That's why Portal was so wildly unpopular, right?
And as the fifth (at least) person to bring up that single game, I'd say you've
all done more to support the FP's point than refute it.
A good, popular puzzle-oriented game stands out enough that many of you thought
to try using it as a counterexample.
A good, popular puzzle-oriented game.
I have to disagree. If the original comment was "there are no good FPS's anymore," we're going to be talking about Bioshock or HL2. People focus on the top of the heap. And in this case, the creation of such a well developed puzzle game indicates not only is there a market for such games, but that at least one developer recognizes it and it trying to tap the market
Illegal wiretapping surely involves breaking into private communications that you are not intended to be part of, through either physical means, or perhaps via software - but by its nature, Tor allows anyone to connect into the network, and people know that what they are sending/receiving is going to travel through other poeple's computers (but can be fairly confident that nobody can trace anything back to them easily).
I don't see how researching into the protocol and viewing the packets that pass through your own node are illegal, unless you accept some kind of contract not to snoop when you install Tor.
Think about that applied to your ISP's routers. You know your data is going through their routers. Should they be able to legally snoop on your VOIP calls, data transfers, and anything else you send through them?
This looks like another trivial patent. Whatever happened to the old "non-obvious" test for patentability?
Personally, I think these are non-obvious patents. 'Game Control with Analog Pressure Sensor', 'Variable Sensor with Tactile Feedback', 'Analog Controls Housed with Electronic Displays', 'Remote Controller with Analog Pressure Sensor'.
So basically, analog controllers, force/vibrate feedback, and displays in the controller. All of these have been possible since almost the beginning of video games and remote controls, but it was only recently they began showing up. Seems like a legitimate patent as far as non-obviousness.
I haven't read the specific patents, but it seems like without details on an actual implementation, the patent would be too vague, though.
you love love love lego because it is different from duplo. It's got lots of cool themes that capture imagination and the product is so high quality that it's damn near impossible to separate some of the pieces when they're snapped together..
I think the creative marketing and design justifies an elevated price, even if the physical product alone had not.
I personally have always preferred just the blocks themselves. I didn't want specially shaped themed parts for a castle or pirate ship that I could only use for the castle or pirate ship. The raw blocks are the best thing about Lego.
Reloaded has existed for quite a while and as far as I know they've never put malware in their cracks.
No cracker groups of any consequence has ever put malware in anything as far as I know, it's 99% others using a virus-adding tool and distributing their own trojaned version of their cracks. Still, it's not easy to tell one from the other.
Exactly right. A few groups are always first with no-cd cracks, and a couple of places are always first to get them from the original sources. If you stick with the ones you know, chances are close to 0 of having problems.
Mass Effect was only game I can remember in the last couple of years where a big-group crack was released that didn't fully work. But since all the other games I own worked without the CDs, I was fine with keeping that one game in my drive. And it's been fixed since.
There is no copy protection scheme that has not been utterly broken.
I don't think this is true. Some high-priced software (e.g. CAD toolkits) ship with a USB dongle containing a CPU and part of the executable in encrypted form. In the course of the program's normal execution, some data is sent to the dongle, processed, and sent back. The dongle is designed to self-destruct when cracked open. This scheme is highly resistant to cracks, provided the part of the executable is well-chosen to not be recreatable, and typical attackers cannot obtain a large supply of dongles.
Not that I'm saying it's necessarily reasonable for consumer videogames to use such an elaborate scheme.
Actually, hardware dongles are pretty easy to crack. You don't even open the dongle. If the challenge and response is always the same, you can snoop and emulate the response in software. If it's always changing, you just recode the executable to either always issue the same challenge, or recode it to OK whatever it gets back. It's actually easier to crack than software, since it's much more obvious tracing a binary file if it accesses a hardware device.
then why dont they just sign onto the kyoto protocol at the same level that other developed (read the united states) countries are supposed to.
oh wait.......
