Way back in 1995, the NAB and RIAA already began to realize that the Internet might be a threat to their established business. (Hey, they may be greedy, but they're not stupid!) So, they did what you might expect an established American business to do: they bought a law to protect themselves against competition, the DPRA (cool - another 4-letter acronym to hate!)
According the NAB's own words in the linked "summary" posting, p.4:
The impetus for the legislation was concerns of the recording industry that certain emerging businesses enabled by developing digital transmission technologies might provide music transmissions of such nature and quality as would displace record sales.
This little gem of a quote is part of the NAB's appeal document! The NAB/RIAA does not even attempt to hide the fact that the purpose of the DPRA was specifically to target select-and-download services and prop up "no-choice" broadcasting.
Unfortunately for them, the US Copyright Office refused to play along, and decided that all Internet streams would be charged similarly. So, they're understandably upset that the law they bought and paid for isn't protecting them as well as they'd like. (Some days, even a CongressCritter is a lousy investment...)
Unfortunately for the rest of us, the law was clearly intended to exempt them from royalties, so they'll probably get a "clarification" buried deep within the next huge steaming pile of legislation regarding the Office of Homeland Security or whatever.
As to those who have posted "hey, Congress won't do that -- it will make it way too obvious that they're supporting the fat cats in the RIAA!": what color is the sky in the world where you live (and how can I get there?)
if you looked almost exactly like someone on the FBI's "most wanted list"; it sucks, but, well, what can you do?
What can you do? How about:
Never take another plane ride again.
Never take another train ride again.
Try to avoid driving on the highway at all costs, so that you don't get pulled over and thrown in jail.
Pray every morning when you get up that your neighbor doesn't report you to the Feds, so that they bust down your door with a no-knock warrant and shoot you dead on the spot.
In other words, just give up any chance of ever living without fear again.
I sincerely hope you're just being a troll, because if facial recognition were ever to be widely implemented, the above would be a way of life for tens of thousands of perfectly law-abiding citizens in this country, or whever else it was implemented.
If you really don't think it matters, I'll tell you what: send me a couple of photographs of yourself, in the classic mug shot poses, and within a week I'll have you in that wonderful little FBI database with nice little TERRORIST notes all over your file (all it takes is unsubstantiated rumors these days.) Then we'll see how much you enjoy traveling...
I suspect that your own accuracy rate is not nearly as high as you believe it is.
First, as you state, that 99.99% accuracy rate only applies to a group of people you meet regularly; this probably includes perhaps a few hundred people, and a significant part of your total memory and processing capability is devoted to recognizing and updating your memory of those faces (check out a brian map for how much of our cortex is dedicated to face recognition.) Even duplicating that feat (i.e. identifying a small group of faces) would be a major undertaking for a computer system.
Second, that 99.99% isn't nearly as impressive as it sounds, because it represents the positive rate, i.e. the chance that you will correctly identify an individual in the target population. That corresponds to a false negative rate of 0.01% -- you're saying that once in ten thousand times, you'll actually fail to recognize somebody you see on a regular basis. Not too encouraging, that.
Third, that figure says absolutely nothing about the false positive rate, which I suspect is much higher. In other words, how often do you see somebody that you think you recognize, but can't quite remember exactly? From my own experience, I would say that number is as high as one in a hundred. Our own built-in face recognition system is simply designed that way -- to generate a large number of "near misses".
So, the bottom line is: even the supposedly high accuracy of human facial recognition isn't accurate enough, and undoubtedly doesn't scale very well.
I understand perfectly. I think it's dead too. Of course, I'm not MS's target market - I don't even own a TV. (Yes, you read that right.) If MS were a sane company, they would have pulled the plug already. But they aren't and they won't. Even if it is dead, they'll do their best Weekend at Bernies: they'll continue to put out XBox titles, buy lots of advertising and product tie-ins, maybe buy a few movie placement; then retool and release the XBox 2 in a few years. When that fails, they'll regroup and release XBox 3. And so it goes. (Hey, even Bob is still around.)
Hmm, I doubt very much that a port from PS2 to PC would be cheaper than a port from the XBox to the PC. Nevertheless, as I said, I'm not making a business case for myself, but for a big game development company (like, say, Konami.) As long as they can justify the cost of targetting the XBox (probably by saying "what IF it's the Next Big Thing?") then there will still be mindshare for the XBox, and that's all that Microsoft cares about right now.
The most expensive things in selling computer games is not programming, it's artwork, marketing and the retail-channel.
I think you just made my point for me. All I was saying is that the major game development houses will be able to convince themselves that it's worth targeting the XBox, because the porting costs to the PC are minimal, and any game shop that can afford to develop for the XBox will be targeting the PC already. If a XBox title fails miserably, they can just port it and slap a sticker on their ad campaign that says LamerzX: Now available for the PC!
