Change the law, how does one really do that? You can write to your senator or representative, only to get an automated response. I remember back in the early days of the DMCA, I wrote to my senator to urge him to oppose it, I got a prompt response assuring me that he was -supporting- the DMCA and not to worry because he would make sure that it would pass... You could try running for senate yourself, but unless you have the budget and the required charisma, you are likely to accomplish nothing but wasting a few thousand dollars. You can vote, but that doesn't do a whole lot, especially if you don't want the Republican or the Democrat challenger, and voting for the "lesser evil" never works out.
About the only thing you can do is disobey the unjust laws and do the right thing secretly or move to someplace more free.
The idea that "Anonymous" is a single entity is false. There isn't some supergroup called "Anonymous" anyone can (and does) call themselves "Anonymous" simply because its the "cool" factor. In then end, I'm anonymous, you're anonymous, the guy down the street is anonymous. That's the big thing with "Anonymous" there is no leader, its just a bunch of people moving in roughly the same direction. There is no one philosophy either morally or politically, just a couple of common interests. Join the swarm and leave.
Laws do not equal morality. Immoral things are legal and moral things may be illegal. You are the one that has to live with your decisions, supporting the "law" blindly is foolish because it rarely leads to the correct (moral) decisions. There exists a law higher than the laws created by the thugs in power.
I'd rather have a C64 than what I had (Windows 98/NT machines) in school. I'd much rather have an ability to program in class than learn Office. My school experience taught me absolutely nothing (other than you don't set up website filters to block Flash games by using an exact string using the HTTP and the www, easily bypassed by not adding in the www) and even using the DOS prompt was frowned upon, after all you could break the ever so expensive computers by changing the wallpaper!
The fact that something needs to be subsidized shows that it makes no economic sense. You can steal your way to a profit, but that doesn't mean you're a good businessman.
Yep, Team Fortress 2 is a good benchmark for detail. While it is an older title and therefore has less detail than a game released yesterday, it has enough detail to prevent it from being bland, but has great contrast and lighting to where you can actually see what's happening. There are too many FPS games today that you can't see what's happening.
Really? I've found that less realistic games tend to have much better contrast than "ultra-realistic" games, NSMB has posed no problem, on the other hand, I've played several FPS and even first adventure games that were nearly impossible to see due to the color selection only being steel grey, gun grey, dirt grey, camo grey, and muzzle flash orange.
Call of Duty has always been the worst offender for me.
Unlikely. If there was an easy and cheap way to use solar power, why wouldn't they? Of course part of the problem is that monopolies and government subsidies often distort the market when it comes to energy, but if there was truly a way for people to get cheap, reliable, easy solar energy, solar would be very popular. The problem is, solar is not cheap. And going off the grid by installing your own solar panels is neither cheap nor easy.
One day, solar energy will be cost-effective in many places, but not today. Solar energy is great if you want to move off the grid, or if you're in a remote location, but for the average American, it simply isn't cheap enough yet.
Because lately, despite the rock-bottom prices for magnetic and flash media, a lot of devices have a pathetic amount of storage space, but do have wi-fi. Gone are the days of getting 80GB+ of storage space in a device. Look at the Nexus 7, the base price only gets you 8GB of storage space (and no MicroSD card slot), I don't have the largest music library out there, but mine roughly is about 10 GB in size, let alone with video. So if I want to listen to my music on my tablet, I either have to be very selective or stream it. The highest end one is 16 GB and still will barely hold my music selection while having enough space for applications and other data.
Unless your device is lucky enough to have a MicroSD card where you can slap in a 32 GB one for $10-20, chances are you are going to have to stream, unless this device in question has a magnetic HDD.
If you could predict the future and know what enemy you'd have to fight next
Really, every conflict and war that the US has entered in since World War II has been a completely voluntary war. The US can (and does) choose the wars it wants to fight. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Kosovo, etc. There hasn't been a war in the last 50 years that the US has -had- to fight, everything has been carefully chosen.
Maintaining a large military does not help the country. Why do you think 9/11 happened? It was because the US interfered in the Middle East. Its no accident that terrorist attacks haven't happened in neutral Switzerland. Peace is never won through bombs, it isn't won by propping up dictators, its won through diplomacy, its won through free trade and honesty. War breeds war.
