Whether or not you are buying a license to listen to music or not is variously debateable depending on how you procured it. For instance if you go to any music store and purchase a CD album no where does it state that you are agree'ing to a license.
Copyright is necessary in some ways to advance our culture and society, but the current state of copyright law is completely out of line with it's orignal intent.
When I was a kid I remember spending the night at a friends house with a bunch of my buddies. We were in the middle of a discussion about funny things we were told we had said in our sleep. When during a brief pause in the convesation one of my friends, that hadn't said anything in a bit, blurted out "You can't put a dog in the fridge!" Everyone hesitated for a moment before some of us who had a dog replied that we were confident we could make it happen. After a bit of talking about it and whether or not we should attempt to prove it. We discovered that our blurting friend was sound asleep the whole time. 15 years later and he still hasn't lived that one down.
That reminds me of when I paid for dinner for 12 people down in mexico a few years ago. The total was $66 and it's not like we were cheaping out. I had a whole lobster, a bunch of sides and an appetizer myself.
Exactly! There are a very small number of people who I would want to have all of my contact information. There is a number of people orders of magnitude larger than the first who I want to have some of my contact information, but definitely not all.
That's not entirely true. Their customers whom they provide a service to is the site owners, not the users viewing those sites. They don't have any obligation to us as users. I would view their even working on a global opt-out as being very charitable. It's moot in my opinion anyways because anyone that doesn't want their computer zombified should already be using a browser configured such that tynt can't track it via this javascript.
It's already been addressed elsewhere but China doesn't have that large of a hold over our national debt. Their stake is something like 7%. Which is much less than a trillion dollars and we just printed off more than 2 trillion in the last year or so. If China just decided to call in our debt by dumping it on the market we could just print however many extra dollars that represented to buy it back with. This would of course cause some inflation but it'd be less than the last two stimulus packages caused.
Ninja Claptrap could make for an excellent sequel. I haven't had the Destroyer die that fast, he's not hard to kill just time consuming. That's playing as a Berserker Brick and a Gunslinger Mordecai, but yeah the end fight was disappointing.
I finished the Zombie DLC the other day and now I can't even remember if it had a cutscene at all. Now that I think about it hard enough the cut scene at the end was funny but not memorable, I can remember bits of it but nothing major. The beginning cutscene though was really good and I liked how some of the quests were different from what was in the main game. Dr. Ned's Claptrap had some great audio and the Jakob's Claptrap interaction with it was hilarious. My single biggest gripe about that DLC was that there is only one New-U station in the whole damned place, limiting fast travel.
I don't understand "e) I try not to cook to have any leftovers"
Is this from the standpoint that if you can't refrigerate the leftovers then they will be wasted as spoilage or something? Personally I always try and cook or bake enough for several meals of leftovers. This way I can spend less time cooking. Which is more economical of my time and possibly also a better use of resources, such as electricity, gas and food if you get it cheaper in bulk.
I agree that the technology needs to represent a large step forward, but I'd also add that it has to be affordable for what it offers, as percieved by the market. And of course that means it's entirely dependant on opinion. As evidenced by you saying that HDTV is a significant advance over standard definition. In my opinion HDTV isn't worth paying extra for over standard definition, unless it's a very minor price difference, say 5% or less. I mean yes I can see the difference and it looks better but I honestly don't care enough to pay a premium for it, I'll certainly not pay a premium on a subscription basis for it.
I think that 3D will continue to be a niche product until they have a much better way of recording it. For animated movies it's easy to make the entire picture in focus, so that anywhere the viewer looks things are sharp and not headache inducing. Currently for live action movies the camera's have to focus on something and so in 3D you can't see things clearly unless it's the focus of attention. And while the director might like that since he can more readily direct the viewers attention where he wants it annoys a lot of people because they are looking around in a scene not just at the principle actors.
I think Holographic displays are really the holy grail of 3d displays. But they will have a tremendous impact on the way movies are filmed not just watched. Every set would have to be built to work in 360 degree 3d, well at least hopefully.
