The US was the one pushing all those things (and Japan)Them caving means they agreed to remove all those silly provisions due to pressure from other countries (EU, Canada, Mexico, etc.)
Other countries also have companies making profits from american entertainment and buying their own politicians. Also, Japan's a big media producer as well (outside Asia, mostly games, cartoons and comics, but still).
I think you're right, but is it more illegal than spamming? I believe the kind of spam sent by these people/bots is illegal in the United States and several other countries (though I'm not american, so I may be wrong). The sender is hiding his identity, deliberately getting around spam prevention systems and offering no method for opting out. So we're dealing with criminals here, and what is law enforcement doing about it? Random Digilante writes in his blog that he contacts ISPs, who would normally be expected to investigate these people (who inclusively break the ISPs own terms of service), but they usually do nothing. So while the taking over of e-mail addresses registered by criminals for the sole purpose of breaking laws and annoying the hell out of everyone may not be exactly nice, shouldn't you save your indignation for the actual spammers, their customers, ISPs, law enforcement agencies and lawmakers? Or for people who are out in the streets embezzling, scamming, mugging, kidnapping, raping and murdering?
They're all in Java. The freely available version played in your web browser sucks and isn't at all representative of the fun you can have with the real game (though note that it's still in alpha and very buggy).
Well, Port is the actual name of the city, county and district. Oakland is Oakland, not Port. But even among other cities called Port, which I'm sure there must be several all over the world, any wine bottled there won't be nearly as famous or culturally significant as real port. You seem to have read my prior exchange of posts with the troll; You can see from the link I posted that Port is a wine not only drunk all over the world but with centuries of tradition. The entire region of Porto and the Douro valley is heavily based around the wine industry. If it fails, many people will lose their jobs and the standards of living (already low for many) will sharply decrease.
According to this source, the wine drank by your Pepys was indeed imported from Portugal.
Port is the literal translation of the name of the city where the wine is bottled, Porto (it actually means that, as in a ship's port). The entire river Douro valley is part of the wine's production area, with big vineyards all along the river.
Champagne and port have been in the dictionary as generic terms for centuries. Just from the standpoint of IP law, pulling them out of the public domain where they've safely landed and re-protecting them is even dumber than retroactive copyright extensions--and even worse (IMO) is the attempt to legally redefine words that have widely used English meanings.
During most of that time, port has been produced only in Portugal, and within europe, the term was already restricted and not in the public domain (due to the european PDO system).
I'm from Portugal. We're a small country whose economy is in a terrible state (much worse than the global economy). One of the few exports we depend on is port wine. If the name of the wine is usurped freely, uninformed consumers merely looking for "port wine" will buy the fake, more widely marketed stuff produced by wealthier companies in wealthier countries and we'll grow closer to being bankrupt.
Your argument makes sense when referring to many companies and games, but Machinarium is very good. I pirated it and then bought it, which very few people do according to them, and yes, I do not pay for games that suck (but I pay afterwards for almost every indie game I play because they're usually really good).
Amanita Design is the company that threw in a free game to all buyers of the Humble Indie Bundle at absolutely no profit for themselves (other than good PR of course). They seem to be talented and decent people and I hope more of their players will compensate them for their games.
Sorry if I'm wrong about this, but aren't slashdot stories submitted by users and voted up or down by users in the firehose? Editors just OK the highest rated ones... They don't do much else, from my observation.
The ability to track your usage and gather information about you.
Web browsers also support cookies natively, and it is possible to use these with html5 without explicitly requiring Flash to 'track your usage and gather information about you', and many, many advertising and other such companies do so. Flash sharedobjects are just a piece of technology. They aren't any more evil or suspicious than normal cookies. All this company does is store a copy of your cookies in a flash cookie so if you delete the one, they can restore it from the other.
I think you mean pseudomoralism... In any sane frame of reference, corruption is much more immoral than, say, violent videogames (you may argue these aren't immoral at all for you, as they aren't for me, but they are for some people). You can't be corrupted and moral at the same time, and from what I've seen the current australian government is so corrupted they don't even make a proper effort to hide it anymore.
