Except for the fact that software patents are so vague that it is impossible to tell what violates patents and what doesn't. Until we finally decide to abolish patents, no one can ever know for sure if something will be in violation of a patent or not.
Most likely Google asked Sun how much money it would cost to license the patent for X because Google had no possible way of knowing if something would violate that patent or not, obviously the price of "protection money" on something that may or may not be covered under the patent was too high so they decided to take their risks in court.
The only dangerous people who produce child pornography won't visit those sites because they already have it on local media
There, fixed it for you. If we spent as much time going after the producers as we do prosecuting thoughtcrime, we might be able to actually prevent child abuse, instead the police as always go after the non-harmful crimes rather than those who are actually abusing the children.
Except for the fact that Ubuntu makes it pretty easy to upgrade to the next version by just clicking a button, the system requirements aren't increased and it is totally different than upgrading from XP to Vista/7. And yes, Apple is a hardware company primarily and wants people to buy new expensive hardware every couple of years so that makes sense for them to do that.
Its kept secret so the government can discount any site that disagrees with it as containing banned material and has indoctrinated the masses and made their thoughtcrime-style legislation so broad that anyone who disagrees with it is labeled a pedo and shunned.
Exactly. Rather than using thoughtcrime style legislation and expanding government powers like current legislation is doing, and using laws designed to protect children to stop victimless crime (for example the man jailed for possessing -drawings- of allegedly underage girls) they should be stopping the people harming the children and going after the real crime.
This is like every other government "shutdown", shutting down the most noticeable parts of the government to get attention even if it makes no sense. For example, out of all the things to be shut down in a state/local government shutdown it generally won't be the things actually costing the most money, but highly visible things like state parks, or trash service all the while the things that caused the budget to be in a mess are still continuing.
And yet even the BBC has bias, less on their actual reporting, which is pretty fair, but at least on their website and from the BBC newscasts I've seen on television, they seem to be fairly selective which stories they carry, now, part of this may be from me not being British and therefore having a different view of what is important, but the BBC seems to carry a fairly hefty center-left slant, and unabashedly pro-government in a lot of their stances, rarely questioning the necessity of many government programs.
And like usual, yet another person saying that bias exists on the other side but not -my- favourite news agency. And surely not in my point of view. For example, look at MSNBC trying to stereotype all people protesting health care as white racists. Just take a look at this news clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKQJ4-N7LI&feature=player_embedded#at=15 and how concerned they are that these "white racists" are carrying guns so close to the first black president. When in reality, the guy carrying the "assault rifle" was... black. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7syx26QtQIM&feature=player_embedded I'm not saying that Fox/CNN/MSNBC/BBC/etc. is better than the other, all I'm saying is that -all- news outlets have bias, and it is honestly silly to say otherwise.
Right, and what "honest news outfits" are out there? None of them. Because quite honestly, no one really cares about news. The masses want their mindless celebrity gossip. The left wants to hear alarmist predictions about what republicans are doing, the right wants to hear alarmist predictions about what democrats are doing. Others want local "mush" stories about a three-legged dog, giving the elderly a free air conditioner, etc. But no one really wants facts and figures. And even if there is a market for facts, how do you even get reliable facts? Everyone with the capability to gather facts will always have an incentive to skew the facts. Even "neutral" organizations such as universities and publicly funded studies have a desire to gain more funds, which either means agreeing with the powers that fund them (usually the government) or being alarmist to gain more funds. Because, no funds mean no jobs.
Bias is human and as long as humans are involved in some way, news will have bias.
Wait what? News isn't always 100% fact and may contain opinion? The same thing could be said for CNN, MSNBC, the BBC or heck, even Slashdot. Nothing is without bias.
When you compare GTK (Or QT) based applications to most Windows applications you will find that *Nix apps are pretty consistent.
The biggest barrier to UI design isn't intuitiveness or consistency, it is the fact that most people don't like to change, so anything that is different is naturally going to be "harder" to use, even when coming from a broken UI.
Right, because clearly -everything- was better in the pre-industrial, pre-scientific age. I mean, who -doesn't- want to die from easily treatable infections, live their lives in darkness and generally live like we did in the 1700s.
Go ahead and live your life worshiping the earth, no one is stopping you. For the rest of us, it makes a lot more sense to continue to increase our standard of living.
I can guarantee you that all the natural disasters that happened this year put together has a much smaller death toll than what the death toll would be from life in the pre-industrial, pre-scientific age.
I don't think that Sega can retire Sonic because Sega doesn't want to take risks like every other game company. When was the last time we truly saw something innovative that
A) Worked
And most important B) made money.
