Once again, the copyright lobbyists are eating themselves like an ouroboros lawyer. Are they going to hire Lars Ulrich to explain us why it's alright to pirate your own work when you've been so adamant about suing the pants off everyone else?
The RIAA and MPAA, who smash our home windows and front doors to come and riffle through our things looking for evidence that we're all bandits out to rob them blind so they can sue us for hundreds of thousands the moment they find a single downloaded song. Oh, the irony.
While browsing over the config file of Icewind Dale one day, I found myself surprised to find a flag called 'Nightmare=0', so needless to say, I found myself intrigued with a little voice in my head egging me to 'Do eeeeeeet!' So naturally, I set the flag to 1, and start a new game. Even with all my characters having the game's best weapons and maxed levels, I found the very first gang of goblins to be more than a match for me, to say nothing of everything else after that. One of the most challenging runs I've ever done!
'This isn't just about national security,' says Barbara Fast, vice president of Boeing Cyber Solutions. 'It's about the economic well-being of the United States.'
How long until the RIAA finds someone in the chain of command to convince that it's in an economic imperative that music pirates need to be stopped, and get a direct DoD data feed of P2P IP data?
But I am much more interested why are Eta/Burakumin/Shinheimin/whoever treated this way by people who cannot possibly remember the Edo period.
For the same reason that african american citizens still get regularly handed hateful scorn by racist morons who clearly weren't alive before the Emancipation Act?
Or is it just the symptom? My experience with MMO addiction comes not from the game itself, but rather is a manifestation of there being a massive void in my life that the game naturally fills out without judgement or mockery. It just accepts, and gives me what I need so badly that I can't get in the real world, be it adventure, social contact or a sense of achievement. If you want to help your friend get away from the game, you must figure out which of these things he derives from the game and not from his real life, then help him obtain it from a non-gaming source. Short of that, learn to speak in pirate speech, I guess.
What Japan needs is some enlightment that can only come with a few episodes of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs. Watching Mike Rowe trying to shovel disgusting refuse from a leatherworking facility is not only entertaining, it teaches that those jobs are A) pretty difficult to learn and B) fundamentally necessary for civilization to continue!
Anybody else thinking of Media Center Edition? While the required hardware implementation for the PC edition left somewhat to be desired (those required satellite and cable cards still give me nightmares), the Xbox 360 might skip a lot of the more complicated initial setup for a far more user-friendly experience. Or so you would think, in theory.
I've personally never dealt with Circuit City as I'm in Canada. the only thing close I guess was "The Source by Curcuit City" which basically was Radio Shack prior to that.
Even money says they still want your full name, address and phone number just for buying an overpriced pack of D-cell batteries.
I'm pretty sure that Best Buy offers the genetic transmutation thingamajigger that turned Steve Urkel into Stephane Urquelle in their recommended purchases section. Either that, or surf eBay for the used original.
The miniturization and degree of complexity in today's modern electronics, combined with price drops from affordable generic knock-offs of premium items makes it now possible to equip yourself like James Bond after a Q-Branch sequence with little more than a shoestring budget and a Best Buy online account.
If this does turn out to be true, who is going to use their service ever again? Even if someone doesn't have any pirated music on their computer, who wants their music collection data sent to the RIAA? What about legitimate purchased songs being flagged as being pirated?
It hardly matters whether the music is pirated or legitimate, all they care about is money, plain and simple. The Righteous Inquisition Army of Autocrats has made statements in the past that indicate that if they had their way, you would have to pay for every time you listen to any piece of music, regardless that you purchased it already. They always want more money, and they won't rest until the day where they can bill you for having a copy of that song burned into your brain neural patterns as an "all-you-can-listen portable recording". Every time you listen to a song for free on the radio or on the street, an RIAA lawyer gets an ulcer.
I was a chemistry undergrad myself, and in looking back on lab conditions during that time, I can't help but think that the situation was pretty sorry from the safety standpoint. Between the low budget for equipment, lack of time for safety education (a one hour safety class for a three-tear long study program!) and the general don't-give-a-crap attitude of a lot of the students, I ended up inhaling more funky fumes, running for the eye baths, scrambling for the emergency lab shower and spending way too much time evacuating the premises than is generally considered acceptable (more than zero is too much). Then again, the time I spent doing lab work convinced me that in some respect, private industry is not always that much better, and I'm better off being in computer tech now.
Would we want the added responsibility of having to treat them better (and likely failing)?
I figure it's just better to _augment_ humans (there are plenty of ways to do that), than to create new entities. After all if we want nonhuman intelligences we already have plenty at the local pet stores and various farms, and how well are we handling those?
Humans already have a poor track record of dealing with animals and other humans.
