Posts like this come across as whining. The only thing that will really change anything is when consumers wise up and stop handing their money over to these industries. Humankind did fine without them for the longest time, so the world won't come to an end when John Q. Consumer elects to forego purchasing his usual quota of four DVDs/CDs per month.
If you keep giving someone the stick they then use to beat you, who is at fault?
Are you serious? I have to say my jaw nearly hit the table when I heard about the so-called Tax Refund trumpeted by Bush & Co last year...oh...it wasn't really a refund, but a loan against the following year's return. WHY DID HE KEEP CALLING IT A REFUND, THEN? I've never seen a more blatant attempt at manipulating public perception.
For the record, I'm no fan of the Democratic party, but the Republican party isn't the solution - it has a built-in nastiness all its own.
The artists are hooked on the RIAA, and us consumers (well, not me), are hooked on this weird notion that we just MUST have whatever our favorite artists happen to produce. Everyone's in it together.
You KNOW that the artists aren't going to get clean- they've got too much at stake. The question is, when are the consumers ever going to get clean?
Actually, in the U.S., it's called a Constitutional Republic Notice the word Constitutional. It's just that these days, we've got a bunch of power-hungry morons running things who have wet dreams about how many people they can watch and how much "potential" it has, constitutional issues be damned. BR>
On the positive side, we're only at the forefront of all this...once this kind of BS gets off the ground, there are sure to be legal challenges, and it's possible that the whole mess could (and should) be flushed down the crapper by the judicial branch of the government.
My point is, most of our actions are done in the public sphere, and can be observed by ANY casual observer. In theory, what anyone does in a public space, cannot be private by definition. Is it bad that people track you for your personal buying habits?
I'm not sure there exists any rational basis for the assumption that because something is done in public, that it must be public information. One often doesn't have a choice in the matter - you have to visit the grocery store in order to buy food, and you have to buy food in order to survive. Suddenly, this one necessary act becomes a wealth of information that can be accessed by any number of intruders - usually for their own gain.
Using the logic that, "well, someone would have seen you anyway," is purely fallacious. What we have that technology allows is the ability to shift both time and medium, as well as persistence. It's not that something happened in public, it's that everything has the potential to become series of recorded, massively linked events that can be viewed and used by people without your knowledge, for as long as the information is available.
As long as a government has the means to keep information from its citizens, it has the ability to abuse the tremendous power that comes with it. "No Privacy" has to be an all-or-nothing proposition, so that it can be symmetrically applied to every citizen, regardless of their role in society. Since this will never happen, the only option left is to ditch the idea entirely.
I see a bit of a reality check. For the people who lost their jobs and KNOW that all in all, there are no shortcuts, I'm tempted to exercise a little empathy. But for what the dot-bomb era brought us, I have none.
I am STILL amazed when I think about how fast and furiously many of these companies burned through someone else's money. I'd say that for those whose skills were marginal, even non-existent at the time they were hired, they were living in a world every bit as phony as the companies themselves. Don't cry about it, just learn from it.
But I don't think this is necessarily true. I haven't yet, but I'm anxious to get my hands on a game that supports geomod. When you start adding technologies like this, and depending on how detailed it is, I see this as something that could place a HUGE burden on the GPU. Everyone says current boards are OK for CURRENT games, but I'd like to think that game development will eventually grow into the extra bandwidth with all kinds of cool stuff.
Only if you want to produce stand alone realtime 3D applications or web content without the blender logo displayed in a corner at the bottem do you have to buy a license.
OR if you want the most current release of Blender Creator OR Blender Publisher.
Which is, on top of that, somewhat resonable in pricing (around 300$, single license) for such a package.
Personally, I'd like to see my $300 buy more modeling-related tools, interface polish, and reliability, than the ability to create and distribute 3D web content. But, as long as users know that their $300 is for the purchase of a Publisher license (which may include functionality they simply don't need or want), the price is fine.
Sorry, I disagree. Blender is very capable, but not what I'd consider a "polished" app. The hotkey concept makes it more efficient, but there are plenty of little things missing that could make life a lot easier.
Why should NaN be willing to accept anything LESS profit than it can actually make? I think NaN should be able to profit as much as they can - obscenely, even - PROVIDED they produce a product that people want, and price at a point they're willing to pay. There has been a great deal of discussion in the chat forums on NaN's server regarding this topic.
As software companies begin to take more and more advantage of their "licensing" provisions, it seem to me that anyone considering such a license should think very carefully before using the software. What if, for example, a contractor could change the conditions under which you use the house that he built? Or recind your use of it altogether?
With the cost of establishing an e-commerce grade presence on the web being rather significant, there's no WAY I'd consider using software produced by a company with an overly restrictive licensing policy. This "we expect you to use our product but we reserve the right to do whatever we want" mentality has to go.
