I've got a Pentium 100-based MP3 jukebox that can run MP3Blaster at ~20-25% CPU. If I want to make sure it doesn't get bored, I can have LAME start encoding new MP3s to suck up the remaining CPU and the playback continues uninterrupted.
I doubt that a P90 would have any problems with playback. (Unless you try making the poor thing run X.)
Re:What programs needed for video input and output
on
Hacking The Tivo
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· Score: 1
There's no need to prove that Linux can do the same thing as TiVO. It's already Linux-based.
You certainly can't argue that it *hurts* you to be able to see how the calls you need are implemented.
Not true.
Knowing details of how an interface is implemented can lead some programmers to write code that is dependent upon the particular implementation. If the interface's implementation is later changed, such code may break.
Of course, this is a problem with the calling code (and its programmer) and applies to anything that relies on undocumented features, not a problem with the source being visible per se.
Have you used MSVC lately? It's got code templates and wizards and crap like that all over the place. Whether people want MSVC to write code for them or not, it sure tries pretty hard to do just that.
By far, my favorite feature is the popup Intellisense... You will quickly get hooked on this feature.
Speak for yourself. When Borland added their version of this (mis)feature to Delphi, everyone else I worked with loved it, but it wasn't long before I had to turn it off. Damn popups kept placing themselves right on top of a piece of code I was using for reference and obscuring it.
For the record, I now have both a Linux box (which I do most things on) and a WinNT box (for compiling) at work. I write code in vi under Linux, then use CygWin's make to build it using MSVC's command-line compiler and linker under NT. Works great, although converting MSVC's auto-generated Makefile to something human-comprehensible was a royal PITA... But I only had to do that once; I haven't started another project out in the IDE since then.
(I do still use the IDE for some of my debugging, though, mostly because that's what comes up when I tell NT to debug a process that just GPFed. I occasionally consider switching it to give me gdb then, but MSVC's debugger is pretty good.)
First came RTG's CyberPunk (set in 2013, incidentally), then Shadowrun, then CP 2020. So the question of which came first is just a matter of whether you consider CP and CP 2020 to be the same game or not. (Considering the overhaul that SR's rules got in their 2nd edition, I think it's quite fair to consider both of RTG's games to be the same system...)
Re:Ghost in the Shell, Akira, The Matrix
on
Essential Anime
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· Score: 1
Ninja Resurrection is a sequel only in the minds (such as they are) of ADV's marketing department.
Yes, they both center around ninja named Jubei. But that is the extent of their connection. Even taking the different animation houses and styles into account, the Ninja Scroll Jubei and the Ninja Resurrection Jubei don't look anything like each other. And the name 'Jubei' is the strongest connection between them.
Ninja Scroll is widely recognized as a classic of the genre. Ninja Resurrection, IMO, is crap - although I will admit that I watched it expecting a Ninja Scroll sequel, and may be judging it more harshly than I would if I hadn't expected it to meet such a high standard.
Re:Ghost in the Shell, Akira, The Matrix
on
Essential Anime
·
· Score: 1
When my girlfriend and I were leaving the theater after seeing The Matrix, I made some sort of comment about it being "live-action anime" and she looked at me like I was nuts. Nice to see someone else has made the same observation!
Record companies get radio stations to play one or two songs off the latest CD as bait. If you want to hear more, you have to pay them for it.
MP3 traders let you get all the songs for free. In RIAA's mind, that means that, since you've already got (MP3s of) the CD, you won't buy it, where before you would have.
It's not just about who picks the bait. It's also about whether you get one song free or all of them.
Since when does "religious" == "Christian"? We heathens have gods too, you know... (Christians just hate us because they're jealous that we have more gods than they do.)
At least, if you've built your app in the Right Way (TM), i.e. each module does his thing.
Actually, that's probably what's going to make the VCL port the most painful - Microsoft provided code (in comctrl and friends) to handle drawing and managing standard widgets, so the substantial majority of the graphical components are just very thin wrappers around the Win32 API. Now they're going to have to take those wrapper components and make them act like Win32 without having Win32 behind them.
I think the issue here is not whether or not it IS legal, but whether or not it SHOULD be legal. That kind of regionalizing of markets flies in the face of any kind of integrated global economy.
I wonder what the World Trade Organization would have to say about that...
swords will be slashed and no blood yet the guy falls down dead *sigh*, no limbs lost etc.
