Most of the reactions to someone saying "I am a bisexual geek girl" have been rather interesting. Mostly along the line of "Rrrrrowl" (paraphrased. };>). My totally off-topic question would be: Would the reaction be as favorable if it were a "bisexual geek guy?" Why does it seem more acceptable for girls to be bi than guys?
Neither time nor space is infinite according to the data we have.
Correction: Space is infinite according to the data we have. The amount of stuff though (and that stuff's current boundaries) is finite. Time is more debatable though. Some have theorized that time really is only the measure of change... if absolutely nothing changes, does time actually pass? If there is no matter in our pre-universe, is there actually time?
I've noticed a particular pattern with Katz's writings: they usually follow almost exactly 3-5 days after the posting of a major slashdot story that garners more than 400 comments
You mean a journalist decides to write on topics that many people feel passionately about? What a concept!
It's sick to think how many millions of dollars were wasted on 30 second time slots when it could be going to much better use...
I love how everyone says all this money was "wasted," as if it somehow didn't go anywhere. As if they had simply taken 2 million dollars and tossed it into a bonfire. Figure it out: the money goes somewhere. It's always transfered, not wasted. The only ones who lose there are the people who paid for the timeslots. And they do it because they think they can gain with the advertisement.
Here's some irony. BIG story about cookies and crushing implications on privacy. What do people do? They gripe about it, using their cookie-required accounts! I just don't understand people. Ok, kiddies, one more time:
COOKIES ARE EVIL!!!
Ummm, no. Cookies are not inherently evil. They are only a problem if they're used to track you over multiple sites, and slashdot doesn't do that. That's blaming stabbing deaths on knifes -- they have good legitimate uses, but are misused in some cases. That doesn't make them evil.
DeCSS was made under a non-profit situation. DoubleClick's tracking reeks of commercialism. (and) But DoubleClick wants to sell the information.
So what? A bad action is still a bad action whether or not you're making money on it or not. I think most objections to privacy violations are those: objections to an invasion of privacy, NOT just that privacy was invaded so someone could sell the information rather than give it away. If doubleclick GAVE away all their information to corporations rather than selling it (almost impossible scenario, since it would be a bad business model, but this is a hypothetical situation), I would still be complaining just as loudly, as would most privacy advocates.
With all the support Etoy had and the support DeCSS has, it should be no problem to overcome corporate greed.
The problem is that these cases aren't similar. The eToys vs etoy case was extremely clear-cut: the motivations were very clear, and etoy was very very clearly in the legal clear (and still look at all the crap they had to go through). The DVD defendants don't have that luxury: whether you like it or not, the issues surrounding the DVD case are legally murky.
I think we are pretty lucky they decided to release that in the US, though they decided to gip us out of FFII (I think FFV in Japan).
You can buy FFV for the Playstation now (it would have been FF2.5 };>), since Square is able to release it now. Don't blame Square for not releasing it over here -- that was a Nintendo of America decision. One of the many bad NoA decisions that screwed US audiences out of good games. Sony is a little more lenient, and has let Square re-release FFV and FFVI (with the original artwork) as "Final Fantasy Anthology" for the Playstation.
(Still it's fun to play the english translation on an SNES emulator. Only have a few minutes? Well, have the emulator save the state of the game at any point! That's one of the best things about emulators -- the ability to save whenever you want).
I think that one of the improvements we're going to see in games is more video, not CGI but actual video shots in video games. It'll start out slowly with just replacing still scenes with video clips, but eventually playing a video game is really going to be like being a part of a movie. People will look like real people, not like drawn characters. People will ACT not just stand in place. People will speak rather than make you read words on the screen.
And I don't think this would be a good thing. We've seen "actors" in games before, and the results have almost always been disasterous. To do it correctly, you'd need some excellent voice actors, and they aren't cheap. Not to mention they often ruin the game when they are at least marginal -- a good screen actor just won't always make a good video game presence. I just don't think video games are a good medium for actors at all.
I also fear three possible solutions to the problem of filming all the footage required:
The game becomes much more expensive as production costs mount.
The "path most often taken" gets much more time lavished to it. If you do something unusual in the game, you won't get rewarded by similar-quality cinematic effects.
Because the cinematic effects are pre-rendered or pre-filmed, you just won't have many choices (Ie, "interactive" movie). This is the route that Final Fantasy VIII has taken. A little annoying, but it seems to have turned out rather well.
weres the tiered hirachy of loosers? none, thats what the system wants to make, which is dumb.
Is it? I suppose the question is how to define learning or intelligence. Perhaps society wants to define that by how fast someone can learn as well as how well.
You also have to consider the administrative overhead of letting everyone "take the test when they're ready." You realize that, of course, teachers would have to make different versions of the tests for almost every student. There is no way you couldn't trust students not to share these things.:) Such a system would require immense resources, at least if they were implimented in the elementary school/high school level. It sometimes -sounds- nice, but how are you going to realistically impliment it?