It's quite powerful. It has some interface annoyances (despite what the Blender groupies say), but if you're willing to put up with it, you CAN produce some kick-a** stuff. Get out your wallet though, if you want the latest release of Blender Creator (the plugin, of course, is free).
>> I'm sure there were once people like you telling the German Jews that things couldn't get any worse too!
Worse, Hitler (or one of his Cronies) stated in no uncertain terms that they (the Jews) had nothing to worry about - they'd be allowed to have their own schools, their own neighborhoods, etc. The only thing they weren't allowed to do was participate in government. That, we know now, was the beginning of the end.
This is one thing that has gone VERY wrong with academia in the past 30 years. Instead of teaching facts, and critical thinking skills, schools, colleges, universities by and large teach WHAT to think.
And they don't even do that any more, since most of the time, those with the real knowledge (the professors) are off on some research project, leaving the actual "teaching" to underlings. College has become a very expensive formality - especially when it involves the better-known schools. It's a catch-22- students believe that they have to fork out buttloads of money in order to get a good education, and good educational credentials (whether or not one actually learns anything) are necessary for a good job. What a racket.
Scenario: a FaceIt operator dismisses his 109th false positive side-by-side alert provided by the software. How confident do you think he/she is, at this point, that ANY of them will net a postitive identity? When you combine this with the equal likelihood that there can be false negatives (something the ACLU article didn't even mention), this is utter chaos - criminals getting away because they haven't been recognized, and innocent people being flagged as possible criminals. Where's the benefit?
Enter Facex. That's essentially what this face recognition stuff is doing - compiling a profile of a face that it sees, and then checking for other profiles that are similar. Given the multitude of conditions that can affect what it sees (lighting, angle, and facial expression to name a few), it's going to take some very ingenious programming to overcome these influences. Further, I'd love to see the ACLU (or other party) conduct some studies to see just how innaccurate this system is when dealing with other factors - like whether or not someone is wearing sunglasses, whether or not they have a beard and/or moustache, makeup (lipstick, blush, eye shadow), whether or not they're wearing a hat, etc.
FaceIt, it appears, is an overhyped technology that isn't any where near ready for prime time. And knowing what it's up against, I don't think it ever will be.
to the camera, as in, "I'm so FREAKING annoyed that I'm being subjected to this nonsense."
Why do I think it's nonsense? Have they tested this on any Al-Qaeda members? Remember - these people have gone through extensive training, and there's no reason tha such training in the future can't include something that addresses this kind of interrogation. Another possibility- what if there was a drug whose effect could render this test completely useless?
I had an internet account with Qwest, back when ( was stupid enough, and Qwest thought it was above the market by offering only three internet access packages - none of which were unlimited use. Because of a project I was working on which required a lot of internet access one month, I got socked with a huge bill. I asked if they were more interested in keeping me as a customer, or more interested in collecting the amount on the bill (it's not that I expected free service, just something more reasonable).
Guess which option they chose.
I can only thank Qwest at this point, because I've been happy with Earthlink ever since.
I was VERY unhappy when I heard that Qwest acquired US West - US West certainly had its problems, but combining US West's telecom infrastructure with Qest's arrogance, it turns out, was a recipe for exactly what we're seeing now. The only thing I can suggest is to limit the use of, or completely cancel Qwest service. There are enough alternatives now that this isn't *that* big of an issue. There needs to be a sudden drop in revenue to get their attention - it's unfornately, the only thing they understand. Ethics and morals are completely outside the box in terms of the way Qest conducts itself as a corporate entity.
And the only reason Excel has all these features (and will continue to have more) is that without them, M$ would absolutely no way to perpetuate the money stream that comes from the endless upgrade treadmill. So it's not that these extra features are necessary, or even useful - it's that without them, M$ can't make money. Why more people can't understand this is beyond me.
He is honest about the fact that his contract at Intel's Supercomputer division was about to expire and he was trying to find a reason for them to continue to keep him employed
Funny how no one seems to have problem with this. In other words, he was acting purely out of self interest. Gamesmanship has its risks, and my only response to Shwartz would be, "deal with it."
As has been said so many times before, all of these stupid ownership and copyright battles can be over and done in a matter of a few months, if consumers would just WISE UP to what it is they're buying, and refuse to purchase anything with unreasonable strings attached. As long as consumers LET them call the shots, they WILL. Without the money, though, they're nothing.
It's time to stop whining, and start doing (like I have). Stop buying the stuff. SIMPLE.
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Posts like this come across as whining. The only thing that will really change anything is when consumers wise up and stop handing their money over to these industries. Humankind did fine without them for the longest time, so the world won't come to an end when John Q. Consumer elects to forego purchasing his usual quota of four DVDs/CDs per month.
