It's funny that you say imeem is missing the point when your web address is pointing to last.fm. Imeem is basically last.fm PLUS unlimited music plays PLUS video feeds. (But admittedly, minus the kewl audioscrobbler.) I don't see what there is to beef about a free ad-supported service which has basically just destroyed the raison-d'etre of Yahoo!Music Unlimited and other comparable services. In any event, your criticisms are really about the major labels, not about imeem per se. Imeem can exist in a world completely without the RIAA, and could conceivably contract with individual artists to stream their songs, looking almost exactly the same as it does now.
So even if the labels are missing the boat, (and I personally feel that this is a positive step for them, albeit dragged-kicking-and-streaming;)) I think imeem's business model is one which may work, and which may outlast the music industry as we know it.
Drs. Klein and Ullsperger noted that upon discovery of the gene, they tested themselves for its presence.
"Fortunately we determined we were both negative for the A1-allele," Dr. Klein admitted with some relief, with Ullsperger adding, "We double checked just to make sure."
I understand completely. I too would like to stop my nosy neighbors from peering at me out of their window when I leave my house in the morning. My plan is to implement "pay per stare" at some point in the future but they aren't gonna pay if they can get their jollies for free. I blame the "Sun" and "street lamps" and "glass" and other devices that interfere with my ability to effect sole distribution over the intellectual property that is my personal image. Well, at the very least, I should be able to sue torch/flashlight manufacturers into oblivion and then use my deserved winnings to tackle the big boys 150 gigameters away.
1) Why the assumption that Activision is the big bad in this case? They may have done a perfectly ordinary cover, and the judge may completely dismiss the Romantics' case. Or not, but it's fairly common for cover artists to try to emulate the original sound.
2) I think it's at least possible the people are objecting to this case not out of a love for Activision, but out of the principle that intellectual property rights should be as least restrictive as possible. That is of high concern to many of us "slashdotters," one which might override concerns about which party is David and which is Goliath.
3) In Midler, there are several facts to the case which may be different from The Romantics.
First, we know for a fact that Ford attempted to negotiate with Midler for her performance and she refused. We don't know that in the case of the Romantics.
Second, Young & Rubicam, the ad agency, admitted at trial that they instructed Midler's backup singer to sound as much as her as possible. There's no evidence of those kinds of machinations here, yet. And even if there were, the law makes clear that "mere imitation of a recorded performance would not constitute a copyright infringement even where one performer deliberately sets out to simulate another's performance as exactly as possible." There has to be more than that -- see below.
Third, at the outset of negotiations, Midler's lawyer asked, "Is it a commercial?" was told yes, and responded, "We are not interested." Clearly Midler did not want her vocals to be considered an endorsement of an advertised product. Perhaps she was opposed to Ford's labor practices or simply preferred BMWs. The point is that a listener might reasonably infer that Midler was endorsing the prodcut through her vocals, and might form an untrue opinion of her character. The Romantics' (apparent) performance in GH does not imply any endorsement of a specific commercial product, and therefore it's possible a court will decide that it is not a misappropriation of their identity, regardless of the degree of verisimilitude.
The text is available online. People can reach their own conclusions.
What a funny troll. I guess it shows that people will believe anything as long as it's said/written in an authoritative manner.
187 million miles. Hmm, is there ANYTHING of note 187 million miles from the Earth, other than the other side of its orbit around the Sun?
Re:Python is part of the answer
on
Open Source Math
·
· Score: 1
Thank you for taking the time to reply. That was very helpful, as was your diagram analogy.
I understand this concept that a computer proof has an additional layer of untrustworthiness. And that in theory a high degree of confidence can never be equivalent to a formal proof. It still seems to me that there are real world circumstances where a computer-aided proof will be stronger (more trustworthy) in practice. E.g., if a mathematician produced a controversial "pen and paper" proof as a tome running on for some thousand pages, the likelihood of multiple human errors would vastly outweigh the theoretical advantages of not relying on a computer proof.
Thanks. I will think more upon this.