The point I was making that the continued existence of the XBox doesn't depend on XBox software sales (or the perceived lack thereof), any more than it depends on MS making a profit on hardware sales.
The XBox is a Trojan horse, plain and simple; and by convincing game developers that it's "a lot like a PC", they've managed to enlist them in their scheme as well.
Sega had to pull the plug on the Dreamcast because (as Gord pointed out) it was the only one of the 3 major consoles that subscribed to the razors-and-blades business plan. However, the implied comparison to MS is not valid.
Sega was a one-trick pony. If the Dreamcast failed, Sega had no other game system to fall back on. In the end, the only strategy for survival was the one that Sega eventually adopted: sell software, not hardware. If Gord could figure this out (and he's just a games dealer), don't you think EA figured this out LONG before that? So game developers were afraid to support it, so Sega lost more money, so eventually everybody knew that Sega would have to get out of the hardware business, long before they publicly announced it.
Microsoft, on the other hand, isn't about to go out of business; so, even if XBox software sales are miserable, developers will continue to target the XBox. After all, if a title flops on the XBox, they can always repackage it as a $20 PC game. I mean, a game developer might abandon the Dreamcast's dev platform and GD-ROM hell, but nobody but nobody is going to stop developing for the Intel-and-DirectX world...
Yes, they should, and some of them probably will. The article does note that Microsoft's other volume licensing program (I believe it's called "Select") is still available, although MS has already indicated they intend to phase it out. Also, the institution could simply choose to buy individual licenses. That's why this isn't likely to run afoul of the "OEMs must pay per-PC" consent decree, because in that case, the OEMs didn't have any other option.
On the other hand, if a school has (say) 200 computers, with 150 PCs and 50 Macs, and the "site license" is cheaper than the 150-seat Volume license, how are they supposed to justify (to the school board) rejecting the site license? Not to mention the stick that goes with that site-license carrot, as others have already mentioned: namely a BSA audit.
It's awfully difficult to be 100% compliant (including all the requisite paperwork) for every single computer on a large campus. Even if a school says "forget it, we'll go 100% Red Hat", there's going to be some sysadmin flunky somewhere who installs Windows so he can play the Sims instead of working...
By the way, I can think of one reason why somebody would pay for a Windows license for a Mac: if you want to access services on an NT server (such as printers, file shares, or databases), you have to have a CAL (Client Access License), which you either buy separately, or get included with a copy of Windows. So, licensing Windows for a Mac isn't as far out as it sounds.
Wow, I'm seriously impressed. You managed to garner 21 replies, and only two of them saw through it. In fact, I was already to post an angry reply, until I re-read the replies to your post. "Wallace & Grommet" indeed. LOL!
For those of you keeping score from home:
Yes, the proposed bill would take away existing rights. As other posters have pointed out, the ratings restrictions on movies are voluntary restrictions on the part of the movie theaters. Last I checked, nobody was attempting to restrict what minors "talk about in public".
There is no phrase "as is Deemed Apt..." in Article 3, or anywhere else in the US Constitution.
The quote regarding "Fire in a crowded theater" stems from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Schenck v. US, 1919: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." (emphasis mine.) Justice Holmes was a member of the White Court; there was no Wallace Court.
The prohibition on threatening the President comes from 18 USC 871, not the "Grommet" doctrine. It requires the actual intent to harm, not just speech. Go here for more details.
There is no reference whatsoever in the US Constitution to the age of majority, or any restrictions on minors, with the exception of the right to vote. "Non-free Chattel" - what a hoot!
Thanks, tps12, for reminding me that wicked sarcasm is alive and well in America!
If a game is not free speech, can it still be copyrighted? According to this, "any original expression that is fixed in a tangible form" can be copyrighted.
Good point! If video games aren't expressive, they can't be copyrighted!
I have a brother in St. Louis - I should tell him to start copying, while the ruling's still valid...
Even setting aside the 7th Circuit Court's ruling that explicitly addressed this issue, there is a very high hurdle that must be cleared before any form of expression can be restricted. IANAL, so I don't have the exact wording, but the expression ("speech") must be either:
Obscene, or
Posing a "clear and present" danger
Judge Limbaugh simply stepped around the hurdle by declaring that video games aren't "speech".
According to the article, "A tape with excerpts of these games was... submitted to the court by the county [of St. Louis] as part of the record," Lowenstein says. The IDSA legal team countered the tape with scripts to video games, he says, that emphasized plot and story lines aimed at proving that games qualified as speech. But, with the... 7th Circuit Court's favorable decision..., "It was frankly inconceivable that this issue was in question." (Messages left with Limbaugh's office, asking if his honor had actually played any of these games, or if he had considered reviewing other games, were not returned by press time.) Since he misspelled two of the games' names, it's quite possible he did nothing other than watch the video provided.
