BG2 was all about pausing, manual reading, thinking, making your move. That to me is the essence of D&D. I don't need realtime. I need to geek out with lots of stats, spells and most importantly: my own pace.
It was (sob) just (sob) f*cking (sob) beautiful...
"Theft" and "Stealing" are both words that have been co-opted by those industries who make their living off a soon-to-be defunct business model in the hopes of fending off the technological innovations that have stemmed their revenue streams.
Before you type something stupid why don't you study this:
1] There is a difference between a contractual obligation to pay, and a property theft.
2] There are precise definitions of "contracts".
3] We consumers never signed one.
Theft occurs when someone loses something. Period. Allowing the publishing industries to alter this definition is like letting G.Bush redefine the words "imminent threat".
What part of consent, freedom, right-to-privacy, physical loss, contractual agrreement, and constitutional rights don't you understand.
Ask any developer in the country: working with Microsoft means jumping through a ridiculous number of hoops, and complying with really awful regulations (like all that X-Box Live crap).
Why do developers do this?
Because development for the X-Box is otherwise relatively easy. The X-Box being a modified PC, means that porting PC titles to the X-Box is cake.
The modified PC architecture also allows Microsoft to raid E3 for hot-titles, and buy out (or sign advance release deals) on hot titles. ("Halo" for example was originally supposed to be a PC release).
But what happens when Microsoft begins to move away from standard components?
The first and most obvious advantage to Microsoft is cost. Owning the chip manufacturing reduces the overall cost of production, not only by cutting out the 3rd party, but through efficiencies of custom architecture. This will translate into a more competitive console price. Most people don't know it, but Microsoft is in a state of panic right now over console prices. GameCube and PS2 can undercut X-Box comfortably in the late-stage console cycle (2 years after a console's release).
But (buyer beware) even though the X-Box NEXT will carry a nice price-tag, the number of titles will be SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER.
Developers *hate* working with the X-Box team at M'soft, and if coding for the X-Box was as difficult as coding for the PS2 developers would choose 1 console and stick with it.
This is almost guaranteed to happen with the release of X-NEXT. Watch as Sony announces a larger than ever release calendar and Microsoft is forced to go on an acquisition streak in order to bulk up on releases.
Also watch as GameCube surprises everyone with their next console which will demolish Sony and Microsoft's benchmarks...
MS has tried several times to add graphical effects and yes, even vector graphics capabilities to IE and they have failed every time.
There are many reasons for this, but first and foremost is that simple, independent applications are not Microsoft's bag.
The internal political pressure to provide hooks within Sparkle for Access, Word, Windows Media Player, CSS, VB-Script, etc. will result in a cumbersome vector graphics engine. What will MS say when developers complain about their painfully sluggish code?
They'll say the usual. Don't blame us... Your machine just isn't fast enough.
And by the way Adobe also has a 3rd generation vector graphics engine and they've got the entire design world listening to them. If they can't get theirs to catch on, my guess is MS adds this to their long list of quickly forgotten failures.
Or did you think this was going to be much cooler than it actually is?
When MIT first announced they were going to opensource their course content, I was under the impression that this would amount to more than course syllabi. I poked through a few courses and I see:
1) A bibliography naming the texts used. 2) A syllabus of chapters read by specific dates. 3) Test questions.
If you ask me this is "opensourced curriculum" is total vaporware.
So MIT is doing what? They're telling me what book to read?
Maybe I just poked through some of the more "direct from the textbook" courses, and maybe there are some that include lectures, professor-prepared materials, and video... but I didn't see them.
For anyone who doesn't understand China, here's the entire history of the country going back at least 500 years.
1) China's government relaxes its authoritarian control in an effort to spur economic growth. 2) Economic growth requires political freedom and the government tacitly allows limited freedoms to develop. 3) Limited freedoms begin to give way to larger cultural changes, and an influx of Western ideologies and influences. 4) Western ideologies and influences contrast and clash with the authoritarian rule of the government. 5) China's government cracks down on cultural "dissidents", blood is spilled, and the government regains absolute control. 6) The crackdown on freedoms results in decreased trade. China's economy suffers. Simultaneously there is a shuffling of the political deck and new political hard-liners emerge. 7) Hard-liners promise economic reform in order to maintain power. 8) Repeat from Step #1 ad infinitum.
Right now we're between Steps #3 and #4
Step #5 will occur almost immediately following the close of the Olympic Games in 2008.
Recently I signed a new cellphone contract and they *would not* allow me to sign the contract without giving them my SS# (which I imagine is for a credit check). What's the legality of that? Is there any way to avoid handing over SS#'s in these situations? Its terrifying that cell-phone services have huge databases of millions of Social Security numbers.
