Absolutely right. Additionally, the traffic data from Hulu is more accurate than any of the Nielsen data they could collect. If a show is being played on Hulu, you're most likely watching it.
Nielsen relies on two different data collection methods - user logs and set meters (a recording device on your television).
The main problem with the user input is the accuracy of the logs. You may not be able to remember everything you watched last week, or to even fill in the log every time you're watching TV. It would also require honesty on the part of the viewers - did you really watch the real housewives of orange county last week, fashion TV or that 3 am male enhancement infomercial? Of course not.
The other method (of directly recording the channels & times the TV are on) isn't accurate either, since it doesn't account for time people aren't actually watching the TV - like leaving the room and forgetting to turn it off, or falling asleep in front of it. What if you're flipping between two shows? Does that count as a "view"?
If you're watching a show on hulu, then you've made an effort to find that specific show. That data is much more valuable to advertisers
I thought those results seem a bit skewed, so I thought I'd do a search on "why is google evil", on
bing and on
google.
If you look at those results, the google results actually have more page links related to google being evil (all on first page, exception of one like to a google corporate policy. The same search on bing only returned half of the pages actually linking google to evil (#3,4,5 are links specifying that google isn't evil). Clearly bing has a pro google bias, and google has some sort of grudge against google!
I'm not defending microsoft here, and I don't understand their search strategy, but maybe their search results deliberately return some opposites or counterpoints to the question asked / standpoint. Personally, I would rather have a search engine show a couple of counterpoints on searches like "Democrats are destroying America", "Republicans are destroying America", "Why religion is right", "Why religion is wrong" etc... Maybe it'll help people see multiple viewpoints and be a little more objective.
I do not know exactly how oink works (worked?), but from the quote
All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.
Wouldn't that make exactly the same defence valid for Pirate Bay and other torrent sites?
If Oink was still up and running, I'm guessing they may have had a similar outcome to mininova, where they wouldn't be found guilty of copyright infringement on the basis that they didn't upload any songs themselves, but would have to remove the copyrighted material. Even if that was the trial, wasn't he charged with fraud, and not file distribution / copyright infringement? That becomes a question of whether the people donating were scammed (perhaps into thinking their donations go towards artists).
It's not really fair to compare this with TPB either, which really was created for pirating. Before you mark this as troll, look at their posted legal threats and cheeky responses, the DJ Joel torrent, and the name "the pirate bay" (cmon, a body of water in Sweden? who are you kidding).
Also, from TFA, he is the first person to be charged in the UK, so the copyright / fraud laws may differ from those in Sweden or the Netherlands
Besides the lawyers of course.. If Intel really did "hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices", then shouldn't everyone be getting a settlement? I have a couple of Intel processors, and I'm still waiting from my cheque in the mail from the last time they got sued.
You're assuming there's a 100% chance you won't actually get the flu when you take a shot. The flu shot you take will only prevent you from getting that one particular strain, so you could very well get your flu shot and still catch a different strain.
Paralysis is just the tip of the iceberg of side effects - flu shots contain mercury and formaldehyde, may lead to alzheimers etc.. (google to find your own credible sources, there's plenty of anti-flu-shot sites with no valid links and perhaps other bogus claims) The chances of getting some of these side effects may be slim, but i'd prefer to risk getting the flu several times in my life, than significantly increase my chances of getting Alzheimer's or dementia later
I think I saw this happen in a documentary called "Live free or Die Hard". Someone send in Bruce Willis after this guy, before he disabled the entire grid!
Wrong. Maybe you just need a wife who is into porn as well. Having a healthy sex drive is not a fault.
I'd say more women these days are more tolerant of porn [find your own citation] compared with 30 or 40 years ago, and that they wouldn't have any problems watching porn with you. There's plenty of female-oriented porn out there for both of you to enjoy (or at least her).
However, I still don't want my fiancee to find my porn stash, or any of the links to the sites that are more specialized in a particular type of porn. Even if your wife is totally open-minded about you watching porn, chances are that if she watches all your porn she'll find something she finds disgusting that she'd never do in a million years. It doesn't even have to be kinky, if the girls on there are of a different ethnicity, she'll say "oh, so you like (brazillian, black, asian, white) girls, huh?" Or a trait found in almost all porn stars she may not have "Oh, you like bigger breasted women, huh?"