China is the single largest user of coal power and also the single dirtiest and most unsafe user as well.
the average death rate for chinese coal workers is more than 10/day iirc.
They're also a massive manufacturing center and exporting superpower. It's easy to tell China to shape up, when the only reason wealthy Western countries are relatively cleaner is because they outsource most dirty manufacturing to China.
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
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Batman Discussion
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· Score: 2, Informative
The Killing Joke portrays the Joker as a normal joe who is trying to get ahead and ends up in a vat of chemicals and becomes the insane criminal everyone knows.
Kind of. The storyline in the killing joke was admittedly, by the Joker himself, not his true origin. He said that he prefers his past to be multiple choice, and that he himself doesn't quite remember exactly what happened to him.
Similarly, we don't witness the origin of the Joker in this movie, and that's a good thing. The Joker also tells two conflicting stories of how he got his scars, which fits with what the joker said in the killing joke.
From an interview with the writer/director on NPR, it was 100% intentional that you don't learn anything about the origins of the Joker in the movie. He said it makes the Joker a more menacing and interesting character. They balanced that with the comic storyline of providing all kinds of possibilities of his origin very well in the movie.
Re:Major Plotholes ... Spoiler Alert
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Batman Discussion
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· Score: 1
2. Who put Harvy Dent and what's her name in the oil barrel rooms? Joker said he didn't do it. (This one's an interesting plothole and I think the hint "What time is it?" might have given it away...) Maybe I'm reading more into it than there is. Possible villain for 3rd movie?
I think I can answer this one. It's either the mob or Joker's henchman. The Joker in this movie says things that are mostly true, but not necessarily completely true. So he could have set it up through his henchman, or the mob could have set it up with or without his orders.
I also felt that the fall of Harvy Dent to Two-Face wasn't that believable. I believe the movie needed more attention to detail there. The scenes with him felt kind of rushed.
I agree. There was so much more you can do with Twoface, but this time he was a rather one dimensional character, especially after he goes nuts. I wish they saved him for another movie, or at least didn't (presumably) kill him off.
Re:Why didn't they just kill the lawyer?
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Batman Discussion
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· Score: 2, Informative
They didn't kill the lawyer for the same reason the people on the boat didn't blow each other up. Batman/Wayne and Dent talk about the whole point of Batman existing to teach the city to stand up to evil, no matter what the cost. In this movie, Gotham begin to learn that lesson.
As far as the guy revealing Batman, he knows Batman has already probably saved his life (remember Wayne's "accident"). Also he knows if he tells, The Joker will kill the lawyer himself. I found it believable that the guy wouldn't tell.
Well, the real life superheroes are actually pretty neat. They do good deeds, have fun doing it, and try to inspire others to relax and do the same. Volunteering in a costume sounds like fun!
"Check out the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica hierarchy sometime -- there are some groups with very suspicious-looking names.
(alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.child? Gee, I wonder what that could contain?)"
I agree... it likely contains "thousands of SPAM messages".
Do you honestly believe that pedophiles are that open about their openly illegal activities?
They are that open, and it does contain CP and "artistic nudes" (although more spam messages). Strangely enough, many have pixel masks or blurs on the privates, for some reason. Don't forget, CP is either not illegal or not prosecuted in some locales.
This from a USENET binary parsing script I wrote that had some bugs, taking messages seemingly at random from various "alt.binaries" newsgroups. Ate my entire month's worth of USENET traffic while I was at work. Double check your code, folks!
I absolutely agree; this film is a masterpiece, and what I find amazing is how Pixar turned the end credits into such a subtle and beautiful coda to the story. The art styles, and the scenes they depict, reflect the progressive rebirth of the newly-recolonized Earth, moving through hieroglyphics to a scene reminiscent of a Van Gogh painting, with Wall-E and EVE gazing up at the large tree, which one realizes is the same plant they struggled to protect, growing from the boot deep in the soil.