So they strike back and forth with no apparent effect until somebody runs out of hit points and falls over? Funny, that sounds exactly like the official *D&D rules to me.
Anything involving blood and dismemberment in *D&D is house rules or DM embellishment; with the exception of a couple very rare magical items (Vorpal Blade, anyone?) that sort of thing was never an offical part of *D&D. Gygax even wrote a number of articles which were published in Dragon saying that house rules adding critical hits or anything else that would alter combat to be more 'realistic' should be avoided.
Lodoss 2 is coming soon according to the latest Animenation catalog, cool...
"Coming soon"? If you're talking about Lodoss War: Tales of the Heroic Knight (or something like that), I've already got 6 volumes of it. This one is either a longer series than the original RoLW or there's a second season, though, since it's still going after 6 tapes.
I hope Karla is in it...
Not as much as in the first series, but (s)he shows up a couple times. And, of course, all the fun bad guys who died in the first series have come back as well. (Let's just say that the continuity between the two series isn't very consistent...)
A few corrections, at least in regard to Incentive Stock Options (yes, there's more than one kind)...
(the time you are allotted the options is the "grant" date, the time before you can "exercise", sell, them is the "vesting period")
Exercising options is the act of purchasing the stock they represent. Your option plan then determines when you are allowed to sell the stock.
Vesting is generally a gradual process. e.g., I'm on an option plan which vests 25% of the options each year for 4 years.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you are often limited in how long you can hold onto them (in my case, I have to sell within 10 years of vesting).
Stock options always have time limits attached due to IRS regulations. Specifically, there are nasty tax effects if you hold the options more than 10 years beyond the date of the options agreement.
Stock options work this way: a company looks at the current trading value of their stock on the specified grant date and then purchases a certain dollar value or fixed number of shares of stock, which they set aside for you.
This description is tied to publically traded corporations. In more general terms, a stock option agreement allows you to buy a certain number of shares at their value as of the agreement's date (called the "strike price") rather than the price at the time of purchase.
The stock is held until the vesting period is over, at which time you may do one of two things: purchase the stock from your company at the price they paid on the grant date, or have the company sell the stock and give you the difference.
Selling off the options for the difference between the strike price and current price is called "cashless exercise". Not all option plans include a cashless exercise provision. Mine, for instance, does not.
There are also (of course) tax consequences involved with cashless exercise (or any quick turnaround) of Incentive Stock Options: If you hold the shares for less than a full year, the money you get will be taxed as normal income. If you hold the shares for a year or more, your profits will be taxed (much more favorably) as long-term capital gains. (The Alternative Minimum Tax comes into play here too, which basically means you must get yourself an accountant when you sell shares bought with options. If AMT comes into play, you pay more taxes this year, but can claim that extra as a credit against future years so, unless your income stays high, you'll probably get that extra tax money back.)
The other kind of stock options (I forget the IRS's name for them) are always taxed at the time of exercise, considering the difference between current value and strike price as (IIRC) normal income. The stock is then treated just like any other stock you may have bought and further profits are taxed normally as capital gains.
so they are not liquid, you cannot borrow against them, you see no income from them whatsoever until the day you exercise them.
This is actually somewhat dependent on your actual option plan, but will generally be true, except in the case of cashless exercise. (Technically, in a cashless exercise, the company or its bank gives you a short-term loan to cover the strike price, buys the shares in your name, immediately sells them, uses the money from the sale to pay off the loan, and hands over the rest of the cash. For all practical purposes, though, you're just selling the options for the difference in market and strike prices.)
I am, of course, neither a lawyer nor a tax professional. I just did a bit of reading on options a few months ago when I was offered some. You really should do the same.
I don't recall what grade it was, but my elementary school did a short bit on distinguishing fact from opinion. (The main reason I remember it was that it was focused primarily on provable statements vs. things that start (either implicitly or explicitly) with "I think..." and I always thought that, if you explicitly say, "I think X", then that makes the it a statement of fact (you either do think X or you don't) about your opinion.)
The last Pokemon show has aired in Japan, bringing the total to about 160 some episodes. Warner Bros. current have the rights to about 100+ of those, and will probably get the rest as 4Kids translates them. However, there's only a limited number of episodes left; unlike certain other TV shows in the states that get run into the ground (The Simpsons, for example), the show had a story arc, and it finished it and ended.
And this affects the GameBoy and collectible card games how? Also, if you cite this as an indication that its longevity is failing, how do you account for the continuing popularity of other finite (anime and otherwise) series?