When my fiancee said, "lets see some porn" I found some variety sites and said, "ok, what do you want to see?" and we browsed, she laughed a little, got a little disgusted at some things, looked interested in some other things; overall it was a pretty painless experience. Finding some videos on the hard drive was another story, as it inevitably turned into the "oh, so you like these type of girls" type of scenario, with some lengthy consolation required ("Cmon baby, I only love you... it's better that I watch them on screen instead of actually sleeping with them... right?" etc etc..).
Your wife may be into porn, she just may not be into your type of porn.
For $15000 I have a program that will cure your kid's internet addiction. I give your kid $200 in cash and they get sent to Libya or Chad for 45 days (accommodations and utilities paid for). Kid has to decide whether to spend the money on food or internet. Spends it all on food? Hey, he hasn't used internet for 45 days, he's cured. Spent most of it on finding and paying for internet? Then he's probably lost some weight from being malnourished, and the painfully slow dial up has at least hindered his online activity. Spent it all on internet and died of starvation? Chances are you never had any time to talk with him anyway since he's plugged in all day, and you've done the world a favor by preventing his uber-dorkness from remaining in the gene pool. Assuming he would have actually gotten a chance to procreate some time in his life.
The bio page here mentions that Hilarie has a PhD as a licensed mental health counselor, and Cosette (the other partner) has a masters in social work (I'm assuming that's what the MSW stands for, no idea about the other acronyms on that page). There's a psychology student / intern there with a bachelor's degree as well, working on her PhD
However, I did get a chuckle out of the qualifications of the other two guys there - their titles are "Life Coach" and "Assistant Recreation Director". one blurb for example includes
Gary Simmons has been working with youth for the past 20+ years. His love and passion for the outdoors has made him an avid outdoorsman, craftsman, and natural leader
$15000 to do a bunch of outdoorsy stuff? I think I'd rather send my kids to summer camp and yoink their i-phone, or just take a vacation somewhere where internet access is limited / non-existent for a fraction of the cost.
The major differences in the sharing of digital media vs a cd / dvd copy is that only one person can listen or watch the cd / dvd being used. It's fine if you want to lend your friend a copy of your cd, because now you can't listen to that copy while he's got it. If you apply this to a torrent or file sharing program, you're essentially burning a cd and giving it to your friend, which is illegal for a good reason.
Another totally useless law that will do nothing to actually prevent actual predators from doing their dirty work. Even if the law actually enforces the local internet providers to block all social network sites from registered sex offender isps (article doesn't mention this), there's nothing to stop a predator from starting a myspace account as twilightfan7788434 at the local internet cafe, or using a neighbor's wireless connection to start chats with minors. However, it will life a lot harder for anyone charged with indecent exposure, or the other relatively minor sex offender charges that put them on the list.
Of course, I'm sure this will get the governor more votes from fretful parents, and any politicians that object to this bill will set themselves up for a great attack ad by their opponents in the next election.
The point is that even if we take for granted that there a fucktons of advanced alien civilizations around it just doesn't follow that we should be able to detect them.
You could come up with a number of reasons why aliens haven't contacted us yet - maybe some have existed and killed themselves off in a nuclear / biological holocaust. Maybe some reach a technological singularity or religious nirvana and become disinterested in exploration / other biological entities. Maybe some have sophisticated enough technology to remain undetected. But surely that can't apply to *every* advanced civilization. If there really were 10,000 or 100,000 advanced civilizations out there, it would be naive to assume that every single one of them can cloak from us, or just doesn't want to contact us.
The fact that the only intelligent race we know has a curious enough percentage of our population to want to seek (any openly contact) ET, and given that we've launched things into space before exterminating ourselves indicates that it's at least possible, if not likely that at least a few other intelligent life forms would have the same interest in technology.
Given the age of the galaxy, size, speed of light and other factors that aren't debatable, this gives me more reason to believe that there are very few or no intelligent aliens out there.
They're dutch based, and one of the top ranked torrent sites as well. How did TPB (based in another country) get a fine imposed on them before mininova? Shouldn't the dutch anti-pirate agencies look in their own back yard first?
