Oh sure, it's easy to make these cases look absurd if you actually use math and reasoning, but is that really fair?
Even if everyone just takes a settlement of say $3,000 (as was cited for a similar case in the article), you are still looking at almost 67.6 million dollars and 68% of the box office gross!
If they just increased the number of defendants to 3,433, then they could match their box office gross.
I don't know why you got modded down... this is entirely valid.
I used to work for an extremely large organization that authenticated on Active Directory, and did not place any permission restrictions on what workstations were used. Anyone with a valid AD account could log into any workstations, and able to access whatever resources that their particular profile had access too, regardless of workstation. Many used roaming profiles and some worked on multiple sites, so it was even more insignificant which workstation they actually used.
Indeed. I think that the following quote shows they don't really understand the nature of Anonymous.
'What is becoming more and more evident is that Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes,'
Either that, or it is a commentary on the value of a college degree.
Just sayin'.
People seem to think that suicide bombers are either idiots, complete nutjobs, or hate-filled extremists. I think the truth is more complicated than that.
I've heard stories about how at least some these guys are recruited. It often involves deceit, manipulation and heavy cohesion. They end up getting mixed up with the wrong people (and it can start seemingly innocently and naively). By the end, they end up being threatened or blackmailed, and put in a position where they feel like if they don't do it, they may bring danger or shame to family and loved ones.
I know it's no consolation to their victims, and by no means does it justify their actions, but some of these guys are victims too.
Hope the bank likes you? Debit cards do not have the same protections as credit, that's why almost anywhere they recommend against using a debit card online, or even to pay for things in person, for that matter.
This definitely tends to be true. Merchants would prefer you use Debit cards because there is a reduced transaction cost for using Debit as opposed to Credit. The lower transaction rates are due to the fact that Debits are considered more secure, because of the PIN entry being required.
When the correct PIN has been entered for a transaction, your leverage to dispute the validity of a transaction is reduced considerably.
Well, I'd agree that it would be doomed to be a mainstream fad... however, these types of games still have the potential to be enjoyed by a niche market, just like there is a small avid community of gamers who are really into fighting games, and don't mind spending significant amounts of money on fairly bulky arcade sticks.
I still really enjoy the music games, especially the pro-modes offered in Rock Band 3, though the franchise certainly seems to have run out of steam in the mainstream.
The biggest limiter with GH (and Rock Band) is there are only so many good songs and bands. Once you exhaust the good songs and bands you really don't have anywhere else to go.
Wow... if your musical exposure has been so small that you think that these games run the risk of running out of good songs and music, then I pity you.
With even with more than 2,000 songs in Rock Band franchise's library now, I think there are many players out there that would agree that there are vasts numbers of songs and artists that have been completely untapped. Only a small fraction of my favorite artists have even had a single song featured (and they have more than one good song)..
I do like how ESRB does break down and say why it is rated a certain way (as another replier pointed out). However, as many will always say, so much of the responsibility should be on the parent, and the "problem" of kids getting access to these games is almost always the fault of the parents, not the stores.
I have actually had the misfortune of working behind the counter of such a store. I would absolutely not sell a mature rated game to the kids directly, but they simply get their parents (or other adults) to buy it anyway.
Now, if I knew they were buying it for their kid, I tried to be helpful and made sure that the parents knew what they were getting. I would start to read out, "by the way, this game is rated as Mature because it contains Strong Language, Graphic Violence, Blood, Sexual Situations, and Drug References," and they'd obviously tune you out (I assume because you are hurting their ability to rationalize giving into their kid), seem to be offended that you'd even mention it (become defensive because they think you are judging their parenting), or simply just didn't care at all.
Only about 10% of all the people that I ever warned would ever say something like, "oh really? I didn't realize that," and then tell their kid to pick a different game instead.
Tons of parents buy 6 and 8 year olds Grand Theft Auto, even after being told what it is, yet sensationalist media wants to blame the video game industry.
I like to think of it as being more than a mere "attempt" at humor... and more of a mocking jab than a complaint, but aside from niggling differences, the modded down AC gets it.;-)
Add them all up and look up the sum in a chart? Really?
So, if a hypothetical game is:
Sex: 1/5 Violence: 2/5 Language: 2/5 Drug References: 1/5
That means it should be rated the same as one that is 5/5 for either sex or violence and 0/5 for everything else?
I would think that the highest score in any category would be more relevant than the total. Having high scores in multiple categories even more so.
However, I'm amazed at just how hypersensitive we are about some of those things, and how callous we are to others. Unfortunately, video games, other forms of media, fails to make a distinction between nudity, artistic nudity, gratuitous nudity, sex, gratuitous sex etc. We all just clump them together as "sex" and overreact to them, while video games allow for levels of violence that would be generally considered unacceptable in the majority of other forms of media.