They exist now, but a lot of people on the ISP side are thinking they should be making a lot more money from their success or be allowed to restrict the huge amount of bandwidth used by the traffic they have to send to those sites.
That happens to me with mail (package) delivery as well. The place where I live doesn't have a street name. In the past everyone could get here with no problem, but the only mail truck driver who ever made it here in the past decade (to deliver a package for me; I don't know about the rest of my family) was one who worked for ups for some reason, and I order regularly from amazon. I figured they were probably all relying on gps and can't find their way out of a wet paper bag on their own.
To me it reminds me of a short story I once read in a sci-fi anthology about a cannibal kid going to school and eating all the teachers, and all they'd do is say "he needs to express himself" and "we have to try and understand him". I think the writer had a deep trauma about this kind of educator. Or he was just nuts.
Anyway, if I'd written your Python-like skit, it would be a crazy STUDENT with a gun, and as the punchline he'd shoot the principal.
Maybe I'm just stating the obvious, but a balloon filled with helium doesn't need power to stay airborne, unless things changed since my time. Though who knows, balloons these days...
My european's idea of baseball (and I've watched it. Live. In the US.):
A bunch of people stand still on an oddly shaped field for hours. Once in a while someone throws a small ball at someone else and a few others run around the field, then everyone stands still again. Most of the time, spectators are watching silly crap on a giant screen while stuffing themselves with really bad junk food.
I won't even describe basketball, I don't want to start a war.
Slashdot Mirror
The article says 2012. Is it 2011 already? Did my nap take THAT long???
I was precisely thinking of that series while reading this thread! It's a very educational comedy.
The US was the one pushing all those things (and Japan)Them caving means they agreed to remove all those silly provisions due to pressure from other countries (EU, Canada, Mexico, etc.)
Other countries also have companies making profits from american entertainment and buying their own politicians. Also, Japan's a big media producer as well (outside Asia, mostly games, cartoons and comics, but still).
I think you're right, but is it more illegal than spamming? I believe the kind of spam sent by these people/bots is illegal in the United States and several other countries (though I'm not american, so I may be wrong). The sender is hiding his identity, deliberately getting around spam prevention systems and offering no method for opting out. So we're dealing with criminals here, and what is law enforcement doing about it? Random Digilante writes in his blog that he contacts ISPs, who would normally be expected to investigate these people (who inclusively break the ISPs own terms of service), but they usually do nothing. So while the taking over of e-mail addresses registered by criminals for the sole purpose of breaking laws and annoying the hell out of everyone may not be exactly nice, shouldn't you save your indignation for the actual spammers, their customers, ISPs, law enforcement agencies and lawmakers? Or for people who are out in the streets embezzling, scamming, mugging, kidnapping, raping and murdering?
They're all in Java. The freely available version played in your web browser sucks and isn't at all representative of the fun you can have with the real game (though note that it's still in alpha and very buggy).
The range of visible and updated chunks around a player with visibility set to far is huge, though.
Well, Port is the actual name of the city, county and district. Oakland is Oakland, not Port. But even among other cities called Port, which I'm sure there must be several all over the world, any wine bottled there won't be nearly as famous or culturally significant as real port. You seem to have read my prior exchange of posts with the troll; You can see from the link I posted that Port is a wine not only drunk all over the world but with centuries of tradition. The entire region of Porto and the Douro valley is heavily based around the wine industry. If it fails, many people will lose their jobs and the standards of living (already low for many) will sharply decrease.
Well, a Google search yielded this in about 30 seconds: http://www.discovertheorigin.co.uk/port-wine/
According to this source, the wine drank by your Pepys was indeed imported from Portugal.
Port is the literal translation of the name of the city where the wine is bottled, Porto (it actually means that, as in a ship's port). The entire river Douro valley is part of the wine's production area, with big vineyards all along the river.