In other words, the judge chose to simply ignore a large amount of the evidence. This, of course, makes it very likely that the decision will be quickly overturned; and it's very likely that the judge knew that when he drafted his decision.
So, why did he make the ruling? He's simply grandstanding. After all, he's appointed for life, and nobody's about to mount a recall election just because he said that little kiddies can't play guts-n-gore games...
This would only be "making the case for them" if SonicBlue is indeed infringing, and knows it.
As truesaer already pointed out, it's called "discovery", and it basically works like this:
a) Various EvilSuperMegaCorps say: "You're violating our copyrights! We'll sue!"
b) SonicBlue says: "No we're not!"
c) Judge says: "Prove it! I know you have that data, now hand it over!"
On first blush, this may seem intrusive, but imagine if you were the litigant, suing EvilSuperMegaCorp for copyright violation. In that case, of course you would expect that the judge would order ESMC to hand over the data about the use of that material that you know they're collecting.
Two lessons here:
If you ever provide personal information to a corporation, you can expect that information will eventually be handed to somebody you don't want it to (perhaps through a lawsuit, or a bankruptcy, or theft, or whatever.) If you don't want it out, don't give it out.
The level of misinformation about the US legal system among slashdotters is astounding. Witness the multiple posts about "this violates the Bill Of Rights!" (Yes, I know not all posters are US residents, but that doesn't excuse most of them.) (Then again, maybe it's just the least informed that post the most. ): ) If you're really interested in protecting your rights, don't you think you ought to know what they are?
IANAL, although the more I read uninformed posts like these, the more I think about entering law school...
That only applies in criminal cases. The Bill Of Rights restricts what government may do. (The gov't is the litigant in criminal cases: "The People v. John Smith.")
Of course people are cheap, but most people don't like wasting time any more than wasting money. Back when Napster was big, I installed it and went poking around for some of my favorite songs from back in the '80s. After a few hours of not really finding anything, I gave up and never went back. Online file-sharing may be free as in money, but certainly not free as in time.
Now, as far as comparing a purchasing decision with paying income taxes, the comparison is ridiculous. If I don't feel like buying CDs, nobody will probably notice; but if I don't pay my income tax, there's a good chance somebody might arrest me. Income tax isn't even remotely voluntary. And no, don't give me that crap about "jointly agreed to support." I have never once voted for an incumbent, because I consider supporting any Federal budget passed since the beginning of the Cold War as essentially crime against humanity, with its huge military black budget. Seriously.
(One last note: with Napster, I may not have found what I was looking for, but I *did* find some other bands that I liked. I probably own about a dozen CDs now that I wouldn't have bought otherwise. And, no, I haven't bought a single major-label CD since Napster was shut down.)
1) No, they're not, except in places (e.g. the umbilical cord) where those same cells are available in adults. But that wasn't my point: I was saying that nobody causes an abortion just to harvest cells.
2) I've never heard of this, and it doesn't make any sense: what "parts" could possibly be valuable?? It makes a lot more sense to "harvest" parts from adults, but apart from the odd sci-fi movie, I've never heard of this either. (Those reports of organ harvesting in China turned out to be fabrications.)
3) Yes, I found that out in response to another thread. I'd never heard of that position either, and I find it equally difficult to support, but at least logically consistent.
Personally, I believe a human being comes into existence the moment s/he breathes on his/her own, not before. This comes from someone with four children. My wife suffered two miscarriages, and while we grieved greatly, we didn't and don't for a minute believe that a human life was lost. It was just a clump of cells flushed down the toilet, no more a living being than the skin off my big toe. Nevertheless, a baby is a wonderful, miraculous thing, even in the womb, so I can sympathize with the "pro-life" position better than you might think.
4) Of course it's a sign of wisdom. I thought his position was a surprisingly compelling compromise (even though I still feel it was utterly misguided.) I was objecting to giving Bush the credit, as if he was some sort of political mastermind.
Hmm, I thought we had a simple miscommunication. Until this discussion, I really hadn't realized that there were intelligent, well-informed people who objected to IVF on moral grounds. You learn something new every day...
Unfortunately, that probably only widens the gap between us. I suppose I should have known better than to wade into such a polarized debate. Godwin indeed; this discussion isn't going to go anywhere.