It's frustrating when people automatically begin walking out of Wall-E as soon as the credits start rolling. I don't get it... are they pre-conditioned to do it due to almost universal fade-to-black-cue-music in every other film? I kept looking at them as they passed and wanted to yell "What are you doing?! The movie isn't over!" The ending was one of the coolest parts. 90% of the theater had left before the clips were over.
Why? Chairmakers don't receive compensations for as long as people are enjoying their chairs. Builders don't receive compensation for as long as people enjoy their houses.
I keep hearing this analogy, and it just doesn't fly. If a chairmaker or builder decides, in their contract, to rent out their product or limit who can sit/live on/in their product, they can. There is legal protection for them. The contract can be enforced and their rights as creator are protected.
That's what copyright is: a way to legally protect the creator of an easy to copy product, allowing them to make contracts and sell their works. Without copyright, they could sell their work once, and then their customer could undercut them indefinitely.
If you create something, you should be entitled to set the terms of how it's distributed, whether it be music, software, literature, or whatever.
Wow... modded Troll?
To get a product in someone's hands requires, at minimum, two steps. Creation of the product and production of the product. The producer of a product gets to decide how they want to sell their production. Why shouldn't the creator of a product get to decide how they sell their creation?
Or shall I invoice, 40 years from now, "maintenance fees" for systems I installed in the last years.
If you put that into your contract, you can! There's nothing stopping you from doing it.
That said, trying to copy the laws for service work into the realm of selling creative work simply doesn't function. To extend your analogy, should a creative work only be allowed to be sold once, to one person? That's how it is in your service industry, and trying to apply it to song writers is unrealistic.
So they object because a) It will make it seem that women need a leg up, and b) they'll have to dumb down science to give women a leg up. I don't particularly believe the second, but if it is true, that would mean the first is just an accurate appraisal of reality.
Did changing standards 'devastate' firefighting, policing or the Army?
As far as the US Army goes, women work in non-combat positions, so if there were an equal mixture of men to women, it could arguably be devastating to combat effectiveness. So that's not really a valid argument. Women aren't treated the same as men in the army.
Not really. If Google can prove Viacom employees, especially those on the clock or using Viacom computers, uploaded Viacom content that Viacom then claimed as infringing, that's a pretty strong argument for a fraudulent lawsuit.
Personally, I think the answer is subscription gaming like GameTap. All you can eat from their catalog for one price. That way, you don't get burned on a bad purchase. It's convenient, cheap, and generally easier to do than pirating.
The biggest reason piracy is so rampant is because it's so easy and because it's free.
If they added value by putting feeliesback in boxes, it could help.
Even if you look back to the NES where we only had a few major developers there was a lot of quality games made, games that pushed the hardware to the limit. In the SNES/Genesis era things stayed the same. But once we got to the PS1/N64 era, we got flooded with a ton of really crappy games
It was slightly better for the NES, but not by alot. Mainly because of the draconian rules the publishers had to follow to legally release games for the NES. Nintendo set them up to prevent another Atari fiasco, where people were afraid to buy games because most of them sucked.
But it's always been the same mostly crap with a few standouts for consoles. I think you might just be looking back at the NES with a haze; forgetting the truly bad games it had.
No because rabbits inherited traits from other species. The appearance of them before the species with similar traits would disprove evolution.
No, it was just disprove that particular line of inherited traits. Evolution could then say that species with similar traits inherited them from the rabbits.:-)
Astrology is actually more valid than ID, since it's a scientific theory. About any variant of astrology is falsifiable -- it gives testable consistent predictions. Predictions which are largely false, but a disproved theory is still a theory.
A theory, something that ID is not.
I've always wondered about falsifiable evolution. Is it falsifiable, and how?
Slashdot Mirror
That's why Portal was so wildly unpopular, right? And as the fifth (at least) person to bring up that single game, I'd say you've all done more to support the FP's point than refute it. A good, popular puzzle-oriented game stands out enough that many of you thought to try using it as a counterexample. A good, popular puzzle-oriented game.