I think you're confusing "people" with "everything" here, when it comes to emitting light. I recall doing some once at this outdoor music festival, then staring at the stars for somewhere between 15 seconds and 45 minutes and thinking how bright and beautiful they were. Then I realized I was in my tent.
Oh boy! Instead of just having fun playing a game I can now turn it into a music class! That sounds like loads of fun!
Have you tried rock band, or are you aware of it? Did you give the drums a shot and then think "oh shit, this is too much like playing drums here - dammit now I'm learning". Newsflash : Learning and having fun are not always mutually exclusive. Don't buy rock band, you'll hate it then.
Seriously, why do you people like you keep posting bullshit like this as if anyone, other than a few hardcore nerds, who plays this game actually thinks they are learning an instrument?
Did you actually read what I said here? It's USING A REAL GUITAR. How could you not learn anything by hitting some strings on the guitar plugged in to this "game" that actually correspond to generating the same notes on the guitar? Maybe you're not learning as much as you could playing a real guitar (you won't learn theory or chord identification for example, and it may not show how to position your fingers). But compare that to the current guitar hero - where you learn virtually nothing on how to play music (maybe timing, that's about it).
Maybe you're confusing this with dance dance revolution or something, where moving feet fast != dancing skills, or buttons on guitar hero != music skills. You actually learn some rhythm and how to keep a beat playing the rock band drums. Your voice might improve if you can tell when you're too sharp or too flat and you're singing along. However, the technology on the singing for rock band is still pretty weak, and you can easily cheat to get a better score, but we'll see improvements as time passes.
I've never met a guitar player that just stopped playing 'cause it was boring or they "just didn't feel like it anymore".
OTOH, I know about a half dozen people who have done exactly that.
That's a good point and I'll take that one back. I guess I was trying to compare the average length of time someone plays a particular video game with the amount of time they play an instrument. Most people lose interest in a video game after a few months (if there's no new content), but giving up an instrument entirely probably happens less. It just seems easier to quit a video game than an instrument, and I do both of those quite a bit, but that's just my opinion. By using a real guitar (or drums, or keyboard or whatever) you're kind of drifting away from playing just another video game.
Oh that's just great. Guitar hero brought us a generation of kids playing video games pretending to be musicians. Now we're creating a generation of kids pretending to be people pretending to be musicians?
Even if they keep adding more songs, it's pretty much the same thing over and over. I played it here and there at a friend's place and the repetitive button mashing gets old fast - there's no real sense of accomplishment.
Add a mod or controller that allows you to hook up a real guitar, and figure out some "skill / sound = more points" system. Something similar to the voice recognition for the microphone in rock band. Now you're actually learning a real instrument and feel some sense of accomplishment (and your parents / spouse won't be on your ass for wasting time 'playing video games'). Set up some gaming version of i-tunes where you can buy new songs and play them. I've never met a guitar player that just stopped playing 'cause it was boring or they "just didn't feel like it anymore". Factor in the continuous influx of songs by artists and now you've got a virtually infinite business model.
Tried translating that, and sort of got the gist of it using an online translator here, though a little hard to understand at http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
I won't translate the whole thing, but I noticed this tidbit :
"The people's net - game channel country news General publications administration concerned people in charge on 21st in the evening pay attention to "Evil spirit Beastly World" on the society examine and approve the related question to accept reporter to interview."
World of Warcraft somehow translates to "Evil Spirit Beastly World" here - maybe that doesn't sound like much in western culture, but I'll bet that a lot of Chinese find the thought of a world of evil spirits terrifying, and not something to risk tampering with or provoking. Basing this off "In Chinese thought, the world is populated by a vast number of spirits, both good and evil. Such spirits include nature demons (kuei-shen), evil spirits or devils (oni), and ghosts (kui)." a couple of links I found here and here. Could be one of the factors in the delay.
Re:Absurd? Are you taking the piss?
on
P.I.I. In the Sky
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· Score: 1
You could still link other information to a person however. In the Thomas / RIAA case, there was enough evidence to link her user name "tereastarr" to other accounts of hers, such as email. In this case, the IP address wasn't even necessary. You can't sue a computer, but with enough other evidence you can link a computer to a person, or an online account to a person. These filesharing cases aren't over just yet, but it certainly makes it a lot harder for them to have a case (i.e. unsecured wireless network)
Does this mean that illegal activity originating from an IP address tied to me cannot be used in court as evidence against me? (Like in the RIAA cases?)