Maybe because online they can actually be *good* at it? Y'know, I can shoot a bow in the real world, but only on a RPG can I actually hit what I'm aiming for...;-)
By the way, Asheron's Call 2 also has trade skills and NO character classes: anybody can specialize in anything they want, at any time. Sounds much more interesting to me. Check it out. And it's due out late this year...
Perhaps the parent poster was referring to the collection of umbilical cord blood. Or perhaps, even more likely, the parent was simply referring to the continuing search for other sources of totipotent stems cells within the adult human body. Your huge leap to the conclusion that the post was somehow an apologism for abortion was utterly unjustified and off-topic. How on earth did anybody get the idea that people were going around inducing abortions to collect the stem cells??
I'd say "Godwin" is definitely appropriate. (Was that just a typo on your part, or is "Godwin" a verb now?)
Guess the cloning issue is moot now with more evidence that adult stem cells do the same as aborted fetus cells.
C'mon read the article (or even just the/. summary): Peter Fodor... then cultured them into bone, cartilage, skeletal muscle and nerve cells.
Only these four types of cells were produced from the fat cells. Researchers have known for some time that fat cells were "multipotent", i.e. able to produce cells of many other types. However, they also know that embryonic stem cells are "totipotent", i.e. able to produce cells of all other types. So, research into other sources of totipotent stem cells is still highly desirable.
Also, the banned stem cell research in question involves the use of embryonic stem cells (i.e. cells cultured in a Petri dish for the purposes of in vitro fertilization), not "cells from aborted fetuses", since they aren't stem cells anyway.
Regardless of that, the ban on the use of embryonic stem cells doesn't even make sense from an ethical perspective: why should it be somehow nobler to take the embryonic stem cells produced for IVF and throw them away, instead of doing life-saving research on them?
The standard response to this is that people will somehow "justify" obtaining an abortion on the grounds that the cells will go to some use, but as I just said, those cells come from IVF, which couples only use as an absolute last resort anyway (it's very expensive - over $20,000 per attempt; very painful; and still only about 20% successful.)
Finally, do you really think Bush came up with that idea on his own? He said himself that it was the result of long, intense debate with lots of people. So, I'm not about to peel off my "Bush Is A Stupid Idiot" bumper sticker any time soon. (Just kidding. The only bumper sticker I have says "Nader/LaDuke.")
I just couldn't let this one pass: Visual Cobol for.NET does in fact already exist, except it's made by Fujitsu, not Microsoft, and it's called NetCOBOL.
COBOL was the first high-level programming language I learned, over 15 years ago, and promptly forgot. Ah, the memories: punch cards, batch processing,... look at me, an Old Fart(tm) at 35...
Read the article again: the reward you speak of is exactly how the control is performed. No pain/shock is involved: the electrodes are connected directly to the rat's brain. The rat is probably vaguely aware that there are wires in its scalp, but other than that, all it knows is that it feels good to go left, or right, or wherever. As you said, it "wants nothing more than to follow the commands."
So, could this technique be applied to humans? Of course, and you don't need to look to 1984 or Brave New World to find examples of it. It's as old as human civilization; it's the basis for nearly every thing we do. It's called "education."
Think about it: after just a few months of military training, a soldier is ready to almost instantaneously respond to a verbal command from an officer hundreds of feet away, because s/he wants to. Sounds like remote control to me.
As the article said, the only real news here is how quickly they can train the rats, and how reliably they can respond.
Hopefully, it won't have to climb all over you to find you... If they use an infrared sensor to determine a probable location, then send in a remote-controlled rat with a wireless camera (hey! Finally a REAL use for those stupid X-10 thingies!) that can give them the information they need to extract you.
Of course, they really should use mice -- then they could call 'em "The Rescuers(tm)!"
I'd go off here on a tangent about how we should have a Constitutional amendment requiring prospective voters to demonstrate at least third-grade science and literacy skills before you get to vote, and maybe, I dunno, maybe an eighth-grade science education before you can run for elected office.
Actually, that's kind of what is being proposed here in Washington State: Initiative 780 would require legislators to take the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning, a test which high-schoolers are required to pass in order to graduate) and post their scores publicly. The teachers are all for it and the legislators are against it, of course...
Hey jackass, wanna save some space on the planet for the rest of us to have children or are you gonna pop out another 2 or 3?
Loser
i bet your catholic.
I know shouldn't feed the troll, but since you phrased it sooo politely (and logged in to boot!), I'll have you know that I'm Mormon, not Catholic. If that was intended to be an insult, it was a pitifully inept one. May I kindly suggest that you sharpen your wit with a little remedial reading here, here, or even here. "Subtle Nuance" you haven't.
Nevertheless, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are in fact seriously concerned about overpopulation. Here are some statistics that might allay some of your fears.