I have to disagree. If the original comment was "there are no good FPS's anymore," we're going to be talking about Bioshock or HL2. People focus on the top of the heap. And in this case, the creation of such a well developed puzzle game indicates not only is there a market for such games, but that at least one developer recognizes it and it trying to tap the market
Not to mention 1/2 of the Wii games out there.
Illegal wiretapping surely involves breaking into private communications that you are not intended to be part of, through either physical means, or perhaps via software - but by its nature, Tor allows anyone to connect into the network, and people know that what they are sending/receiving is going to travel through other poeple's computers (but can be fairly confident that nobody can trace anything back to them easily).
I don't see how researching into the protocol and viewing the packets that pass through your own node are illegal, unless you accept some kind of contract not to snoop when you install Tor.
Think about that applied to your ISP's routers. You know your data is going through their routers. Should they be able to legally snoop on your VOIP calls, data transfers, and anything else you send through them?
This looks like another trivial patent. Whatever happened to the old "non-obvious" test for patentability?
Personally, I think these are non-obvious patents. 'Game Control with Analog Pressure Sensor', 'Variable Sensor with Tactile Feedback', 'Analog Controls Housed with Electronic Displays', 'Remote Controller with Analog Pressure Sensor'. So basically, analog controllers, force/vibrate feedback, and displays in the controller. All of these have been possible since almost the beginning of video games and remote controls, but it was only recently they began showing up. Seems like a legitimate patent as far as non-obviousness.
I haven't read the specific patents, but it seems like without details on an actual implementation, the patent would be too vague, though.
And why exactly would you throw it away?
Its just a matter of time until the release the CherryPal2...
I'm really, really hoping the next version is the Cherry 2000 instead. I'd buy one of those.
you love love love lego because it is different from duplo. It's got lots of cool themes that capture imagination and the product is so high quality that it's damn near impossible to separate some of the pieces when they're snapped together.. I think the creative marketing and design justifies an elevated price, even if the physical product alone had not.
I personally have always preferred just the blocks themselves. I didn't want specially shaped themed parts for a castle or pirate ship that I could only use for the castle or pirate ship. The raw blocks are the best thing about Lego.
Reloaded has existed for quite a while and as far as I know they've never put malware in their cracks.
No cracker groups of any consequence has ever put malware in anything as far as I know, it's 99% others using a virus-adding tool and distributing their own trojaned version of their cracks. Still, it's not easy to tell one from the other.
Exactly right. A few groups are always first with no-cd cracks, and a couple of places are always first to get them from the original sources. If you stick with the ones you know, chances are close to 0 of having problems.
Mass Effect was only game I can remember in the last couple of years where a big-group crack was released that didn't fully work. But since all the other games I own worked without the CDs, I was fine with keeping that one game in my drive. And it's been fixed since.
There is no copy protection scheme that has not been utterly broken.
I don't think this is true. Some high-priced software (e.g. CAD toolkits) ship with a USB dongle containing a CPU and part of the executable in encrypted form. In the course of the program's normal execution, some data is sent to the dongle, processed, and sent back. The dongle is designed to self-destruct when cracked open. This scheme is highly resistant to cracks, provided the part of the executable is well-chosen to not be recreatable, and typical attackers cannot obtain a large supply of dongles.
Not that I'm saying it's necessarily reasonable for consumer videogames to use such an elaborate scheme.
Actually, hardware dongles are pretty easy to crack. You don't even open the dongle. If the challenge and response is always the same, you can snoop and emulate the response in software. If it's always changing, you just recode the executable to either always issue the same challenge, or recode it to OK whatever it gets back. It's actually easier to crack than software, since it's much more obvious tracing a binary file if it accesses a hardware device.
Hardware dongles are a joke.
then why dont they just sign onto the kyoto protocol at the same level that other developed (read the united states) countries are supposed to.
oh wait.......
