I can't believe that no one has replied with the "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" quote yet. Slashdot is seriously losing its geek cred.
You must not watch much Star Trek, or else you'd know that at least 9 out of every ten times when a Vulcan invokes that proverb, the captain end up risking the entire ship to save him.
It would take a pretty unreliable computer system to even get within an order of magnitude of what we do to each other through inattentive or drunken driving.
Since when has logic ever stopped people from suing large corporations for things that aren't their fault? If anything, the drop in car crashes will cause them to seem less "normal", and people will be even more trigger-happy with the lawyers.
He might have been violating the terms of his employment contract by abusing his abilities to look at people's private data, but that's about it. He wasn't really breaking any other laws because he only looked at data that the victims had willingly provided to Google.
Steve Jobs sued a company into oblivion just for installing legally purchased copies of OSX on PCs. If anything, Chestnykh is not following Steve Jobs' example because that would require sending TPB a cease-and-decist.
Are you suggesting Gabe Newell built a radio station in the Soviet Union in 1982 just in case he someday owns a game company and needs a really clever marketing trick?
Until then we should just take into account that politicians use demagoguery to elevate acceptance of stupidity and mental deficiency in society (what freedom of religion is) to the level of supporting blatant fraud and brainwashing as long as it suits those politicians' goals.
No, freedom of religion is the freedom to practice any religion you like, or no religion at all. It is what allows me to be a Christian and you to be an Atheist without fear of persecution. In fact, when you consider the fact that the vast majority of Americans (and humans in general) practice some form of religion, you realize that freedom of religion is (amongst other things) the acceptance of Atheism. So unless you are trying to label atheism as "stupidity and mental deficiency"), this statement is contrary to your argument.
Also, contrary to what you may think, there have been several Atheist nations throughout the 20th century. Not much "massive acceleration", if you ask me.
There are some games where Steam can be a real pain in the ass, like in GTA4. You already have to be logged into both Rockstar Social Club AND Games For Windows Live; if you buy the Steam version, you literally have to log into three separate DRM systems to play the damn game.
Also, Steam is somewhat scary to me because I wonder what'll happen to my game collection should Valve eventually go out of buisiness or shut down steam (probably not in the near future, but it could very well happen eventually). I'm the kind of person who still plays 20+ year old games every now and then.
Well if you're never going to play offline, why are you so upset about a system that requires you to be online?
I know there are plenty of other issues with DRM, but I really don't see how this would be one of them for somebody who thinks playing offline "would be pretty much useless"
Not to mention the fact that you always have to have the latest patch to play a 'Games For Windows Live' game, even in single player. Those of us with slower internet connections don't want to wait several days to play the game because there's a new 7 gig patch that fixes a bunch of glitches that you never even noticed before.
Game companies will never let you resell a game you don't have on a disc. Unlike with games printed on physical mediums, there is no chance of a downloaded game being unplayable due to scratches, and there is no "shiny newness" that a game that wasn't resold has. Either used copies would be cheaper than new copies and there would be no point in buying new copies (which I can't imagine game companies allowing), or game companies would make the used copies the same price as new copies and it would be a moot point. This will not catch on.
My parents made me see a bunch of shrinks when I was in high school because my GPA was a 3.0. Those con artists will diagnose you with ANYTHING if they think you'll pay for their pills and therapy. Supposedly I have ADHD, so they gave me a prescription for Ritalin. That didn't help the "problem", so they upgraded me to Straterra, which did nothing but make me throw up (both literally and metaphorically). After that the psychiatrist told me that the problem was that I was only taking one pill; the solution is to be taking another pill in addition to the Straterra (luckily, I managed to talk my parents out of agreeing to this).
There was also a psychologist they made me talk to once every week. I have no fucking idea how that was supposed to fix me, but they payed a ton for the therapy sessions, so he was happy to confirm the psychiatrist's diagnosis of ADHD.
You don't seem to understand that there is NO LEGAL PRECEDENCE for denying a religious group the right to build a place of worship solely because you don't like them. The Constitution's 1st amendment was created with exactly this sort of situation in mind. If we do not allow them to build their mosque/community center, we are denying them one of the most fundamental rights of American law.
Adding Hayden Christensen into scenes where the original had Sebastian Shaw just made me cringe.