Why? Why in a "properly graded" environment must a certain percentage of students get one grade and a certain percentage get another? Grades are not supposed to be designed so that they fit a pretty curve, they are supposed to reflect how well a student learned the material. Grading someone on how well the other classmates did as opposed to how well he did is just BS.
I knew it! Somehow... I just knew Microsoft was going to needlessly appear in this thread. I was planning on posting a similar analogy if it didn't. };>
Maybe we can add an addendum to Godwin's law to include MS references...
Re:RIAA is asking for 68 billion dollars!!!
on
RIAA Sues MP3.com
·
· Score: 1
Let's admit it, this isn't REALLY about Beam-IT. Beam-IT gave them a tiny bit of leverage in their true goal: they have simply wanted to destroy mp3.com for some time. That they would go and file marginal (and rediculously priced) lawsuits against them should come as a surprise to no one. }:>
Traditionally, university staff has not been that free-thinking. When someone mentions that universities tend to be free-thinking, they're usually thinking of one of two things:
However, I'm not sure which to blame the failure on... these machines have each eaten through 3 hard drives in the past year...
My mom had a similar experience. I had a 1.2gig WD drive which ran flawlessly in my computer for almost 3 years. After I got a larger drive (also a WD which has been perfect as well), I installed the 1.2gig in my mom's computer. About a week later, clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk. WD replaced the drive for free. But after maybe a week, the same thing happened with that one too. We went through at least 3 or 4 drives before ripping the computer apart and putting it back together with the new drive. I wondered if there was some type of power supply weirdness (or something) that was making the drives fail so, especially after my first worked so well. It couldn't have ALL been timing...
Is it news? Well, yes and no. Is everything in the New York Times news? No. They have editorials as well. Many people seem to diss Katz because he states his opinions here, and since they're in the "news for nerds" board, it gets misrepresented as fact. I haven't seen this though: Katz hasn't been presented as a news writer.. he writes editorials...
Re:Broadband ISP's need different rules
on
@Home UDP Lifted
·
· Score: 1
- wide open with no logging
Well, yes and no. True, Wingate used to ship with that configuration by default, but this was changed to be more secure some time ago -- at least a year or two.
In addition, I've talked to some @HOME customers who said they didn't download/install/configure anything. The @HOME serviceman came and installed the cablemodem and installed the software packages, one of which was a wide-open wingate. Is this anecdotal evidence? Well, yes. But if true, it shows that @HOME is passing the buck a little when it says its not responsible for users who have insecure wingates installed.
Why? Because they're easier to dismiss. It's easier to just not take them seriously. It's much easier to ignore their message and just say "God, what an asshole" and move on.
I've often felt that Microsoft propaganda isn't the worst enemy for Linux -- Linux users are Linux's worst enemies. With almost every Microsoft thread on Slashdot (or Linux newsgroups, etc), you often see the same thing: "f*cking Microsoft, how can anyone use that crap? Windows is for stupid losers." And so on. This of course does Linux no favors at all, and only serves to make the original poster look foolish. Why flame? I guess it makes the flamer feel all macho and self-important, but is it really doing anything else?
The lips usually synch very well in the original Japanese, but that means reading subtitles, some don't like that either.
I almost insist upon subtitles now for the anime I rent (and certainly any that I buy). If you've seen the bad Lodoss English job, and the even worse Akira dubbing and compared them to the originals, there's really no comparison. };( Check out the Anti-Robotech Page for why most anime dubs are bad. (Note the author dislikes Robotech but is a Macross fan -- you can be, you know.:))
Interesting. I shopped around on pricewatch.com for about half an hour, ordered one, and a few days later it was sitting on my doorstep. No waiting for me..
This is why many sites use deliberate mis-spellings of popular sites? (Altavista closed one such site, via a lawsuit. www.homail.com is probably going to bring another, sooner or later.)
You're confusing two different problems and assuming one has to do with the other. Pornography is not setting up an explicit website and then registering www.whitehouse.com. It isn't setting up a website and then ordering a CD of 2 million email addresses to spam to. Those are problems, but they are more related to business decisions independant of pornography itself, tactics which more than just the adult industry engages in.
I do agree that it would be nice to penalize sites that engage in deception or spam, but I also think it's a mistake to blame pornography in general for the shady tactics of some owners.
Slashdot Mirror
Just curious..
Correction: Space is infinite according to the data we have. The amount of stuff though (and that stuff's current boundaries) is finite. Time is more debatable though. Some have theorized that time really is only the measure of change... if absolutely nothing changes, does time actually pass? If there is no matter in our pre-universe, is there actually time?
You mean a journalist decides to write on topics that many people feel passionately about? What a concept!
I love how everyone says all this money was "wasted," as if it somehow didn't go anywhere. As if they had simply taken 2 million dollars and tossed it into a bonfire. Figure it out: the money goes somewhere. It's always transfered, not wasted. The only ones who lose there are the people who paid for the timeslots. And they do it because they think they can gain with the advertisement.
COOKIES ARE EVIL!!!
