I don't know about consoles, but in PC games this is called a patch. If there is still work to be done in the 30-60 days before release that can't be included in the main release, you release it as a patch on day 1. What is the difference between dlc and a patch you ask? Easy, dlc is a patch that costs money. Support companies like tripwire interactive. Their game Red Orchestra patched in 3 separate content expansions over the game's lifetime, and users weren't charged a cent. These expansions contained new maps, vehicles, skins, weapons, just about a complete new version of the game. Tripwire is also just an example, there are many companies that continue to support and reward their customers for the initial purchase. Bioware used to be good. New bioware can suck my dick, and if they are very very good at it they might get some liquid dlc.
First step is to stop listening to the hype. Yes it would be bad for the large power distribution infrastructure but no solar flare is going to erase optical discs that doesn't also wipe out most life on the planet.
The thing that surprised me was that someone who thinks most life on the planet is going to be wiped out is concerned about source code. Who is going to play your games when civilisation is reduced to rubble? You think people fighting over post apocalyptic resources are going to give a shit about some indy game? I am also an indy developer and I thought my delusions of grandeur were about as big as they get. I tell myself I can revolutionise the video gaming paradigm. Even I am not deluded enough to think that my work would have any value whatsoever if the actual species was under threat. Get a copy of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica or the complete works of Albert Einstein, or Nikola Tesla... bury that shit in an airtight metal box 100km beneath the surface of the moon. Indy games... yeah, right.
I am a US basher, so let me defend that position:
All nations are bad, some are worse than others. The US is not the worst. The US probably rates about 18th on my list of evil governments, and it gets a special boost because of it's wide reach. If the DRC or north Korea had the global reach of the US they would be many times worse. They don't though. The US has military bases in the country I live in. They have CIA/NSA spy bases in the country I was born in (two seperate countries). They permeate all our public broadcasting with US culture/news/entertainment. They stand on a soapbox and shout out to the world phrases like 'land of the free', 'leader of the free world', 'greatest nation on earth'... etc. ad nauseam. I bash the US for the same reason that people bash Charlie Sheen for taking drugs, or Bill Clinton for getting a blowjob. Are they the worst? No. Could you find someone in every crackhouse in every city in the world that both does more drugs than sheen, and gets more blowjobs than Cli'ton? Yes. But when you hold yourself up in the public eye, and try to gain fame and recognition, when you put yourself in a position of power and influence over others, you are under more scrutiny than most. If you get the US to pull all it's forces out of the hundreds of countries they are in, and to stop interfering in our justice systems, or foreign affairs and our economies, then I will go after someone else. Russia and China are next on my list, and they would just love to take your spot. So quit complaining.
To be fair, this thread is about Germany. All governments are liars and murderers. So let me share the love: Fuck Germany. I am sitting here in the poor district of Berlin with no money, no work, and no food in my house. The state owes me over 1000 Euros, but they wont pay it because they have deliberately lost the paperwork I filed to claim it. After they first returned it to me complaining that I filed it a few days early. Everyone who deals with this government branch knows they deliberately lose paperwork, and do their best to screw you. No one can do anything about it though. Fuck Germany.
I am sorry that rant wasn't more on topic but the way Germany deals with copyright law in the context of individual breaches through filesharing is fair and reasonable, and I have no complaints about it. They screw over the entertainment and hospitality industry, not to mention the artists with their GEMA (local branch of the mafiaa), but that is offtopic too as this article is about filesharing.
It has been known for decades that household use of antibacterial soaps creates immune bacteria that are causing major problems for hospitals. There is no reason for it, but it takes a new study that shows you are not just fucking shit up for everyone, you are fucking your own shit up too. Now people will stop, selfishness rules.
I would just like to gently remind the thread and slashdot in general that this article is NOT about the US. Yes in any conversation about voting and elections the US is an important example, but these conversations that gradually devolve into talking about the fine details of voter laws in florida and california and then inevitably to flamewars about the relative merits of the dems vs the republicans are offtopic and irrelevant. The article is about using distributed semantic networks to verify the identities of individuals for the purpose of voting.
