I recall reading somewhere that in a civil case the plaintiff can't get triple damages unless the defendant has already been found guilty in a criminal RICO case. IANAL though, and I may not be remembering correctly.
You were arguing that seatbelts make hospitals less expensive and crowded No I wasn't; could you be confusing my replies with the OP? My arguement was always that to use something for which the cost is shared by society (in this case roads), you have to obey the rules that the majority agree upon.
As a matter of record, I agree with the point of Ivan256 above, namely:
that in a free society the solution shouldn't be to ban said behaviors, but to eliminate the entitlement to the services which "cost" in those situations. However, modern societies are so interdependent that I believe such a solution to be impossible - we will always be sharing the cost for one thing or another as long as we live in groups. And as long as we share the cost on a service or on infrastructure, we will to have to compromise on how it can be used.
Quit being such a tool. No need to be insulting.
Whether someone else wears a seat belt has absolutely nothing to do with "making the roads a better place." I disagree. I feel safer on a road where everyone is wearing their seat belts. But regardless, I said "conditions", plural. The "better place" part applies more aptly to laws about speed limits, or signaling, or against me randomly shooting at people who cut me off, etc. All of these are conditions we agree to when driving on public roads. Keep in mind I did say that some of socities rules are arbitrary - seat belt laws may fall into this clasification for you, but apparently not the majority.
You don't "respect" the OP's freedom one bit. I respect his/her freedom exactly up until the point at which his/her actions affect me. At that point my freedom starts being degraded. Like I said, we all compromise. It's a balance, and usually not a delicate one, but it's the best we have.
Public roads are shared by all drivers. To use them, you must adhere to conditions that the majority of people (or their representatives) agree on. These conditions exist to make the roads a better place for all. The same situation exists for most services and commodities that have been paid for with everyone's tax money. You no more have the "right" to act recklessly on public roads than I have the "right" to dig up the water main passing near my property with a backhoe. I sacrificed my freedom to indiscriminately use a backhoe when I decided to settle down in a city full of amenities instead of in the arctic tundra (for example).
If you feel your freedom is abridged because you are not allowed to act recklessly while driving, then you still have the freedom to not drive. Can't because you need to drive to work and there's no public transit? You have to freedom to move or quit your job and get something closer. Freedom doesnt mean everything gets to be the way you want - in a society we compromise.
That said, if you want to abandon modern society and go live alone in the middle of nowhere, build your own roads, sewage, water and power services, then you can have all the "freedom" to act dumb that you could ever want. But if you want to share anything with the rest of society, be prepared to live by societies (admittedly sometimes arbitrary) rules. It's the cost of doing business, so to speak.
But why don't people have the right to be dumb or self destructive? You answered your own question already. People don't have the right to be dumb and self destructive when the cost of those actions is shared by everyone (or anyone) else. If you want to act dumb and self destuctive, do so in a way that is a cost only to you.
For example, go buy a speed boat and play chicken with iceburgs in international waters - you won't hear much complaining then. But roads were paid for and are maintained by everyone's tax money; no single person has the right to abuse them (on the other hand if you want to bomb around your farm without a seatbelt and stay off the roads, that's fine with most people too).
Why would you want a backup 360 in case yours fails? RROD problems are covered for 3 years now. Even if you bought a launch console in 2005 you would still be protected for another year at least.
Won't you be getting a nasty visit from some government types if you launch a 21 ft rocket without some kind of clearance? The article didn't mention them telling the FAA or state authorities of their plans...
Well, extended support for XP ends in 2014. Considering all of 2008,2009,2010,2011,2012 and 2013 will be the year of the Linux desktop, I highly doubt anyone will still be using XP by then.
Well UO was one of the first MMORPG's. Back then no one knew that if you made it more like a job you could sell millions and millions of copies. The developers simply didnt know any better and just tried to make the game "fun". Poor, poor bastards.;)
No, different taste didn't mean he was trolling. Of course not everyone will like every game. For example I dislike Madden games, but they sell very well.
But did you read his post?
Terrible graphics, pathetic sound, gameplay physics that make no sense, and the exact same story as Doom... one of the worst first person shooters ever made... Thats not an insightful critique; it's just a string of insults. In a story that is only slightly related to halo (I think the news here was the MIT hack itself) that usually means trolling. If he wasn't trolling then he should learn to write a bit more eloquently.
Ha, kidding. I remember being a part of the UO beta myself back in '97 - those were great times. Hell I was actually there when Lord British was assassinated - it was an impossible to control lag-a-thon (dial-up FTW!), but at that time it was an unparalleled experience.