Re:Python is part of the answer
on
Open Source Math
·
· Score: 1
I'm not a mathematician and know little about this subject. Could you elaborate upon how the weakness in computer aided proofs is any different from the weakness shared by pen and paper proofs? With the latter as well, there is a non-zero chance that there is an error in the proof. It is well known that erroneous proofs have gone undiscovered for long periods of time, even before the age of the computer. To use your gamma ray, a person's neurons could also be struck by radiation causing him to have a mental "blip" or causing his optic nerve to send wrong information. However, unlike a computer, a person cannot improve the reliability of his internal circuitry. A computer can (in theory) be constructed which has a much lower possibility of "hard" error than any possible human, and so, the computer could at least potentially reduce the possibility of a result being faulty.
Yet despite this you sound quite clear that a computer proof is inherently flawed compared with a pen-and-paper proof. So what am I missing?
To borrow a term from one of the fine America-loving comments on that bulletin board, I think it would be appropriate to call "TinyURL" type services "Pixie Servers".
Fanboys have been lamenting this "stupid" "pointless" format war from the beginning but this just proves it has been wonderful from the consumer point of view. Had there been only one format, chances are we'd still have to pay $400-$500 minimum for players. Thank you, competition.
You're both right. K-mart bought Sears, but the resulting company is Sears Holding Corp, which owns K-mart. Sort of like the way SBC bought AT&T and then took on the name of its victim, er, acquisition.
Took on the name of its victim. We should call these "Sylar buyouts."
Unless sony drops the price of their Blu-Ray equipment, Blu-Ray is dead in the water. Have they already forgotten BetaMax?
This is not a directly comparable situation. Blu-Ray isn't going to die because it lives in every PS3 that is sold. Even if all the other studios switch (and it will take a lot for Disney to lose face and switch) Sony will continue to offer Blu-Ray content for the forseeable future. Not to mention, Blu-Ray burners store more and are likely to be predominant in the storage arena unless the HD-DVD people start making cheap burners too. So on second thought, maybe it is comparable in the sense that it actually took Betamax a long time to die, twenty-seven years according to Wikipedia. In that length of time, chances are neither HD-DVD nor BluRay will resemble what we see today, if they exist at all.
Fact is, Sony had a chance to end this war before it started by compromising a bit and agreeing to use HDi/iHD instead of BD-J. Its hatred for all things Microsoft caused it to make a monumental blunder. And in snubbing Redmond, it couldn't even come off as a champion of the people because of the extreme "Sony Style" DRM built into Blu-Ray.
It wouldn't surprise me if 512MB is more than the entire amount of RAM that existed on the planet in 1971. And just to put things in more modern perspective, the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 3.1 were 2MB RAM and for Windows 95, 4MB (realistically 8-16MB). We've gotten spoiled to think that 1GB is or should be a minimum for an OS to work properly.
Wi-LAN claims in their press release that While we prefer to resolve patent infringement through business discussions, we have consistently maintained that litigation was always a possibility when negotiations do not result in a license within a reasonable time. So, at least allegedly, they have been attempting to get this matter resolved through licensing. And since they've been around for 15 years, it seems perhaps not fair to label them as patent trolls.
So I ask you, Slashdotter, imagine this situation. You invent an incremental technological breakthrough, and you patent it. Let's say it involves some esoteric use of carbon nanotubes. Unfortunately, at the moment nobody is manufacturing nanotubes in the quality or consistency that you would need. Basically you have to wait for other tech to mature before your invention can take off.
A few years pass and finally, nanotech is up to the level where your invention could be profitable. You start to ask around to see if other companies are interested in licensing your patent. No takers. Another year passes, and to your shock, products from major companies start to appear on the market that utilize your exact invention. Again you try to work out a license and they all laugh in your face. "Go ahead, try to take us to court. We'll bury you," some legal intern snickers after one heated telephone exchange. Finally, one "patent holding" company offers to buy your invention. Not for much, but for much more than you would otherwise get for it, namely, zero.