I am sorry to disagree with the experts here, but I think they got it wrong. I merely object to the name 'nocebo effect'. What this article refers to is the placebo effect, you take something, believe it is the drug, and feel the effects of the drug. The name nocebo would be much better applied to the cases where the people get the actual drug, and believe it is a placebo, which can cancel out the drug's effects. Yes this is a purely semantic distinction, but if you think about it, I think you will find it is correct. Also moderators: I am amazed at what passes for 'insightful' these days. Have a little pride and remember it suggests that you didn't already think of it yourself when you give that moderation. The first post is evidence that we need '+1 the article is stupid and this comment points that out'.
Yes...and that's the point. It's really nothing special. Just a standard semi-automatic rifle (not much different than any other varmint rifle).
But in DC it is illegal and near impossible to get one. And he did....
(Could of just kept his mouth shut. And when things hit the crapper in another decade, he'd have the means to keep himself and his neighbors safe.)
Could the moderators tell me exactly what part of this they found informative? The only piece of information in this that is even accurate is the bit about such guns being illegal in DC and that was from the post he was replying to. Yeah guns keep you safe, keep telling yourself that. Also fried chicken keeps you thin and computer games keep you tanned.
Well you know what they say: 'make hay while the sun shines'. Maybe a bumper hay crop may offset some of your corn losses. Mind you, you are talking about political hay. I think there is a glut on the world market at the moment, at least of the US variety of hay.
I don't see why you'd hate Zynga more than copyright law. Don't play Zynga games and they don't affect you. You can't opt out of copyright law.
This is the thing, as an indy game developer myself I find it hard to decide which I hate more. I can imagine the anger I would feel if I had a popular game and it was ripped off and all my customers stolen by assholes like zynga who never contributed anything to the gaming world in their life.
On the other hand if zynga loses this case it might set a dangerous precedent. My own work is generally inspired by something else, all artists plagiarise to some degree. It is clear to people who appreciate good games who is bringing new innovation to an old abandoned idea, and who is ripping off other people's ip to milk profit from it. But codifying that in law is not an easy task. The ideal outcome in my opinion is that EA and zynga both put each other out of business with massive legal costs, and then all simultaneously drop dead from heart attacks. I guess the ideal realistic outcome is that zynga wins the court case but the bad publicity damages their reputation to such a degree that they gradually fade away. I know that is also not very realistic, people who like zynga games are not usually smart enough to understand a complex issue like this.
I repaired a drive that had a piece of circuitry knocked off by heating up a knife on a gas stove and resoldering it. I didn't have a soldering iron. Apart from that the only recourse I have found is to use a ide/sata to usb bridge. The fact that plugging in via usb means the OS doesn't have to boot up with a broken drive means you can try over and over till you get lucky, and I am usually able to salvage 90% of data this way.
You are right that this is a highly unlikely scenario, especially given that your point C multiplies against A and B such that it is highly unlikely that a dangerous or detrimental genetic change could occur, and also highly unlikely that any change would be passed on to offspring. The chances of both are extremely small. I am forced to disagree with your conclusion though. There are seven thousand million people in the world. In terms of medical treatment unlikely is synonymous with daily occurrence, very unlikely is the same as doesn't happen very often, and extremely unlikely is the same as bound to happen eventually. The question is not will something go wrong, the question is what are the potential consequences if something does go wrong. Given that the consequences might go unnoticed for many generations and spread to large numbers of people, and given that we know so little about the way genetics works, the answer is: We have no idea, it could be anything.
Disclaimer: I am not against this treatment at all, I support and celebrate advances in medical science. I merely point out that this is not a decision to be rushed or taken lightly.
We need that quick fix! Blame the Guns! Thats the Answer!
Don't blame the Society that desires a movie that glorifies violence and subversive behavior!
Don't blame the School that grinds down the individual.
Don't blame the Friends that saw a lost person and walked away.