Before any of the software pirates / MAFIAA haters start cheering, there's plenty of other evidence to personally identify a user. In the Jammie Thomas case for example, she used the same username that she always had, had a password protected PC and was the only one that had access etc... So I doubt this ruling will make a difference in this case
However, if the IP address is the ONLY piece of evidence linking a file sharer (or some more serious criminal activity i.e. child porn, identify theft, scam artist, spammer) then I'm sure this ruling will be referenced in future cases
Re:Postal addresses identify houses!I
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P.I.I. In the Sky
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· Score: 2, Funny
Im lost, doesnt slashdot normally ridicule rulings that tie a person to a crime based only on IP address? Doesnt this ruling toss that right out the window?
Or am I being silly in expecting people on slashdot to be logical and consistent in their beliefs? Im sorry if ive ruined your "bash judges" party.
When it comes to personal privacy, an IP address is definitely identifiable information and this is an outrage. When it comes to file sharing though, there's no way you can prove that the IP address actually belonged to a particular person.. it could be anyone using that computer, or unsafe wireless network!
On a similar note, is there any guarantee that the dogs will be better at sniffing for drugs just because they're clones? Perhaps the training they receive has much more to do with their ability to detect drugs than their genetic information. For the cost involved in cloning these dogs, you could probably train a lot more dogs that sniff almost as well as a few good sniffers
For fuck's sake, people, the credit card guys haven't actually bought a law concerning hereditary debt slavery yet, and this guy thinks that it is already on the books?
Maybe he read this article the other day. Basically the son gets sued for a medical bill because mom didn't pay it. Who would think such an arcane law still existed?
So far I've only heard of one case of this happening, and even here you could argue that his lifestyle was more of a motive for murder than the spam itself. One factor could be there aren't that many of them, most spam is generated by a handful of bot nets which don't require a whole lot of maintenance.
The other factor is that they're just too hard to identify. Or in other countries that make it too hard to track down and make worthwhile finding. Compare that with identify theft / scamming which does far more damage to an individual than spam - but you never hear about identity thieves getting murdered either.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely right. Additionally, the traffic data from Hulu is more accurate than any of the Nielsen data they could collect. If a show is being played on Hulu, you're most likely watching it.
Nielsen relies on two different data collection methods - user logs and set meters (a recording device on your television).
The main problem with the user input is the accuracy of the logs. You may not be able to remember everything you watched last week, or to even fill in the log every time you're watching TV. It would also require honesty on the part of the viewers - did you really watch the real housewives of orange county last week, fashion TV or that 3 am male enhancement infomercial? Of course not.
The other method (of directly recording the channels & times the TV are on) isn't accurate either, since it doesn't account for time people aren't actually watching the TV - like leaving the room and forgetting to turn it off, or falling asleep in front of it. What if you're flipping between two shows? Does that count as a "view"?
If you're watching a show on hulu, then you've made an effort to find that specific show. That data is much more valuable to advertisers
I thought those results seem a bit skewed, so I thought I'd do a search on "why is google evil", on bing and on google.
If you look at those results, the google results actually have more page links related to google being evil (all on first page, exception of one like to a google corporate policy. The same search on bing only returned half of the pages actually linking google to evil (#3,4,5 are links specifying that google isn't evil). Clearly bing has a pro google bias, and google has some sort of grudge against google!
I'm not defending microsoft here, and I don't understand their search strategy, but maybe their search results deliberately return some opposites or counterpoints to the question asked / standpoint. Personally, I would rather have a search engine show a couple of counterpoints on searches like "Democrats are destroying America", "Republicans are destroying America", "Why religion is right", "Why religion is wrong" etc... Maybe it'll help people see multiple viewpoints and be a little more objective.
I do not know exactly how oink works (worked?), but from the quote
All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.
Wouldn't that make exactly the same defence valid for Pirate Bay and other torrent sites?