For example: Okami was very innovative and a great game but sold poorly. On the other hand, Nintendo can put Mario in a game and it will sell based on the name alone. When creative games sell poorly and mass-produced games based on established names sell well, its no surprise that they all make cookie-cutter games, its the only way they can make a profit.
I agree, the Final Fantasy remakes (especially Dawn of Souls) were amazing on the GBA. But Phantasia was a terrible remake, and when the "professional" translation makes more mistakes than the DeJap fan-made translation, it isn't a good sign. Overall though I've been disappointed with Namco's efforts with their Tales series in the west. Namco could have done a lot to help the RPG-starved Wii by releasing Tales of Graces for it rather than inexplicably deciding to only release it for the PS3 in the US. Then -none- of the DS/GBA series was localized for the west.
All of the Tales games have been excellent games and yet few have made it to the US and even fewer to Europe. Symphonia was easily one of the top 5 GC games made, and Vesperia is one of the better Xbox games out there, but there is so much that Namco hasn't bothered releasing.
Why not use semi-electronic voting where you use a pencil and a scantron-type ballot, primary results can be done electronically while there are paper records that can be counted by hand if the results are challenged. It seems to be the best of both worlds, preventing a lot of the flaws of e-voting while still allowing results to be counted quickly, easily and without bias.
There is a -huge- difference between giving the government more power and letting people live their lives.
Whenever you give an individual power, there is a lot you can do to stop them from using that power on you. For example, if I own a grocery store and you don't like that I have security cameras everywhere in the store, you don't have to shop there, nor will anyone force you to shop there. There is no reason why you have to support me at all, heck, you can start a boycott of my grocery store with a bunch of like minded people and even drive me out of business. You don't have to support me or use my business.
On the other hand, when you give the government power, you have to not only use it but fiscally support it. If you don't agree with Arizona police you can't simply just hire a private security firm and stop paying taxes.
Your line of reasoning eventually ends up in a police state. Government power should -always- be kept at a minimum because no matter what you can't not support the government.
Because ever since the fed has been creating dollars out of nothing, we've had rampant inflation to the point where we can't even make out coins out of durable metal (pennies up until mid-1982 were 95% copper, ones later than that are mostly zinc with a thin copper coating) and instead the pennies literally rot. For fun, borrow a metal detector and dig up some coins, while Spanish milled dollars from the 1700s will come up intact and as good as the day it was minted, a penny from the late '90s will be nearly unrecognizable.
I don't know what bank you have been going to but every bank I've gone to has a free coin counter. Heck, I've gone through several hundred dollars worth of pennies and keeping out the 95% copper ones and then selling them on eBay (it is illegal to melt or export them, but not illegal to sell them to speculators who believe the melt ban will be lifted soon), its a pretty easy way to double your money.
So in other words you are happy to live in a country where the government has fucked up its own currency with inflation enough to discontinue one of its denominations? Happy to live in a country where saving money won't really matter because it will be eaten up by inflation anyways? -That- is what the demise of the penny signifies.
Exactly, 5 years ago with unlimited data plans, expensive flash memory (if I remember correctly my 2 GB Micro-SD card cost me about $50+ about 5 years ago) and unsecured wi-fi putting things on "the cloud" might have made sense. But today? It doesn't work.
"The Cloud" works if storage is expensive and bandwidth is cheap. Today, storage is cheap and bandwidth is expensive.
Right, and in a day where flash memory is dirt cheap, accessing the web on a device is getting harder and harder to do (no more cell phone unlimited data, fewer unsecured wi-fi hotspots) and you can get streaming music for free (Pandora, Last.Fm, YouTube, Shoutcast, etc.), why does it make sense for you to pay $4 to access your own music?
Perhaps 5 years ago "the cloud" might have made sense back when 2 GB SD cards were still $50-60, unsecured Wi-Fi was incredibly common and data plans were unlimited, but today with dirt cheap flash media prices with enough storage to hold lots of songs it really makes no sense.
If you are using iTunes on anything other than OS-X, it sucks. First off, it is slower than crap, the store barely works (why does it take longer to "process" a media file than it does to download it online) and is generally a pain to work with.
On Windows FooBar2000 kicks the crap out of iTunes. On Linux, both rhythmbox and amarok work just fine for me and VLC is king for playing single files.
Other than Zelda II I really wouldn't call the Zelda series an action RPG because it doesn't contain many RPG elements (EXP, etc.) rather I'd classify Zelda as an adventure game with only a few elements borrowed from RPGs (you have money, HP and MP). Rather, I'd classify an action RPG as a game like Tales of Symphonia or Star Ocean, games that are mostly RPGs but have action oriented combat.
Slashdot Mirror
...Because we all know that everyone wanting anonymity -must- be doing something illegal.