Champagne and port have been in the dictionary as generic terms for centuries. Just from the standpoint of IP law, pulling them out of the public domain where they've safely landed and re-protecting them is even dumber than retroactive copyright extensions--and even worse (IMO) is the attempt to legally redefine words that have widely used English meanings.
During most of that time, port has been produced only in Portugal, and within europe, the term was already restricted and not in the public domain (due to the european PDO system).
I'm from Portugal. We're a small country whose economy is in a terrible state (much worse than the global economy). One of the few exports we depend on is port wine. If the name of the wine is usurped freely, uninformed consumers merely looking for "port wine" will buy the fake, more widely marketed stuff produced by wealthier companies in wealthier countries and we'll grow closer to being bankrupt.
They're good.
Mrs. Lovejoy, actually! Maude Flanders is a different character who died several seasons ago.
Maybe he's a non-native speaker himself ;)
Your argument makes sense when referring to many companies and games, but Machinarium is very good. I pirated it and then bought it, which very few people do according to them, and yes, I do not pay for games that suck (but I pay afterwards for almost every indie game I play because they're usually really good).
Amanita Design is the company that threw in a free game to all buyers of the Humble Indie Bundle at absolutely no profit for themselves (other than good PR of course). They seem to be talented and decent people and I hope more of their players will compensate them for their games.
Sorry if I'm wrong about this, but aren't slashdot stories submitted by users and voted up or down by users in the firehose? Editors just OK the highest rated ones... They don't do much else, from my observation.
You're right about wikipedia, of course.
The ability to track your usage and gather information about you.
Web browsers also support cookies natively, and it is possible to use these with html5 without explicitly requiring Flash to 'track your usage and gather information about you', and many, many advertising and other such companies do so. Flash sharedobjects are just a piece of technology. They aren't any more evil or suspicious than normal cookies. All this company does is store a copy of your cookies in a flash cookie so if you delete the one, they can restore it from the other.
I think you mean pseudomoralism... In any sane frame of reference, corruption is much more immoral than, say, violent videogames (you may argue these aren't immoral at all for you, as they aren't for me, but they are for some people). You can't be corrupted and moral at the same time, and from what I've seen the current australian government is so corrupted they don't even make a proper effort to hide it anymore.
They exist now, but a lot of people on the ISP side are thinking they should be making a lot more money from their success or be allowed to restrict the huge amount of bandwidth used by the traffic they have to send to those sites.
That happens to me with mail (package) delivery as well. The place where I live doesn't have a street name. In the past everyone could get here with no problem, but the only mail truck driver who ever made it here in the past decade (to deliver a package for me; I don't know about the rest of my family) was one who worked for ups for some reason, and I order regularly from amazon. I figured they were probably all relying on gps and can't find their way out of a wet paper bag on their own.
To me it reminds me of a short story I once read in a sci-fi anthology about a cannibal kid going to school and eating all the teachers, and all they'd do is say "he needs to express himself" and "we have to try and understand him". I think the writer had a deep trauma about this kind of educator. Or he was just nuts.
Anyway, if I'd written your Python-like skit, it would be a crazy STUDENT with a gun, and as the punchline he'd shoot the principal.
How many IQ points does it take to fill a mayonnaise jar?
Please solve for X, where X is the volume of the jar, and at least three types of mayonnaise.
Maybe I'm just stating the obvious, but a balloon filled with helium doesn't need power to stay airborne, unless things changed since my time. Though who knows, balloons these days...
My european's idea of baseball (and I've watched it. Live. In the US.):
A bunch of people stand still on an oddly shaped field for hours. Once in a while someone throws a small ball at someone else and a few others run around the field, then everyone stands still again. Most of the time, spectators are watching silly crap on a giant screen while stuffing themselves with really bad junk food.
I won't even describe basketball, I don't want to start a war.
American football and Hockey are fine, though...
Offshore? Where?
Let the guy move to Mars so he can set up a secure proxy for us earthlings.
FIFA are extremely conservative. They only care about maintaining the status quo and never really make any changes or act on anything at that scale...