If Oink was still up and running, I'm guessing they may have had a similar outcome to mininova, where they wouldn't be found guilty of copyright infringement on the basis that they didn't upload any songs themselves, but would have to remove the copyrighted material. Even if that was the trial, wasn't he charged with fraud, and not file distribution / copyright infringement? That becomes a question of whether the people donating were scammed (perhaps into thinking their donations go towards artists).
It's not really fair to compare this with TPB either, which really was created for pirating. Before you mark this as troll, look at their posted legal threats and cheeky responses, the DJ Joel torrent, and the name "the pirate bay" (cmon, a body of water in Sweden? who are you kidding).
Also, from TFA, he is the first person to be charged in the UK, so the copyright / fraud laws may differ from those in Sweden or the Netherlands
Also, some people will add anyone to their friends list simply to have more friends. More friends = more popular in social networking.
Besides the lawyers of course.. If Intel really did "hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices", then shouldn't everyone be getting a settlement? I have a couple of Intel processors, and I'm still waiting from my cheque in the mail from the last time they got sued.
You're assuming there's a 100% chance you won't actually get the flu when you take a shot. The flu shot you take will only prevent you from getting that one particular strain, so you could very well get your flu shot and still catch a different strain.
Paralysis is just the tip of the iceberg of side effects - flu shots contain mercury and formaldehyde, may lead to alzheimers etc.. (google to find your own credible sources, there's plenty of anti-flu-shot sites with no valid links and perhaps other bogus claims) The chances of getting some of these side effects may be slim, but i'd prefer to risk getting the flu several times in my life, than significantly increase my chances of getting Alzheimer's or dementia later
I think I saw this happen in a documentary called "Live free or Die Hard". Someone send in Bruce Willis after this guy, before he disabled the entire grid!
Wrong. Maybe you just need a wife who is into porn as well. Having a healthy sex drive is not a fault.
I'd say more women these days are more tolerant of porn [find your own citation] compared with 30 or 40 years ago, and that they wouldn't have any problems watching porn with you. There's plenty of female-oriented porn out there for both of you to enjoy (or at least her).
However, I still don't want my fiancee to find my porn stash, or any of the links to the sites that are more specialized in a particular type of porn. Even if your wife is totally open-minded about you watching porn, chances are that if she watches all your porn she'll find something she finds disgusting that she'd never do in a million years. It doesn't even have to be kinky, if the girls on there are of a different ethnicity, she'll say "oh, so you like (brazillian, black, asian, white) girls, huh?" Or a trait found in almost all porn stars she may not have "Oh, you like bigger breasted women, huh?"
When my fiancee said, "lets see some porn" I found some variety sites and said, "ok, what do you want to see?" and we browsed, she laughed a little, got a little disgusted at some things, looked interested in some other things; overall it was a pretty painless experience. Finding some videos on the hard drive was another story, as it inevitably turned into the "oh, so you like these type of girls" type of scenario, with some lengthy consolation required ("Cmon baby, I only love you... it's better that I watch them on screen instead of actually sleeping with them... right?" etc etc..).
Your wife may be into porn, she just may not be into your type of porn.
For $15000 I have a program that will cure your kid's internet addiction. I give your kid $200 in cash and they get sent to Libya or Chad for 45 days (accommodations and utilities paid for). Kid has to decide whether to spend the money on food or internet. Spends it all on food? Hey, he hasn't used internet for 45 days, he's cured. Spent most of it on finding and paying for internet? Then he's probably lost some weight from being malnourished, and the painfully slow dial up has at least hindered his online activity. Spent it all on internet and died of starvation? Chances are you never had any time to talk with him anyway since he's plugged in all day, and you've done the world a favor by preventing his uber-dorkness from remaining in the gene pool. Assuming he would have actually gotten a chance to procreate some time in his life.
However, I did get a chuckle out of the qualifications of the other two guys there - their titles are "Life Coach" and "Assistant Recreation Director". one blurb for example includes
Gary Simmons has been working with youth for the past 20+ years. His love and passion for the outdoors has made him an avid outdoorsman, craftsman, and natural leader
$15000 to do a bunch of outdoorsy stuff? I think I'd rather send my kids to summer camp and yoink their i-phone, or just take a vacation somewhere where internet access is limited / non-existent for a fraction of the cost.