I went on to play UO after the beta for about a year before I called it quits. After being lag-killed for the 20th time or so I decided to give my hard-earned house (literally about 30 hours of tailoring skull caps) and my boat to my guild and move on:(
First: I say "not paying attention" to mean neglecting doing something that someone should be doing (namely being cognizant of what's going on) not failing to do something that requires effort. In this sense I meant to say that anyone thinking that Halo 2 and Doom have the same story must be being willfully ignorant - not that they are failing to notice some nuanced plot point.
Two: I would bet good money that there are MORE cut scenes in the MGS games than in the Halo games used to explain the story. I don't see that as a bad thing - I think the MGS games are amazing and I own them all (even Twin Snakes). But using MGS as an example of a game that does not "cram (the story) in the middle of the game slowing things down" is a very poor choice; IMO some of the cutscenes in the MGS games rival those of Xenosaga! (Seeing metal gear ray and revolver ocelot for the first time in MGS2 comes to mind.)
Actually I have played a fair bit of MP3 on a friends wii and thought it was great. I plan to pick up a wii around christmas when the new smash bros comes out and I will definitely be picking up MP3.
I'm a big fan of the first two metroid primes as well. From what I played, the 3rd controlled wonderfully. It was a bit different - I'd say it's more intuitive than a controller by far, but still not quite up to keyboard/mouse. That may just be because I have the most experience with keyboard/mouse though. What I can definitely say for sure is that the wiimote is easier to get used to than a gamepad-style controller; the learning curve for the wiimote is definitely simpler.
Whether the wiimote is better than a mouse for a fps I cannot say; my experience over the last 2 decades makes me a bit too biased towards the mouse;)
I've seen a few hundred "Can somebody please explain the appeal of blank" posts and usually just dismiss them as flaimbait. In fact, the "worst than Wolf3D" jab basically guarentees you are trolling. But since I am one of the people who picked up Halo3 on launch day I figure I may as well try to explain the appeal of it, for the benefit of anyone else reading if not you.
First, the Halo universe does have some depth to it. If you think Halo 2 had the same story as doom then you probably weren't paying attention. It would take too long to explain the story in depth, but I'm sure it's all on wikipedia anyway. Certainly I don't find the Halo games as engrossing as some of the great PC games (thinking of Halflife, Deux Ex, System Shock, and most recently Bioshock) but I would definately say it's above average. At the very least the story is not a negative point. Halo 3 in particular ties up nicely the plot of the first two games.
Secondly the gameplay: I am definately a keyboard/mouse kinda guy. I think a console controller is far inferior. That said, the Halo games basically set the standard for how FPS's should be played on consoles. In this sense the original Halo stands among games like Mario64 and Goldeneye for having great control schemes (for the time). Certainly a keyboard/mouse would be better, but I don't want to use those while sitting on my couch. For the equipment it has, the Halo games have as good control as you could ask for.
Moreover even after having played just about every fps I can think of on PC, I have never found a game that had vehicles that were as fun to drive as in Halo. Halflife 2 came close, and other games may have more realistic vehicle control, but the vehicles in the Halo series are just FUN. However Bungi accomplished that, they did it damn well.
Third the graphics. I freely conceed that Halo 2 had shitacular graphics compared to computer games of the same time. After all Halflife 2 was released at the same time and was far prettier on a high-end (for the time) PC. However Halo 2 did have some of the best graphics for the xbox at the time, and for that console generation on the whole (off the top of my head I can only think of RE4 on the GC having undeniably superior graphics) For Halo 3 that is much less of an issue - the graphics are great. They aren't as gritty as Gears of War or as atmospheric as Bioshock, but they are not meant to be. They're rich, colorful and detailed, and the draw distance is impressive.
Finally I will end with the main point of Halo - MULTIPLAYER. Completely disregarding the story, the graphics, or the lack of mouse control, you still have one of the funnest multiplayer games around. Sitting in front of a big tv and playing with a few friends is an experience that cannot easily be matched on the PC, and is definately not matched by any other console game. It's like a Counterstrike LAN party but you don't have to lug a computer all over the place. In a word: awesome.
Well to the vast majority of people, rape and murder don't require much of a punishment deterrent - they are objectionable crimes simply from a human decency point of view, not just a legal point of view (obviously there still has to be a deterrent for the minority who are fine with raping and murdering).
Selling/distributing someone elses IP appears to be a victimless crime to a lot of people though, so there is almost no moral deterrent. Thus the legal deterrent has to be large if you want people to be afraid of breaking the law.
Of course that is all just about enforcement. The actual law is another matter.
He didn't go to jail for owning mod chips, or having "over 1,000 pirated game discs" in his house. If you RTFA, you'll see he pleaded guilty to two counts of counterfeit trafficking. That's right, he was selling mod chips.
No one ever goes to jail for just having pirated materials (regardless of the law against it in some countries). The only people who get in trouble are people selling/distributing it.
Well the (very light on details) blurb linked to in the summary does say "Sony has failed to confirm a price drop", and that they are committed to focus on Software rather than price for the time being. That's not exactly the same as saying there will not be a price drop. The "there wouldn't be one soon" statement in the Summary seems more like Zonk-spin than actual reporting.
That said, no one in their right mind should trust any company to be telling the the truth when their bottom line is at stake, Sony or otherwise.
In all fairness, it wouldn't make much sense for Sony to come out and say they were going to cut the price. If you know for sure that a PS3 will be $100 cheaper next week, why the heck would you go buy one today?
MS is a villain in a lot of areas, but not in this case. Immersion sued both MS and Sony for using rumble technology in their consoles without licencing it.
MS bought a share of Immersion as a settlement, while Sony decided to keep fighting and eventually lost. I think it was obvious to both companies at the start that Immersion had a good case - MS quickly decided to settle while Sony decided not to. The 10% share of Immersion that MS bought as a settlement has nothing to do with Sony refusing to settle. If anything, seeing MS settle should have been a good clue to Sony that they might want to settle as well.
Sony paid a lot for their lack of forsight too; It cost MS about 25 million to settle. Sony got stuck with a bill 4 times as much, not counting the years of legal fees. Sony gambled and lost. It was their decision, not MS's.
I'd also like to point out that Immersion isn't the standard patent troll that we hear about on Slashdot all the time. They actively develop and sell their technologies, not just sit on patents and litigate their way to profit like some other companies. MS and Sony both used their designs without permission, and there was a good reason Sony lost their fight. Immersion isnt a villian either.
Side note: Nintendo wasn't sued because their rumble technology works differently, and was developed in house. Immersion has a patent on a specific method of providing rumble feedback, not just rumble feedback in general. Since Nintendo used a different method, they were fine. MS and Sony (for some dumb reason) both decided to use the same method Immersion had patented.
I wish that he would post the video that he took when he went back to talk to the manager a second time. The dickishness he describes sounds outrageous.
The most secure setting provided (that I am aware of) is "do not install updates". The most secure setting provided (that actually exists) is "Turn off Automatic Updates". Under this setting the update service is disabled and there is no checking for or installing updates - stealth or otherwise. Presumably this would be the option selected for all the critical systems you describe.
Slashdot Mirror
I recall reading somewhere that in a civil case the plaintiff can't get triple damages unless the defendant has already been found guilty in a criminal RICO case. IANAL though, and I may not be remembering correctly.
As a matter of record, I agree with the point of Ivan256 above, namely: that in a free society the solution shouldn't be to ban said behaviors, but to eliminate the entitlement to the services which "cost" in those situations. However, modern societies are so interdependent that I believe such a solution to be impossible - we will always be sharing the cost for one thing or another as long as we live in groups. And as long as we share the cost on a service or on infrastructure, we will to have to compromise on how it can be used.
Public roads are shared by all drivers. To use them, you must adhere to conditions that the majority of people (or their representatives) agree on. These conditions exist to make the roads a better place for all. The same situation exists for most services and commodities that have been paid for with everyone's tax money. You no more have the "right" to act recklessly on public roads than I have the "right" to dig up the water main passing near my property with a backhoe. I sacrificed my freedom to indiscriminately use a backhoe when I decided to settle down in a city full of amenities instead of in the arctic tundra (for example).
If you feel your freedom is abridged because you are not allowed to act recklessly while driving, then you still have the freedom to not drive. Can't because you need to drive to work and there's no public transit? You have to freedom to move or quit your job and get something closer. Freedom doesnt mean everything gets to be the way you want - in a society we compromise.
That said, if you want to abandon modern society and go live alone in the middle of nowhere, build your own roads, sewage, water and power services, then you can have all the "freedom" to act dumb that you could ever want. But if you want to share anything with the rest of society, be prepared to live by societies (admittedly sometimes arbitrary) rules. It's the cost of doing business, so to speak.
