it's an interesting, even if maybe abstract or simply not legally backed, viewpoint.
Granted they seem to just be trying to circumvent people's legitimate want/need for privacy, and that you could say they're kinda hopping on the first amendment bandwagon that everyone is on so often...
But it's interesting to say the least. I'm curious to see where this will actually go. Though if it goes to court "Nowhere fast" would be my best guess.
I'll make this short and sweet. Despite your creative quoting; they wasted my time.
I stated my question. They answered it. She then offered to "help" me build a computer, I declined, she insisted that she could give me a "deal" on the price, I suck at being mean to people who are overly nice, and an hour and a half of my time later... I still saved money by building it myself on their website. And I say they wasted my time because they managed to not offer me standard listed specs, and screw up the email quote they sent me, offering the incorrect hardware.
Inspired by the article about that German guy who got the price of windows refunded to him, I called Dell to see if at the very least I could get a swap to WinXp Pro instead of Vista Home Premium.
I then spent an hour and a half on the phone with an incompetent sales woman who not only wasted my time, but attempted to pressure me into buying shit I didn't want, but furthermore still screwed up my quote, and in the end did not get my business. (Long story, not really the time or place for it)
Point being;
The only reason I even called and spoke to someone on the phone was to see if I could do the swap, and not have Vista on my system.
I assured this woman that I was not only in the IT industry, but knew very contrary to what she said about Vista being a good OS, that it sucked, I was not willing to use it, and that unless they would still warranty my hardware after a reformat I would not be buying from them.
The only computers they seem to offer XP on are high end models.
You're really better off just ordering a vista system, reinstalling XP over it, and keeping your install CDs for when they fix their crappy OS so it actually works.
Now to just sit back and wait a few weeks for my new computer to arrive. Wipe Vista. Reinstall XP Pro Lite.
Maybe a brand new computer with a Intel ® Core(TM)2 Duo Processor 2.13GHz, 1066 FSB and 2gb of RAM can freaking run Oblivion...
I don't recall saying it was their problem.
Nor did I set up the account.
Nor did I sign anything.
I'm the curator of the account, as my father is not technologically literate. I did not ever bother to ask, nor care, that we had email with them, as it did not affect the account or our internet access. Also, I did not ignore any messages. As I already stated I did not really ever know, or care, until recently, that we even had email with them.
Unfortunately, I did not make the call, I was at work when the call was made.
It started with our internet not working. After troubleshooting it, assuming it was a hardware/software/user error, for hours, I had to leave, I told "Them" being my family to call TWC.
I came home to find out that our router had been Quarentined. My reaction was rather "Wtf?". And that's apparently just their term for "Shut off".
Supposedly they sent several email notifications. To our TWC email account. We don't check or use it. A letter or phonecall would have been better recieved and more useful.
To cut to the quick, they were told that we were downloading "too much" and that we needed to cut our consumption.
My bandwidth consumption includes music, games, appz, and normal internet stuff. And movies if you count porn.
Maybe somewhere around 3-6 GB of porn a month. Maybe a gig of music, a game or two, amounting to a gig or two, and a gig of other misc stuff. NOT that much imho. My younger brother on the network however, had a habit of downloading entire seasons of stuff like South Park. (To which I wanna know why the moron needs cable if he's just gonna waste my bandwidth downloading low quality TV episodes)
So I presume he consumed as much if not more than I do.
I've yet to have the time, or feel masochistic enough to want to call and deal with their "support" people on the issue... And in light of this article, it seems I'm better off keeping my mouth shut, and that my protest would have likely been met with a disconnection of service.
The CSB (CocksuckingBastards) at TWC(TimeWarnerCable) with Roadrunner "Quarantined" our modem because of bandwidth usage.
Needless to say I was outraged and am still strongly considering a switch to ADSL.
Oh, and they've still ignored my request for a copy of their TOS EULA and Fair Use policies.
Their service sucks, it goes down randomly, and I've had more intelligent conversations with a rock than with their support centers.
I hate this type of BS.
The individual(s) responsible should be shot in the face for making such ignorant decisions.