It is true that unlike software EULA's, music has no "single-user" or "single-seat" requirement.
But, a copyright isn't ultimately about ownership. Its about "the rights to copy, distribute and/or publish". While a group of 1000 users *could* indeed share ownership of a CD, in order for them to truly "share" it, they would have to create multiple copies of the content thus violating the copyright.
Check out my post titled "HOW TO REALLY SCREW UP THE RIAA"...
Let's remember something here... the RIAA has spent very little so far. This is a *scare tactic* people.
The cost of suing everyone in the filesharing community would exceed the GNP of the United States. They are hoping that a small handful of suits (Only 261 shows how expensive it actually is) will have a widespread impact on filesharing activity.
But if you ignore them, the *will* and MUST go away because there is no financially viable alternative for them. Lawsuits are incredibly expensive, and the plaintiffs in these cases are college students with NO MONEY.
Therefore this is a money losing proposition for the RIAA. If you want to beat them, CALL THEIR BLUFF.
I've just come up with a way to really create havoc for the RIAA. This is something they'd sh*t themselves over, and its so easy you could do it right now.
[Step One]
Pay for, and download a legal MP3 file from iMusic or Emusic or any of the other legal commercial MP3 download sites.
[Step Two] Now that you've legally downloaded those MP3 files, you are also allowed to burn those to a CD-R (as stands to reason, but the Emusic site also says you're allowed to -- after all you're intending to listen to it on your stereo).
[Step Three]
DON'T LISTEN TO IT.
Instead, sell your newly burned CD-R (as "new") on eBay or Half.com.
[Step Four]
Congratulations, you've just created a legitimate marketplace for CD-R recordings. No one will be able to tell what's legitimate from illegitimate anymore. Your CD-R is perfectly legal to sell online, but so might anyone else's. In essence you've just creasted a legal loophole for the sales of home-burned CD-R's packed with music.
[Step Five] Mod this up and lets start a revolution!
last time I checked, theft is not common and reasonable behavior.
"Theft"? Downloading songs from the Internet IS NOT THEFT. That's not my opinion. Its the law.
Copyright law is (read carefully) a protection against COPYING AND DISTRIBUTING. To download a copyrighted work from the internet is NOT RESTRICTED BY COPYRIGHT LAW. The offender is the person who uploaded it.
What makes this case almost impossible to win in court (And the RIAA knows this which is why they use the signed affidavit approach) is that users who download songs simultaneously make them available -- It should be noted that this is not the same as copying or publishing. Those are actions. We are talking about inaction.
RIAA lawyers are attempting to make the claim that downloading is in essence "making a copy" but that is simply a case they are making, and is far from having precedent.
The EFF has published a guide to 'not getting caught'. Read it here. Interesting stuff.
Ask a dozen lawyers to explain it to you and you'll get a dozen answers.
The proof of this is the "signed confession" that the RIAA is asking for. They know full well that prosecuting these cases is a legal nightmare which they will most likely not win. BUT suing for breach of contract (after you've signed your confession and agreement to cease and desist) will be a cakewalk.
Slashdot Mirror
(Single player of course).
BG2 was all about pausing, manual reading, thinking, making your move. That to me is the essence of D&D. I don't need realtime. I need to geek out with lots of stats, spells and most importantly: my own pace.
It was (sob) just (sob) f*cking (sob) beautiful...
Nice dumbed down oversimplification.
"Theft" and "Stealing" are both words that have been co-opted by those industries who make their living off a soon-to-be defunct business model in the hopes of fending off the technological innovations that have stemmed their revenue streams.
Before you type something stupid why don't you study this:
1] There is a difference between a contractual obligation to pay, and a property theft.
2] There are precise definitions of "contracts".
3] We consumers never signed one.
Theft occurs when someone loses something. Period. Allowing the publishing industries to alter this definition is like letting G.Bush redefine the words "imminent threat".
What part of consent, freedom, right-to-privacy, physical loss, contractual agrreement, and constitutional rights don't you understand.
Laissez fare bitch.
Dear sir,
Don't like us sitting on your wittle space rock?
Come and get us!
Nah hah!
Love,
NASA
Ask any developer in the country: working with Microsoft means jumping through a ridiculous number of hoops, and complying with really awful regulations (like all that X-Box Live crap).
Why do developers do this?
Because development for the X-Box is otherwise relatively easy. The X-Box being a modified PC, means that porting PC titles to the X-Box is cake.