If something is useful and easily allowed to be owned, of course it would be owned. Now, naturally there are natural things that no one owns because its impossible to stake a claim on (the sun, the wind, the ocean) and some things which aren't even property because they lack the essential definition of property (that there can only be one user that uses it to the fullest, such as a car, if I want to drive a car to New York tomorrow, and my neighbor wants to drive that same car to LA at the same time, it won't work, but with non-property such as copyright that essential part is missing, if my neighbor wants to start a movie at 3:05 PM and I want to start that same title at 3:07 PM, we can do that with digital copies, naturally though a physical DVD or Blu-Ray is property) and there are plenty of things that are property that no one wants and are therefore unowned.
Exactly. We need diplomacy, not bombs. We need to stop trying to be the world's "policeman", stop propping up dictators, stop propping up the rebels to take down the dictators we earlier propped up, and slash military spending. Consider Switzerland, for example.
How about trying to maintain a foreign policy that encourages peace and free trade? I'm sure that will keep us much safer and will cost us less. But instead we spend our billions on arms and look for conflicts to use them in...
Sure, but there are a lot of great commercial titles with absolutely no F/OSS equivalent that comes close.
The fact that there are bad games on both sides doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of great commercial titles and only a handful of decent F/OSS ones. Really, aside from: SuperTux, Battle for Wesnoth, FreeCiv/FreeCol, and Open Arena there aren't a lot of other good open source titles. On the other hand, off the top of my head some great commercial games for the PC include: Portal, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Skyrim, Fable, etc.
Because in the USA you can choose a better job and there are plenty of better ones out there if you have the skills/aptitude for them. In China, unless you have a family member in the Communist party, you're pretty much stuck doing either factory labor or agricultural labor. Starting your own business in China is nowhere near as easy as it is in the US unless you have political connections.
You act like trade benefits one party and doesn't benefit the other.
Due to China's low cost labor, we, in the US, have been able to enjoy a -much- higher standard of living than we otherwise would be able to have. In exchange, China is getting a huge amount of capital which raises their standard of living, although, due to not having a free market it really only raises the standard of living for those at the top.
There really aren't very many DS versions though and they are all functionally identical. More options are better. Want a small, pocket sized console or have small hands? Get a 3DS. Want a larger console for those with larger hands? Get a 3DS-XL. Both will play the exact same games and have the exact same functions, its just that an 8 year old and a 28 year old have different hand sizes. A 3DS will feel cramped for those with large hands, a larger version won't. On the other hand, a 3DS-XL will feel huge if you have tiny hands.
If you want to complain about different models, look at Sony where there are different models that are not functionally identical (for example, a 60 GB PS3 can play PS2 games, a 160 GB PS3 cannot, and they both look the exact same).
Super Mario Land 3D is pretty awesome. New Super Mario Bros. 2 is also supposed to be good but isn't out till August. If you haven't played it the first time around on the PS2, Tales of the Abyss is excellent. Kid Icarus is also great. And of course Ocarina of Time is too, but chances are you've already played it to death on the N64/GameCube/Wii.
There's also Mario Kart 7 and Resident Evil: Revelations, but I haven't personally played either of them quite yet.
It is very likely that companies and governments are already using this technique to eavesdrop on criminal activity, Alonso said.
Really? How about them using it to eavesdrop on -everyone- regardless on if it is "criminal" or not. Plus, I'm sure governments have more invasive methods rather than just this.
Great, now show me the F/OSS games with the same polish as commercial titles. Show me the F/OSS equivalent of Team Fortress 2, or Portal. Yeah, there are a few gems out there like Battle for Wesnoth, but other than that F/OSS gaming is dead.
I'm all for open source software and killing DRM. Heck, honestly I think we need to just abolish copyright all together. But I'm not going to cry over Steam coming to Linux because it means that Linux users will be able to actually have some games to play.
Part of free speech and the "marketplace of ideas" requires there to be at least some level of anonymity. Trolling is simply part of the internet. Just ignore the troll comments if you want, or read them if you want.
Anonymous speech has had huge impact, particularly in early American history. You have to remember that the major works of early American politics were anonymous, including the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers.