I 3 me some gmail and I would have a seriously big beef with being forced to use some crappy client/site outside of gmail.
I hope someone at this college writes a program to log in for you and forward everything to your account of choice.
Less stories about my beloved Google.com doing bad things for money. More stories about what our President, and his associates do for money. Whatever happened to those Enron guys, anyway?
But seriously...
Until they even prove/convict someone of something on a website like that, is it even fair, according to our legal system's Innocent Until Proven Guilty policy, to say that Google is advertising on websites engaged in illegal activity? I for one, like my warez, pr0n, and MP3s. And anything that helps keep those sites up is in my eyes good.
Just because the RIAA and other bodies that would like to shut down those sites are unsuccessful, doesn't mean they need to start harassing google over letting those websites make enough money to operate off their ad program.
Thusly, no one has a right to really bitch when they do something you don't like. And honestly? As entertaining, or enlightening as religious debate may be, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exDo2SMdB-0, there's a time and a place. And if Youtube says not on my time, and not in my space, well, suck it up and deal with it. No one's stopping you from saying it, sharing it, feeling it, thinking it, but they ARE exercising their right to NOT have it on their site. Regardless of similar videos, topics, etc. They don't have to be impartial, or fair. In fact they can be hypocrites of they like. They can leave certain videos up that discuss the subject, while taking others down. That's really their prerogative.
I may not agree with what any given person chooses to do with their freedoms, but I will fight for their right to do so.
Unless I'm misunderstanding the questions people are asking, the idea of Hydrogen comes from the fact that they've been developing ways to use it as a fuel source for quite some time now.
Similar to how they have already (I think) developed an engine that runs on some kinda corn oil, that costs like 5 cents or something ridiculously cheap along those lines, per gallon.
Not to trash Microsoft too much, but...
Remind me why I care what they say.
If you can't enforce it, you might as well blow it out your ass.
I'll get right on giving a damn what they say I "Can" and "Cannot" do with their software, right after I send the RIAA a check, and pay for my software, and my porn for that matter.
I think we all know I have no intention of doing any of the above.
Or downloading vista for that matter.
It's unfortunate that the Wii will get passed up by some people due to graphics, but really... I'm not worried.
The Wii gave gamers everything they wanted. The Wii seems like Nintendo took a bunch of gamers, and said "Hey, what do you want our new system to do?" And the gamers said "Well, we really don't give a shit about graphics, but this, this, and this, would be nice..." And Nintendo did it all.
Honestly, in terms of bang for your buck, the Wii is the best next-gen console out there.
$250, for the Wii? The Wii is almost as fun as my 360, The only problem is lack of current selection, and it still being VERY new. And it's just over half the price.
In terms of current entertainment, I'd say
Xbox360 > Wii
I frankly think the reason so many BAD games are coming out for next gen systems, is because they spend too much time worrying about what the game looks like, and not enough time worrying about how it plays, how fun it is, testing it, finding bugs, fixing things, changing things, ect...
I agree with almost all of this.
I will point out one thing though;
For those of us who do feel very strongly about certain types of music or bands, liking the same type of music is very important. I don't think I could get along with a girl who listened to say, hip hop, rap, or country. Country being the lesser of the three evils, because it's easiest on the ears, for the most part. The same goes for my friends. I actually don't have any friends that primarily listen to any of those three types of music.
But yes, talking about music as an icebreaker is so freaking cliché. Everyone likes music. You might as well talk about enjoying breathing, or how good opposable thumbs are. People really need to find common ground with each other, that goes further than skin deep.
I've seen exactly what you're talking about in so many places in my life. I wonder now, with video games, and computers, and the internet already having been attacked by these types of people, when they're accepted at large, what new type of media will replace them, to be attacked and blamed for all society's ills.
Thanks for sharing a link to the article, but I couldn't read it without purchasing a subscription.
I don't want to search for it right now, but someone basically said something earlier in the thread, that implied that there needs to be some kinda of conscientious effort to better moderate videogames, even if Thompson is wrong.
And to this I say "ESRB". It's there for a reason.