Personally, that's the one change I actually approve of. Obi-wan's justification for telling Luke that Vader killed his father was that he considers Darth Vader to be Anakin's alter ego (as opposed to being the same person). Since this is Anakin's ghost and not Vader's ghost, it should appear as Anakin did in Episode 3 (this is what he looked like when he "died") if Obi-wan is correct in believing that they are essentially two separate people in the same body.
One of the Pokemon games (Diamond and Pearl, I think) presents you with a slideshow consisting of pictures of what you did last time you played the game, along with text captions every time you start up your DS. I would think that this qualifies as prior art.
Yet the piles have continued to grow because the law requires the US Mint to issue four new presidential coins each year even if most of the previous year's coins remain in government vaults.
The 50-states quarters that they spent the last decade were a pretty big success, and there were alot of people collecting them (at least I remember seeing alot of special kits for holding all your quarters on sale), so why not do a "44 presidents" set?
Better yet, we could just repeal this stupid law, but that's just too damn logical for Congress.
I'm afraid that if they do that, this place really will turn into Digg, which used to have similar content to/. before the 2008 American presidential elections caused it to be overrun with people who care nothing about political stories (specifically, the ones they already agree with).
For 40 cents, some guy will come to your house, pick up your letter and deliver it anywhere in the United States within two days. Doesn't sound that mismanaged to me.
The only problem with the postal service is that they're being made obsolete by modern technology, and that's a problem that would plague any company that tries to replace them.
Postal Service? National Do Not Call Registry? Making food companies provide the Nutrition Facts on the side of the box? Creating the internet in the first place?
If you don’t like your internet service provider’s policies, you can simply switch to another one.
Not quite. For most Americans, there aren't more than a couple of ISPs available (excluding Satellite and ye olde dialup modem), so you really can't. Where I live, the only available broadband has been Verizon DSL, from 2003 up until 2010, so if they had decided to start throttling bandwidth to unapproved sites, I would've been screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe that no one has replied with the "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" quote yet. Slashdot is seriously losing its geek cred.
You must not watch much Star Trek, or else you'd know that at least 9 out of every ten times when a Vulcan invokes that proverb, the captain end up risking the entire ship to save him.
It would take a pretty unreliable computer system to even get within an order of magnitude of what we do to each other through inattentive or drunken driving.
Since when has logic ever stopped people from suing large corporations for things that aren't their fault? If anything, the drop in car crashes will cause them to seem less "normal", and people will be even more trigger-happy with the lawyers.
There's also the problem that any time somebody using their system gets into an accident, they'll probably try to sue the manufacturer.
He might have been violating the terms of his employment contract by abusing his abilities to look at people's private data, but that's about it. He wasn't really breaking any other laws because he only looked at data that the victims had willingly provided to Google.
Steve Jobs sued a company into oblivion just for installing legally purchased copies of OSX on PCs. If anything, Chestnykh is not following Steve Jobs' example because that would require sending TPB a cease-and-decist.
Are you suggesting Gabe Newell built a radio station in the Soviet Union in 1982 just in case he someday owns a game company and needs a really clever marketing trick?
But the market did create a Microsoft!
Until then we should just take into account that politicians use demagoguery to elevate acceptance of stupidity and mental deficiency in society (what freedom of religion is) to the level of supporting blatant fraud and brainwashing as long as it suits those politicians' goals.
No, freedom of religion is the freedom to practice any religion you like, or no religion at all. It is what allows me to be a Christian and you to be an Atheist without fear of persecution. In fact, when you consider the fact that the vast majority of Americans (and humans in general) practice some form of religion, you realize that freedom of religion is (amongst other things) the acceptance of Atheism. So unless you are trying to label atheism as "stupidity and mental deficiency"), this statement is contrary to your argument.
Also, contrary to what you may think, there have been several Atheist nations throughout the 20th century. Not much "massive acceleration", if you ask me.
There are some games where Steam can be a real pain in the ass, like in GTA4. You already have to be logged into both Rockstar Social Club AND Games For Windows Live; if you buy the Steam version, you literally have to log into three separate DRM systems to play the damn game.
Also, Steam is somewhat scary to me because I wonder what'll happen to my game collection should Valve eventually go out of buisiness or shut down steam (probably not in the near future, but it could very well happen eventually). I'm the kind of person who still plays 20+ year old games every now and then.