Why create an artificial being we would treat as animals and slaves when we can create the next evolutionary step of humans who will do the same to us instead?
the thai government effectively bans everyone from gaming?
and no one else is supposed to kill themselves?
[sarcasm] Why not? That sure worked well when that kid killed himself after playing too much dungeons and dragons, and parents everywhere started forbidding their kids from playing it as well! D&D is dead now, and that kid is remembered as a hero for destroying an evil game... [/sarcasm]
Let's look at this logically. They figured out that this student had made an illegal download, and rather than contact him directly and explain the situation, they contacted his landlord. What were they expecting to get from this? Perhaps that he demand the six or so dollars his movie ticket price he skipped on their behalf, thus wasting hundreds of dollars in Mediasentry costs? And how did they hope that this landlord would transfer their demands to this students, aside with the possible threat of massive lawsuits to him, for being an accessory to download? To me, this constitutes little else but outright blackmail. They knew they would never be able to prosecute this student in a legal court where due process was applied, so they applied pressure to the landlord so that he would do their own dirty work with no lawyer costs, bad publicity and risks of losing involved. The Barbra Streisand Effect, however, pretty much guaranteed that Slashdot would hear of it whether they tried to squelch the story or not.
If my bank wanted to repossess my home for failing to keep my grass shorter than three inches "because it's part of my contract", I'd love to see them try and get the courts try and ENFORCE that. They'd be laughed out of courts. Why do you think the RIAA is being vilified so much across the world? Mostly it's because they keep trying to impose punishment that is hundreds of thousands of times the worth of the offense, and is completely disconnected with any sense of reality. This latest stunt is just another one of the RIAA's faithful boot-licking lackeys pursuing overseas their failed american tactics.
And punishment fitted the crime - he downloaded one movie, deprived the movie studios of six dollars, and thus lost his home on the spot. Justice was served, right?
Getting students evicted by putting pressure on the dorm management? That's setting a new standard in scumbag behavior, so what's next now? How do you go deeper when you've already dug a six feet trench underneath the sewer lines?
Slashdot Mirror
If you murdered your favorite artist, you'd be out of jail sooner and you could sell your story to a Hollywood screenwriter for a couple of millions.
Once again, the copyright lobbyists are eating themselves like an ouroboros lawyer. Are they going to hire Lars Ulrich to explain us why it's alright to pirate your own work when you've been so adamant about suing the pants off everyone else?
How many slashdot "White House to Appoint Internet Czar" stories are we going to see? Let's just report it when it happens (if it ever does).
The RIAA and MPAA, who smash our home windows and front doors to come and riffle through our things looking for evidence that we're all bandits out to rob them blind so they can sue us for hundreds of thousands the moment they find a single downloaded song. Oh, the irony.
While browsing over the config file of Icewind Dale one day, I found myself surprised to find a flag called 'Nightmare=0', so needless to say, I found myself intrigued with a little voice in my head egging me to 'Do eeeeeeet!' So naturally, I set the flag to 1, and start a new game. Even with all my characters having the game's best weapons and maxed levels, I found the very first gang of goblins to be more than a match for me, to say nothing of everything else after that. One of the most challenging runs I've ever done!
'This isn't just about national security,' says Barbara Fast, vice president of Boeing Cyber Solutions. 'It's about the economic well-being of the United States.'
How long until the RIAA finds someone in the chain of command to convince that it's in an economic imperative that music pirates need to be stopped, and get a direct DoD data feed of P2P IP data?
I just got learned! Thanks man!
But I am much more interested why are Eta/Burakumin/Shinheimin/whoever treated this way by people who cannot possibly remember the Edo period.
For the same reason that african american citizens still get regularly handed hateful scorn by racist morons who clearly weren't alive before the Emancipation Act?
Or is it just the symptom? My experience with MMO addiction comes not from the game itself, but rather is a manifestation of there being a massive void in my life that the game naturally fills out without judgement or mockery. It just accepts, and gives me what I need so badly that I can't get in the real world, be it adventure, social contact or a sense of achievement. If you want to help your friend get away from the game, you must figure out which of these things he derives from the game and not from his real life, then help him obtain it from a non-gaming source. Short of that, learn to speak in pirate speech, I guess.
What Japan needs is some enlightment that can only come with a few episodes of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs. Watching Mike Rowe trying to shovel disgusting refuse from a leatherworking facility is not only entertaining, it teaches that those jobs are A) pretty difficult to learn and B) fundamentally necessary for civilization to continue!
Anybody else thinking of Media Center Edition? While the required hardware implementation for the PC edition left somewhat to be desired (those required satellite and cable cards still give me nightmares), the Xbox 360 might skip a lot of the more complicated initial setup for a far more user-friendly experience. Or so you would think, in theory.