More on topic, a response to your post;
I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. The ESRB exists to guide parents on what little Jimmy should and should not be playing. As one of my two jobs is working at a store where we sell video games, I'm amazed at how many small children (Under 13) have parents that will buy the Grand Theft Auto games for them. Clearly a lot of these parents are not checking to see if little Jimmy understands the difference between fiction and reality.
Frankly, I'm in the most profane and vulgar ways possible, fucking SICK of people ruining my life experience, in terms of digital media, by being fuck-ups. I extend this to everyone who's blamed video games, movies, music, TV, and any current form of media/entertainment for something stupid they've done, or their kid has done.
Short and sweet;
There's a lot of things in this world we don't want little Jimmy to get his hands on. Drugs, alcohol, porn, firearms, knives, your brand new expensive digital camera, etc.
How do you keep those things out of little Jimmy's hands? Got an answer? Good. Take that and re-apply it to movies, music, video games, and anything else you'd like to blame for the way your kid turned out. There's warning labels on this stuff for a reason... Really people.
[samsim] I heard about this guy who broke into a lion's den at the zoo
[samsim] and got mauled
[samsim] and people were talking about how there should have been better defences put up to prevent people getting into the cage
[samsim] a friend of mine suggested setting up some kind of deterrent
[samsim] for example, putting some sort of fierce animal in the cage, which would attack anybody who climbed in
I think that about sums up my feelings on these types of people. We need more lion dens, and less Thompsons.
Since we have no way to prove such a conjecture, I think it's rather pointless to speculate about what would have happened had it been 150 degrees instead of 180-190.
I will say this though, that it was only an example, more meant to illustrate the frequency of frivolous lawsuits, rather than call attention to that specific instance.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why our current legal system exists, in theory. To make sure that people in general are best represented and that the laws aren't abused. This is all in theory and ideally of course. In practice that doesn't exactly happen all the time. What worries me in a sense is that if this went to court... who would be arguing what? Obviously certain elements within our own government that upholds our laws, would like to see this bid for protection under the first amendment succeed, yet our own government would be arguing against it in court? I'm not so sure. It seems like a conflict of interests at first glance.
This is actually interesting.
I can't say I personally know the legal grounds upon which they as a company do it, or argue this...
But I will say it's an interesting, even if maybe abstract or simply not legally backed, viewpoint.
Granted they seem to just be trying to circumvent people's legitimate want/need for privacy, and that you could say they're kinda hopping on the first amendment bandwagon that everyone is on so often...
But it's interesting to say the least. I'm curious to see where this will actually go. Though if it goes to court "Nowhere fast" would be my best guess.
I'll make this short and sweet. Despite your creative quoting; they wasted my time. I stated my question. They answered it. She then offered to "help" me build a computer, I declined, she insisted that she could give me a "deal" on the price, I suck at being mean to people who are overly nice, and an hour and a half of my time later... I still saved money by building it myself on their website. And I say they wasted my time because they managed to not offer me standard listed specs, and screw up the email quote they sent me, offering the incorrect hardware.
Inspired by the article about that German guy who got the price of windows refunded to him, I called Dell to see if at the very least I could get a swap to WinXp Pro instead of Vista Home Premium.
I then spent an hour and a half on the phone with an incompetent sales woman who not only wasted my time, but attempted to pressure me into buying shit I didn't want, but furthermore still screwed up my quote, and in the end did not get my business. (Long story, not really the time or place for it)
Point being;
The only reason I even called and spoke to someone on the phone was to see if I could do the swap, and not have Vista on my system.
I assured this woman that I was not only in the IT industry, but knew very contrary to what she said about Vista being a good OS, that it sucked, I was not willing to use it, and that unless they would still warranty my hardware after a reformat I would not be buying from them.
The only computers they seem to offer XP on are high end models.
You're really better off just ordering a vista system, reinstalling XP over it, and keeping your install CDs for when they fix their crappy OS so it actually works.
Now to just sit back and wait a few weeks for my new computer to arrive. Wipe Vista. Reinstall XP Pro Lite.
Maybe a brand new computer with a Intel ® Core(TM)2 Duo Processor 2.13GHz, 1066 FSB and 2gb of RAM can freaking run Oblivion...