Pokemon have been reported as tools of the devil, etc etc, by a number of critics. Pokemon card trading has been banned from many schools because students spent more time doing that than learning.
You're kidding with these two, right? Being called a tool of Satan and a breeding ground for witches was probably the best thing that ever happened to D&D.
Pokemon's been spoofed by MAD and South Park.:D.
I thought that was a sign of success, not failure...
*shudder* For me, that would be a nightmare. Even assuming that it would have a delay built in (so that, for instance, glancing at your onscreen clock (or - worse - something offscreen) doesn't flip the focus all over the place), it's not unusual for me to be looking at one window while typing into another. One of the things I like most about X is the ability to have one window on top (so I can easily see its contents) while a different window has the input focus (so I can work in it based on the contents of the topmost window).
And what would this do to non-touch typists who spend most of their time looking at the keyboard rather than the screen?
Assumption: Comet's co-conspirator (gayporn.com in this example) makes use of user registration and uses a cookie to identify returning users.
So it's easy...
gayporn's logs say that, after submitting his registration at 12:10:00, Bob came back that evening at 23:42:10, presumably to see what's new on the site before bed. He then visited again the next day at 23:13:35. (Note that this is all IP-independent as a cookie is being used to identify him on return visits, much like Slashdot logins.)
Comet's logs say that UID 001 loaded the gayporn cursor at 11:58:11 (Bob's visit as a guest before submitting registration) and 23:42:45 on the first day and at 23:14:04 on the second day.
The times in each set of logs are close enough to extablish that Bob on gayporn is likely to be UID 001 on Comet. If no other gayporn user accessed their systems within, say, 2 minutes before Comet was contacted on both of those occasions, UID 001 is almost certainly Bob. And, of course, with each additional visit, the probability of establishing a pattern conclusively and uniquely linking Bob to UID 001 increases.
If Comet also knows when you stop using their cursor as well as when you start, this can be generalized to work with co-conspirators that don't identify you immediately upon accessing their site (such as those using manual logins), although a larger number of visits would probably be required to establish a unique match.
No network addressing information required, just two unique, trackable IDs to correlate.
(Again, I don't think this is happening. But it could.)
A list saying "Cursor UserID 12345 visited sites http://abc.com and http://xyz.org"?
Potentially, yes.
There is NO WAY to correlate this information with any other bit of information without all of the member web sites being in on the conspiracy and coughing up their access logs in real time, and even then, proxy servers and dynamic IP addressing would render this data virtually unusable
Uh... No.
First off, it would only require one site to give out logs and user information in order to determine with reasonable certainty the identity of any users who visit more than once. Multiple sites would let you get anyone who visited more than one, even if they only go once to each. (User 12345 visited site X at times Y and Z. Joe Schmoe is the only person who visited X at both of those times. Now let's see what else Joe/User 12345 has been up to...)
Secondly, the logs wouldn't be needed in real time. After-the-fact analysis would work just as well. (Probably better, since you need to correlate multiple web site visits.)
And, finally, dynamic IP addressing and proxys don't matter because this doesn't use your IP address. It correlates a Comet-assigned serial number with one or more user accounts on a site that exchanges data with Comet.
Personally, I don't think they're doing this. My point is just that they could. And it wouldn't be that difficult.
This is a well-known argument commonly referred to as "The Grandfather Paradox". (Standard version: If you go back in time and kill your grandfather before your father is born, you don't exist so you can't do it so you don't and your father is born so you do...)
Personally, I don't believe that any method for information (including living beings) to travel backwards to arbitrary points in time will ever be developed because we don't have it now. (If it could be done, that information would eventually be taken back to before its discovery, someone would leak it to the 'natives', and it would be known from the Beginning.)
Why is premeditated murder considered more heinous if the punishment is just for the "person's actions"?
Planning is something you do. It is an action.
Please don't bring equity into this discussion. Equity does not come into play at all in justice.
Then why is Justice typically personified as wearing a blindfold and holding a balance?
Also, note that I made no claim that the current system is equitable. I merely suggested that equitability is a Good Thing and that laws which intentionally increase the inequity (particularly those with no other purpose!) should be avoided.
(OK, so I didn't just suggest that. I also presented a pair of hypothetical situations where a law allegedly intended to punish "hate" would punish a hateless person while ignoring a hateful one. As I said earlier, while the intent of hate laws may be to prosecute motivation, that is not likely to be their effect.)