Now who's the bad guy in the above scenario? The poor inventor, who couldn't afford to invent all of the other enabling technologies to produce his patent on his own? The patent holding company, who is building up a portfolio from other frustrated inventors? Or the big corporations, who think they're immune from having to pay for intellectual property they expropriate? Or maybe you really think all patents are bad, and if you invent something, your only option is to either give it away for nothing or to try to keep it a trade secret?
My point is: don't be so quick to slavishly kiss up to the corporate overlords and put down every instance of patent litigation. The big corps must be loving the fact that the supposedly free-thinking tech-savvy intellectuals of the world are all lined up in their corner.
IANAL, but even without the videotape, I believe small claims court is the way to go with these things. Big companies don't like to go to court over small matters. I know of a case where Microsoft settled with someone in Small Claims court over the full price of a computer because they didn't want to be hassled with paying attorneys to come to court.
Basically the person who this happened to needs to subpoena the store employees at witnesses, subpoena BB headquarters for all of their 'shrinkage' reports regarding hard drives, effectively make it as difficult and expensive as possible for the company to appear in court. They will probably call him before the court date and offer a reasonable settlement.
Of course Best Buy HAVE to act like arses because if they didn't, everyone would return to the store with bricks and demand refunds for their new 1TB hard drives. But once they see you're serious with your lawsuit, they'll be more inclined to offer a settlement.
No, it's not just an issue of one error. It's an intrinsic flaw in the concept of veropedia.
How do you determine whether an article is accurate or not? You can't practically fact-check for every article you read, and if you could, then you would go to the primary sources to begin with and never mind an encyclopedia. So fundamentally, it boils down to trust. In a traditional encyclopedia, you trust the knowledge of experts. In wikipedia, you trust the knowledge of the mob. In veropedia, you have neither. Once an article is imported from wiki to vero, it is deemed "stable" and you don't have constant feedback correcting its mistakes as you would in a regular wikipedia article. Whatever mistakes slip through remain.
Chuckle. You have to love this fake alternative-community lingo.
A collaborative effort: In regular English, "a collaborative effort" that is a business enterprise is known as a "company." I'll take away points because they missed the ever popular "grass roots."
written by Wikipedia contributors: Hopefully you won't notice that anybody can call themselves a "wikipedia contributor" so that means nothing. Nice touch how they try to spin it as if a garden-variety Wikipedia contributor is somehow better than an expert.
NN is preferential shaping based on the source of the data. QOS is preferential shaping based on the type of data.
That's a nice soundbite but it's an oversimplfication.
If I'm using up the majority of the bandwidth on my block downloading files, and Comcast decides to throttle me, they're doing QoS, even if they're just totally throttling my speed without regard to the type of data.
They also are doing QoS if they throttle my uploads, although it's preferentiial shaping based on the source of the data, namely, my house.
And one could imagine that Comcast could decide they're going to allow one form of P2P, their own (imaginary) protocol "crapcast," patented, and end-to-end encrypted. For which, of course, you'd have to pay a monthly surcharge and 3rd party providers would need to obtain licenses at exorbitant rates. Every other form of p2p they would block, based upon type of data. Even so, that would be NN.
Seems to me they provide the mp3's as a BOTE estimate, an order of magnitude for point of reference, nothing more. If anybody wants to calculate it into hours (which is meaningless without a corresponding bitrate), then they've got the actual storage space, 128GB, and can do the math themselves.
Monsanto DRM Dubya Satan Hitler Darl McBride Comcast RIAA Microsoft MPAA Bin Laden Bono (he's not fooling anybody) Rush Limbaugh AOL Saddam Hussein Hillary Clinton Bram Cohen IBM Castro Bill Clinton Any 8-bit computer except the TRS-80 God Hugo Chavez Al Gore The Pirate Bay Richard Dawkins DVD Jon rms emacs Linus Torvalds Xerox PARC Woz Apple
For years, the US political system has relied on this sort of wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude by the common voter. We can talk smack against the "libruls" and "political correctness" and express our devotion to the freewheeling marketplace, but in the back of our minds we take it for granted that, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, the courts will come and rescue us whenever the business tycoons we vote into power get too absurd in their obeisance to their own wallets. But surely, by now, after a generation of primarily right-wing judicial appointees, we see that the situation has changed. The courts are no longer the last bastion of liberal social policies. Nor should they be. Let's stop expecting the old men in robes to bail us out of the messes we are in. We are a nation of laws, and we owe it to ourselves and our descendants to have laws in place that express our true political will.