China is the single largest user of coal power and also the single dirtiest and most unsafe user as well.
the average death rate for chinese coal workers is more than 10/day iirc.
They're also a massive manufacturing center and exporting superpower. It's easy to tell China to shape up, when the only reason wealthy Western countries are relatively cleaner is because they outsource most dirty manufacturing to China.
The Killing Joke portrays the Joker as a normal joe who is trying to get ahead and ends up in a vat of chemicals and becomes the insane criminal everyone knows.
Kind of. The storyline in the killing joke was admittedly, by the Joker himself, not his true origin. He said that he prefers his past to be multiple choice, and that he himself doesn't quite remember exactly what happened to him.
Similarly, we don't witness the origin of the Joker in this movie, and that's a good thing. The Joker also tells two conflicting stories of how he got his scars, which fits with what the joker said in the killing joke.
From an interview with the writer/director on NPR, it was 100% intentional that you don't learn anything about the origins of the Joker in the movie. He said it makes the Joker a more menacing and interesting character. They balanced that with the comic storyline of providing all kinds of possibilities of his origin very well in the movie.
2. Who put Harvy Dent and what's her name in the oil barrel rooms? Joker said he didn't do it. (This one's an interesting plothole and I think the hint "What time is it?" might have given it away ...) Maybe I'm reading more into it than there is. Possible villain for 3rd movie?
I think I can answer this one. It's either the mob or Joker's henchman. The Joker in this movie says things that are mostly true, but not necessarily completely true. So he could have set it up through his henchman, or the mob could have set it up with or without his orders.
I also felt that the fall of Harvy Dent to Two-Face wasn't that believable. I believe the movie needed more attention to detail there. The scenes with him felt kind of rushed.
I agree. There was so much more you can do with Twoface, but this time he was a rather one dimensional character, especially after he goes nuts. I wish they saved him for another movie, or at least didn't (presumably) kill him off.
They didn't kill the lawyer for the same reason the people on the boat didn't blow each other up. Batman/Wayne and Dent talk about the whole point of Batman existing to teach the city to stand up to evil, no matter what the cost. In this movie, Gotham begin to learn that lesson.
As far as the guy revealing Batman, he knows Batman has already probably saved his life (remember Wayne's "accident"). Also he knows if he tells, The Joker will kill the lawyer himself. I found it believable that the guy wouldn't tell.
For those of us already in our 30s, we'd be over the hill in 10-12 years.
It's much more likely that we'd be end up more like Captain Jackson, Zetaman, Captain Prospect or some other "real life superhero"
Well, the real life superheroes are actually pretty neat. They do good deeds, have fun doing it, and try to inspire others to relax and do the same. Volunteering in a costume sounds like fun!
"Check out the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica hierarchy sometime -- there are some groups with very suspicious-looking names. (alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.child? Gee, I wonder what that could contain?)"
I agree... it likely contains "thousands of SPAM messages".
Do you honestly believe that pedophiles are that open about their openly illegal activities?
They are that open, and it does contain CP and "artistic nudes" (although more spam messages). Strangely enough, many have pixel masks or blurs on the privates, for some reason. Don't forget, CP is either not illegal or not prosecuted in some locales.
This from a USENET binary parsing script I wrote that had some bugs, taking messages seemingly at random from various "alt.binaries" newsgroups. Ate my entire month's worth of USENET traffic while I was at work. Double check your code, folks!
I absolutely agree; this film is a masterpiece, and what I find amazing is how Pixar turned the end credits into such a subtle and beautiful coda to the story. The art styles, and the scenes they depict, reflect the progressive rebirth of the newly-recolonized Earth, moving through hieroglyphics to a scene reminiscent of a Van Gogh painting, with Wall-E and EVE gazing up at the large tree, which one realizes is the same plant they struggled to protect, growing from the boot deep in the soil.