Maybe it's because I've worn glasses my whole life but wearing the polarized glasses they hand out at the theatre has never bothered me all that much. I've had a fwe pairs that were poorly constructed and had burrs from the molding but that's about it. I'd far rather wear glasses like that then shell out thousands of dollars more.
And I don't get how the double layer tv's are supposed to work, won't both of my eyes see the same pictures and so it'll all just be blurry like watching a current 3d movie at the theatre without the polarized glasses?
The Nightmare Before Christmas was very well done in my opinion. I seem to recall that every scene was noticably 3D and the only one that stood out with objects close to the viewer was near the begining with falling snow flakes.
While you are right that he was at some point a volunteer, and I think I remember even hearing about how he might have recently opted to stay in. Getting out of the US military is not as simple as walking away from a job. That is if you don't want to spend time in prison and or have a felony convistion on your record for the rest of your life. I finished my enlistment a while back and getting out processed was a huge deal, I had to hand carry records all over the place. If I screwed up something in that process seriously enough I could still end up being held responsible financially at the least for the militaries blatant waste of resources.
That guy was/is obviously completely off his rockers but I've never seen anyone get out of the military easily.
I think I get 13 days worth of PTO to use as I please, that's in addition to my 10 federal holidays and 1 floating holiday. It's certainly not great or even good. What makes up for it at least partly in my opinion is that they let us work a comressed work schedule.
In a two week period I work eight nine hour days and one eight hour day, I get four weekend days off and one regularly scheduled day off. When a holiday falls on my regular day off those hours just shift to the next work day. I have it worked out such that every other weekend for me is a three day weekend. So I can schedule most appointments and such that would normally require use of my PTO on that extra day off. And having so many long weekends enables me to spend PTO more wisely and still get largish chunks of time off.
Granted my setup isn't as good as is available in other parts of the world but for this area it's pretty good.
Shoot I don't know if the contracting company I work for has ever given out bonuses. I know that last year our annual cost of living raise was a joke. In fact we were told we were lucky to get one at all. The only reason we did is because our division is government contracts. When congress passes the annual pay increase for the DoD the DoD then passes on some of that by automatically increasing the contract with the company I work for by that same percentage. This last year it was 2.9%, it's public record, so when they finally told us half way through the year that our raises were less than half of that it's a might bit insulting. So in the end I got a raise of less than a single percent in reality for that year. When I know for a fact they received 2.9% more for the contract for the entire year, not just the half of the year that I did.
I understand that there is overhead for an employer involved in having each employee. The ratio can vary widely from 40% of an individuals salary to over 100% in some cases. But some of the factors that contribute largely to that don't apply to my employer. For instance I work at a government facility using government equipment. All my employer really has to do is handle my payroll, time keeping, and health benefits. I know what the contract slot I fill costs the government every year and I know that I get less than 40% of it. And they can't afford to give us raises comensurate with what they received for the contract? Not to mention they don't bother sponsoring any kind of holiday parties or anything.
Reminds me of something my brother in-law told me. He used to work with dolphins at an amusement park and now works in the Coast Guard. Anways he said that for every incident you hear of where a dolphin "saved" someone's life by pushing them to the surface and to shore when they were drowning, there is probably a person drowned by a dolphin. They aren't trying to save anyone, they are just looking for entertainment and poking and proding a struggling swimmer fits the bill.
I was going to say much the same. I played up until about '97 or '98 I think. Anyways I was always the poor kid and so built all my decks from the cheap common cards everyone had ten copies of. In particular I remember my almost pure direct damage deck, small creature decks for both white and green, and my prodigal sorcerer/spell counters deck being very strong.
I still listen to FM radio, but pretty much only because I prefer it to silence for my time in the car. I drive a 1990 Toyota. I'm not sure if it's tape deck works but I don't own any tapes to try it with. I used to use an FM tuner with my iPod but the iPod got stolen a few years back and I haven't bothered to replace it. Most of my driving is to work and back which amounts to twenty minutes a day. So listening to the radio for a little bit isn't bad and so far hasn't warranted me swapping out the stereo for a better one I have sitting in my room.