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Change the law, how does one really do that? You can write to your senator or representative, only to get an automated response. I remember back in the early days of the DMCA, I wrote to my senator to urge him to oppose it, I got a prompt response assuring me that he was -supporting- the DMCA and not to worry because he would make sure that it would pass... You could try running for senate yourself, but unless you have the budget and the required charisma, you are likely to accomplish nothing but wasting a few thousand dollars. You can vote, but that doesn't do a whole lot, especially if you don't want the Republican or the Democrat challenger, and voting for the "lesser evil" never works out.
About the only thing you can do is disobey the unjust laws and do the right thing secretly or move to someplace more free.
The idea that "Anonymous" is a single entity is false. There isn't some supergroup called "Anonymous" anyone can (and does) call themselves "Anonymous" simply because its the "cool" factor. In then end, I'm anonymous, you're anonymous, the guy down the street is anonymous. That's the big thing with "Anonymous" there is no leader, its just a bunch of people moving in roughly the same direction. There is no one philosophy either morally or politically, just a couple of common interests. Join the swarm and leave.
Laws do not equal morality. Immoral things are legal and moral things may be illegal. You are the one that has to live with your decisions, supporting the "law" blindly is foolish because it rarely leads to the correct (moral) decisions. There exists a law higher than the laws created by the thugs in power.
I'd rather have a C64 than what I had (Windows 98/NT machines) in school. I'd much rather have an ability to program in class than learn Office. My school experience taught me absolutely nothing (other than you don't set up website filters to block Flash games by using an exact string using the HTTP and the www, easily bypassed by not adding in the www) and even using the DOS prompt was frowned upon, after all you could break the ever so expensive computers by changing the wallpaper!
The fact that something needs to be subsidized shows that it makes no economic sense. You can steal your way to a profit, but that doesn't mean you're a good businessman.
Yep, Team Fortress 2 is a good benchmark for detail. While it is an older title and therefore has less detail than a game released yesterday, it has enough detail to prevent it from being bland, but has great contrast and lighting to where you can actually see what's happening. There are too many FPS games today that you can't see what's happening.
Really? I've found that less realistic games tend to have much better contrast than "ultra-realistic" games, NSMB has posed no problem, on the other hand, I've played several FPS and even first adventure games that were nearly impossible to see due to the color selection only being steel grey, gun grey, dirt grey, camo grey, and muzzle flash orange.
Call of Duty has always been the worst offender for me.
Unlikely. If there was an easy and cheap way to use solar power, why wouldn't they? Of course part of the problem is that monopolies and government subsidies often distort the market when it comes to energy, but if there was truly a way for people to get cheap, reliable, easy solar energy, solar would be very popular. The problem is, solar is not cheap. And going off the grid by installing your own solar panels is neither cheap nor easy.
One day, solar energy will be cost-effective in many places, but not today. Solar energy is great if you want to move off the grid, or if you're in a remote location, but for the average American, it simply isn't cheap enough yet.
Because lately, despite the rock-bottom prices for magnetic and flash media, a lot of devices have a pathetic amount of storage space, but do have wi-fi. Gone are the days of getting 80GB+ of storage space in a device. Look at the Nexus 7, the base price only gets you 8GB of storage space (and no MicroSD card slot), I don't have the largest music library out there, but mine roughly is about 10 GB in size, let alone with video. So if I want to listen to my music on my tablet, I either have to be very selective or stream it. The highest end one is 16 GB and still will barely hold my music selection while having enough space for applications and other data.
Unless your device is lucky enough to have a MicroSD card where you can slap in a 32 GB one for $10-20, chances are you are going to have to stream, unless this device in question has a magnetic HDD.
If you could predict the future and know what enemy you'd have to fight next
Really, every conflict and war that the US has entered in since World War II has been a completely voluntary war. The US can (and does) choose the wars it wants to fight. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Kosovo, etc. There hasn't been a war in the last 50 years that the US has -had- to fight, everything has been carefully chosen.
Maintaining a large military does not help the country. Why do you think 9/11 happened? It was because the US interfered in the Middle East. Its no accident that terrorist attacks haven't happened in neutral Switzerland. Peace is never won through bombs, it isn't won by propping up dictators, its won through diplomacy, its won through free trade and honesty. War breeds war.