Once again, as I've mentioned before, if you are so concerned about inequity, let's abolish any laws that call for gradations of punishment.
That's carrying things to an absurd extreme - murder is a completely different thing than petty vandalism and their punishments should reflect that. Firing a gun at an innocent person is a reprehensible act and should be punished accordingly. But whether the shot is aimed at John or Bill is of little consequence.
Hate crime laws attempt to send a message to society,
The purpose of law is not to "send a message". That's called terrorism.
in the same way that the dealth penalty does.
...and here I've always thought that the purpose of the death penalty was either to apply the most grievous possible punshment to those who commit the most heinous crimes or to ensure that those who have (repeatedly) killed innocents are deprived of the opportunity to do so again.
Premeditated vs. other murder is still a question of a person's actions. Hate crime laws attempt to punish people for their attitudes.
There's also the matter of inequity intoduced by hate crime laws themselves. If a white man kills a random person who just happens to be black, in many cases, the hate-crime-believing prosecutor would try to bill that as a hate crime. If, OTOH, a black man decides to kill someone solely because they're white, that would generally not be construed as a hate crime.
Hate crime laws attempt to punish an offender's motivation and end up punishing the offender based on the victim rather than the crime. Neither of these is a desirable result. Crimes are actions and it is actions that should be punished.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt that a P90 would have any problems with playback. (Unless you try making the poor thing run X.)
There's no need to prove that Linux can do the same thing as TiVO. It's already Linux-based.
Not true.
Knowing details of how an interface is implemented can lead some programmers to write code that is dependent upon the particular implementation. If the interface's implementation is later changed, such code may break.
Of course, this is a problem with the calling code (and its programmer) and applies to anything that relies on undocumented features, not a problem with the source being visible per se.
(BTW, the "speed bumps" he was talking about were in learning EMACS, not using it.)
Have you used MSVC lately? It's got code templates and wizards and crap like that all over the place. Whether people want MSVC to write code for them or not, it sure tries pretty hard to do just that.
Speak for yourself. When Borland added their version of this (mis)feature to Delphi, everyone else I worked with loved it, but it wasn't long before I had to turn it off. Damn popups kept placing themselves right on top of a piece of code I was using for reference and obscuring it.
For the record, I now have both a Linux box (which I do most things on) and a WinNT box (for compiling) at work. I write code in vi under Linux, then use CygWin's make to build it using MSVC's command-line compiler and linker under NT. Works great, although converting MSVC's auto-generated Makefile to something human-comprehensible was a royal PITA... But I only had to do that once; I haven't started another project out in the IDE since then.
(I do still use the IDE for some of my debugging, though, mostly because that's what comes up when I tell NT to debug a process that just GPFed. I occasionally consider switching it to give me gdb then, but MSVC's debugger is pretty good.)
First came RTG's CyberPunk (set in 2013, incidentally), then Shadowrun, then CP 2020. So the question of which came first is just a matter of whether you consider CP and CP 2020 to be the same game or not. (Considering the overhaul that SR's rules got in their 2nd edition, I think it's quite fair to consider both of RTG's games to be the same system...)
Yes, they both center around ninja named Jubei. But that is the extent of their connection. Even taking the different animation houses and styles into account, the Ninja Scroll Jubei and the Ninja Resurrection Jubei don't look anything like each other. And the name 'Jubei' is the strongest connection between them.
Ninja Scroll is widely recognized as a classic of the genre. Ninja Resurrection, IMO, is crap - although I will admit that I watched it expecting a Ninja Scroll sequel, and may be judging it more harshly than I would if I hadn't expected it to meet such a high standard.
When my girlfriend and I were leaving the theater after seeing The Matrix, I made some sort of comment about it being "live-action anime" and she looked at me like I was nuts. Nice to see someone else has made the same observation!
Record companies get radio stations to play one or two songs off the latest CD as bait. If you want to hear more, you have to pay them for it.
MP3 traders let you get all the songs for free. In RIAA's mind, that means that, since you've already got (MP3s of) the CD, you won't buy it, where before you would have.
It's not just about who picks the bait. It's also about whether you get one song free or all of them.
Since when does "religious" == "Christian"? We heathens have gods too, you know... (Christians just hate us because they're jealous that we have more gods than they do.)
Actually, that's probably what's going to make the VCL port the most painful - Microsoft provided code (in comctrl and friends) to handle drawing and managing standard widgets, so the substantial majority of the graphical components are just very thin wrappers around the Win32 API. Now they're going to have to take those wrapper components and make them act like Win32 without having Win32 behind them.