They did. http://www.bioalloy.org/projects/images/p-m6.jpg
Son of a ... thumb link. ... Here's the right one. http://www.bioalloy.org/projects/images/p-m6.jpg
http://www.bioalloy.org/projects/images/thumbs/p-m 6.jpg
I don't recall saying it was their problem. Nor did I set up the account. Nor did I sign anything. I'm the curator of the account, as my father is not technologically literate. I did not ever bother to ask, nor care, that we had email with them, as it did not affect the account or our internet access. Also, I did not ignore any messages. As I already stated I did not really ever know, or care, until recently, that we even had email with them.
Unfortunately, I did not make the call, I was at work when the call was made.
It started with our internet not working. After troubleshooting it, assuming it was a hardware/software/user error, for hours, I had to leave, I told "Them" being my family to call TWC.
I came home to find out that our router had been Quarentined. My reaction was rather "Wtf?". And that's apparently just their term for "Shut off".
Supposedly they sent several email notifications. To our TWC email account. We don't check or use it. A letter or phonecall would have been better recieved and more useful.
To cut to the quick, they were told that we were downloading "too much" and that we needed to cut our consumption.
My bandwidth consumption includes music, games, appz, and normal internet stuff. And movies if you count porn.
Maybe somewhere around 3-6 GB of porn a month. Maybe a gig of music, a game or two, amounting to a gig or two, and a gig of other misc stuff. NOT that much imho. My younger brother on the network however, had a habit of downloading entire seasons of stuff like South Park. (To which I wanna know why the moron needs cable if he's just gonna waste my bandwidth downloading low quality TV episodes)
So I presume he consumed as much if not more than I do.
I've yet to have the time, or feel masochistic enough to want to call and deal with their "support" people on the issue... And in light of this article, it seems I'm better off keeping my mouth shut, and that my protest would have likely been met with a disconnection of service.
The CSB (CocksuckingBastards) at TWC(TimeWarnerCable) with Roadrunner "Quarantined" our modem because of bandwidth usage. Needless to say I was outraged and am still strongly considering a switch to ADSL. Oh, and they've still ignored my request for a copy of their TOS EULA and Fair Use policies. Their service sucks, it goes down randomly, and I've had more intelligent conversations with a rock than with their support centers.
Gmail is superior. It's really just that simple.
Whoops. Yay HTML, forgot that < would get caught as html with I meant to <3 gmail.
I hate this type of BS. The individual(s) responsible should be shot in the face for making such ignorant decisions. I 3 me some gmail and I would have a seriously big beef with being forced to use some crappy client/site outside of gmail. I hope someone at this college writes a program to log in for you and forward everything to your account of choice.
Here you go.
Be nice. >=)
Less stories about my beloved Google.com doing bad things for money. More stories about what our President, and his associates do for money. Whatever happened to those Enron guys, anyway?
But seriously...
Until they even prove/convict someone of something on a website like that, is it even fair, according to our legal system's Innocent Until Proven Guilty policy, to say that Google is advertising on websites engaged in illegal activity? I for one, like my warez, pr0n, and MP3s. And anything that helps keep those sites up is in my eyes good.
Just because the RIAA and other bodies that would like to shut down those sites are unsuccessful, doesn't mean they need to start harassing google over letting those websites make enough money to operate off their ad program.
I hate to say it, but;
YouTube is free.
Thusly, no one has a right to really bitch when they do something you don't like. And honestly? As entertaining, or enlightening as religious debate may be, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exDo2SMdB-0, there's a time and a place. And if Youtube says not on my time, and not in my space, well, suck it up and deal with it. No one's stopping you from saying it, sharing it, feeling it, thinking it, but they ARE exercising their right to NOT have it on their site. Regardless of similar videos, topics, etc. They don't have to be impartial, or fair. In fact they can be hypocrites of they like. They can leave certain videos up that discuss the subject, while taking others down. That's really their prerogative.
I may not agree with what any given person chooses to do with their freedoms, but I will fight for their right to do so.