The major differences in the sharing of digital media vs a cd / dvd copy is that only one person can listen or watch the cd / dvd being used. It's fine if you want to lend your friend a copy of your cd, because now you can't listen to that copy while he's got it. If you apply this to a torrent or file sharing program, you're essentially burning a cd and giving it to your friend, which is illegal for a good reason.
Another totally useless law that will do nothing to actually prevent actual predators from doing their dirty work. Even if the law actually enforces the local internet providers to block all social network sites from registered sex offender isps (article doesn't mention this), there's nothing to stop a predator from starting a myspace account as twilightfan7788434 at the local internet cafe, or using a neighbor's wireless connection to start chats with minors. However, it will life a lot harder for anyone charged with indecent exposure, or the other relatively minor sex offender charges that put them on the list.
Of course, I'm sure this will get the governor more votes from fretful parents, and any politicians that object to this bill will set themselves up for a great attack ad by their opponents in the next election.
The point is that even if we take for granted that there a fucktons of advanced alien civilizations around it just doesn't follow that we should be able to detect them.
You could come up with a number of reasons why aliens haven't contacted us yet - maybe some have existed and killed themselves off in a nuclear / biological holocaust. Maybe some reach a technological singularity or religious nirvana and become disinterested in exploration / other biological entities. Maybe some have sophisticated enough technology to remain undetected. But surely that can't apply to *every* advanced civilization. If there really were 10,000 or 100,000 advanced civilizations out there, it would be naive to assume that every single one of them can cloak from us, or just doesn't want to contact us.
The fact that the only intelligent race we know has a curious enough percentage of our population to want to seek (any openly contact) ET, and given that we've launched things into space before exterminating ourselves indicates that it's at least possible, if not likely that at least a few other intelligent life forms would have the same interest in technology.
Given the age of the galaxy, size, speed of light and other factors that aren't debatable, this gives me more reason to believe that there are very few or no intelligent aliens out there.
They're dutch based, and one of the top ranked torrent sites as well. How did TPB (based in another country) get a fine imposed on them before mininova? Shouldn't the dutch anti-pirate agencies look in their own back yard first?
I think you're confusing "people" with "everything" here, when it comes to emitting light. I recall doing some once at this outdoor music festival, then staring at the stars for somewhere between 15 seconds and 45 minutes and thinking how bright and beautiful they were. Then I realized I was in my tent.
Oh boy! Instead of just having fun playing a game I can now turn it into a music class! That sounds like loads of fun!
Have you tried rock band, or are you aware of it? Did you give the drums a shot and then think "oh shit, this is too much like playing drums here - dammit now I'm learning". Newsflash : Learning and having fun are not always mutually exclusive. Don't buy rock band, you'll hate it then.
Seriously, why do you people like you keep posting bullshit like this as if anyone, other than a few hardcore nerds, who plays this game actually thinks they are learning an instrument?
Did you actually read what I said here? It's USING A REAL GUITAR. How could you not learn anything by hitting some strings on the guitar plugged in to this "game" that actually correspond to generating the same notes on the guitar? Maybe you're not learning as much as you could playing a real guitar (you won't learn theory or chord identification for example, and it may not show how to position your fingers). But compare that to the current guitar hero - where you learn virtually nothing on how to play music (maybe timing, that's about it).
Maybe you're confusing this with dance dance revolution or something, where moving feet fast != dancing skills, or buttons on guitar hero != music skills. You actually learn some rhythm and how to keep a beat playing the rock band drums. Your voice might improve if you can tell when you're too sharp or too flat and you're singing along. However, the technology on the singing for rock band is still pretty weak, and you can easily cheat to get a better score, but we'll see improvements as time passes.
I've never met a guitar player that just stopped playing 'cause it was boring or they "just didn't feel like it anymore".
OTOH, I know about a half dozen people who have done exactly that.
That's a good point and I'll take that one back. I guess I was trying to compare the average length of time someone plays a particular video game with the amount of time they play an instrument. Most people lose interest in a video game after a few months (if there's no new content), but giving up an instrument entirely probably happens less. It just seems easier to quit a video game than an instrument, and I do both of those quite a bit, but that's just my opinion. By using a real guitar (or drums, or keyboard or whatever) you're kind of drifting away from playing just another video game.