The modified PC architecture also allows Microsoft to raid E3 for hot-titles, and buy out (or sign advance release deals) on hot titles. ("Halo" for example was originally supposed to be a PC release).
But what happens when Microsoft begins to move away from standard components?
The first and most obvious advantage to Microsoft is cost. Owning the chip manufacturing reduces the overall cost of production, not only by cutting out the 3rd party, but through efficiencies of custom architecture. This will translate into a more competitive console price. Most people don't know it, but Microsoft is in a state of panic right now over console prices. GameCube and PS2 can undercut X-Box comfortably in the late-stage console cycle (2 years after a console's release).
But (buyer beware) even though the X-Box NEXT will carry a nice price-tag, the number of titles will be SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER.
Developers *hate* working with the X-Box team at M'soft, and if coding for the X-Box was as difficult as coding for the PS2 developers would choose 1 console and stick with it.
This is almost guaranteed to happen with the release of X-NEXT. Watch as Sony announces a larger than ever release calendar and Microsoft is forced to go on an acquisition streak in order to bulk up on releases.
Also watch as GameCube surprises everyone with their next console which will demolish Sony and Microsoft's benchmarks...
There have been *maybe* 5-7 decent games written for the X-Box since launch. And that's *if* you're versatile in your tastes.
Not to mention the fact that my ancient PC had better anti-aliasing at 1024x768 than my X-Box has at TV resolutions.
What's the next console for X-Box owners? Its called the "Playstation III".
MS has tried several times to add graphical
effects and yes, even vector graphics capabilities
to IE and they have failed every time.
There are many reasons for this, but first and
foremost is that simple, independent applications
are not Microsoft's bag.
The internal political pressure to provide hooks within Sparkle for Access,
Word, Windows Media Player, CSS, VB-Script, etc. will result in a cumbersome vector graphics engine. What will MS
say when developers complain about their painfully
sluggish code?
They'll say the usual. Don't blame us... Your machine just isn't fast enough.
And by the way Adobe also has a 3rd generation vector graphics engine and
they've got the entire
design world listening to them. If they can't
get theirs to catch on, my guess is MS adds this
to their long list of quickly forgotten failures.
Yours truly,
Microsoft Bob.
The question I'm trying to answer is:
What did the big bang *feel* like?
Or did you think this was going to be much cooler than it actually is?
When MIT first announced they were going to opensource their course content, I was under the impression that this would amount to more than course syllabi. I poked through a few courses and I see:
1) A bibliography naming the texts used.
2) A syllabus of chapters read by specific dates.
3) Test questions.
If you ask me this is "opensourced curriculum" is total vaporware.
So MIT is doing what? They're telling me what book to read?
Maybe I just poked through some of the more "direct from the textbook" courses, and maybe there are some that include lectures, professor-prepared materials, and video... but I didn't see them.
What they're basically saying is: "We're moving to a fee based system to protect kids".
Did anyone hear their statement and *not* guffaw?
For anyone who doesn't understand China, here's the entire history of the country going back at least 500 years.
1) China's government relaxes its authoritarian control in an effort to spur economic growth.
2) Economic growth requires political freedom and the government tacitly allows limited freedoms to develop.
3) Limited freedoms begin to give way to larger cultural changes, and an influx of Western ideologies and influences.
4) Western ideologies and influences contrast and clash with the authoritarian rule of the government.
5) China's government cracks down on cultural "dissidents", blood is spilled, and the government regains absolute control.
6) The crackdown on freedoms results in decreased trade. China's economy suffers. Simultaneously there is a shuffling of the political deck and new political hard-liners emerge.
7) Hard-liners promise economic reform in order to maintain power.
8) Repeat from Step #1 ad infinitum.
Right now we're between Steps #3 and #4
Step #5 will occur almost immediately following the close of the Olympic Games in 2008.
Yeah... this time it'll be different though....
The exhibition launched prior to the film and was first displayed in Wellington, NZ where it received enormous amounts of international press.
The content and existence of the exhibition are OLD news. Hell, I saw it a year ago.
The real news here I suppose is that now its showing in London.
Methinks this is viscious plot hatched by the optical media industry to bury the magnetic media industry once and for all.
In the meantime don't keep your PDA anywhere near your credit cards...
I'm surprised that New Scientist reached this far into the barrel of pseudoscience for this story.
... "GOD"?!!!
What an absolute bunch of rubbish.
They have conveniently used semantics to call:
"spherical" shapes "Cellular structures",
"breaking in two" --> "Cellular division"
"radiation" --> "Communication"
And the combination of these poetically inspired semantics --> "Life!"