According to the CIA World FactBook, the fertility rate (average number of children born to each female) in most Western nations is well below the replacement rate of 2.1:
USA: 2.0 Canada: 1.6 Germany: 1.4 Italy: 1.2
Canada in particular has a declining immigration rate in addition to the low birth rate, so according to the recent census, Canada's population is likely to decrease in the next decade. I don't think you need to worry about "saving space."
Then again, you may be one of those worried about being overrun by the mongrel hordes, but here again are some useful statistics (again, mostly from the FactBook):
Current world population: 6,220,000,000 Arable land area in the US: 1,740,000 km^2
In other words, if the arable (farmable) land in the US were equally divided among the entire population of the world, it would only come to about 3,600 persons / km^2 (about twice the population density of the Bay Area), or about 300 m^2 (~3,000 sq. ft) for every man, woman and child. That's certainly enough to be self-sustaining. So, in short, the farmland in the US alone is enough to support the entire world; no need to worry there either.
One last note: after my 4th child was born, I had a vasectomy (which was planned all along), so you needn't lose any sleep over my "popping out" another 2 or 3. On the other hand, my 8-year-old is not only quite familiar with computers, but (unlike you) is also familiar with the proper use of "your" vs. "you're"; so perhaps what you should be losing sleep over is your own lack of education, if not your future livelihood...
Slashdot Mirror
Way back in 1995, the NAB and RIAA already began to realize that the Internet might be a threat to their established business. (Hey, they may be greedy, but they're not stupid!) So, they did what you might expect an established American business to do: they bought a law to protect themselves against competition, the DPRA (cool - another 4-letter acronym to hate!)
According the NAB's own words in the linked "summary" posting, p.4:
The impetus for the legislation was concerns of the recording industry that certain emerging businesses enabled by developing digital transmission technologies might provide music transmissions of such nature and quality as would displace record sales.
This little gem of a quote is part of the NAB's appeal document! The NAB/RIAA does not even attempt to hide the fact that the purpose of the DPRA was specifically to target select-and-download services and prop up "no-choice" broadcasting.
Unfortunately for them, the US Copyright Office refused to play along, and decided that all Internet streams would be charged similarly. So, they're understandably upset that the law they bought and paid for isn't protecting them as well as they'd like. (Some days, even a CongressCritter is a lousy investment...)
Unfortunately for the rest of us, the law was clearly intended to exempt them from royalties, so they'll probably get a "clarification" buried deep within the next huge steaming pile of legislation regarding the Office of Homeland Security or whatever.
As to those who have posted "hey, Congress won't do that -- it will make it way too obvious that they're supporting the fat cats in the RIAA!": what color is the sky in the world where you live (and how can I get there?)
What can you do? How about:
In other words, just give up any chance of ever living without fear again.
I sincerely hope you're just being a troll, because if facial recognition were ever to be widely implemented, the above would be a way of life for tens of thousands of perfectly law-abiding citizens in this country, or whever else it was implemented.
If you really don't think it matters, I'll tell you what: send me a couple of photographs of yourself, in the classic mug shot poses, and within a week I'll have you in that wonderful little FBI database with nice little TERRORIST notes all over your file (all it takes is unsubstantiated rumors these days.) Then we'll see how much you enjoy traveling...
I suspect that your own accuracy rate is not nearly as high as you believe it is.
First, as you state, that 99.99% accuracy rate only applies to a group of people you meet regularly; this probably includes perhaps a few hundred people, and a significant part of your total memory and processing capability is devoted to recognizing and updating your memory of those faces (check out a brian map for how much of our cortex is dedicated to face recognition.) Even duplicating that feat (i.e. identifying a small group of faces) would be a major undertaking for a computer system.
Second, that 99.99% isn't nearly as impressive as it sounds, because it represents the positive rate, i.e. the chance that you will correctly identify an individual in the target population. That corresponds to a false negative rate of 0.01% -- you're saying that once in ten thousand times, you'll actually fail to recognize somebody you see on a regular basis. Not too encouraging, that.
Third, that figure says absolutely nothing about the false positive rate, which I suspect is much higher. In other words, how often do you see somebody that you think you recognize, but can't quite remember exactly? From my own experience, I would say that number is as high as one in a hundred. Our own built-in face recognition system is simply designed that way -- to generate a large number of "near misses".
So, the bottom line is: even the supposedly high accuracy of human facial recognition isn't accurate enough, and undoubtedly doesn't scale very well.
I understand perfectly. I think it's dead too. Of course, I'm not MS's target market - I don't even own a TV. (Yes, you read that right.) If MS were a sane company, they would have pulled the plug already. But they aren't and they won't. Even if it is dead, they'll do their best Weekend at Bernies: they'll continue to put out XBox titles, buy lots of advertising and product tie-ins, maybe buy a few movie placement; then retool and release the XBox 2 in a few years. When that fails, they'll regroup and release XBox 3. And so it goes. (Hey, even Bob is still around.)