Don't blame the Parents that watched Wheel of Fortune instead of constructive activities.
Nah, it must be the tools.
I will agree to blame all those things if you will also agree that access to guns might be part of the issue. Say what you want about molotovs and machetes, but molotovs require a modicum of knowledge to make and machetes require a certain amount of strength and dexterity to get though 62 people, not to mention a much higher level of psychotic numbness. Guns make killing easy, a paraplegic with severe mental retardation can still do a gun massacre. You are right that there are a lot more factors involved, but you have to admit that in a culture that glorifies violence and subversive behaviour, has a shit education system, low social cohesion, bad support for parents etc. that having access to handguns and assault rifles is also probably not helping.
Angry birds is just a rip off of a very old concept, popularity != quality.
Now that that is out of the way, if you simply take all indie games in an epic sized game folder and click on random binaries until you find something you like then your comments about signal to noise ratio are spot on. But that is not how I find games. The way many people find games is also plagued by this problem, namely clicking on advertisements that look like something they might like, on services like the ones you mention. I usually rely on word of mouth, I also rely on a very select group of reviewers who don't just hype whatever is new, and lastly I keep an eye on developers that have done things I liked in the past, including open source communities. Now the point of all this is that you are stuck in a certain industry mindset which could be applied to this console as well, as you point out however, this is unlikely to work. There are other models though. Finding ways to rate and filter signal from noise is compsci 101, and the guys building this console could probably put together a peer to peer game rating/reviewing/recommending system in a couple of hours without breaking a sweat. Also many indie games are not just crap, they are niche, you might not like game x, but I might. Giving the user access to millions of little games is nice as long as they have tools to search them efficiently and find what suits their taste. Basically it seems like your point is that big name companies selling random indie games by the millions don't care if the user enjoys the game after they paid for it, but a console maker would care if users enjoy the games. I am agreeing with you and pointing out that this is the reason that it could work.
This. They are clearly making these claims to attract big commercial developers. This is a mistake as those developers will not come. They should be trying to attract indy developers with free to play content. For developers like this open, hackable systems are great, and the chance to move into the console market in a way that supports digital distribution direct to the consumer without the need for proprietary disc formats is very attractive. I would suggest that they collaborate with the Unity3d people, there is a goldmine of free to play content there and anyone can get in on it. A console with this business model could soon come to dominate the console indy corner of the market (given that there is zero competition). As an independent basement developer myself, I know I have no chance of earning money off my games until one becomes popular. I would jump at the chance to deploy for a console if it was as simple and hassle free as deploying windows/mac/browser clients on unity. You would not get the best games but you would get huge numbers of games. Some would be good and many would be innovative. Once you had a player base and a market share some of the bigger companies with a more progressive outlook like valve might consider releasing some of their free titles on the platform.
The summary sums it up better "The results contradict prevailing theories, which hold that most of our planet's water originated in the outer solar system and was delivered by comets or asteroids".
Whoever wrote 'Asteroid Crashes Likely Gave Earth Its Water' as a news headline should not be allowed to write headlines anymore.
If we are referring to popular culture for ideas about what could go wrong, there is a Canadian show called 'Regenesis' which I highly recommend. It is just sciency enough to make it uninteresting to the general public (Canadian accents and US government policy bashing may also play a role). Quote: "There are people working on things in labs right now that make the manhattan project look like kids playing with lego".
Sorry dude - I grew up with burnouts. You have do a lot of weed for a long time, but they SURELY weren't any smarter in any way that was obvious to an external observer. They did seem pretty happy though - just sitting on the couch was a great day for them.
In my experience this is a psychological reaction to the sense of well being that marijuana gives. I have also known a lot of long time cannabis users who display this behaviour, and have even experienced it personally. The drug gives you a feeling that all is well and dampens the desire for having more possessions, status, power, etc. This is nothing to do with intelligence or memory, only with motivation. It may seem on the face of things to be a negative or detrimental effect, especially in a society where the profit motive and greed are used as the primary drivers of progress. But it is precisely for this reason that I believe it can also be a good thing. I think our society is sick and obsessed with having and getting. Either way, this is far too philosophical to justify prohibition, if you start talking about human nature and the structure of society you are beyond the point where banning a single substance makes any sense.
So basically, this guy bought a $24 million house by selling [...] media that he neither made, nor owned, nor invested in [...] anyone can see the negative repercussions of people making millions of dollars off of the transaction, when he is neither the sharer, the viewer, nor the author. He's a middleman and this money was ill-gotten
So you are saying the RIAA should get the money instead?
I am so confused. Are people suggesting that I wont be able to buy parts for my pc anymore? Why not? Will they be made illegal? Will companies simply cease to manufacture them? Why? The main reasoning behind TFA seems to be some random blogger claiming that people like to carry things around with them, so pcs will die out because they aren't portable. I have no portable devices, I don't really go out much. I thought that was part of being a proper computer nerd. Am I missing something important here? If I do go out it is mainly because I have something to do that doesn't involve my computer, you know, meat stuff. Maybe I am a luddite but I like to be able to swap out my hardware, mainly for cost/performance reasons. How does the random tech blogger intend to prevent me owning a pc? Maybe he is just talking about the mass market, pcs aren't where the $$$ is anymore. In that case I just wandered into the wrong conversation altogether. Who gives a fuck? I am not a vendor. Why is this even considered newsworthy? Is there really such a high percentage of slashdot readers that sell hardware? Someone please explain to me what this conversation is even about.
You asked for specific citations for those specific issues (hassling journalists, "emergency" dictatorial powers, and the oulaw of gun ownership). You were given those citations, then you moved the goalposts. The other crap you are talking about is spread between Putin and Chavez.
Funny how you talk about bias, but you are about as pro-Chavez biased as I have ever seen in my life. I personally don't give a fuck either way, nor do I own a TV, or read from places like CNN except for getting stories for situations like this.
No I didn't, read it again. No I wasn't read it again. I am the most pro Chavez person you have ever seen? Wow. Let me just repeat the words of praise I have lavished on him:
I disagree with the charges and believe that journalists should be able to say what they want, I think the Chavez administration has overstepped its authority in this case.
I am actually concerned about state repression of the media in Venezuela.
Chavez is a politician. He is not better or worse than bush or blair or merkel, he may be cruder, poorer and less sophisticated but I nothing but contempt for all of them.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about consoles, but in PC games this is called a patch. If there is still work to be done in the 30-60 days before release that can't be included in the main release, you release it as a patch on day 1. What is the difference between dlc and a patch you ask? Easy, dlc is a patch that costs money. Support companies like tripwire interactive. Their game Red Orchestra patched in 3 separate content expansions over the game's lifetime, and users weren't charged a cent. These expansions contained new maps, vehicles, skins, weapons, just about a complete new version of the game. Tripwire is also just an example, there are many companies that continue to support and reward their customers for the initial purchase. Bioware used to be good. New bioware can suck my dick, and if they are very very good at it they might get some liquid dlc.
Apart from the fact that nothing good has come of it
First step is to stop listening to the hype. Yes it would be bad for the large power distribution infrastructure but no solar flare is going to erase optical discs that doesn't also wipe out most life on the planet.
The thing that surprised me was that someone who thinks most life on the planet is going to be wiped out is concerned about source code. Who is going to play your games when civilisation is reduced to rubble? You think people fighting over post apocalyptic resources are going to give a shit about some indy game? I am also an indy developer and I thought my delusions of grandeur were about as big as they get. I tell myself I can revolutionise the video gaming paradigm. Even I am not deluded enough to think that my work would have any value whatsoever if the actual species was under threat. Get a copy of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica or the complete works of Albert Einstein, or Nikola Tesla... bury that shit in an airtight metal box 100km beneath the surface of the moon. Indy games... yeah, right.
I am a US basher, so let me defend that position: All nations are bad, some are worse than others. The US is not the worst. The US probably rates about 18th on my list of evil governments, and it gets a special boost because of it's wide reach. If the DRC or north Korea had the global reach of the US they would be many times worse. They don't though. The US has military bases in the country I live in. They have CIA/NSA spy bases in the country I was born in (two seperate countries). They permeate all our public broadcasting with US culture/news/entertainment. They stand on a soapbox and shout out to the world phrases like 'land of the free', 'leader of the free world', 'greatest nation on earth'... etc. ad nauseam. I bash the US for the same reason that people bash Charlie Sheen for taking drugs, or Bill Clinton for getting a blowjob. Are they the worst? No. Could you find someone in every crackhouse in every city in the world that both does more drugs than sheen, and gets more blowjobs than Cli'ton? Yes. But when you hold yourself up in the public eye, and try to gain fame and recognition, when you put yourself in a position of power and influence over others, you are under more scrutiny than most. If you get the US to pull all it's forces out of the hundreds of countries they are in, and to stop interfering in our justice systems, or foreign affairs and our economies, then I will go after someone else. Russia and China are next on my list, and they would just love to take your spot. So quit complaining.
To be fair, this thread is about Germany. All governments are liars and murderers. So let me share the love: Fuck Germany. I am sitting here in the poor district of Berlin with no money, no work, and no food in my house. The state owes me over 1000 Euros, but they wont pay it because they have deliberately lost the paperwork I filed to claim it. After they first returned it to me complaining that I filed it a few days early. Everyone who deals with this government branch knows they deliberately lose paperwork, and do their best to screw you. No one can do anything about it though. Fuck Germany.
I am sorry that rant wasn't more on topic but the way Germany deals with copyright law in the context of individual breaches through filesharing is fair and reasonable, and I have no complaints about it. They screw over the entertainment and hospitality industry, not to mention the artists with their GEMA (local branch of the mafiaa), but that is offtopic too as this article is about filesharing.
It has been known for decades that household use of antibacterial soaps creates immune bacteria that are causing major problems for hospitals. There is no reason for it, but it takes a new study that shows you are not just fucking shit up for everyone, you are fucking your own shit up too. Now people will stop, selfishness rules.
I would just like to gently remind the thread and slashdot in general that this article is NOT about the US. Yes in any conversation about voting and elections the US is an important example, but these conversations that gradually devolve into talking about the fine details of voter laws in florida and california and then inevitably to flamewars about the relative merits of the dems vs the republicans are offtopic and irrelevant. The article is about using distributed semantic networks to verify the identities of individuals for the purpose of voting.
I am sorry to disagree with the experts here, but I think they got it wrong. I merely object to the name 'nocebo effect'. What this article refers to is the placebo effect, you take something, believe it is the drug, and feel the effects of the drug. The name nocebo would be much better applied to the cases where the people get the actual drug, and believe it is a placebo, which can cancel out the drug's effects. Yes this is a purely semantic distinction, but if you think about it, I think you will find it is correct. Also moderators: I am amazed at what passes for 'insightful' these days. Have a little pride and remember it suggests that you didn't already think of it yourself when you give that moderation. The first post is evidence that we need '+1 the article is stupid and this comment points that out'.
Yes...and that's the point. It's really nothing special. Just a standard semi-automatic rifle (not much different than any other varmint rifle).
But in DC it is illegal and near impossible to get one. And he did.... (Could of just kept his mouth shut. And when things hit the crapper in another decade, he'd have the means to keep himself and his neighbors safe.)
Could the moderators tell me exactly what part of this they found informative? The only piece of information in this that is even accurate is the bit about such guns being illegal in DC and that was from the post he was replying to. Yeah guns keep you safe, keep telling yourself that. Also fried chicken keeps you thin and computer games keep you tanned.
Well you know what they say: 'make hay while the sun shines'. Maybe a bumper hay crop may offset some of your corn losses. Mind you, you are talking about political hay. I think there is a glut on the world market at the moment, at least of the US variety of hay.
No it is god punishing you for using fahrenheit.
25.33 degrees for those that both care and didn't already type '77.6f in c' into google.
I don't see why you'd hate Zynga more than copyright law. Don't play Zynga games and they don't affect you. You can't opt out of copyright law.
This is the thing, as an indy game developer myself I find it hard to decide which I hate more. I can imagine the anger I would feel if I had a popular game and it was ripped off and all my customers stolen by assholes like zynga who never contributed anything to the gaming world in their life.
On the other hand if zynga loses this case it might set a dangerous precedent. My own work is generally inspired by something else, all artists plagiarise to some degree. It is clear to people who appreciate good games who is bringing new innovation to an old abandoned idea, and who is ripping off other people's ip to milk profit from it. But codifying that in law is not an easy task. The ideal outcome in my opinion is that EA and zynga both put each other out of business with massive legal costs, and then all simultaneously drop dead from heart attacks. I guess the ideal realistic outcome is that zynga wins the court case but the bad publicity damages their reputation to such a degree that they gradually fade away. I know that is also not very realistic, people who like zynga games are not usually smart enough to understand a complex issue like this.
Someone please mod this guy up, he has been consistently saving me time replying to pointless waste of time threads recently
I repaired a drive that had a piece of circuitry knocked off by heating up a knife on a gas stove and resoldering it. I didn't have a soldering iron. Apart from that the only recourse I have found is to use a ide/sata to usb bridge. The fact that plugging in via usb means the OS doesn't have to boot up with a broken drive means you can try over and over till you get lucky, and I am usually able to salvage 90% of data this way.
This in a country where banning assault weapons in off the table
You are right that this is a highly unlikely scenario, especially given that your point C multiplies against A and B such that it is highly unlikely that a dangerous or detrimental genetic change could occur, and also highly unlikely that any change would be passed on to offspring. The chances of both are extremely small. I am forced to disagree with your conclusion though. There are seven thousand million people in the world. In terms of medical treatment unlikely is synonymous with daily occurrence, very unlikely is the same as doesn't happen very often, and extremely unlikely is the same as bound to happen eventually. The question is not will something go wrong, the question is what are the potential consequences if something does go wrong. Given that the consequences might go unnoticed for many generations and spread to large numbers of people, and given that we know so little about the way genetics works, the answer is: We have no idea, it could be anything.
Disclaimer: I am not against this treatment at all, I support and celebrate advances in medical science. I merely point out that this is not a decision to be rushed or taken lightly.
We need that quick fix! Blame the Guns! Thats the Answer!
Don't blame the Society that desires a movie that glorifies violence and subversive behavior!
Don't blame the School that grinds down the individual.
Don't blame the Friends that saw a lost person and walked away.
Don't blame the Parents that watched Wheel of Fortune instead of constructive activities.
Nah, it must be the tools.
I will agree to blame all those things if you will also agree that access to guns might be part of the issue. Say what you want about molotovs and machetes, but molotovs require a modicum of knowledge to make and machetes require a certain amount of strength and dexterity to get though 62 people, not to mention a much higher level of psychotic numbness. Guns make killing easy, a paraplegic with severe mental retardation can still do a gun massacre. You are right that there are a lot more factors involved, but you have to admit that in a culture that glorifies violence and subversive behaviour, has a shit education system, low social cohesion, bad support for parents etc. that having access to handguns and assault rifles is also probably not helping.
Angry birds is just a rip off of a very old concept, popularity != quality.