Ummm, no. Cookies are not inherently evil. They are only a problem if they're used to track you over multiple sites, and slashdot doesn't do that. That's blaming stabbing deaths on knifes -- they have good legitimate uses, but are misused in some cases. That doesn't make them evil.
So what? A bad action is still a bad action whether or not you're making money on it or not. I think most objections to privacy violations are those: objections to an invasion of privacy, NOT just that privacy was invaded so someone could sell the information rather than give it away. If doubleclick GAVE away all their information to corporations rather than selling it (almost impossible scenario, since it would be a bad business model, but this is a hypothetical situation), I would still be complaining just as loudly, as would most privacy advocates.
The problem is that these cases aren't similar. The eToys vs etoy case was extremely clear-cut: the motivations were very clear, and etoy was very very clearly in the legal clear (and still look at all the crap they had to go through). The DVD defendants don't have that luxury: whether you like it or not, the issues surrounding the DVD case are legally murky.
Why can't it be a slow application?
You can buy FFV for the Playstation now (it would have been FF2.5 };>), since Square is able to release it now. Don't blame Square for not releasing it over here -- that was a Nintendo of America decision. One of the many bad NoA decisions that screwed US audiences out of good games. Sony is a little more lenient, and has let Square re-release FFV and FFVI (with the original artwork) as "Final Fantasy Anthology" for the Playstation.
(Still it's fun to play the english translation on an SNES emulator. Only have a few minutes? Well, have the emulator save the state of the game at any point! That's one of the best things about emulators -- the ability to save whenever you want).
And I don't think this would be a good thing. We've seen "actors" in games before, and the results have almost always been disasterous. To do it correctly, you'd need some excellent voice actors, and they aren't cheap. Not to mention they often ruin the game when they are at least marginal -- a good screen actor just won't always make a good video game presence. I just don't think video games are a good medium for actors at all.
I also fear three possible solutions to the problem of filming all the footage required:
Why do you have to have remote access services installed with NT?
Why wouldn't they want a national defense? A national defense isn't too far removed from a national offense, and we know they'd want one of those. }:>
Is it? I suppose the question is how to define learning or intelligence. Perhaps society wants to define that by how fast someone can learn as well as how well.
You also have to consider the administrative overhead of letting everyone "take the test when they're ready." You realize that, of course, teachers would have to make different versions of the tests for almost every student. There is no way you couldn't trust students not to share these things. :) Such a system would require immense resources, at least if they were implimented in the elementary school/high school level. It sometimes -sounds- nice, but how are you going to realistically impliment it?
Maybe we can add an addendum to Godwin's law to include MS references...
My mom had a similar experience. I had a 1.2gig WD drive which ran flawlessly in my computer for almost 3 years. After I got a larger drive (also a WD which has been perfect as well), I installed the 1.2gig in my mom's computer. About a week later, clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk. WD replaced the drive for free. But after maybe a week, the same thing happened with that one too. We went through at least 3 or 4 drives before ripping the computer apart and putting it back together with the new drive. I wondered if there was some type of power supply weirdness (or something) that was making the drives fail so, especially after my first worked so well. It couldn't have ALL been timing...
Is everything in the New York Times news? No. They have editorials as well. Many people seem to diss Katz because he states his opinions here, and since they're in the "news for nerds" board, it gets misrepresented as fact. I haven't seen this though: Katz hasn't been presented as a news writer.. he writes editorials...
Well, yes and no. True, Wingate used to ship with that configuration by default, but this was changed to be more secure some time ago -- at least a year or two.
In addition, I've talked to some @HOME customers who said they didn't download/install/configure anything. The @HOME serviceman came and installed the cablemodem and installed the software packages, one of which was a wide-open wingate. Is this anecdotal evidence? Well, yes. But if true, it shows that @HOME is passing the buck a little when it says its not responsible for users who have insecure wingates installed.
I've often felt that Microsoft propaganda isn't the worst enemy for Linux -- Linux users are Linux's worst enemies. With almost every Microsoft thread on Slashdot (or Linux newsgroups, etc), you often see the same thing: "f*cking Microsoft, how can anyone use that crap? Windows is for stupid losers." And so on. This of course does Linux no favors at all, and only serves to make the original poster look foolish. Why flame? I guess it makes the flamer feel all macho and self-important, but is it really doing anything else?
I almost insist upon subtitles now for the anime I rent (and certainly any that I buy). If you've seen the bad Lodoss English job, and the even worse Akira dubbing and compared them to the originals, there's really no comparison. };( Check out the Anti-Robotech Page for why most anime dubs are bad. (Note the author dislikes Robotech but is a Macross fan -- you can be, you know. :))
You're confusing two different problems and assuming one has to do with the other. Pornography is not setting up an explicit website and then registering www.whitehouse.com. It isn't setting up a website and then ordering a CD of 2 million email addresses to spam to. Those are problems, but they are more related to business decisions independant of pornography itself, tactics which more than just the adult industry engages in.
I do agree that it would be nice to penalize sites that engage in deception or spam, but I also think it's a mistake to blame pornography in general for the shady tactics of some owners.