Hmm, I doubt very much that a port from PS2 to PC would be cheaper than a port from the XBox to the PC. Nevertheless, as I said, I'm not making a business case for myself, but for a big game development company (like, say, Konami.) As long as they can justify the cost of targetting the XBox (probably by saying "what IF it's the Next Big Thing?") then there will still be mindshare for the XBox, and that's all that Microsoft cares about right now.
The most expensive things in selling computer games is not programming, it's artwork, marketing and the retail-channel.
I think you just made my point for me. All I was saying is that the major game development houses will be able to convince themselves that it's worth targeting the XBox, because the porting costs to the PC are minimal, and any game shop that can afford to develop for the XBox will be targeting the PC already. If a XBox title fails miserably, they can just port it and slap a sticker on their ad campaign that says LamerzX: Now available for the PC!
The point I was making that the continued existence of the XBox doesn't depend on XBox software sales (or the perceived lack thereof), any more than it depends on MS making a profit on hardware sales.
The XBox is a Trojan horse, plain and simple; and by convincing game developers that it's "a lot like a PC", they've managed to enlist them in their scheme as well.
Sega had to pull the plug on the Dreamcast because (as Gord pointed out) it was the only one of the 3 major consoles that subscribed to the razors-and-blades business plan. However, the implied comparison to MS is not valid.
Sega was a one-trick pony. If the Dreamcast failed, Sega had no other game system to fall back on. In the end, the only strategy for survival was the one that Sega eventually adopted: sell software, not hardware. If Gord could figure this out (and he's just a games dealer), don't you think EA figured this out LONG before that? So game developers were afraid to support it, so Sega lost more money, so eventually everybody knew that Sega would have to get out of the hardware business, long before they publicly announced it.
Microsoft, on the other hand, isn't about to go out of business; so, even if XBox software sales are miserable, developers will continue to target the XBox. After all, if a title flops on the XBox, they can always repackage it as a $20 PC game. I mean, a game developer might abandon the Dreamcast's dev platform and GD-ROM hell, but nobody but nobody is going to stop developing for the Intel-and-DirectX world...
Yes, they should, and some of them probably will. The article does note that Microsoft's other volume licensing program (I believe it's called "Select") is still available, although MS has already indicated they intend to phase it out. Also, the institution could simply choose to buy individual licenses. That's why this isn't likely to run afoul of the "OEMs must pay per-PC" consent decree, because in that case, the OEMs didn't have any other option.
On the other hand, if a school has (say) 200 computers, with 150 PCs and 50 Macs, and the "site license" is cheaper than the 150-seat Volume license, how are they supposed to justify (to the school board) rejecting the site license? Not to mention the stick that goes with that site-license carrot, as others have already mentioned: namely a BSA audit.
It's awfully difficult to be 100% compliant (including all the requisite paperwork) for every single computer on a large campus. Even if a school says "forget it, we'll go 100% Red Hat", there's going to be some sysadmin flunky somewhere who installs Windows so he can play the Sims instead of working...
By the way, I can think of one reason why somebody would pay for a Windows license for a Mac: if you want to access services on an NT server (such as printers, file shares, or databases), you have to have a CAL (Client Access License), which you either buy separately, or get included with a copy of Windows. So, licensing Windows for a Mac isn't as far out as it sounds.
For those of you keeping score from home:
Thanks, tps12, for reminding me that wicked sarcasm is alive and well in America!
If a game is not free speech, can it still be copyrighted? According to this, "any original expression that is fixed in a tangible form" can be copyrighted.
Good point! If video games aren't expressive, they can't be copyrighted!
I have a brother in St. Louis - I should tell him to start copying, while the ruling's still valid...
Judge Limbaugh simply stepped around the hurdle by declaring that video games aren't "speech".
According to the article, "A tape with excerpts of these games was ... submitted to the court by the county [of St. Louis] as part of the record," Lowenstein says. The IDSA legal team countered the tape with scripts to video games, he says, that emphasized plot and story lines aimed at proving that games qualified as speech. But, with the ... 7th Circuit Court's favorable decision ..., "It was frankly inconceivable that this issue was in question." (Messages left with Limbaugh's office, asking if his honor had actually played any of these games, or if he had considered reviewing other games, were not returned by press time.) Since he misspelled two of the games' names, it's quite possible he did nothing other than watch the video provided.
In other words, the judge chose to simply ignore a large amount of the evidence. This, of course, makes it very likely that the decision will be quickly overturned; and it's very likely that the judge knew that when he drafted his decision.