Of course, that means we actually have to pay attention to whom we elect into Congress, and to what they do once they're there. Even worse, we'll have to stop being hypocrites and realize that most of us actually want a life cocooned by taxes and regulation. Are we up to that?
One of the complaints about the original game that I'm aware of is that the FOV is not user-adjustable, hence the game experience is exactly the same on a widescreen monitor as it is on a traditional 4:3 monitor. For a while, at least, there was a minor hue and cry about this among the dualhead enthusiasts and their ilk. Although I think the game currently plays fine on my widescreen monitor, it might be interesting to add content for WS and multihead players, such as a FOV adjuster, additional diagnostics (e.g. map stays visible on second monitor), and subtle enhancements to ensure that any improvements don't break the game experience. For example, if you expand the field of view, you want to make sure hidden enemies don't spawn in plain sight.
Huh? Which part of my post are you supposed to be disagreeing with? I'm saying it's misleading and exaggerated to claim, as the writeup does, that IU students are being forced to use Chacha. As you correctly point out, there's plenty else wrong with what IU is doing without making stuff up.
Mod parent up. This is just IU using Chacha to power its own internal search portal, and forcing its employees to be unpaid volunteers for Chacha. Nobody's stopping students from using GOOG or anything else for their general web searches. RTFPR for more info.
I still think it's boneheaded and a conflict of interest, but let's not exaggerate it into something it's not. Oh wait, this is Slashdot, never mind.
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny that you say imeem is missing the point when your web address is pointing to last.fm. Imeem is basically last.fm PLUS unlimited music plays PLUS video feeds. (But admittedly, minus the kewl audioscrobbler.) I don't see what there is to beef about a free ad-supported service which has basically just destroyed the raison-d'etre of Yahoo!Music Unlimited and other comparable services. In any event, your criticisms are really about the major labels, not about imeem per se. Imeem can exist in a world completely without the RIAA, and could conceivably contract with individual artists to stream their songs, looking almost exactly the same as it does now.
;)) I think imeem's business model is one which may work, and which may outlast the music industry as we know it.
So even if the labels are missing the boat, (and I personally feel that this is a positive step for them, albeit dragged-kicking-and-streaming
Drs. Klein and Ullsperger noted that upon discovery of the gene, they tested themselves for its presence.
"Fortunately we determined we were both negative for the A1-allele," Dr. Klein admitted with some relief, with Ullsperger adding, "We double checked just to make sure."
I understand completely. I too would like to stop my nosy neighbors from peering at me out of their window when I leave my house in the morning. My plan is to implement "pay per stare" at some point in the future but they aren't gonna pay if they can get their jollies for free. I blame the "Sun" and "street lamps" and "glass" and other devices that interfere with my ability to effect sole distribution over the intellectual property that is my personal image. Well, at the very least, I should be able to sue torch/flashlight manufacturers into oblivion and then use my deserved winnings to tackle the big boys 150 gigameters away.
1) Why the assumption that Activision is the big bad in this case? They may have done a perfectly ordinary cover, and the judge may completely dismiss the Romantics' case. Or not, but it's fairly common for cover artists to try to emulate the original sound.
2) I think it's at least possible the people are objecting to this case not out of a love for Activision, but out of the principle that intellectual property rights should be as least restrictive as possible. That is of high concern to many of us "slashdotters," one which might override concerns about which party is David and which is Goliath.
3) In Midler, there are several facts to the case which may be different from The Romantics.
First, we know for a fact that Ford attempted to negotiate with Midler for her performance and she refused. We don't know that in the case of the Romantics.