I haven't bothered to get a smart phone either because I'm so rarely far enough away from a desktop computer that it'd be worth the price. In fact I find carrying the cell phone I do have so annoying that I avoid taking it with me whenever I can.
The thing is that clearly you have a valid need for a good smart phone. I would argue that the vast majority of people that buy these things though don't have any need for them. Not that there is anything wrong with buying a status symbol. I just think it's funny that so many people will spend so much on something they get so little real use out of.
I'm not far from my twenties, turned 31 this year. I've been interested in Smart Phones and such since I saw my first PalmPilot in 1998. The trouble always was that the price was too high for a gadget I'd have to make up uses for. I've never been in a work or home environment where owning one of these devices was worth it. I've always had better more cost effective options available.
So far as phones go I think I probably average under 17 minutes a month on my personal cell phone. In fact I can't even bring it into the building I work in, so my wife carries and uses it.
Getting a real ID for a deceased person might not even be all that hard. I remember when I went in to get a driver's license all they wanted was stuff I could obtain without verifying my identity independantly. The process could follow along these lines:
1. Find the name of a person that died very young and born about the same time as you.
2. Send a letter to the county health office of that person's birth requesting a copy of that person's birth certificate, as if you were that person. They don't bother to track if any of those people are now deceased and even if they do I don't think it'd be marked on the certificate, and you could claim to be a family member doing geaneology stuff or something.
3. Send a letter to Social Security requesting a number for your new identity. This could be tricky and is why you want the name of a deceased person who died very young. If they were never issued a SSN then it won't be listed as belonging to a deceased person.
4. Take your birth certificate and SSN card and get your state issued perfectly legit ID card.
The older you are the more difficult this can be since requesting a SSN for a middle aged person might raise some eyebrows. And the lack of a credit history or much of anything relating to that name could pose an issue for any kind of serious backgroud check.
The correct method is to just cut the pizza however you want. Then offer the other person the opportunity to pick their slice(s) first. While they are distracted selecting their slice(s), club them like a baby seal. Then you may eat all of the slices and possibly make a profit after searching their pockets.
The pizza joint my family frequented when I was a child always cut the pizza into strips. One cut bisecting the pizza evenly, and then a series of cuts perpendicular to the first to make a bunch of strips. It worked well with their thin crispy crust pizza's, though I have never seen another place do it like that.
I can't say that I recall ever having "The Talk" myself with my parents. I remember my mother explaining to me at some point, once I already understood sex, that I should let her know if anyone ever sexually abused me. She didn't say "sexually abuse" but she gave me a few verbal examples of what she was worried about. I think we had a half day class in the fifth grade that covered sex and how puberty was expected to play a roll in our growth. And then again in the 8th and 10th grades it was covered again and in greater detail and length(no puns intended).
Because of my religous beliefs I've only ever had sexual relations with my wife. But I don't let that color my view of the world. Sex is not and never really has been a black and white issue and neither is violence. Maybe at some times in some cultures it's been presented that way but in practice I doubt it's ever been the case.
Even some of those games weren't completely original.
The King's Quest games started before the release of Zelda and are more of a true adventure game. Zelda is a good combination of Adventure and Platformer.
As someone else said Dune 2 was what C&C was based on, and I'm pretty sure I've read before that Dune 2 wasn't actually the first in the RTS either.
I remember playing a number of turn based strategy games before Civilization was released. Empire Deluxe was the first version I played but it was originally created in 1977.
There were graphical RPG's around in 1975. Rogue was out in 1980, Final Fantasy didn't come along until 1987.
But yeah, there isn't very much really original stuff, at least not in the form of whole genre's. The inovation is almost always along the lines of improving an existing implementation, combining features to produce something new, and very rarely coming up with some wholly new minor feature.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether or not you are buying a license to listen to music or not is variously debateable depending on how you procured it. For instance if you go to any music store and purchase a CD album no where does it state that you are agree'ing to a license.