Well if you're never going to play offline, why are you so upset about a system that requires you to be online?
I know there are plenty of other issues with DRM, but I really don't see how this would be one of them for somebody who thinks playing offline "would be pretty much useless"
Not to mention the fact that you always have to have the latest patch to play a 'Games For Windows Live' game, even in single player. Those of us with slower internet connections don't want to wait several days to play the game because there's a new 7 gig patch that fixes a bunch of glitches that you never even noticed before.
Game companies will never let you resell a game you don't have on a disc. Unlike with games printed on physical mediums, there is no chance of a downloaded game being unplayable due to scratches, and there is no "shiny newness" that a game that wasn't resold has. Either used copies would be cheaper than new copies and there would be no point in buying new copies (which I can't imagine game companies allowing), or game companies would make the used copies the same price as new copies and it would be a moot point. This will not catch on.
You can't get addicted to a game, either.
"NOT ENOUGH POWER - BUILD MORE PYLONS!". ??
You haven't been playing much Starcraft recently, have you?
My parents made me see a bunch of shrinks when I was in high school because my GPA was a 3.0. Those con artists will diagnose you with ANYTHING if they think you'll pay for their pills and therapy. Supposedly I have ADHD, so they gave me a prescription for Ritalin. That didn't help the "problem", so they upgraded me to Straterra, which did nothing but make me throw up (both literally and metaphorically). After that the psychiatrist told me that the problem was that I was only taking one pill; the solution is to be taking another pill in addition to the Straterra (luckily, I managed to talk my parents out of agreeing to this).
There was also a psychologist they made me talk to once every week. I have no fucking idea how that was supposed to fix me, but they payed a ton for the therapy sessions, so he was happy to confirm the psychiatrist's diagnosis of ADHD.
You don't seem to understand that there is NO LEGAL PRECEDENCE for denying a religious group the right to build a place of worship solely because you don't like them. The Constitution's 1st amendment was created with exactly this sort of situation in mind. If we do not allow them to build their mosque/community center, we are denying them one of the most fundamental rights of American law.
Adding Hayden Christensen into scenes where the original had Sebastian Shaw just made me cringe.
Personally, that's the one change I actually approve of. Obi-wan's justification for telling Luke that Vader killed his father was that he considers Darth Vader to be Anakin's alter ego (as opposed to being the same person). Since this is Anakin's ghost and not Vader's ghost, it should appear as Anakin did in Episode 3 (this is what he looked like when he "died") if Obi-wan is correct in believing that they are essentially two separate people in the same body.
One of the Pokemon games (Diamond and Pearl, I think) presents you with a slideshow consisting of pictures of what you did last time you played the game, along with text captions every time you start up your DS. I would think that this qualifies as prior art.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was pretty good, even though it sold poorly.
FTA:
Yet the piles have continued to grow because the law requires the US Mint to issue four new presidential coins each year even if most of the previous year's coins remain in government vaults.
The 50-states quarters that they spent the last decade were a pretty big success, and there were alot of people collecting them (at least I remember seeing alot of special kits for holding all your quarters on sale), so why not do a "44 presidents" set?
Better yet, we could just repeal this stupid law, but that's just too damn logical for Congress.
I'm afraid that if they do that, this place really will turn into Digg, which used to have similar content to /. before the 2008 American presidential elections caused it to be overrun with people who care nothing about political stories (specifically, the ones they already agree with).
For 40 cents, some guy will come to your house, pick up your letter and deliver it anywhere in the United States within two days. Doesn't sound that mismanaged to me.
The only problem with the postal service is that they're being made obsolete by modern technology, and that's a problem that would plague any company that tries to replace them.
Postal Service? National Do Not Call Registry? Making food companies provide the Nutrition Facts on the side of the box? Creating the internet in the first place?
If you don’t like your internet service provider’s policies, you can simply switch to another one.
Not quite. For most Americans, there aren't more than a couple of ISPs available (excluding Satellite and ye olde dialup modem), so you really can't. Where I live, the only available broadband has been Verizon DSL, from 2003 up until 2010, so if they had decided to start throttling bandwidth to unapproved sites, I would've been screwed.
Yes, because the only people who side against Wikileaks are the ones in the US military.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return to my bunker and rally my allies within the Digg Bury Brigade.