Second, Young & Rubicam, the ad agency, admitted at trial that they instructed Midler's backup singer to sound as much as her as possible. There's no evidence of those kinds of machinations here, yet. And even if there were, the law makes clear that "mere imitation of a recorded performance would not constitute a copyright infringement even where one performer deliberately sets out to simulate another's performance as exactly as possible." There has to be more than that -- see below.
Third, at the outset of negotiations, Midler's lawyer asked, "Is it a commercial?" was told yes, and responded, "We are not interested." Clearly Midler did not want her vocals to be considered an endorsement of an advertised product. Perhaps she was opposed to Ford's labor practices or simply preferred BMWs. The point is that a listener might reasonably infer that Midler was endorsing the prodcut through her vocals, and might form an untrue opinion of her character. The Romantics' (apparent) performance in GH does not imply any endorsement of a specific commercial product, and therefore it's possible a court will decide that it is not a misappropriation of their identity, regardless of the degree of verisimilitude.
The text is available online. People can reach their own conclusions.
What a funny troll. I guess it shows that people will believe anything as long as it's said/written in an authoritative manner.
187 million miles. Hmm, is there ANYTHING of note 187 million miles from the Earth, other than the other side of its orbit around the Sun?
Thank you for taking the time to reply. That was very helpful, as was your diagram analogy.
I understand this concept that a computer proof has an additional layer of untrustworthiness. And that in theory a high degree of confidence can never be equivalent to a formal proof. It still seems to me that there are real world circumstances where a computer-aided proof will be stronger (more trustworthy) in practice. E.g., if a mathematician produced a controversial "pen and paper" proof as a tome running on for some thousand pages, the likelihood of multiple human errors would vastly outweigh the theoretical advantages of not relying on a computer proof.
Thanks. I will think more upon this.
I'm not a mathematician and know little about this subject. Could you elaborate upon how the weakness in computer aided proofs is any different from the weakness shared by pen and paper proofs? With the latter as well, there is a non-zero chance that there is an error in the proof. It is well known that erroneous proofs have gone undiscovered for long periods of time, even before the age of the computer. To use your gamma ray, a person's neurons could also be struck by radiation causing him to have a mental "blip" or causing his optic nerve to send wrong information. However, unlike a computer, a person cannot improve the reliability of his internal circuitry. A computer can (in theory) be constructed which has a much lower possibility of "hard" error than any possible human, and so, the computer could at least potentially reduce the possibility of a result being faulty.
Yet despite this you sound quite clear that a computer proof is inherently flawed compared with a pen-and-paper proof. So what am I missing?
To borrow a term from one of the fine America-loving comments on that bulletin board, I think it would be appropriate to call "TinyURL" type services "Pixie Servers".
Other than that, Bluray isn't just a Sony thing.
I'm aware, but Wikipedia strongly implies that in the end it was Sony specifically who stood in the way of Microsoft's HDi being adopted for BD.
Regarding your other point, I agree 100%. Corporations aren't football teams. They don't need fans.
Fanboys have been lamenting this "stupid" "pointless" format war from the beginning but this just proves it has been wonderful from the consumer point of view. Had there been only one format, chances are we'd still have to pay $400-$500 minimum for players. Thank you, competition.
You're both right. K-mart bought Sears, but the resulting company is Sears Holding Corp, which owns K-mart. Sort of like the way SBC bought AT&T and then took on the name of its victim, er, acquisition.
Took on the name of its victim. We should call these "Sylar buyouts."
Unless sony drops the price of their Blu-Ray equipment, Blu-Ray is dead in the water. Have they already forgotten BetaMax?
This is not a directly comparable situation. Blu-Ray isn't going to die because it lives in every PS3 that is sold. Even if all the other studios switch (and it will take a lot for Disney to lose face and switch) Sony will continue to offer Blu-Ray content for the forseeable future. Not to mention, Blu-Ray burners store more and are likely to be predominant in the storage arena unless the HD-DVD people start making cheap burners too. So on second thought, maybe it is comparable in the sense that it actually took Betamax a long time to die, twenty-seven years according to Wikipedia. In that length of time, chances are neither HD-DVD nor BluRay will resemble what we see today, if they exist at all.