I guess the extreme violence is ok, because no real people are getting hurt, unlike the *real* exploitation and harm that happens from video game nudity and sex, right? > >
Well... he does raise a valid point that it doesn't really matter what you say. Without hard evidence to the contrary, the word of a cop is legally assumed to be more legitimate than your word. If it comes down to who said what, and if they aren't honest, then you lose.
C. You insist on your rights being maintained, he grumbles and huffs, threatens to get a warrant, but in the end lets you go because he knows he's not going to be able to get a search warrant for your phone because you were stopped for speeding.
While I agree our priorities in many areas are out of whack, I don't think think this is completely one of them.
While I do back the space program, I don't think that the quest for speed for speed's sake for consumers is quite as important. This speed comes requires much more fuel, and is far more energy inefficient. It's clear that the consumer market can't bear those kinds of costs, otherwise Concords would be far more common.
Making energy use more efficient, reducing the resources consumed to make energy, and reducing the environmental impact on producing power are things that we should have as a very high priority. Those have a much higher chance of affecting our long-term happiness and health than getting from Tokyo to New York a little faster than our grandparents could.
I have to wonder how they reconcile the whole "it is easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven" bit.
That's a very good question, and unfortunately one that I know the answer to.
Many modern Christians believe in a fairly modern and contrived myth that the "eye of a needle" is referencing a gate in Jerusalem called "The Eye of the Needle", which for enigmatic reason was made to have a fairly short entrance. This entrance was too tall for a burdened camel to pass through. Travelers with a camel would have to first "remove their burdens" to enter this gate. Some will even make reference to the camel has to "get down on it's knees" first as well.
Of course, the problem is that it's a myth that only began appearing in the last 2 centuries. That doesn't matter though, because it's quite popular among fundamentalist Christians. They choose an interpretation that makes them feel better. Now they can ignore the poor and feel comfortable being rich because all they have to do is pray and make themselves believe that they have rid themselves of their burdens. In their defense, looking after the poor is quite a burden.
It's kind of like how when Jesus is quoted as saying, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me" is interpreted to only refer to children. It's used to attack those who are pro-choice. However, it is never used for the poor, immigrants, criminals, Muslims, or democrats.;-)
The sheeple think they might be rich someday and they don't want anyone to take their imaginary money away.
"You too could be rich some day ! Don't let your fellow poor leech away your riches! Kick those women off the free abortion train today or you'll be ruined!"
I really do think this is phenomenon is underestimated. Of course, conservatives like to promote the idea of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", and like to imply that people become rich by their own hard work, with no help, while diminishing the roles of luck, connections, and all the help from the government that they received in achieving this goal (such as public education, public infrastructure, and protection of law).
In addition, I think there is a bit of influence from the Christian Right involved with this as well. It's been my observation during the last 20 or so years, that the "prosperity message" has become very popular among Protestants and is very closely tied to the Christian Right. A large number of Christians have latched that riches and blessings are promises from God by living by certain principles.
Not only do they believe that they can become rich one day, they believe that it's god will for them to be rich one day, and they don't want the big bad government taking away their gifts from God (especially so the government can give money to "baby murderers" instead).
So you are equating scientists to Islamists? The term 'infidel' was first used by Islamists to justify the massacre of Christians throughout the middle east and into Spain, just so you have the origin of terms correct.
No... I'm not equating, I'm contrasting... Please note that I made a statement on how one thing was different than the other.
And yes, I'm quite well aware of what the word means. You see, that's why I chose it. It is meant to help in the aforementioned contrast by showing that a big difference between religion and science is that scientists don't go around trying to kill other scientists based on disagreements regarding scientific models.
Furthermore, I'm not even trying to say anything about Islam specifically either, just religion. It just happened to be a word associated with Islam. It just happened to be useful for providing the particular contrast that I was making.
I think that Windows went from 3.x to 90+something and even got up to the low thousands, before coming back down to single digits.
And just imagine how confusing it is going to be waiting for the next version of Windows when we get to Windows 94! Will they have to come up with a new naming system so they don't repeat 95 again?;-)
I definitely agree here. Just because 'Leet' is commonly written with numeric substitutions more often than many other words doesn't mean it should be put in a dictionary as such. A huge number of words are either commonly or slightly less written such substitutions, abbreviations, and letter order swaps (and not even in the same way for each word).
Listing these would be nearly the equivalent of a dictionary beginning to start listing common misspellings of words too.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, puns being the lowest form of comedy, they are uniquely suited to Slashdot posts.
"I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man." - Charles Lamb
If they just increased the number of defendants to 3,433, then they could match their box office gross.
Oops, off by a decimal place... 34,333.
Oh sure, it's easy to make these cases look absurd if you actually use math and reasoning, but is that really fair?
Even if everyone just takes a settlement of say $3,000 (as was cited for a similar case in the article), you are still looking at almost 67.6 million dollars and 68% of the box office gross!