Unless I'm misunderstanding the questions people are asking, the idea of Hydrogen comes from the fact that they've been developing ways to use it as a fuel source for quite some time now.
s pring/corn.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle
Similar to how they have already (I think) developed an engine that runs on some kinda corn oil, that costs like 5 cents or something ridiculously cheap along those lines, per gallon.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/newsevents/EPS/v13n2_1997
Not to trash Microsoft too much, but... Remind me why I care what they say. If you can't enforce it, you might as well blow it out your ass. I'll get right on giving a damn what they say I "Can" and "Cannot" do with their software, right after I send the RIAA a check, and pay for my software, and my porn for that matter. I think we all know I have no intention of doing any of the above. Or downloading vista for that matter.
It's unfortunate that the Wii will get passed up by some people due to graphics, but really... I'm not worried.
The Wii gave gamers everything they wanted. The Wii seems like Nintendo took a bunch of gamers, and said "Hey, what do you want our new system to do?" And the gamers said "Well, we really don't give a shit about graphics, but this, this, and this, would be nice..." And Nintendo did it all.
Honestly, in terms of bang for your buck, the Wii is the best next-gen console out there.
$250, for the Wii? The Wii is almost as fun as my 360, The only problem is lack of current selection, and it still being VERY new. And it's just over half the price.
In terms of current entertainment, I'd say
Xbox360 > Wii
I frankly think the reason so many BAD games are coming out for next gen systems, is because they spend too much time worrying about what the game looks like, and not enough time worrying about how it plays, how fun it is, testing it, finding bugs, fixing things, changing things, ect...
I agree with almost all of this. I will point out one thing though; For those of us who do feel very strongly about certain types of music or bands, liking the same type of music is very important. I don't think I could get along with a girl who listened to say, hip hop, rap, or country. Country being the lesser of the three evils, because it's easiest on the ears, for the most part. The same goes for my friends. I actually don't have any friends that primarily listen to any of those three types of music. But yes, talking about music as an icebreaker is so freaking cliché. Everyone likes music. You might as well talk about enjoying breathing, or how good opposable thumbs are. People really need to find common ground with each other, that goes further than skin deep.
I've seen exactly what you're talking about in so many places in my life. I wonder now, with video games, and computers, and the internet already having been attacked by these types of people, when they're accepted at large, what new type of media will replace them, to be attacked and blamed for all society's ills.
Thanks for sharing a link to the article, but I couldn't read it without purchasing a subscription.
I want you to die for reposting this in every new article.
I pride myself on my colorful phallic metaphors. Though my girlfriend just rolls her eyes at me when she hears it.
Go figure, eh?
And to this I say "ESRB". It's there for a reason.
More on topic, a response to your post;
I agree with pretty much everything you've said here. The ESRB exists to guide parents on what little Jimmy should and should not be playing. As one of my two jobs is working at a store where we sell video games, I'm amazed at how many small children (Under 13) have parents that will buy the Grand Theft Auto games for them. Clearly a lot of these parents are not checking to see if little Jimmy understands the difference between fiction and reality.
Frankly, I'm in the most profane and vulgar ways possible, fucking SICK of people ruining my life experience, in terms of digital media, by being fuck-ups. I extend this to everyone who's blamed video games, movies, music, TV, and any current form of media/entertainment for something stupid they've done, or their kid has done.
Short and sweet; There's a lot of things in this world we don't want little Jimmy to get his hands on. Drugs, alcohol, porn, firearms, knives, your brand new expensive digital camera, etc.
How do you keep those things out of little Jimmy's hands? Got an answer? Good. Take that and re-apply it to movies, music, video games, and anything else you'd like to blame for the way your kid turned out. There's warning labels on this stuff for a reason... Really people.
http://www.bash.org/?628630 I think that about sums up my feelings on these types of people. We need more lion dens, and less Thompsons.
Since we have no way to prove such a conjecture, I think it's rather pointless to speculate about what would have happened had it been 150 degrees instead of 180-190.
I will say this though, that it was only an example, more meant to illustrate the frequency of frivolous lawsuits, rather than call attention to that specific instance.