Copyright is necessary in some ways to advance our culture and society, but the current state of copyright law is completely out of line with it's orignal intent.
When I was a kid I remember spending the night at a friends house with a bunch of my buddies. We were in the middle of a discussion about funny things we were told we had said in our sleep. When during a brief pause in the convesation one of my friends, that hadn't said anything in a bit, blurted out "You can't put a dog in the fridge!" Everyone hesitated for a moment before some of us who had a dog replied that we were confident we could make it happen. After a bit of talking about it and whether or not we should attempt to prove it. We discovered that our blurting friend was sound asleep the whole time. 15 years later and he still hasn't lived that one down.
That reminds me of when I paid for dinner for 12 people down in mexico a few years ago. The total was $66 and it's not like we were cheaping out. I had a whole lobster, a bunch of sides and an appetizer myself.
Exactly! There are a very small number of people who I would want to have all of my contact information. There is a number of people orders of magnitude larger than the first who I want to have some of my contact information, but definitely not all.
That's not entirely true. Their customers whom they provide a service to is the site owners, not the users viewing those sites. They don't have any obligation to us as users. I would view their even working on a global opt-out as being very charitable. It's moot in my opinion anyways because anyone that doesn't want their computer zombified should already be using a browser configured such that tynt can't track it via this javascript.
It's already been addressed elsewhere but China doesn't have that large of a hold over our national debt. Their stake is something like 7%. Which is much less than a trillion dollars and we just printed off more than 2 trillion in the last year or so. If China just decided to call in our debt by dumping it on the market we could just print however many extra dollars that represented to buy it back with. This would of course cause some inflation but it'd be less than the last two stimulus packages caused.
Ninja Claptrap could make for an excellent sequel. I haven't had the Destroyer die that fast, he's not hard to kill just time consuming. That's playing as a Berserker Brick and a Gunslinger Mordecai, but yeah the end fight was disappointing.
I finished the Zombie DLC the other day and now I can't even remember if it had a cutscene at all. Now that I think about it hard enough the cut scene at the end was funny but not memorable, I can remember bits of it but nothing major. The beginning cutscene though was really good and I liked how some of the quests were different from what was in the main game. Dr. Ned's Claptrap had some great audio and the Jakob's Claptrap interaction with it was hilarious. My single biggest gripe about that DLC was that there is only one New-U station in the whole damned place, limiting fast travel.
I don't understand "e) I try not to cook to have any leftovers"
Is this from the standpoint that if you can't refrigerate the leftovers then they will be wasted as spoilage or something? Personally I always try and cook or bake enough for several meals of leftovers. This way I can spend less time cooking. Which is more economical of my time and possibly also a better use of resources, such as electricity, gas and food if you get it cheaper in bulk.
I agree that the technology needs to represent a large step forward, but I'd also add that it has to be affordable for what it offers, as percieved by the market. And of course that means it's entirely dependant on opinion. As evidenced by you saying that HDTV is a significant advance over standard definition. In my opinion HDTV isn't worth paying extra for over standard definition, unless it's a very minor price difference, say 5% or less. I mean yes I can see the difference and it looks better but I honestly don't care enough to pay a premium for it, I'll certainly not pay a premium on a subscription basis for it.
I think that 3D will continue to be a niche product until they have a much better way of recording it. For animated movies it's easy to make the entire picture in focus, so that anywhere the viewer looks things are sharp and not headache inducing. Currently for live action movies the camera's have to focus on something and so in 3D you can't see things clearly unless it's the focus of attention. And while the director might like that since he can more readily direct the viewers attention where he wants it annoys a lot of people because they are looking around in a scene not just at the principle actors.
I think Holographic displays are really the holy grail of 3d displays. But they will have a tremendous impact on the way movies are filmed not just watched. Every set would have to be built to work in 360 degree 3d, well at least hopefully.