Except for the fact that software patents are so vague that it is impossible to tell what violates patents and what doesn't. Until we finally decide to abolish patents, no one can ever know for sure if something will be in violation of a patent or not.
Most likely Google asked Sun how much money it would cost to license the patent for X because Google had no possible way of knowing if something would violate that patent or not, obviously the price of "protection money" on something that may or may not be covered under the patent was too high so they decided to take their risks in court.
The only dangerous people who produce child pornography won't visit those sites because they already have it on local media
There, fixed it for you. If we spent as much time going after the producers as we do prosecuting thoughtcrime, we might be able to actually prevent child abuse, instead the police as always go after the non-harmful crimes rather than those who are actually abusing the children.
And most people are not criminals and shouldn't be treated as such. Democracy only works with limited government, free press and privacy.
Except for the fact that Ubuntu makes it pretty easy to upgrade to the next version by just clicking a button, the system requirements aren't increased and it is totally different than upgrading from XP to Vista/7. And yes, Apple is a hardware company primarily and wants people to buy new expensive hardware every couple of years so that makes sense for them to do that.
Its kept secret so the government can discount any site that disagrees with it as containing banned material and has indoctrinated the masses and made their thoughtcrime-style legislation so broad that anyone who disagrees with it is labeled a pedo and shunned.
Exactly. Rather than using thoughtcrime style legislation and expanding government powers like current legislation is doing, and using laws designed to protect children to stop victimless crime (for example the man jailed for possessing -drawings- of allegedly underage girls) they should be stopping the people harming the children and going after the real crime.
This is like every other government "shutdown", shutting down the most noticeable parts of the government to get attention even if it makes no sense. For example, out of all the things to be shut down in a state/local government shutdown it generally won't be the things actually costing the most money, but highly visible things like state parks, or trash service all the while the things that caused the budget to be in a mess are still continuing.
And yet even the BBC has bias, less on their actual reporting, which is pretty fair, but at least on their website and from the BBC newscasts I've seen on television, they seem to be fairly selective which stories they carry, now, part of this may be from me not being British and therefore having a different view of what is important, but the BBC seems to carry a fairly hefty center-left slant, and unabashedly pro-government in a lot of their stances, rarely questioning the necessity of many government programs.
And like usual, yet another person saying that bias exists on the other side but not -my- favourite news agency. And surely not in my point of view. For example, look at MSNBC trying to stereotype all people protesting health care as white racists. Just take a look at this news clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKQJ4-N7LI&feature=player_embedded#at=15 and how concerned they are that these "white racists" are carrying guns so close to the first black president. When in reality, the guy carrying the "assault rifle" was... black. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7syx26QtQIM&feature=player_embedded I'm not saying that Fox/CNN/MSNBC/BBC/etc. is better than the other, all I'm saying is that -all- news outlets have bias, and it is honestly silly to say otherwise.
Right, and what "honest news outfits" are out there? None of them. Because quite honestly, no one really cares about news. The masses want their mindless celebrity gossip. The left wants to hear alarmist predictions about what republicans are doing, the right wants to hear alarmist predictions about what democrats are doing. Others want local "mush" stories about a three-legged dog, giving the elderly a free air conditioner, etc. But no one really wants facts and figures. And even if there is a market for facts, how do you even get reliable facts? Everyone with the capability to gather facts will always have an incentive to skew the facts. Even "neutral" organizations such as universities and publicly funded studies have a desire to gain more funds, which either means agreeing with the powers that fund them (usually the government) or being alarmist to gain more funds. Because, no funds mean no jobs.
Bias is human and as long as humans are involved in some way, news will have bias.
Wait what? News isn't always 100% fact and may contain opinion? The same thing could be said for CNN, MSNBC, the BBC or heck, even Slashdot. Nothing is without bias.
As opposed to?
When you compare GTK (Or QT) based applications to most Windows applications you will find that *Nix apps are pretty consistent.
The biggest barrier to UI design isn't intuitiveness or consistency, it is the fact that most people don't like to change, so anything that is different is naturally going to be "harder" to use, even when coming from a broken UI.
Right, because clearly -everything- was better in the pre-industrial, pre-scientific age. I mean, who -doesn't- want to die from easily treatable infections, live their lives in darkness and generally live like we did in the 1700s.
Go ahead and live your life worshiping the earth, no one is stopping you. For the rest of us, it makes a lot more sense to continue to increase our standard of living.
I can guarantee you that all the natural disasters that happened this year put together has a much smaller death toll than what the death toll would be from life in the pre-industrial, pre-scientific age.
I don't think that Sega can retire Sonic because Sega doesn't want to take risks like every other game company. When was the last time we truly saw something innovative that
A) Worked
And most important B) made money.