I've personally never dealt with Circuit City as I'm in Canada. the only thing close I guess was "The Source by Curcuit City" which basically was Radio Shack prior to that.
Even money says they still want your full name, address and phone number just for buying an overpriced pack of D-cell batteries.
I'm pretty sure that Best Buy offers the genetic transmutation thingamajigger that turned Steve Urkel into Stephane Urquelle in their recommended purchases section. Either that, or surf eBay for the used original.
The miniturization and degree of complexity in today's modern electronics, combined with price drops from affordable generic knock-offs of premium items makes it now possible to equip yourself like James Bond after a Q-Branch sequence with little more than a shoestring budget and a Best Buy online account.
12) Circumvention of a copy-protection mechanism (my user and root passwords).
Report those police officers to the RIAA. Hilarity ensues.
If this does turn out to be true, who is going to use their service ever again? Even if someone doesn't have any pirated music on their computer, who wants their music collection data sent to the RIAA? What about legitimate purchased songs being flagged as being pirated?
It hardly matters whether the music is pirated or legitimate, all they care about is money, plain and simple. The Righteous Inquisition Army of Autocrats has made statements in the past that indicate that if they had their way, you would have to pay for every time you listen to any piece of music, regardless that you purchased it already. They always want more money, and they won't rest until the day where they can bill you for having a copy of that song burned into your brain neural patterns as an "all-you-can-listen portable recording". Every time you listen to a song for free on the radio or on the street, an RIAA lawyer gets an ulcer.
I was a chemistry undergrad myself, and in looking back on lab conditions during that time, I can't help but think that the situation was pretty sorry from the safety standpoint. Between the low budget for equipment, lack of time for safety education (a one hour safety class for a three-tear long study program!) and the general don't-give-a-crap attitude of a lot of the students, I ended up inhaling more funky fumes, running for the eye baths, scrambling for the emergency lab shower and spending way too much time evacuating the premises than is generally considered acceptable (more than zero is too much). Then again, the time I spent doing lab work convinced me that in some respect, private industry is not always that much better, and I'm better off being in computer tech now.
Would we want the added responsibility of having to treat them better (and likely failing)? I figure it's just better to _augment_ humans (there are plenty of ways to do that), than to create new entities. After all if we want nonhuman intelligences we already have plenty at the local pet stores and various farms, and how well are we handling those? Humans already have a poor track record of dealing with animals and other humans.
Why create an artificial being we would treat as animals and slaves when we can create the next evolutionary step of humans who will do the same to us instead?
the thai government effectively bans everyone from gaming? and no one else is supposed to kill themselves?
[sarcasm] Why not? That sure worked well when that kid killed himself after playing too much dungeons and dragons, and parents everywhere started forbidding their kids from playing it as well! D&D is dead now, and that kid is remembered as a hero for destroying an evil game... [/sarcasm]
Which again begs the question - why would they bother evicting him for a SINGLE movie download unless legal threats were enacted, i.e. blackmail?
Let's look at this logically. They figured out that this student had made an illegal download, and rather than contact him directly and explain the situation, they contacted his landlord. What were they expecting to get from this? Perhaps that he demand the six or so dollars his movie ticket price he skipped on their behalf, thus wasting hundreds of dollars in Mediasentry costs? And how did they hope that this landlord would transfer their demands to this students, aside with the possible threat of massive lawsuits to him, for being an accessory to download? To me, this constitutes little else but outright blackmail. They knew they would never be able to prosecute this student in a legal court where due process was applied, so they applied pressure to the landlord so that he would do their own dirty work with no lawyer costs, bad publicity and risks of losing involved. The Barbra Streisand Effect, however, pretty much guaranteed that Slashdot would hear of it whether they tried to squelch the story or not.
If my bank wanted to repossess my home for failing to keep my grass shorter than three inches "because it's part of my contract", I'd love to see them try and get the courts try and ENFORCE that. They'd be laughed out of courts. Why do you think the RIAA is being vilified so much across the world? Mostly it's because they keep trying to impose punishment that is hundreds of thousands of times the worth of the offense, and is completely disconnected with any sense of reality. This latest stunt is just another one of the RIAA's faithful boot-licking lackeys pursuing overseas their failed american tactics.
And punishment fitted the crime - he downloaded one movie, deprived the movie studios of six dollars, and thus lost his home on the spot. Justice was served, right?
Yeah, you're probably correct. Because they did nothing wrong, immoral or generally unethical in the united states so far, right?
Getting students evicted by putting pressure on the dorm management? That's setting a new standard in scumbag behavior, so what's next now? How do you go deeper when you've already dug a six feet trench underneath the sewer lines?