Maybe it's because I've worn glasses my whole life but wearing the polarized glasses they hand out at the theatre has never bothered me all that much. I've had a fwe pairs that were poorly constructed and had burrs from the molding but that's about it. I'd far rather wear glasses like that then shell out thousands of dollars more.
And I don't get how the double layer tv's are supposed to work, won't both of my eyes see the same pictures and so it'll all just be blurry like watching a current 3d movie at the theatre without the polarized glasses?
You beat me to it!
The Nightmare Before Christmas was very well done in my opinion. I seem to recall that every scene was noticably 3D and the only one that stood out with objects close to the viewer was near the begining with falling snow flakes.
The zombies are already there on Sall Street and at the UN building, why ship more of them in on a big boat when there is such a ready supply?
While you are right that he was at some point a volunteer, and I think I remember even hearing about how he might have recently opted to stay in. Getting out of the US military is not as simple as walking away from a job. That is if you don't want to spend time in prison and or have a felony convistion on your record for the rest of your life. I finished my enlistment a while back and getting out processed was a huge deal, I had to hand carry records all over the place. If I screwed up something in that process seriously enough I could still end up being held responsible financially at the least for the militaries blatant waste of resources.
That guy was/is obviously completely off his rockers but I've never seen anyone get out of the military easily.
I think I get 13 days worth of PTO to use as I please, that's in addition to my 10 federal holidays and 1 floating holiday. It's certainly not great or even good. What makes up for it at least partly in my opinion is that they let us work a comressed work schedule.
In a two week period I work eight nine hour days and one eight hour day, I get four weekend days off and one regularly scheduled day off. When a holiday falls on my regular day off those hours just shift to the next work day. I have it worked out such that every other weekend for me is a three day weekend. So I can schedule most appointments and such that would normally require use of my PTO on that extra day off. And having so many long weekends enables me to spend PTO more wisely and still get largish chunks of time off.
Granted my setup isn't as good as is available in other parts of the world but for this area it's pretty good.
Shoot I don't know if the contracting company I work for has ever given out bonuses. I know that last year our annual cost of living raise was a joke. In fact we were told we were lucky to get one at all. The only reason we did is because our division is government contracts. When congress passes the annual pay increase for the DoD the DoD then passes on some of that by automatically increasing the contract with the company I work for by that same percentage. This last year it was 2.9%, it's public record, so when they finally told us half way through the year that our raises were less than half of that it's a might bit insulting. So in the end I got a raise of less than a single percent in reality for that year. When I know for a fact they received 2.9% more for the contract for the entire year, not just the half of the year that I did.
I understand that there is overhead for an employer involved in having each employee. The ratio can vary widely from 40% of an individuals salary to over 100% in some cases. But some of the factors that contribute largely to that don't apply to my employer. For instance I work at a government facility using government equipment. All my employer really has to do is handle my payroll, time keeping, and health benefits. I know what the contract slot I fill costs the government every year and I know that I get less than 40% of it. And they can't afford to give us raises comensurate with what they received for the contract? Not to mention they don't bother sponsoring any kind of holiday parties or anything.
Great quote there!
Reminds me of something my brother in-law told me. He used to work with dolphins at an amusement park and now works in the Coast Guard. Anways he said that for every incident you hear of where a dolphin "saved" someone's life by pushing them to the surface and to shore when they were drowning, there is probably a person drowned by a dolphin. They aren't trying to save anyone, they are just looking for entertainment and poking and proding a struggling swimmer fits the bill.
I was going to say much the same. I played up until about '97 or '98 I think. Anyways I was always the poor kid and so built all my decks from the cheap common cards everyone had ten copies of. In particular I remember my almost pure direct damage deck, small creature decks for both white and green, and my prodigal sorcerer/spell counters deck being very strong.
I still listen to FM radio, but pretty much only because I prefer it to silence for my time in the car. I drive a 1990 Toyota. I'm not sure if it's tape deck works but I don't own any tapes to try it with. I used to use an FM tuner with my iPod but the iPod got stolen a few years back and I haven't bothered to replace it. Most of my driving is to work and back which amounts to twenty minutes a day. So listening to the radio for a little bit isn't bad and so far hasn't warranted me swapping out the stereo for a better one I have sitting in my room.
I haven't bothered to get a smart phone either because I'm so rarely far enough away from a desktop computer that it'd be worth the price. In fact I find carrying the cell phone I do have so annoying that I avoid taking it with me whenever I can.
Oh yeah and I'm only 31.
The thing is that clearly you have a valid need for a good smart phone. I would argue that the vast majority of people that buy these things though don't have any need for them. Not that there is anything wrong with buying a status symbol. I just think it's funny that so many people will spend so much on something they get so little real use out of.
I'm not far from my twenties, turned 31 this year. I've been interested in Smart Phones and such since I saw my first PalmPilot in 1998. The trouble always was that the price was too high for a gadget I'd have to make up uses for. I've never been in a work or home environment where owning one of these devices was worth it. I've always had better more cost effective options available.
So far as phones go I think I probably average under 17 minutes a month on my personal cell phone. In fact I can't even bring it into the building I work in, so my wife carries and uses it.
Getting a real ID for a deceased person might not even be all that hard. I remember when I went in to get a driver's license all they wanted was stuff I could obtain without verifying my identity independantly. The process could follow along these lines:
1. Find the name of a person that died very young and born about the same time as you.
2. Send a letter to the county health office of that person's birth requesting a copy of that person's birth certificate, as if you were that person. They don't bother to track if any of those people are now deceased and even if they do I don't think it'd be marked on the certificate, and you could claim to be a family member doing geaneology stuff or something.
3. Send a letter to Social Security requesting a number for your new identity. This could be tricky and is why you want the name of a deceased person who died very young. If they were never issued a SSN then it won't be listed as belonging to a deceased person.
4. Take your birth certificate and SSN card and get your state issued perfectly legit ID card.
The older you are the more difficult this can be since requesting a SSN for a middle aged person might raise some eyebrows. And the lack of a credit history or much of anything relating to that name could pose an issue for any kind of serious backgroud check.
What's wrong with all you people!?!?
The correct method is to just cut the pizza however you want. Then offer the other person the opportunity to pick their slice(s) first. While they are distracted selecting their slice(s), club them like a baby seal. Then you may eat all of the slices and possibly make a profit after searching their pockets.
The pizza joint my family frequented when I was a child always cut the pizza into strips. One cut bisecting the pizza evenly, and then a series of cuts perpendicular to the first to make a bunch of strips. It worked well with their thin crispy crust pizza's, though I have never seen another place do it like that.
I can't say that I recall ever having "The Talk" myself with my parents. I remember my mother explaining to me at some point, once I already understood sex, that I should let her know if anyone ever sexually abused me. She didn't say "sexually abuse" but she gave me a few verbal examples of what she was worried about. I think we had a half day class in the fifth grade that covered sex and how puberty was expected to play a roll in our growth. And then again in the 8th and 10th grades it was covered again and in greater detail and length(no puns intended).
Because of my religous beliefs I've only ever had sexual relations with my wife. But I don't let that color my view of the world. Sex is not and never really has been a black and white issue and neither is violence. Maybe at some times in some cultures it's been presented that way but in practice I doubt it's ever been the case.
Even some of those games weren't completely original.
The King's Quest games started before the release of Zelda and are more of a true adventure game. Zelda is a good combination of Adventure and Platformer.
As someone else said Dune 2 was what C&C was based on, and I'm pretty sure I've read before that Dune 2 wasn't actually the first in the RTS either.
I remember playing a number of turn based strategy games before Civilization was released. Empire Deluxe was the first version I played but it was originally created in 1977.
There were graphical RPG's around in 1975. Rogue was out in 1980, Final Fantasy didn't come along until 1987.
But yeah, there isn't very much really original stuff, at least not in the form of whole genre's. The inovation is almost always along the lines of improving an existing implementation, combining features to produce something new, and very rarely coming up with some wholly new minor feature.