For example: Okami was very innovative and a great game but sold poorly. On the other hand, Nintendo can put Mario in a game and it will sell based on the name alone. When creative games sell poorly and mass-produced games based on established names sell well, its no surprise that they all make cookie-cutter games, its the only way they can make a profit.
I agree, the Final Fantasy remakes (especially Dawn of Souls) were amazing on the GBA. But Phantasia was a terrible remake, and when the "professional" translation makes more mistakes than the DeJap fan-made translation, it isn't a good sign. Overall though I've been disappointed with Namco's efforts with their Tales series in the west. Namco could have done a lot to help the RPG-starved Wii by releasing Tales of Graces for it rather than inexplicably deciding to only release it for the PS3 in the US. Then -none- of the DS/GBA series was localized for the west.
All of the Tales games have been excellent games and yet few have made it to the US and even fewer to Europe. Symphonia was easily one of the top 5 GC games made, and Vesperia is one of the better Xbox games out there, but there is so much that Namco hasn't bothered releasing.
Why not use semi-electronic voting where you use a pencil and a scantron-type ballot, primary results can be done electronically while there are paper records that can be counted by hand if the results are challenged. It seems to be the best of both worlds, preventing a lot of the flaws of e-voting while still allowing results to be counted quickly, easily and without bias.
There is a -huge- difference between giving the government more power and letting people live their lives.
Whenever you give an individual power, there is a lot you can do to stop them from using that power on you. For example, if I own a grocery store and you don't like that I have security cameras everywhere in the store, you don't have to shop there, nor will anyone force you to shop there. There is no reason why you have to support me at all, heck, you can start a boycott of my grocery store with a bunch of like minded people and even drive me out of business. You don't have to support me or use my business.
On the other hand, when you give the government power, you have to not only use it but fiscally support it. If you don't agree with Arizona police you can't simply just hire a private security firm and stop paying taxes.
Your line of reasoning eventually ends up in a police state. Government power should -always- be kept at a minimum because no matter what you can't not support the government.
Because ever since the fed has been creating dollars out of nothing, we've had rampant inflation to the point where we can't even make out coins out of durable metal (pennies up until mid-1982 were 95% copper, ones later than that are mostly zinc with a thin copper coating) and instead the pennies literally rot. For fun, borrow a metal detector and dig up some coins, while Spanish milled dollars from the 1700s will come up intact and as good as the day it was minted, a penny from the late '90s will be nearly unrecognizable.
We have destroyed our currency with inflation.
I don't know what bank you have been going to but every bank I've gone to has a free coin counter. Heck, I've gone through several hundred dollars worth of pennies and keeping out the 95% copper ones and then selling them on eBay (it is illegal to melt or export them, but not illegal to sell them to speculators who believe the melt ban will be lifted soon), its a pretty easy way to double your money.
So in other words you are happy to live in a country where the government has fucked up its own currency with inflation enough to discontinue one of its denominations? Happy to live in a country where saving money won't really matter because it will be eaten up by inflation anyways? -That- is what the demise of the penny signifies.
Exactly, 5 years ago with unlimited data plans, expensive flash memory (if I remember correctly my 2 GB Micro-SD card cost me about $50+ about 5 years ago) and unsecured wi-fi putting things on "the cloud" might have made sense. But today? It doesn't work.
"The Cloud" works if storage is expensive and bandwidth is cheap. Today, storage is cheap and bandwidth is expensive.
Right, and in a day where flash memory is dirt cheap, accessing the web on a device is getting harder and harder to do (no more cell phone unlimited data, fewer unsecured wi-fi hotspots) and you can get streaming music for free (Pandora, Last.Fm, YouTube, Shoutcast, etc.), why does it make sense for you to pay $4 to access your own music?
Perhaps 5 years ago "the cloud" might have made sense back when 2 GB SD cards were still $50-60, unsecured Wi-Fi was incredibly common and data plans were unlimited, but today with dirt cheap flash media prices with enough storage to hold lots of songs it really makes no sense.
If you are using iTunes on anything other than OS-X, it sucks. First off, it is slower than crap, the store barely works (why does it take longer to "process" a media file than it does to download it online) and is generally a pain to work with.
On Windows FooBar2000 kicks the crap out of iTunes. On Linux, both rhythmbox and amarok work just fine for me and VLC is king for playing single files.
Other than Zelda II I really wouldn't call the Zelda series an action RPG because it doesn't contain many RPG elements (EXP, etc.) rather I'd classify Zelda as an adventure game with only a few elements borrowed from RPGs (you have money, HP and MP). Rather, I'd classify an action RPG as a game like Tales of Symphonia or Star Ocean, games that are mostly RPGs but have action oriented combat.