If they just increased the number of defendants to 3,433, then they could match their box office gross.
I don't know why you got modded down... this is entirely valid.
I used to work for an extremely large organization that authenticated on Active Directory, and did not place any permission restrictions on what workstations were used. Anyone with a valid AD account could log into any workstations, and able to access whatever resources that their particular profile had access too, regardless of workstation. Many used roaming profiles and some worked on multiple sites, so it was even more insignificant which workstation they actually used.
Anonymous my ASS
Convenient scape goat
Indeed. I think that the following quote shows they don't really understand the nature of Anonymous.
'What is becoming more and more evident is that Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes,'
You beat me to this thought...
I was going to comment that they will probably find tons of copyrighted content, and it can then be used as a justification for ACTA...
Then the derogatory term for copyright forefingers will be officially changed from "pirates" to "terrorists".
Either that, or it is a commentary on the value of a college degree.
Just sayin'.
People seem to think that suicide bombers are either idiots, complete nutjobs, or hate-filled extremists. I think the truth is more complicated than that.
I've heard stories about how at least some these guys are recruited. It often involves deceit, manipulation and heavy cohesion. They end up getting mixed up with the wrong people (and it can start seemingly innocently and naively). By the end, they end up being threatened or blackmailed, and put in a position where they feel like if they don't do it, they may bring danger or shame to family and loved ones.
I know it's no consolation to their victims, and by no means does it justify their actions, but some of these guys are victims too.
Hope the bank likes you? Debit cards do not have the same protections as credit, that's why almost anywhere they recommend against using a debit card online, or even to pay for things in person, for that matter.
This definitely tends to be true. Merchants would prefer you use Debit cards because there is a reduced transaction cost for using Debit as opposed to Credit. The lower transaction rates are due to the fact that Debits are considered more secure, because of the PIN entry being required.
When the correct PIN has been entered for a transaction, your leverage to dispute the validity of a transaction is reduced considerably.
Well, I'd agree that it would be doomed to be a mainstream fad... however, these types of games still have the potential to be enjoyed by a niche market, just like there is a small avid community of gamers who are really into fighting games, and don't mind spending significant amounts of money on fairly bulky arcade sticks.
I still really enjoy the music games, especially the pro-modes offered in Rock Band 3, though the franchise certainly seems to have run out of steam in the mainstream.
The biggest limiter with GH (and Rock Band) is there are only so many good songs and bands. Once you exhaust the good songs and bands you really don't have anywhere else to go.
Wow... if your musical exposure has been so small that you think that these games run the risk of running out of good songs and music, then I pity you.
With even with more than 2,000 songs in Rock Band franchise's library now, I think there are many players out there that would agree that there are vasts numbers of songs and artists that have been completely untapped. Only a small fraction of my favorite artists have even had a single song featured (and they have more than one good song)..
I do like how ESRB does break down and say why it is rated a certain way (as another replier pointed out). However, as many will always say, so much of the responsibility should be on the parent, and the "problem" of kids getting access to these games is almost always the fault of the parents, not the stores.
I have actually had the misfortune of working behind the counter of such a store. I would absolutely not sell a mature rated game to the kids directly, but they simply get their parents (or other adults) to buy it anyway.
Now, if I knew they were buying it for their kid, I tried to be helpful and made sure that the parents knew what they were getting. I would start to read out, "by the way, this game is rated as Mature because it contains Strong Language, Graphic Violence, Blood, Sexual Situations, and Drug References," and they'd obviously tune you out (I assume because you are hurting their ability to rationalize giving into their kid), seem to be offended that you'd even mention it (become defensive because they think you are judging their parenting), or simply just didn't care at all.
Only about 10% of all the people that I ever warned would ever say something like, "oh really? I didn't realize that," and then tell their kid to pick a different game instead.
Tons of parents buy 6 and 8 year olds Grand Theft Auto, even after being told what it is, yet sensationalist media wants to blame the video game industry.
I like to think of it as being more than a mere "attempt" at humor... and more of a mocking jab than a complaint, but aside from niggling differences, the modded down AC gets it. ;-)
Wow, I hope we can get that in the US as well! Can you imagine how awesome it would be to be able to hit your monthly usage cap in 3 minutes?
Add them all up and look up the sum in a chart? Really?
So, if a hypothetical game is:
Sex: 1/5
Violence: 2/5
Language: 2/5
Drug References: 1/5
That means it should be rated the same as one that is 5/5 for either sex or violence and 0/5 for everything else?
I would think that the highest score in any category would be more relevant than the total. Having high scores in multiple categories even more so.
However, I'm amazed at just how hypersensitive we are about some of those things, and how callous we are to others. Unfortunately, video games, other forms of media, fails to make a distinction between nudity, artistic nudity, gratuitous nudity, sex, gratuitous sex etc. We all just clump them together as "sex" and overreact to them, while video games allow for levels of violence that would be generally considered unacceptable in the majority of other forms of media.