I wonder what the World Trade Organization would have to say about that...
So they strike back and forth with no apparent effect until somebody runs out of hit points and falls over? Funny, that sounds exactly like the official *D&D rules to me.
Anything involving blood and dismemberment in *D&D is house rules or DM embellishment; with the exception of a couple very rare magical items (Vorpal Blade, anyone?) that sort of thing was never an offical part of *D&D. Gygax even wrote a number of articles which were published in Dragon saying that house rules adding critical hits or anything else that would alter combat to be more 'realistic' should be avoided.
"Coming soon"? If you're talking about Lodoss War: Tales of the Heroic Knight (or something like that), I've already got 6 volumes of it. This one is either a longer series than the original RoLW or there's a second season, though, since it's still going after 6 tapes.
I hope Karla is in it...
Not as much as in the first series, but (s)he shows up a couple times. And, of course, all the fun bad guys who died in the first series have come back as well. (Let's just say that the continuity between the two series isn't very consistent...)
(the time you are allotted the options is the "grant" date, the time before you can "exercise", sell, them is the "vesting period")
Exercising options is the act of purchasing the stock they represent. Your option plan then determines when you are allowed to sell the stock.
Vesting is generally a gradual process. e.g., I'm on an option plan which vests 25% of the options each year for 4 years.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you are often limited in how long you can hold onto them (in my case, I have to sell within 10 years of vesting).
Stock options always have time limits attached due to IRS regulations. Specifically, there are nasty tax effects if you hold the options more than 10 years beyond the date of the options agreement.
Stock options work this way: a company looks at the current trading value of their stock on the specified grant date and then purchases a certain dollar value or fixed number of shares of stock, which they set aside for you.
This description is tied to publically traded corporations. In more general terms, a stock option agreement allows you to buy a certain number of shares at their value as of the agreement's date (called the "strike price") rather than the price at the time of purchase.
The stock is held until the vesting period is over, at which time you may do one of two things: purchase the stock from your company at the price they paid on the grant date, or have the company sell the stock and give you the difference.
Selling off the options for the difference between the strike price and current price is called "cashless exercise". Not all option plans include a cashless exercise provision. Mine, for instance, does not.
There are also (of course) tax consequences involved with cashless exercise (or any quick turnaround) of Incentive Stock Options: If you hold the shares for less than a full year, the money you get will be taxed as normal income. If you hold the shares for a year or more, your profits will be taxed (much more favorably) as long-term capital gains. (The Alternative Minimum Tax comes into play here too, which basically means you must get yourself an accountant when you sell shares bought with options. If AMT comes into play, you pay more taxes this year, but can claim that extra as a credit against future years so, unless your income stays high, you'll probably get that extra tax money back.)
The other kind of stock options (I forget the IRS's name for them) are always taxed at the time of exercise, considering the difference between current value and strike price as (IIRC) normal income. The stock is then treated just like any other stock you may have bought and further profits are taxed normally as capital gains.
so they are not liquid, you cannot borrow against them, you see no income from them whatsoever until the day you exercise them.
This is actually somewhat dependent on your actual option plan, but will generally be true, except in the case of cashless exercise. (Technically, in a cashless exercise, the company or its bank gives you a short-term loan to cover the strike price, buys the shares in your name, immediately sells them, uses the money from the sale to pay off the loan, and hands over the rest of the cash. For all practical purposes, though, you're just selling the options for the difference in market and strike prices.)
I am, of course, neither a lawyer nor a tax professional. I just did a bit of reading on options a few months ago when I was offered some. You really should do the same.
I don't recall what grade it was, but my elementary school did a short bit on distinguishing fact from opinion. (The main reason I remember it was that it was focused primarily on provable statements vs. things that start (either implicitly or explicitly) with "I think..." and I always thought that, if you explicitly say, "I think X", then that makes the it a statement of fact (you either do think X or you don't) about your opinion.)
And this affects the GameBoy and collectible card games how? Also, if you cite this as an indication that its longevity is failing, how do you account for the continuing popularity of other finite (anime and otherwise) series?
Pokemon have been reported as tools of the devil, etc etc, by a number of critics.
Pokemon card trading has been banned from many schools because students spent more time doing that than learning.
You're kidding with these two, right? Being called a tool of Satan and a breeding ground for witches was probably the best thing that ever happened to D&D.