How about this new "lifeform":
Slashdot itself grows, divides and mutates. My GOD! Slashdot is alive... ALIVE!!! And COWBOY NEAL IS
Does anyone remember "science"?
That's my 2 cents... I'm off to see my astrologer for some advice on which crystals to wear today...
Recently I signed a new cellphone contract and they *would not* allow me to sign the contract without giving them my SS# (which I imagine is for a credit check). What's the legality of that? Is there any way to avoid handing over SS#'s in these situations? Its terrifying that cell-phone services have huge databases of millions of Social Security numbers.
Anyone?
3D Screen? Pwash! That's nothing!
My entire laptop is 3D! You can walk around it and see it from different angles and everything!
I'm pretty much stuck on the first level of this Gentoo game
Anybody know a cheat code?
Yay! Now I can install my Linux PS2 emulator.
Can we all just take a moment to savour the irony here?
"The years most underrated stories" -- and the site goes down when it gets an appropriate amount of attention.
Which is fine with me since these stories weren't "under-reported" they were "under-interesting" and "under-truthful".
It is true that unlike software EULA's, music has no "single-user" or "single-seat" requirement.
But, a copyright isn't ultimately about ownership. Its about "the rights to copy, distribute and/or publish". While a group of 1000 users *could* indeed share ownership of a CD, in order for them to truly "share" it, they would have to create multiple copies of the content thus violating the copyright.
Check out my post titled
"HOW TO REALLY SCREW UP THE RIAA"...
Peace.
In case anyone cares (sending money to cover the settlement costs?), Brianna's address is:
154 W. 84th St. Apt. 701
New York, NY 10024
The name of her mother, the person who'll have to write the $2,000 check to the RIAA I suppose, is Sylvia Torres.
Yeah..... Suuuuure.....
Let's remember something here... the RIAA has spent very little so far. This is a *scare tactic* people.
The cost of suing everyone in the filesharing community would exceed the GNP of the United States. They are hoping that a small handful of suits (Only 261 shows how expensive it actually is) will have a widespread impact on filesharing activity.
But if you ignore them, the *will* and MUST go away because there is no financially viable alternative for them. Lawsuits are incredibly expensive, and the plaintiffs in these cases are college students with NO MONEY.
Therefore this is a money losing proposition for the RIAA. If you want to beat them, CALL THEIR BLUFF.
-- Keep on trading in the free world.
I've just come up with a way to really create havoc for the RIAA. This is something they'd sh*t themselves over, and its so easy you could do it right now.
[Step One]
Pay for, and download a legal MP3 file from iMusic or Emusic or any of the other legal commercial MP3 download sites.
[Step Two]
Now that you've legally downloaded those MP3 files, you are also allowed to burn those to a CD-R (as stands to reason, but the Emusic site also says you're allowed to -- after all you're intending to listen to it on your stereo).
[Step Three]
DON'T LISTEN TO IT.
Instead, sell your newly burned CD-R (as "new") on eBay or Half.com.
[Step Four]
Congratulations, you've just created a legitimate marketplace for CD-R recordings. No one will be able to tell what's legitimate from illegitimate anymore. Your CD-R is perfectly legal to sell online, but so might anyone else's. In essence you've just creasted a legal loophole for the sales of home-burned CD-R's packed with music.
[Step Five]
Mod this up and lets start a revolution!
last time I checked, theft is not common and reasonable behavior.
"Theft"? Downloading songs from the Internet IS NOT THEFT. That's not my opinion. Its the law.
Copyright law is (read carefully) a protection against COPYING AND DISTRIBUTING. To download a copyrighted work from the internet is NOT RESTRICTED BY COPYRIGHT LAW. The offender is the person who uploaded it.
What makes this case almost impossible to win in court (And the RIAA knows this which is why they use the signed affidavit approach) is that users who download songs simultaneously make them available -- It should be noted that this is not the same as copying or publishing. Those are actions. We are talking about inaction.
RIAA lawyers are attempting to make the claim that downloading is in essence "making a copy" but that is simply a case they are making, and is far from having precedent.
The EFF has published a guide to 'not getting caught'. Read it here. Interesting stuff.
The "Law" in this case is the problem though.
It is neither clear, nor logical, nor legal.
Ask a dozen lawyers to explain it to you and you'll get a dozen answers.
The proof of this is the "signed confession" that the RIAA is asking for. They know full well that prosecuting these cases is a legal nightmare which they will most likely not win. BUT suing for breach of contract (after you've signed your confession and agreement to cease and desist) will be a cakewalk.