I guess the extreme violence is ok, because no real people are getting hurt, unlike the *real* exploitation and harm that happens from video game nudity and sex, right? > >
Not to mention, "if you give a centimeter, they will take a kilometer," just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Well... he does raise a valid point that it doesn't really matter what you say. Without hard evidence to the contrary, the word of a cop is legally assumed to be more legitimate than your word. If it comes down to who said what, and if they aren't honest, then you lose.
C. You insist on your rights being maintained, he grumbles and huffs, threatens to get a warrant, but in the end lets you go because he knows he's not going to be able to get a search warrant for your phone because you were stopped for speeding.
While I agree our priorities in many areas are out of whack, I don't think think this is completely one of them.
While I do back the space program, I don't think that the quest for speed for speed's sake for consumers is quite as important. This speed comes requires much more fuel, and is far more energy inefficient. It's clear that the consumer market can't bear those kinds of costs, otherwise Concords would be far more common.
Making energy use more efficient, reducing the resources consumed to make energy, and reducing the environmental impact on producing power are things that we should have as a very high priority. Those have a much higher chance of affecting our long-term happiness and health than getting from Tokyo to New York a little faster than our grandparents could.
I have to wonder how they reconcile the whole "it is easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven" bit.
That's a very good question, and unfortunately one that I know the answer to.
Many modern Christians believe in a fairly modern and contrived myth that the "eye of a needle" is referencing a gate in Jerusalem called "The Eye of the Needle", which for enigmatic reason was made to have a fairly short entrance. This entrance was too tall for a burdened camel to pass through. Travelers with a camel would have to first "remove their burdens" to enter this gate. Some will even make reference to the camel has to "get down on it's knees" first as well.
Of course, the problem is that it's a myth that only began appearing in the last 2 centuries. That doesn't matter though, because it's quite popular among fundamentalist Christians. They choose an interpretation that makes them feel better. Now they can ignore the poor and feel comfortable being rich because all they have to do is pray and make themselves believe that they have rid themselves of their burdens. In their defense, looking after the poor is quite a burden.
It's kind of like how when Jesus is quoted as saying, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me" is interpreted to only refer to children. It's used to attack those who are pro-choice. However, it is never used for the poor, immigrants, criminals, Muslims, or democrats. ;-)
http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm
http://www.debunker.com/texts/needleye.html
The sheeple think they might be rich someday and they don't want anyone to take their imaginary money away.
"You too could be rich some day ! Don't let your fellow poor leech away your riches! Kick those women off the free abortion train today or you'll be ruined!"
I really do think this is phenomenon is underestimated. Of course, conservatives like to promote the idea of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", and like to imply that people become rich by their own hard work, with no help, while diminishing the roles of luck, connections, and all the help from the government that they received in achieving this goal (such as public education, public infrastructure, and protection of law).
In addition, I think there is a bit of influence from the Christian Right involved with this as well. It's been my observation during the last 20 or so years, that the "prosperity message" has become very popular among Protestants and is very closely tied to the Christian Right. A large number of Christians have latched that riches and blessings are promises from God by living by certain principles.
Not only do they believe that they can become rich one day, they believe that it's god will for them to be rich one day, and they don't want the big bad government taking away their gifts from God (especially so the government can give money to "baby murderers" instead).
So you are equating scientists to Islamists? The term 'infidel' was first used by Islamists to justify the massacre of Christians throughout the middle east and into Spain, just so you have the origin of terms correct.
No... I'm not equating, I'm contrasting... Please note that I made a statement on how one thing was different than the other.
And yes, I'm quite well aware of what the word means. You see, that's why I chose it. It is meant to help in the aforementioned contrast by showing that a big difference between religion and science is that scientists don't go around trying to kill other scientists based on disagreements regarding scientific models.
Furthermore, I'm not even trying to say anything about Islam specifically either, just religion. It just happened to be a word associated with Islam. It just happened to be useful for providing the particular contrast that I was making.
Did this seriously need explanation?
I think that Windows went from 3.x to 90+something and even got up to the low thousands, before coming back down to single digits.
And just imagine how confusing it is going to be waiting for the next version of Windows when we get to Windows 94! Will they have to come up with a new naming system so they don't repeat 95 again? ;-)
Another big difference is that Scientists who support String Theory have never declared war on the infidels who don't.
Should also list 'aks' and 'teh' as well?
I definitely agree here. Just because 'Leet' is commonly written with numeric substitutions more often than many other words doesn't mean it should be put in a dictionary as such. A huge number of words are either commonly or slightly less written such substitutions, abbreviations, and letter order swaps (and not even in the same way for each word).
Listing these would be nearly the equivalent of a dictionary beginning to start listing common misspellings of words too.