For example, go buy a speed boat and play chicken with iceburgs in international waters - you won't hear much complaining then. But roads were paid for and are maintained by everyone's tax money; no single person has the right to abuse them (on the other hand if you want to bomb around your farm without a seatbelt and stay off the roads, that's fine with most people too).
Who would be fooled by that? Comparing a PS3 with a Wii is like comparing a buick with my lawnmower!
Of course I guess someone could gut a PS3 and hide their wii inside (or 2, or 5) to fool thieves...
Why would you want a backup 360 in case yours fails? RROD problems are covered for 3 years now. Even if you bought a launch console in 2005 you would still be protected for another year at least.
It's called price discrimination, and it's not a bad thing, economically speaking.
Won't you be getting a nasty visit from some government types if you launch a 21 ft rocket without some kind of clearance? The article didn't mention them telling the FAA or state authorities of their plans...
Well, extended support for XP ends in 2014. Considering all of 2008,2009,2010,2011,2012 and 2013 will be the year of the Linux desktop, I highly doubt anyone will still be using XP by then.
Well UO was one of the first MMORPG's. Back then no one knew that if you made it more like a job you could sell millions and millions of copies. The developers simply didnt know any better and just tried to make the game "fun". Poor, poor bastards. ;)
But did you read his post? Terrible graphics, pathetic sound, gameplay physics that make no sense, and the exact same story as Doom... one of the worst first person shooters ever made... Thats not an insightful critique; it's just a string of insults. In a story that is only slightly related to halo (I think the news here was the MIT hack itself) that usually means trolling. If he wasn't trolling then he should learn to write a bit more eloquently.
Ha, kidding. I remember being a part of the UO beta myself back in '97 - those were great times. Hell I was actually there when Lord British was assassinated - it was an impossible to control lag-a-thon (dial-up FTW!), but at that time it was an unparalleled experience.
I went on to play UO after the beta for about a year before I called it quits. After being lag-killed for the 20th time or so I decided to give my hard-earned house (literally about 30 hours of tailoring skull caps) and my boat to my guild and move on
Two things:
First: I say "not paying attention" to mean neglecting doing something that someone should be doing (namely being cognizant of what's going on) not failing to do something that requires effort. In this sense I meant to say that anyone thinking that Halo 2 and Doom have the same story must be being willfully ignorant - not that they are failing to notice some nuanced plot point.
Two: I would bet good money that there are MORE cut scenes in the MGS games than in the Halo games used to explain the story. I don't see that as a bad thing - I think the MGS games are amazing and I own them all (even Twin Snakes). But using MGS as an example of a game that does not "cram (the story) in the middle of the game slowing things down" is a very poor choice; IMO some of the cutscenes in the MGS games rival those of Xenosaga! (Seeing metal gear ray and revolver ocelot for the first time in MGS2 comes to mind.)
Well met. Thanks for the complement about my sig.
;)
Actually I have played a fair bit of MP3 on a friends wii and thought it was great. I plan to pick up a wii around christmas when the new smash bros comes out and I will definitely be picking up MP3.
I'm a big fan of the first two metroid primes as well. From what I played, the 3rd controlled wonderfully. It was a bit different - I'd say it's more intuitive than a controller by far, but still not quite up to keyboard/mouse. That may just be because I have the most experience with keyboard/mouse though. What I can definitely say for sure is that the wiimote is easier to get used to than a gamepad-style controller; the learning curve for the wiimote is definitely simpler.
Whether the wiimote is better than a mouse for a fps I cannot say; my experience over the last 2 decades makes me a bit too biased towards the mouse
I've seen a few hundred "Can somebody please explain the appeal of blank" posts and usually just dismiss them as flaimbait. In fact, the "worst than Wolf3D" jab basically guarentees you are trolling. But since I am one of the people who picked up Halo3 on launch day I figure I may as well try to explain the appeal of it, for the benefit of anyone else reading if not you.
First, the Halo universe does have some depth to it. If you think Halo 2 had the same story as doom then you probably weren't paying attention. It would take too long to explain the story in depth, but I'm sure it's all on wikipedia anyway. Certainly I don't find the Halo games as engrossing as some of the great PC games (thinking of Halflife, Deux Ex, System Shock, and most recently Bioshock) but I would definately say it's above average. At the very least the story is not a negative point. Halo 3 in particular ties up nicely the plot of the first two games.