If something is useful and easily allowed to be owned, of course it would be owned. Now, naturally there are natural things that no one owns because its impossible to stake a claim on (the sun, the wind, the ocean) and some things which aren't even property because they lack the essential definition of property (that there can only be one user that uses it to the fullest, such as a car, if I want to drive a car to New York tomorrow, and my neighbor wants to drive that same car to LA at the same time, it won't work, but with non-property such as copyright that essential part is missing, if my neighbor wants to start a movie at 3:05 PM and I want to start that same title at 3:07 PM, we can do that with digital copies, naturally though a physical DVD or Blu-Ray is property) and there are plenty of things that are property that no one wants and are therefore unowned.
Exactly. We need diplomacy, not bombs. We need to stop trying to be the world's "policeman", stop propping up dictators, stop propping up the rebels to take down the dictators we earlier propped up, and slash military spending. Consider Switzerland, for example.
How about trying to maintain a foreign policy that encourages peace and free trade? I'm sure that will keep us much safer and will cost us less. But instead we spend our billions on arms and look for conflicts to use them in...
Sure, but there are a lot of great commercial titles with absolutely no F/OSS equivalent that comes close.
The fact that there are bad games on both sides doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of great commercial titles and only a handful of decent F/OSS ones. Really, aside from: SuperTux, Battle for Wesnoth, FreeCiv/FreeCol, and Open Arena there aren't a lot of other good open source titles. On the other hand, off the top of my head some great commercial games for the PC include: Portal, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Skyrim, Fable, etc.
Because in the USA you can choose a better job and there are plenty of better ones out there if you have the skills/aptitude for them. In China, unless you have a family member in the Communist party, you're pretty much stuck doing either factory labor or agricultural labor. Starting your own business in China is nowhere near as easy as it is in the US unless you have political connections.
Exactly. That is the difference between a corporation and a government, something that many don't seem to get.
The sad part is, China has almost become more capitalist than a good chunk of Europe and the US.
You act like trade benefits one party and doesn't benefit the other.
Due to China's low cost labor, we, in the US, have been able to enjoy a -much- higher standard of living than we otherwise would be able to have. In exchange, China is getting a huge amount of capital which raises their standard of living, although, due to not having a free market it really only raises the standard of living for those at the top.
There really aren't very many DS versions though and they are all functionally identical. More options are better. Want a small, pocket sized console or have small hands? Get a 3DS. Want a larger console for those with larger hands? Get a 3DS-XL. Both will play the exact same games and have the exact same functions, its just that an 8 year old and a 28 year old have different hand sizes. A 3DS will feel cramped for those with large hands, a larger version won't. On the other hand, a 3DS-XL will feel huge if you have tiny hands.
If you want to complain about different models, look at Sony where there are different models that are not functionally identical (for example, a 60 GB PS3 can play PS2 games, a 160 GB PS3 cannot, and they both look the exact same).
Super Mario Land 3D is pretty awesome. New Super Mario Bros. 2 is also supposed to be good but isn't out till August. If you haven't played it the first time around on the PS2, Tales of the Abyss is excellent. Kid Icarus is also great. And of course Ocarina of Time is too, but chances are you've already played it to death on the N64/GameCube/Wii.
There's also Mario Kart 7 and Resident Evil: Revelations, but I haven't personally played either of them quite yet.
It is very likely that companies and governments are already using this technique to eavesdrop on criminal activity, Alonso said.
Really? How about them using it to eavesdrop on -everyone- regardless on if it is "criminal" or not. Plus, I'm sure governments have more invasive methods rather than just this.
Really now? Because last time I checked, Occupy Wall-Street was a pretty major movement which was mostly organized on the internet using screen names.
Great, now show me the F/OSS games with the same polish as commercial titles. Show me the F/OSS equivalent of Team Fortress 2, or Portal. Yeah, there are a few gems out there like Battle for Wesnoth, but other than that F/OSS gaming is dead.
I'm all for open source software and killing DRM. Heck, honestly I think we need to just abolish copyright all together. But I'm not going to cry over Steam coming to Linux because it means that Linux users will be able to actually have some games to play.
Exactly.
Part of free speech and the "marketplace of ideas" requires there to be at least some level of anonymity. Trolling is simply part of the internet. Just ignore the troll comments if you want, or read them if you want.
Anonymous speech has had huge impact, particularly in early American history. You have to remember that the major works of early American politics were anonymous, including the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers.