Pit it against 20Q. Come up with a random thing, and have 20Q ask questions while WA gives answers, and see if the two together can figure out what I was thinking of. My guess is that the questions will be too bizarre for WA to handle ("is electricity an animal, vegetable, or mineral?"), but it should be interesting.
Because what you are saying is pretty much the same argument used against violent video games and the absolute best anyone has been able to do with that is to show a minor increase in aggressive behaviour by very young children, that subsists pretty quickly, immediately following game playing.
You misunderstand. Child porn doesn't make people want to go out and rape children, the way certain people claim video games make gamers violent.
Rather, the already existing demand for child pornography leads to people raping children so that they can cash in on that demand. By outlawing it, the demand is greatly reduced. This makes it less profitable to rape children, so much so that so that it is (ideally) not worth the risk to the would-be pornographer.
It is nothing at all like the bullshit about video games making people into killers.
The results of that should be interesting, given that the president has already stated that anyone who even suggests he's guilty is themselves guilty of sedition.
It is inherently harmful, in that it creates a market demand for children to be raped.
To respond to your line drawing fallacy: * Videos of actual rape should be treated the same, because they create a market for rape. However, since it's much easier and safer for pornographers to pay a woman to pretend she's being raped, this is a non-issue. * Evidence of the other crimes you listed do not create a market for the crime. No one is going to say "Gee, I'll steal millions of dollars so that I can sell the evidence online for hundreds!"
Re:Microsoft's Ripoff Of Sony's Skill Points
on
The Best Achievements
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· Score: 5, Insightful
No, you're the one who doesn't grasp the concept.
The idea is to have EVERY game have tons of little achievements. People find them, accidentally, and then find themselves wanting to complete the set. It keeps them playing past the point where they might have otherwise stopped.
Having more people playing your games improves your mind share, and attracts more developers. And it costs MS not one cent. They are giving away absolutely nothing, but because it's a limited amount of nothing, and you need to work to get that nothing, people eat it up.
It's been a tremendous success, to the point that other companies are now mimicking it. Sony Skill Points? Who's ever heard of those?
And I hate to even point this out but look at the submitters username. If you just got to/. since the mac ads came out you might want to sit back and listen for a few. Years. I know I did.
Those ads started a few years ago. How much longer must he wait before he is worthy to speak in your presence, oh 6-digited one?
Just a minor point, but while many journals are published by the IEEE, the Spectrum is just a magazine (not a professional journal) published by the same organization. It is primarily for entertainment, albeit of an educational and informative sort.
No informed adult believes that Republicans and Democrats are the same. The two parties agree on certain issues, which is unfortunate for those who hold a different view on those particular issues. But that does not mean that the parties are the same.
Gay marriage? They differ. Abortion? They differ. Gun control? They differ. Tax rates on the wealthy? They differ. Amount of regulation for the markets? They differ. Torture of key terrorists? They differ. Most foreign policy matters? They differ. Stem cell research? They differ. Universal health care? They differ. Immigration reform? They differ.
Only someone completely ignorant of US politics would try to claim that they're the same.
The college I went to had us do some exams on our personal laptops. They'd give you a CD to boot from, which put you into a separate OS with no way of accessing the contents of your harddrive or USB drives. You'd then connect to a server to get your particular test. I never heard of anyone finding a way to cheat - excluding the methods that work on pencil & paper tests, of course.
I once tried stealing one of the disks and booting up from a lounge back in my dorm, with text books and a calculator at hand, but they were smart enough to block connections to the test server from outside the testing rooms.
The system can definitely work, when properly implemented.
Because us grown-ups realize that this stuff isn't gonna get made for free. Thousands of actual people feed their with this money. Pretending it's alright to take the fruits of their labor and give them nothing in return is simply criminal.
Why not? If the price was right, I'd pay. For example, if I could pay $0.50 to get unlimited and permanent watching rights to a TV show episode, or $1 for a movie, I'd certainly consider that. I already pay $10/mo for Netflix, so if they can offer similarly good content, I'd be willing to spend a similar amount of money.
Note that they're talking about "premium content". You're never going to be charged to watch a prairie dog turn around to dramatic sounding music.
What does that have to do with anything? The whole reason for people wanting to change the name is to convince the populace that it's safe to buy and eat pork.
Too late for that. Everyone knows it as swine flu... having the media call it something else won't change a thing.
The real thing that the media needs to be putting straight is just how little of a threat this flu is. It hasn't been any more lethal than seasonal flu, nor is it really spreading as fast as was originally believed.
The media is causing a panic simply for ratings, which is quite despicable when you think about it.
I read the original post as "There are words for that sort of behaviour, [with that list of words] starting with "malware" and in many places ending in "illegal"." Makes perfect sense to me.
Just think how much [Apple] could power reduce and cost reduce if they dictated the chip-specs!
(I am an electronics engineer, and make chips that Apple buys for many of their products)
They already do, to an extent.
Chip design companies are constantly battling it out to get design wins at big companies like Apple. If Apple tells them, "Hey, we want this chip to do X and Y while consuming Z mA," then those companies are going to try their best to meet those requirements so that they can get Apple as a customer.
Your assertion that chips are being overcomplicated for the purpose of driving up cost is incorrect. Semiconductor companies are constantly trying to simplify their chips' designs, in order to improve yield and reduce costs, while charging the same price to their customers. It's much, much easier to improve margin than it is to convince your customers to pay more.
I doubt that Apple will be able to substantially improve cost or power consumption. While they do have some experience in chip design, it's highly unlikely that they'll be able to go in and do a better job than all of the companies that do nothing else.
See, this would be good, except that say I start a virtual business that somehow generates millions in real income, having to pay taxes on this would be insane
Why? All companies pay taxes. You're not making a virtual business - you're making a real business that just so happens to deal in virtual goods. You should (and will) pay taxes like any other company. In fact, it would probably be in your best interest to incorporate, just like any other company.
A company is a company. You are selling a good or service in exchange for money. The fact that the good or service exists as data in a computer shouldn't matter.
This one works while your computer is in a sleep state. The KillerNIC does not. Sure, it could in theory, but the software to do so doesn't come with it, and no third party ever developed such an app.
So while hardware offloading network activity is nothign new, software to run downloads while the computer is asleep is quite new, and quite nice.
At a reasonable price, I'd consider getting one myself, just to save on power costs.
If you limit patents to five years, expect technology-based industries to resort to trade secrets, or grind to a complete halt.
No pharma company is going to spend billions of dollars developing a cure for AIDS just to get five years of profits.
No electronic design company is going to release their IP blocks for other companies to use, if those other companies won't need to pay after just a few years.
Patents are essential. They need to be harder to get, but when you get one, you do deserve protection for a reasonable amount of time.
No, you don't [have the option of using the classic style Control Panel], or if there is, it's not easily user discoverable.
Windows lists down. When I get a list view on Win7, I get 3 columns, which would be okay, I suppose, but it tracks across rows, which is an incredibly dumb way to organize that list.
It doesn't always use three columns -- it uses as many as it can fit. If you narrow the window so that only one column can fit, you get an alphabetical list.
It's really pathetic that the Control Panel, which has worked fine in every other version of Windows, now requires a work-around to navigate.
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Pit it against 20Q. Come up with a random thing, and have 20Q ask questions while WA gives answers, and see if the two together can figure out what I was thinking of. My guess is that the questions will be too bizarre for WA to handle ("is electricity an animal, vegetable, or mineral?"), but it should be interesting.
Because what you are saying is pretty much the same argument used against violent video games and the absolute best anyone has been able to do with that is to show a minor increase in aggressive behaviour by very young children, that subsists pretty quickly, immediately following game playing.
You misunderstand. Child porn doesn't make people want to go out and rape children, the way certain people claim video games make gamers violent.
Rather, the already existing demand for child pornography leads to people raping children so that they can cash in on that demand. By outlawing it, the demand is greatly reduced. This makes it less profitable to rape children, so much so that so that it is (ideally) not worth the risk to the would-be pornographer.
It is nothing at all like the bullshit about video games making people into killers.
The results of that should be interesting, given that the president has already stated that anyone who even suggests he's guilty is themselves guilty of sedition.
It is inherently harmful, in that it creates a market demand for children to be raped.
To respond to your line drawing fallacy:
* Videos of actual rape should be treated the same, because they create a market for rape. However, since it's much easier and safer for pornographers to pay a woman to pretend she's being raped, this is a non-issue.
* Evidence of the other crimes you listed do not create a market for the crime. No one is going to say "Gee, I'll steal millions of dollars so that I can sell the evidence online for hundreds!"
No, you're the one who doesn't grasp the concept.
The idea is to have EVERY game have tons of little achievements. People find them, accidentally, and then find themselves wanting to complete the set. It keeps them playing past the point where they might have otherwise stopped.
Having more people playing your games improves your mind share, and attracts more developers. And it costs MS not one cent. They are giving away absolutely nothing, but because it's a limited amount of nothing, and you need to work to get that nothing, people eat it up.
It's been a tremendous success, to the point that other companies are now mimicking it. Sony Skill Points? Who's ever heard of those?
And I hate to even point this out but look at the submitters username. If you just got to /. since the mac ads came out you might want to sit back and listen for a few. Years. I know I did.
Those ads started a few years ago. How much longer must he wait before he is worthy to speak in your presence, oh 6-digited one?
I don't think you understand how laws work. Using the word "hereby" doesn't actually make something a law.
For that, you need to donate to a few congressmen.
Just a minor point, but while many journals are published by the IEEE, the Spectrum is just a magazine (not a professional journal) published by the same organization. It is primarily for entertainment, albeit of an educational and informative sort.
Words change in meaning. Get used to it, because it's not gonna stop in our lifetimes.
$1200 a student? That's not that much. Apparently someone hasn't looked at the cost of textbooks lately.
(It's still a waste though)
No informed adult believes that Republicans and Democrats are the same. The two parties agree on certain issues, which is unfortunate for those who hold a different view on those particular issues. But that does not mean that the parties are the same.
Gay marriage? They differ.
Abortion? They differ.
Gun control? They differ.
Tax rates on the wealthy? They differ.
Amount of regulation for the markets? They differ.
Torture of key terrorists? They differ.
Most foreign policy matters? They differ.
Stem cell research? They differ.
Universal health care? They differ.
Immigration reform? They differ.
Only someone completely ignorant of US politics would try to claim that they're the same.
The college I went to had us do some exams on our personal laptops. They'd give you a CD to boot from, which put you into a separate OS with no way of accessing the contents of your harddrive or USB drives. You'd then connect to a server to get your particular test. I never heard of anyone finding a way to cheat - excluding the methods that work on pencil & paper tests, of course.
I once tried stealing one of the disks and booting up from a lounge back in my dorm, with text books and a calculator at hand, but they were smart enough to block connections to the test server from outside the testing rooms.
The system can definitely work, when properly implemented.
Because us grown-ups realize that this stuff isn't gonna get made for free. Thousands of actual people feed their with this money. Pretending it's alright to take the fruits of their labor and give them nothing in return is simply criminal.
Why not? If the price was right, I'd pay. For example, if I could pay $0.50 to get unlimited and permanent watching rights to a TV show episode, or $1 for a movie, I'd certainly consider that. I already pay $10/mo for Netflix, so if they can offer similarly good content, I'd be willing to spend a similar amount of money.
Note that they're talking about "premium content". You're never going to be charged to watch a prairie dog turn around to dramatic sounding music.
What does that have to do with anything? The whole reason for people wanting to change the name is to convince the populace that it's safe to buy and eat pork.
Too late for that. Everyone knows it as swine flu... having the media call it something else won't change a thing.
The real thing that the media needs to be putting straight is just how little of a threat this flu is. It hasn't been any more lethal than seasonal flu, nor is it really spreading as fast as was originally believed.
The media is causing a panic simply for ratings, which is quite despicable when you think about it.
I read the original post as "There are words for that sort of behaviour, [with that list of words] starting with "malware" and in many places ending in "illegal"." Makes perfect sense to me.
Just think how much [Apple] could power reduce and cost reduce if they dictated the chip-specs!
(I am an electronics engineer, and make chips that Apple buys for many of their products)
They already do, to an extent.
Chip design companies are constantly battling it out to get design wins at big companies like Apple. If Apple tells them, "Hey, we want this chip to do X and Y while consuming Z mA," then those companies are going to try their best to meet those requirements so that they can get Apple as a customer.
Your assertion that chips are being overcomplicated for the purpose of driving up cost is incorrect. Semiconductor companies are constantly trying to simplify their chips' designs, in order to improve yield and reduce costs, while charging the same price to their customers. It's much, much easier to improve margin than it is to convince your customers to pay more.
I doubt that Apple will be able to substantially improve cost or power consumption. While they do have some experience in chip design, it's highly unlikely that they'll be able to go in and do a better job than all of the companies that do nothing else.
See, this would be good, except that say I start a virtual business that somehow generates millions in real income, having to pay taxes on this would be insane
Why? All companies pay taxes. You're not making a virtual business - you're making a real business that just so happens to deal in virtual goods. You should (and will) pay taxes like any other company. In fact, it would probably be in your best interest to incorporate, just like any other company.
A company is a company. You are selling a good or service in exchange for money. The fact that the good or service exists as data in a computer shouldn't matter.
This one works while your computer is in a sleep state. The KillerNIC does not. Sure, it could in theory, but the software to do so doesn't come with it, and no third party ever developed such an app.
So while hardware offloading network activity is nothign new, software to run downloads while the computer is asleep is quite new, and quite nice.
At a reasonable price, I'd consider getting one myself, just to save on power costs.
Yet you knew immediately what the phrase meant. Gee, it's almost like it got its point across with perfect clarity.
If you limit patents to five years, expect technology-based industries to resort to trade secrets, or grind to a complete halt.
No pharma company is going to spend billions of dollars developing a cure for AIDS just to get five years of profits.
No electronic design company is going to release their IP blocks for other companies to use, if those other companies won't need to pay after just a few years.
Patents are essential. They need to be harder to get, but when you get one, you do deserve protection for a reasonable amount of time.
You're thinking of patents. No one has ever died because the drug they needed was copy-righted.
No, you don't [have the option of using the classic style Control Panel], or if there is, it's not easily user discoverable.
Windows lists down. When I get a list view on Win7, I get 3 columns, which would be okay, I suppose, but it tracks across rows, which is an incredibly dumb way to organize that list.
It doesn't always use three columns -- it uses as many as it can fit. If you narrow the window so that only one column can fit, you get an alphabetical list.
It's really pathetic that the Control Panel, which has worked fine in every other version of Windows, now requires a work-around to navigate.
Mistakes happen. If the woman in this story had been in that database, she'd be in prison for a crime she didn't commit.