Fact is, Sony had a chance to end this war before it started by compromising a bit and agreeing to use HDi/iHD instead of BD-J. Its hatred for all things Microsoft caused it to make a monumental blunder. And in snubbing Redmond, it couldn't even come off as a champion of the people because of the extreme "Sony Style" DRM built into Blu-Ray.
It wouldn't surprise me if 512MB is more than the entire amount of RAM that existed on the planet in 1971. And just to put things in more modern perspective, the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 3.1 were 2MB RAM and for Windows 95, 4MB (realistically 8-16MB). We've gotten spoiled to think that 1GB is or should be a minimum for an OS to work properly.
Wi-LAN claims in their press release that While we prefer to resolve patent infringement through business discussions, we have consistently maintained that litigation was always a possibility when negotiations do not result in a license within a reasonable time. So, at least allegedly, they have been attempting to get this matter resolved through licensing. And since they've been around for 15 years, it seems perhaps not fair to label them as patent trolls.
So I ask you, Slashdotter, imagine this situation. You invent an incremental technological breakthrough, and you patent it. Let's say it involves some esoteric use of carbon nanotubes. Unfortunately, at the moment nobody is manufacturing nanotubes in the quality or consistency that you would need. Basically you have to wait for other tech to mature before your invention can take off.
A few years pass and finally, nanotech is up to the level where your invention could be profitable. You start to ask around to see if other companies are interested in licensing your patent. No takers. Another year passes, and to your shock, products from major companies start to appear on the market that utilize your exact invention. Again you try to work out a license and they all laugh in your face. "Go ahead, try to take us to court. We'll bury you," some legal intern snickers after one heated telephone exchange. Finally, one "patent holding" company offers to buy your invention. Not for much, but for much more than you would otherwise get for it, namely, zero.
Now who's the bad guy in the above scenario? The poor inventor, who couldn't afford to invent all of the other enabling technologies to produce his patent on his own? The patent holding company, who is building up a portfolio from other frustrated inventors? Or the big corporations, who think they're immune from having to pay for intellectual property they expropriate? Or maybe you really think all patents are bad, and if you invent something, your only option is to either give it away for nothing or to try to keep it a trade secret?
My point is: don't be so quick to slavishly kiss up to the corporate overlords and put down every instance of patent litigation. The big corps must be loving the fact that the supposedly free-thinking tech-savvy intellectuals of the world are all lined up in their corner.
IANAL, but even without the videotape, I believe small claims court is the way to go with these things. Big companies don't like to go to court over small matters. I know of a case where Microsoft settled with someone in Small Claims court over the full price of a computer because they didn't want to be hassled with paying attorneys to come to court.
Basically the person who this happened to needs to subpoena the store employees at witnesses, subpoena BB headquarters for all of their 'shrinkage' reports regarding hard drives, effectively make it as difficult and expensive as possible for the company to appear in court. They will probably call him before the court date and offer a reasonable settlement.
Of course Best Buy HAVE to act like arses because if they didn't, everyone would return to the store with bricks and demand refunds for their new 1TB hard drives. But once they see you're serious with your lawsuit, they'll be more inclined to offer a settlement.
No, it's not just an issue of one error. It's an intrinsic flaw in the concept of veropedia.
How do you determine whether an article is accurate or not? You can't practically fact-check for every article you read, and if you could, then you would go to the primary sources to begin with and never mind an encyclopedia. So fundamentally, it boils down to trust. In a traditional encyclopedia, you trust the knowledge of experts. In wikipedia, you trust the knowledge of the mob. In veropedia, you have neither. Once an article is imported from wiki to vero, it is deemed "stable" and you don't have constant feedback correcting its mistakes as you would in a regular wikipedia article. Whatever mistakes slip through remain.
Chuckle. You have to love this fake alternative-community lingo.
A collaborative effort: In regular English, "a collaborative effort" that is a business enterprise is known as a "company." I'll take away points because they missed the ever popular "grass roots."
written by Wikipedia contributors: Hopefully you won't notice that anybody can call themselves a "wikipedia contributor" so that means nothing. Nice touch how they try to spin it as if a garden-variety Wikipedia contributor is somehow better than an expert.
verofied: Oh, Colbert! What hast thou wrought?