Oh that's just great. Guitar hero brought us a generation of kids playing video games pretending to be musicians. Now we're creating a generation of kids pretending to be people pretending to be musicians?
Even if they keep adding more songs, it's pretty much the same thing over and over. I played it here and there at a friend's place and the repetitive button mashing gets old fast - there's no real sense of accomplishment.
Add a mod or controller that allows you to hook up a real guitar, and figure out some "skill / sound = more points" system. Something similar to the voice recognition for the microphone in rock band. Now you're actually learning a real instrument and feel some sense of accomplishment (and your parents / spouse won't be on your ass for wasting time 'playing video games'). Set up some gaming version of i-tunes where you can buy new songs and play them. I've never met a guitar player that just stopped playing 'cause it was boring or they "just didn't feel like it anymore". Factor in the continuous influx of songs by artists and now you've got a virtually infinite business model.
Tried translating that, and sort of got the gist of it using an online translator here, though a little hard to understand at http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
I won't translate the whole thing, but I noticed this tidbit :
"The people's net - game channel country news General publications administration concerned people in charge on 21st in the evening pay attention to "Evil spirit Beastly World" on the society examine and approve the related question to accept reporter to interview."
World of Warcraft somehow translates to "Evil Spirit Beastly World" here - maybe that doesn't sound like much in western culture, but I'll bet that a lot of Chinese find the thought of a world of evil spirits terrifying, and not something to risk tampering with or provoking. Basing this off "In Chinese thought, the world is populated by a vast number of spirits, both good and evil. Such spirits include nature demons (kuei-shen), evil spirits or devils (oni), and ghosts (kui)." a couple of links I found here and here. Could be one of the factors in the delay.
You could still link other information to a person however. In the Thomas / RIAA case, there was enough evidence to link her user name "tereastarr" to other accounts of hers, such as email. In this case, the IP address wasn't even necessary. You can't sue a computer, but with enough other evidence you can link a computer to a person, or an online account to a person. These filesharing cases aren't over just yet, but it certainly makes it a lot harder for them to have a case (i.e. unsecured wireless network)
Does this mean that illegal activity originating from an IP address tied to me cannot be used in court as evidence against me? (Like in the RIAA cases?)
Before any of the software pirates / MAFIAA haters start cheering, there's plenty of other evidence to personally identify a user. In the Jammie Thomas case for example, she used the same username that she always had, had a password protected PC and was the only one that had access etc... So I doubt this ruling will make a difference in this case
However, if the IP address is the ONLY piece of evidence linking a file sharer (or some more serious criminal activity i.e. child porn, identify theft, scam artist, spammer) then I'm sure this ruling will be referenced in future cases
Im lost, doesnt slashdot normally ridicule rulings that tie a person to a crime based only on IP address? Doesnt this ruling toss that right out the window? Or am I being silly in expecting people on slashdot to be logical and consistent in their beliefs? Im sorry if ive ruined your "bash judges" party.
When it comes to personal privacy, an IP address is definitely identifiable information and this is an outrage. When it comes to file sharing though, there's no way you can prove that the IP address actually belonged to a particular person.. it could be anyone using that computer, or unsafe wireless network!
On a similar note, is there any guarantee that the dogs will be better at sniffing for drugs just because they're clones? Perhaps the training they receive has much more to do with their ability to detect drugs than their genetic information. For the cost involved in cloning these dogs, you could probably train a lot more dogs that sniff almost as well as a few good sniffers
For fuck's sake, people, the credit card guys haven't actually bought a law concerning hereditary debt slavery yet, and this guy thinks that it is already on the books?
Maybe he read this article the other day. Basically the son gets sued for a medical bill because mom didn't pay it. Who would think such an arcane law still existed?
So far I've only heard of one case of this happening, and even here you could argue that his lifestyle was more of a motive for murder than the spam itself. One factor could be there aren't that many of them, most spam is generated by a handful of bot nets which don't require a whole lot of maintenance.
The other factor is that they're just too hard to identify. Or in other countries that make it too hard to track down and make worthwhile finding. Compare that with identify theft / scamming which does far more damage to an individual than spam - but you never hear about identity thieves getting murdered either.