So, why did he make the ruling? He's simply grandstanding. After all, he's appointed for life, and nobody's about to mount a recall election just because he said that little kiddies can't play guts-n-gore games...
As truesaer already pointed out, it's called "discovery", and it basically works like this:
a) Various EvilSuperMegaCorps say: "You're violating our copyrights! We'll sue!"
b) SonicBlue says: "No we're not!"
c) Judge says: "Prove it! I know you have that data, now hand it over!"
On first blush, this may seem intrusive, but imagine if you were the litigant, suing EvilSuperMegaCorp for copyright violation. In that case, of course you would expect that the judge would order ESMC to hand over the data about the use of that material that you know they're collecting.
Two lessons here:
IANAL, although the more I read uninformed posts like these, the more I think about entering law school...
That only applies in criminal cases. The Bill Of Rights restricts what government may do. (The gov't is the litigant in criminal cases: "The People v. John Smith.")
IANAL (BIPOOTV.)
Of course people are cheap, but most people don't like wasting time any more than wasting money. Back when Napster was big, I installed it and went poking around for some of my favorite songs from back in the '80s. After a few hours of not really finding anything, I gave up and never went back. Online file-sharing may be free as in money, but certainly not free as in time.
Now, as far as comparing a purchasing decision with paying income taxes, the comparison is ridiculous. If I don't feel like buying CDs, nobody will probably notice; but if I don't pay my income tax, there's a good chance somebody might arrest me. Income tax isn't even remotely voluntary. And no, don't give me that crap about "jointly agreed to support." I have never once voted for an incumbent, because I consider supporting any Federal budget passed since the beginning of the Cold War as essentially crime against humanity, with its huge military black budget. Seriously.
(One last note: with Napster, I may not have found what I was looking for, but I *did* find some other bands that I liked. I probably own about a dozen CDs now that I wouldn't have bought otherwise. And, no, I haven't bought a single major-label CD since Napster was shut down.)
1) No, they're not, except in places (e.g. the umbilical cord) where those same cells are available in adults. But that wasn't my point: I was saying that nobody causes an abortion just to harvest cells.
2) I've never heard of this, and it doesn't make any sense: what "parts" could possibly be valuable?? It makes a lot more sense to "harvest" parts from adults, but apart from the odd sci-fi movie, I've never heard of this either. (Those reports of organ harvesting in China turned out to be fabrications.)
3) Yes, I found that out in response to another thread. I'd never heard of that position either, and I find it equally difficult to support, but at least logically consistent.
Personally, I believe a human being comes into existence the moment s/he breathes on his/her own, not before. This comes from someone with four children. My wife suffered two miscarriages, and while we grieved greatly, we didn't and don't for a minute believe that a human life was lost. It was just a clump of cells flushed down the toilet, no more a living being than the skin off my big toe. Nevertheless, a baby is a wonderful, miraculous thing, even in the womb, so I can sympathize with the "pro-life" position better than you might think.
4) Of course it's a sign of wisdom. I thought his position was a surprisingly compelling compromise (even though I still feel it was utterly misguided.) I was objecting to giving Bush the credit, as if he was some sort of political mastermind.
Hmm, I thought we had a simple miscommunication. Until this discussion, I really hadn't realized that there were intelligent, well-informed people who objected to IVF on moral grounds. You learn something new every day...
Unfortunately, that probably only widens the gap between us. I suppose I should have known better than to wade into such a polarized debate. Godwin indeed; this discussion isn't going to go anywhere.
Maybe because online they can actually be *good* at it? Y'know, I can shoot a bow in the real world, but only on a RPG can I actually hit what I'm aiming for... ;-)
By the way, Asheron's Call 2 also has trade skills and NO character classes: anybody can specialize in anything they want, at any time. Sounds much more interesting to me. Check it out. And it's due out late this year...
Perhaps the parent poster was referring to the collection of umbilical cord blood. Or perhaps, even more likely, the parent was simply referring to the continuing search for other sources of totipotent stems cells within the adult human body. Your huge leap to the conclusion that the post was somehow an apologism for abortion was utterly unjustified and off-topic. How on earth did anybody get the idea that people were going around inducing abortions to collect the stem cells??
I'd say "Godwin" is definitely appropriate. (Was that just a typo on your part, or is "Godwin" a verb now?)
Guess the cloning issue is moot now with more evidence that adult stem cells do the same as aborted fetus cells.
/. summary): ... then cultured them into bone, cartilage, skeletal muscle and nerve cells.