It's frustrating when people automatically begin walking out of Wall-E as soon as the credits start rolling. I don't get it... are they pre-conditioned to do it due to almost universal fade-to-black-cue-music in every other film? I kept looking at them as they passed and wanted to yell "What are you doing?! The movie isn't over!" The ending was one of the coolest parts. 90% of the theater had left before the clips were over.
for as long as people are enjoying them
Why? Chairmakers don't receive compensations for as long as people are enjoying their chairs. Builders don't receive compensation for as long as people enjoy their houses.
I keep hearing this analogy, and it just doesn't fly. If a chairmaker or builder decides, in their contract, to rent out their product or limit who can sit/live on/in their product, they can. There is legal protection for them. The contract can be enforced and their rights as creator are protected.
That's what copyright is: a way to legally protect the creator of an easy to copy product, allowing them to make contracts and sell their works. Without copyright, they could sell their work once, and then their customer could undercut them indefinitely.
If you create something, you should be entitled to set the terms of how it's distributed, whether it be music, software, literature, or whatever.
Wow... modded Troll?
To get a product in someone's hands requires, at minimum, two steps. Creation of the product and production of the product. The producer of a product gets to decide how they want to sell their production. Why shouldn't the creator of a product get to decide how they sell their creation?
Or shall I invoice, 40 years from now, "maintenance fees" for systems I installed in the last years.
If you put that into your contract, you can! There's nothing stopping you from doing it.
That said, trying to copy the laws for service work into the realm of selling creative work simply doesn't function. To extend your analogy, should a creative work only be allowed to be sold once, to one person? That's how it is in your service industry, and trying to apply it to song writers is unrealistic.
So they object because a) It will make it seem that women need a leg up, and b) they'll have to dumb down science to give women a leg up. I don't particularly believe the second, but if it is true, that would mean the first is just an accurate appraisal of reality.
Did changing standards 'devastate' firefighting, policing or the Army?
As far as the US Army goes, women work in non-combat positions, so if there were an equal mixture of men to women, it could arguably be devastating to combat effectiveness. So that's not really a valid argument. Women aren't treated the same as men in the army.
That's irrelevant to the current lawsuit.
Not really. If Google can prove Viacom employees, especially those on the clock or using Viacom computers, uploaded Viacom content that Viacom then claimed as infringing, that's a pretty strong argument for a fraudulent lawsuit.
As far as the headphone jack goes, some ATMs use that instead of speakers for people who are partially or fully blind. It's a little more private.
Personally, I think the answer is subscription gaming like GameTap. All you can eat from their catalog for one price. That way, you don't get burned on a bad purchase. It's convenient, cheap, and generally easier to do than pirating.
The biggest reason piracy is so rampant is because it's so easy and because it's free.
If they added value by putting feeliesback in boxes, it could help.
Even if you look back to the NES where we only had a few major developers there was a lot of quality games made, games that pushed the hardware to the limit. In the SNES/Genesis era things stayed the same. But once we got to the PS1/N64 era, we got flooded with a ton of really crappy games
It was slightly better for the NES, but not by alot. Mainly because of the draconian rules the publishers had to follow to legally release games for the NES. Nintendo set them up to prevent another Atari fiasco, where people were afraid to buy games because most of them sucked.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Seal_of_Quality
But it's always been the same mostly crap with a few standouts for consoles. I think you might just be looking back at the NES with a haze; forgetting the truly bad games it had.
No because rabbits inherited traits from other species. The appearance of them before the species with similar traits would disprove evolution.
No, it was just disprove that particular line of inherited traits. Evolution could then say that species with similar traits inherited them from the rabbits. :-)
A fossil rabbit in the Precambrian era sediment would do nicely...
But wouldn't that simply indicate rabbits existing in the Precambrian era, rather than falsifying evolution?
Astrology is actually more valid than ID, since it's a scientific theory. About any variant of astrology is falsifiable -- it gives testable consistent predictions. Predictions which are largely false, but a disproved theory is still a theory.
A theory, something that ID is not.
I've always wondered about falsifiable evolution. Is it falsifiable, and how?