Secondly the gameplay: I am definately a keyboard/mouse kinda guy. I think a console controller is far inferior. That said, the Halo games basically set the standard for how FPS's should be played on consoles. In this sense the original Halo stands among games like Mario64 and Goldeneye for having great control schemes (for the time). Certainly a keyboard/mouse would be better, but I don't want to use those while sitting on my couch. For the equipment it has, the Halo games have as good control as you could ask for.
Moreover even after having played just about every fps I can think of on PC, I have never found a game that had vehicles that were as fun to drive as in Halo. Halflife 2 came close, and other games may have more realistic vehicle control, but the vehicles in the Halo series are just FUN. However Bungi accomplished that, they did it damn well.
Third the graphics. I freely conceed that Halo 2 had shitacular graphics compared to computer games of the same time. After all Halflife 2 was released at the same time and was far prettier on a high-end (for the time) PC. However Halo 2 did have some of the best graphics for the xbox at the time, and for that console generation on the whole (off the top of my head I can only think of RE4 on the GC having undeniably superior graphics) For Halo 3 that is much less of an issue - the graphics are great. They aren't as gritty as Gears of War or as atmospheric as Bioshock, but they are not meant to be. They're rich, colorful and detailed, and the draw distance is impressive.
Finally I will end with the main point of Halo - MULTIPLAYER. Completely disregarding the story, the graphics, or the lack of mouse control, you still have one of the funnest multiplayer games around. Sitting in front of a big tv and playing with a few friends is an experience that cannot easily be matched on the PC, and is definately not matched by any other console game. It's like a Counterstrike LAN party but you don't have to lug a computer all over the place. In a word: awesome.
The title of the linked to article is "Mod Chip Seller Sentenced to Jail Time".
Well to the vast majority of people, rape and murder don't require much of a punishment deterrent - they are objectionable crimes simply from a human decency point of view, not just a legal point of view (obviously there still has to be a deterrent for the minority who are fine with raping and murdering).
Selling/distributing someone elses IP appears to be a victimless crime to a lot of people though, so there is almost no moral deterrent. Thus the legal deterrent has to be large if you want people to be afraid of breaking the law.
Of course that is all just about enforcement. The actual law is another matter.
He didn't go to jail for owning mod chips, or having "over 1,000 pirated game discs" in his house. If you RTFA, you'll see he pleaded guilty to two counts of counterfeit trafficking. That's right, he was selling mod chips.
No one ever goes to jail for just having pirated materials (regardless of the law against it in some countries). The only people who get in trouble are people selling/distributing it.
Well the (very light on details) blurb linked to in the summary does say "Sony has failed to confirm a price drop", and that they are committed to focus on Software rather than price for the time being. That's not exactly the same as saying there will not be a price drop. The "there wouldn't be one soon" statement in the Summary seems more like Zonk-spin than actual reporting.
That said, no one in their right mind should trust any company to be telling the the truth when their bottom line is at stake, Sony or otherwise.
In all fairness, it wouldn't make much sense for Sony to come out and say they were going to cut the price. If you know for sure that a PS3 will be $100 cheaper next week, why the heck would you go buy one today?
MS is a villain in a lot of areas, but not in this case. Immersion sued both MS and Sony for using rumble technology in their consoles without licencing it.
MS bought a share of Immersion as a settlement, while Sony decided to keep fighting and eventually lost. I think it was obvious to both companies at the start that Immersion had a good case - MS quickly decided to settle while Sony decided not to. The 10% share of Immersion that MS bought as a settlement has nothing to do with Sony refusing to settle. If anything, seeing MS settle should have been a good clue to Sony that they might want to settle as well.
Sony paid a lot for their lack of forsight too; It cost MS about 25 million to settle. Sony got stuck with a bill 4 times as much, not counting the years of legal fees. Sony gambled and lost. It was their decision, not MS's.
I'd also like to point out that Immersion isn't the standard patent troll that we hear about on Slashdot all the time. They actively develop and sell their technologies, not just sit on patents and litigate their way to profit like some other companies. MS and Sony both used their designs without permission, and there was a good reason Sony lost their fight. Immersion isnt a villian either.
Side note: Nintendo wasn't sued because their rumble technology works differently, and was developed in house. Immersion has a patent on a specific method of providing rumble feedback, not just rumble feedback in general. Since Nintendo used a different method, they were fine. MS and Sony (for some dumb reason) both decided to use the same method Immersion had patented.
Wow. That's simply amazing.
I wish that he would post the video that he took when he went back to talk to the manager a second time. The dickishness he describes sounds outrageous.