C'mon read the article (or even just the
Peter Fodor
Only these four types of cells were produced from the fat cells. Researchers have known for some time that fat cells were "multipotent", i.e. able to produce cells of many other types. However, they also know that embryonic stem cells are "totipotent", i.e. able to produce cells of all other types. So, research into other sources of totipotent stem cells is still highly desirable.
Also, the banned stem cell research in question involves the use of embryonic stem cells (i.e. cells cultured in a Petri dish for the purposes of in vitro fertilization), not "cells from aborted fetuses", since they aren't stem cells anyway.
Regardless of that, the ban on the use of embryonic stem cells doesn't even make sense from an ethical perspective: why should it be somehow nobler to take the embryonic stem cells produced for IVF and throw them away , instead of doing life-saving research on them?
The standard response to this is that people will somehow "justify" obtaining an abortion on the grounds that the cells will go to some use, but as I just said, those cells come from IVF, which couples only use as an absolute last resort anyway (it's very expensive - over $20,000 per attempt; very painful; and still only about 20% successful.)
Finally, do you really think Bush came up with that idea on his own? He said himself that it was the result of long, intense debate with lots of people.
So, I'm not about to peel off my "Bush Is A Stupid Idiot" bumper sticker any time soon. (Just kidding. The only bumper sticker I have says "Nader/LaDuke.")
I just couldn't let this one pass: Visual Cobol for .NET does in fact already exist, except it's made by Fujitsu, not Microsoft, and it's called NetCOBOL.
... look at me, an Old Fart(tm) at 35...
COBOL was the first high-level programming language I learned, over 15 years ago, and promptly forgot. Ah, the memories: punch cards, batch processing,
Read the article again: the reward you speak of is exactly how the control is performed. No pain/shock is involved: the electrodes are connected directly to the rat's brain. The rat is probably vaguely aware that there are wires in its scalp, but other than that, all it knows is that it feels good to go left, or right, or wherever. As you said, it "wants nothing more than to follow the commands."
So, could this technique be applied to humans? Of course, and you don't need to look to 1984 or Brave New World to find examples of it. It's as old as human civilization; it's the basis for nearly every thing we do. It's called "education."
Think about it: after just a few months of military training, a soldier is ready to almost instantaneously respond to a verbal command from an officer hundreds of feet away, because s/he wants to. Sounds like remote control to me.
As the article said, the only real news here is how quickly they can train the rats, and how reliably they can respond.
Hopefully, it won't have to climb all over you to find you... If they use an infrared sensor to determine a probable location, then send in a remote-controlled rat with a wireless camera (hey! Finally a REAL use for those stupid X-10 thingies!) that can give them the information they need to extract you.
Of course, they really should use mice -- then they could call 'em "The Rescuers(tm)!"
I'd go off here on a tangent about how we should have a Constitutional amendment requiring prospective voters to demonstrate at least third-grade science and literacy skills before you get to vote, and maybe, I dunno, maybe an eighth-grade science education before you can run for elected office.
Actually, that's kind of what is being proposed here in Washington State: Initiative 780 would require legislators to take the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning, a test which high-schoolers are required to pass in order to graduate) and post their scores publicly. The teachers are all for it and the legislators are against it, of course...
Loser
i bet your catholic.
I know shouldn't feed the troll, but since you phrased it sooo politely (and logged in to boot!), I'll have you know that I'm Mormon, not Catholic. If that was intended to be an insult, it was a pitifully inept one. May I kindly suggest that you sharpen your wit with a little remedial reading here, here, or even here. "Subtle Nuance" you haven't.
Nevertheless, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are in fact seriously concerned about overpopulation. Here are some statistics that might allay some of your fears.
According to the CIA World FactBook, the fertility rate (average number of children born to each female) in most Western nations is well below the replacement rate of 2.1:Canada in particular has a declining immigration rate in addition to the low birth rate, so according to the recent census, Canada's population is likely to decrease in the next decade. I don't think you need to worry about "saving space."
Then again, you may be one of those worried about being overrun by the mongrel hordes, but here again are some useful statistics (again, mostly from the FactBook):In other words, if the arable (farmable) land in the US were equally divided among the entire population of the world, it would only come to about 3,600 persons / km^2 (about twice the population density of the Bay Area), or about 300 m^2 (~3,000 sq. ft) for every man, woman and child. That's certainly enough to be self-sustaining. So, in short, the farmland in the US alone is enough to support the entire world; no need to worry there either.
One last note: after my 4th child was born, I had a vasectomy (which was planned all along), so you needn't lose any sleep over my "popping out" another 2 or 3. On the other hand, my 8-year-old is not only quite familiar with computers, but (unlike you) is also familiar with the proper use of "your" vs. "you're"; so perhaps what you should be losing sleep over is your own lack of education, if not your future livelihood...