NN is preferential shaping based on the source of the data. QOS is preferential shaping based on the type of data.
That's a nice soundbite but it's an oversimplfication.
If I'm using up the majority of the bandwidth on my block downloading files, and Comcast decides to throttle me, they're doing QoS, even if they're just totally throttling my speed without regard to the type of data.
They also are doing QoS if they throttle my uploads, although it's preferentiial shaping based on the source of the data, namely, my house.
And one could imagine that Comcast could decide they're going to allow one form of P2P, their own (imaginary) protocol "crapcast," patented, and end-to-end encrypted. For which, of course, you'd have to pay a monthly surcharge and 3rd party providers would need to obtain licenses at exorbitant rates. Every other form of p2p they would block, based upon type of data. Even so, that would be NN.
Seems to me they provide the mp3's as a BOTE estimate, an order of magnitude for point of reference, nothing more. If anybody wants to calculate it into hours (which is meaningless without a corresponding bitrate), then they've got the actual storage space, 128GB, and can do the math themselves.
the committee noted a surprisingly number of searches for private financial information.
Looks like the "X is bad, X ON TEH INTERNETS is worse!11!!" meme is mutating into "X ON P2P is worserer!11!!"
In order of decreasing evil.
Monsanto
DRM
Dubya
Satan
Hitler
Darl McBride
Comcast
RIAA
Microsoft
MPAA
Bin Laden
Bono (he's not fooling anybody)
Rush Limbaugh
AOL
Saddam Hussein
Hillary Clinton
Bram Cohen
IBM
Castro
Bill Clinton
Any 8-bit computer except the TRS-80
God
Hugo Chavez
Al Gore
The Pirate Bay
Richard Dawkins
DVD Jon
rms
emacs
Linus Torvalds
Xerox PARC
Woz
Apple
For years, the US political system has relied on this sort of wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude by the common voter. We can talk smack against the "libruls" and "political correctness" and express our devotion to the freewheeling marketplace, but in the back of our minds we take it for granted that, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, the courts will come and rescue us whenever the business tycoons we vote into power get too absurd in their obeisance to their own wallets. But surely, by now, after a generation of primarily right-wing judicial appointees, we see that the situation has changed. The courts are no longer the last bastion of liberal social policies. Nor should they be. Let's stop expecting the old men in robes to bail us out of the messes we are in. We are a nation of laws, and we owe it to ourselves and our descendants to have laws in place that express our true political will.
Of course, that means we actually have to pay attention to whom we elect into Congress, and to what they do once they're there. Even worse, we'll have to stop being hypocrites and realize that most of us actually want a life cocooned by taxes and regulation. Are we up to that?
One of the complaints about the original game that I'm aware of is that the FOV is not user-adjustable, hence the game experience is exactly the same on a widescreen monitor as it is on a traditional 4:3 monitor. For a while, at least, there was a minor hue and cry about this among the dualhead enthusiasts and their ilk. Although I think the game currently plays fine on my widescreen monitor, it might be interesting to add content for WS and multihead players, such as a FOV adjuster, additional diagnostics (e.g. map stays visible on second monitor), and subtle enhancements to ensure that any improvements don't break the game experience. For example, if you expand the field of view, you want to make sure hidden enemies don't spawn in plain sight.
Huh? Which part of my post are you supposed to be disagreeing with? I'm saying it's misleading and exaggerated to claim, as the writeup does, that IU students are being forced to use Chacha. As you correctly point out, there's plenty else wrong with what IU is doing without making stuff up.
Mod parent up. This is just IU using Chacha to power its own internal search portal, and forcing its employees to be unpaid volunteers for Chacha. Nobody's stopping students from using GOOG or anything else for their general web searches. RTFPR for more info.
I still think it's boneheaded and a conflict of interest, but let's not exaggerate it into something it's not. Oh wait, this is Slashdot, never mind.