Pokemon's been spoofed by MAD and South Park. :D.
I thought that was a sign of success, not failure...
The cards are based on a GameBoy game produced by Nintendo.
And what would this do to non-touch typists who spend most of their time looking at the keyboard rather than the screen?
No thanks. Count me out for this one.
So it's easy...
gayporn's logs say that, after submitting his registration at 12:10:00, Bob came back that evening at 23:42:10, presumably to see what's new on the site before bed. He then visited again the next day at 23:13:35. (Note that this is all IP-independent as a cookie is being used to identify him on return visits, much like Slashdot logins.)
Comet's logs say that UID 001 loaded the gayporn cursor at 11:58:11 (Bob's visit as a guest before submitting registration) and 23:42:45 on the first day and at 23:14:04 on the second day.
The times in each set of logs are close enough to extablish that Bob on gayporn is likely to be UID 001 on Comet. If no other gayporn user accessed their systems within, say, 2 minutes before Comet was contacted on both of those occasions, UID 001 is almost certainly Bob. And, of course, with each additional visit, the probability of establishing a pattern conclusively and uniquely linking Bob to UID 001 increases.
If Comet also knows when you stop using their cursor as well as when you start, this can be generalized to work with co-conspirators that don't identify you immediately upon accessing their site (such as those using manual logins), although a larger number of visits would probably be required to establish a unique match.
No network addressing information required, just two unique, trackable IDs to correlate.
(Again, I don't think this is happening. But it could.)
A list saying "Cursor UserID 12345 visited sites http://abc.com and http://xyz.org"?
Potentially, yes.
There is NO WAY to correlate this information with any other bit of information without all of the member web sites being in on the conspiracy and coughing up their access logs in real time, and even then, proxy servers and dynamic IP addressing would render this data virtually unusable
Uh... No.
First off, it would only require one site to give out logs and user information in order to determine with reasonable certainty the identity of any users who visit more than once. Multiple sites would let you get anyone who visited more than one, even if they only go once to each. (User 12345 visited site X at times Y and Z. Joe Schmoe is the only person who visited X at both of those times. Now let's see what else Joe/User 12345 has been up to...)
Secondly, the logs wouldn't be needed in real time. After-the-fact analysis would work just as well. (Probably better, since you need to correlate multiple web site visits.)
And, finally, dynamic IP addressing and proxys don't matter because this doesn't use your IP address. It correlates a Comet-assigned serial number with one or more user accounts on a site that exchanges data with Comet.
Personally, I don't think they're doing this. My point is just that they could. And it wouldn't be that difficult.
Personally, I don't believe that any method for information (including living beings) to travel backwards to arbitrary points in time will ever be developed because we don't have it now. (If it could be done, that information would eventually be taken back to before its discovery, someone would leak it to the 'natives', and it would be known from the Beginning.)
Planning is something you do. It is an action.
Please don't bring equity into this discussion. Equity does not come into play at all in justice.
Then why is Justice typically personified as wearing a blindfold and holding a balance?
Also, note that I made no claim that the current system is equitable. I merely suggested that equitability is a Good Thing and that laws which intentionally increase the inequity (particularly those with no other purpose!) should be avoided.
(OK, so I didn't just suggest that. I also presented a pair of hypothetical situations where a law allegedly intended to punish "hate" would punish a hateless person while ignoring a hateful one. As I said earlier, while the intent of hate laws may be to prosecute motivation, that is not likely to be their effect.)
Once again, as I've mentioned before, if you are so concerned about inequity, let's abolish any laws that call for gradations of punishment.
That's carrying things to an absurd extreme - murder is a completely different thing than petty vandalism and their punishments should reflect that. Firing a gun at an innocent person is a reprehensible act and should be punished accordingly. But whether the shot is aimed at John or Bill is of little consequence.
Hate crime laws attempt to send a message to society,
The purpose of law is not to "send a message". That's called terrorism.
in the same way that the dealth penalty does.
There's also the matter of inequity intoduced by hate crime laws themselves. If a white man kills a random person who just happens to be black, in many cases, the hate-crime-believing prosecutor would try to bill that as a hate crime. If, OTOH, a black man decides to kill someone solely because they're white, that would generally not be construed as a hate crime.
Hate crime laws attempt to punish an offender's motivation and end up punishing the offender based on the victim rather than the crime. Neither of these is a desirable result. Crimes are actions and it is actions that should be punished.