If you keep giving someone the stick they then use to beat you, who is at fault?
Are you serious? I have to say my jaw nearly hit the table when I heard about the so-called Tax Refund trumpeted by Bush & Co last year...oh...it wasn't really a refund, but a loan against the following year's return. WHY DID HE KEEP CALLING IT A REFUND, THEN? I've never seen a more blatant attempt at manipulating public perception.
For the record, I'm no fan of the Democratic party, but the Republican party isn't the solution - it has a built-in nastiness all its own.
The artists are hooked on the RIAA, and us consumers (well, not me), are hooked on this weird notion that we just MUST have whatever our favorite artists happen to produce. Everyone's in it together.
You KNOW that the artists aren't going to get clean- they've got too much at stake. The question is, when are the consumers ever going to get clean?
Actually, in the U.S., it's called a Constitutional Republic Notice the word Constitutional. It's just that these days, we've got a bunch of power-hungry morons running things who have wet dreams about how many people they can watch and how much "potential" it has, constitutional issues be damned.
BR> On the positive side, we're only at the forefront of all this...once this kind of BS gets off the ground, there are sure to be legal challenges, and it's possible that the whole mess could (and should) be flushed down the crapper by the judicial branch of the government.
My point is, most of our actions are done in the public sphere, and can be observed by ANY casual observer. In theory, what anyone does in a public space, cannot be private by definition. Is it bad that people track you for your personal buying habits?
I'm not sure there exists any rational basis for the assumption that because something is done in public, that it must be public information. One often doesn't have a choice in the matter - you have to visit the grocery store in order to buy food, and you have to buy food in order to survive. Suddenly, this one necessary act becomes a wealth of information that can be accessed by any number of intruders - usually for their own gain.
Using the logic that, "well, someone would have seen you anyway," is purely fallacious. What we have that technology allows is the ability to shift both time and medium, as well as persistence. It's not that something happened in public, it's that everything has the potential to become series of recorded, massively linked events that can be viewed and used by people without your knowledge, for as long as the information is available.
As long as a government has the means to keep information from its citizens, it has the ability to abuse the tremendous power that comes with it. "No Privacy" has to be an all-or-nothing proposition, so that it can be symmetrically applied to every citizen, regardless of their role in society. Since this will never happen, the only option left is to ditch the idea entirely.
I see a bit of a reality check. For the people who lost their jobs and KNOW that all in all, there are no shortcuts, I'm tempted to exercise a little empathy. But for what the dot-bomb era brought us, I have none.
I am STILL amazed when I think about how fast and furiously many of these companies burned through someone else's money. I'd say that for those whose skills were marginal, even non-existent at the time they were hired, they were living in a world every bit as phony as the companies themselves. Don't cry about it, just learn from it.
But I don't think this is necessarily true. I haven't yet, but I'm anxious to get my hands on a game that supports geomod. When you start adding technologies like this, and depending on how detailed it is, I see this as something that could place a HUGE burden on the GPU. Everyone says current boards are OK for CURRENT games, but I'd like to think that game development will eventually grow into the extra bandwidth with all kinds of cool stuff.
Only if you want to produce stand alone realtime 3D applications or web content without the blender logo displayed in a corner at the bottem do you have to buy a license.
OR if you want the most current release of Blender Creator OR Blender Publisher.
Which is, on top of that, somewhat resonable in pricing (around 300$, single license) for such a package.
Personally, I'd like to see my $300 buy more modeling-related tools, interface polish, and reliability, than the ability to create and distribute 3D web content. But, as long as users know that their $300 is for the purchase of a Publisher license (which may include functionality they simply don't need or want), the price is fine.
Sorry, I disagree. Blender is very capable, but not what I'd consider a "polished" app. The hotkey concept makes it more efficient, but there are plenty of little things missing that could make life a lot easier.
Why should NaN be willing to accept anything LESS profit than it can actually make? I think NaN should be able to profit as much as they can - obscenely, even - PROVIDED they produce a product that people want, and price at a point they're willing to pay. There has been a great deal of discussion in the chat forums on NaN's server regarding this topic.
As software companies begin to take more and more advantage of their "licensing" provisions, it seem to me that anyone considering such a license should think very carefully before using the software. What if, for example, a contractor could change the conditions under which you use the house that he built? Or recind your use of it altogether?
With the cost of establishing an e-commerce grade presence on the web being rather significant, there's no WAY I'd consider using software produced by a company with an overly restrictive licensing policy. This "we expect you to use our product but we reserve the right to do whatever we want" mentality has to go.
It's quite powerful. It has some interface annoyances (despite what the Blender groupies say), but if you're willing to put up with it, you CAN produce some kick-a** stuff. Get out your wallet though, if you want the latest release of Blender Creator (the plugin, of course, is free).
>> I'm sure there were once people like you telling the German Jews that things couldn't get any worse too!
Worse, Hitler (or one of his Cronies) stated in no uncertain terms that they (the Jews) had nothing to worry about - they'd be allowed to have their own schools, their own neighborhoods, etc. The only thing they weren't allowed to do was participate in government. That, we know now, was the beginning of the end.
Makes me wonder who they might end up *selling* the ad tracking business to, and what *they* might end up doing with it.
This is one thing that has gone VERY wrong with academia in the past 30 years. Instead of teaching facts, and critical thinking skills, schools, colleges, universities by and large teach WHAT to think.
And they don't even do that any more, since most of the time, those with the real knowledge (the professors) are off on some research project, leaving the actual "teaching" to underlings. College has become a very expensive formality - especially when it involves the better-known schools. It's a catch-22- students believe that they have to fork out buttloads of money in order to get a good education, and good educational credentials (whether or not one actually learns anything) are necessary for a good job. What a racket.
The fact that the record companies do this, or that our culture is stupid enough to buy into it (again, and again, and again)?
Scenario: a FaceIt operator dismisses his 109th false positive side-by-side alert provided by the software. How confident do you think he/she is, at this point, that ANY of them will net a postitive identity? When you combine this with the equal likelihood that there can be false negatives (something the ACLU article didn't even mention), this is utter chaos - criminals getting away because they haven't been recognized, and innocent people being flagged as possible criminals. Where's the benefit?
Enter Facex. That's essentially what this face recognition stuff is doing - compiling a profile of a face that it sees, and then checking for other profiles that are similar. Given the multitude of conditions that can affect what it sees (lighting, angle, and facial expression to name a few), it's going to take some very ingenious programming to overcome these influences. Further, I'd love to see the ACLU (or other party) conduct some studies to see just how innaccurate this system is when dealing with other factors - like whether or not someone is wearing sunglasses, whether or not they have a beard and/or moustache, makeup (lipstick, blush, eye shadow), whether or not they're wearing a hat, etc.
FaceIt, it appears, is an overhyped technology that isn't any where near ready for prime time. And knowing what it's up against, I don't think it ever will be.
to the camera, as in, "I'm so FREAKING annoyed that I'm being subjected to this nonsense."
Why do I think it's nonsense? Have they tested this on any Al-Qaeda members? Remember - these people have gone through extensive training, and there's no reason tha such training in the future can't include something that addresses this kind of interrogation. Another possibility- what if there was a drug whose effect could render this test completely useless?
I had an internet account with Qwest, back when ( was stupid enough, and Qwest thought it was above the market by offering only three internet access packages - none of which were unlimited use. Because of a project I was working on which required a lot of internet access one month, I got socked with a huge bill. I asked if they were more interested in keeping me as a customer, or more interested in collecting the amount on the bill (it's not that I expected free service, just something more reasonable).
Guess which option they chose.
I can only thank Qwest at this point, because I've been happy with Earthlink ever since.
I was VERY unhappy when I heard that Qwest acquired US West - US West certainly had its problems, but combining US West's telecom infrastructure with Qest's arrogance, it turns out, was a recipe for exactly what we're seeing now. The only thing I can suggest is to limit the use of, or completely cancel Qwest service. There are enough alternatives now that this isn't *that* big of an issue. There needs to be a sudden drop in revenue to get their attention - it's unfornately, the only thing they understand. Ethics and morals are completely outside the box in terms of the way Qest conducts itself as a corporate entity.
And the only reason Excel has all these features (and will continue to have more) is that without them, M$ would absolutely no way to perpetuate the money stream that comes from the endless upgrade treadmill. So it's not that these extra features are necessary, or even useful - it's that without them, M$ can't make money. Why more people can't understand this is beyond me.
He is honest about the fact that his contract at Intel's Supercomputer division was about to expire and he was trying to find a reason for them to continue to keep him employed
Funny how no one seems to have problem with this. In other words, he was acting purely out of self interest. Gamesmanship has its risks, and my only response to Shwartz would be, "deal with it."
They'd have no problem with it if it came with a free CD!
As has been said so many times before, all of these stupid ownership and copyright battles can be over and done in a matter of a few months, if consumers would just WISE UP to what it is they're buying, and refuse to purchase anything with unreasonable strings attached. As long as consumers LET them call the shots, they WILL. Without the money, though, they're nothing.
It's time to stop whining, and start doing (like I have). Stop buying the stuff. SIMPLE.
It sure as hell doesn't describe me in high school. There were too many more productive ways to spend my time.