Now that that is out of the way, if you simply take all indie games in an epic sized game folder and click on random binaries until you find something you like then your comments about signal to noise ratio are spot on. But that is not how I find games. The way many people find games is also plagued by this problem, namely clicking on advertisements that look like something they might like, on services like the ones you mention. I usually rely on word of mouth, I also rely on a very select group of reviewers who don't just hype whatever is new, and lastly I keep an eye on developers that have done things I liked in the past, including open source communities. Now the point of all this is that you are stuck in a certain industry mindset which could be applied to this console as well, as you point out however, this is unlikely to work. There are other models though. Finding ways to rate and filter signal from noise is compsci 101, and the guys building this console could probably put together a peer to peer game rating/reviewing/recommending system in a couple of hours without breaking a sweat. Also many indie games are not just crap, they are niche, you might not like game x, but I might. Giving the user access to millions of little games is nice as long as they have tools to search them efficiently and find what suits their taste. Basically it seems like your point is that big name companies selling random indie games by the millions don't care if the user enjoys the game after they paid for it, but a console maker would care if users enjoy the games. I am agreeing with you and pointing out that this is the reason that it could work.
This. They are clearly making these claims to attract big commercial developers. This is a mistake as those developers will not come. They should be trying to attract indy developers with free to play content. For developers like this open, hackable systems are great, and the chance to move into the console market in a way that supports digital distribution direct to the consumer without the need for proprietary disc formats is very attractive. I would suggest that they collaborate with the Unity3d people, there is a goldmine of free to play content there and anyone can get in on it. A console with this business model could soon come to dominate the console indy corner of the market (given that there is zero competition). As an independent basement developer myself, I know I have no chance of earning money off my games until one becomes popular. I would jump at the chance to deploy for a console if it was as simple and hassle free as deploying windows/mac/browser clients on unity. You would not get the best games but you would get huge numbers of games. Some would be good and many would be innovative. Once you had a player base and a market share some of the bigger companies with a more progressive outlook like valve might consider releasing some of their free titles on the platform.
The summary sums it up better "The results contradict prevailing theories, which hold that most of our planet's water originated in the outer solar system and was delivered by comets or asteroids".
Whoever wrote 'Asteroid Crashes Likely Gave Earth Its Water' as a news headline should not be allowed to write headlines anymore.
If we are referring to popular culture for ideas about what could go wrong, there is a Canadian show called 'Regenesis' which I highly recommend. It is just sciency enough to make it uninteresting to the general public (Canadian accents and US government policy bashing may also play a role). Quote: "There are people working on things in labs right now that make the manhattan project look like kids playing with lego".
Sorry dude - I grew up with burnouts. You have do a lot of weed for a long time, but they SURELY weren't any smarter in any way that was obvious to an external observer. They did seem pretty happy though - just sitting on the couch was a great day for them.
In my experience this is a psychological reaction to the sense of well being that marijuana gives. I have also known a lot of long time cannabis users who display this behaviour, and have even experienced it personally. The drug gives you a feeling that all is well and dampens the desire for having more possessions, status, power, etc. This is nothing to do with intelligence or memory, only with motivation. It may seem on the face of things to be a negative or detrimental effect, especially in a society where the profit motive and greed are used as the primary drivers of progress. But it is precisely for this reason that I believe it can also be a good thing. I think our society is sick and obsessed with having and getting. Either way, this is far too philosophical to justify prohibition, if you start talking about human nature and the structure of society you are beyond the point where banning a single substance makes any sense.
So basically, this guy bought a $24 million house by selling [...] media that he neither made, nor owned, nor invested in [...] anyone can see the negative repercussions of people making millions of dollars off of the transaction, when he is neither the sharer, the viewer, nor the author. He's a middleman and this money was ill-gotten
So you are saying the RIAA should get the money instead?
I am so confused. Are people suggesting that I wont be able to buy parts for my pc anymore? Why not? Will they be made illegal? Will companies simply cease to manufacture them? Why? The main reasoning behind TFA seems to be some random blogger claiming that people like to carry things around with them, so pcs will die out because they aren't portable. I have no portable devices, I don't really go out much. I thought that was part of being a proper computer nerd. Am I missing something important here? If I do go out it is mainly because I have something to do that doesn't involve my computer, you know, meat stuff. Maybe I am a luddite but I like to be able to swap out my hardware, mainly for cost/performance reasons. How does the random tech blogger intend to prevent me owning a pc? Maybe he is just talking about the mass market, pcs aren't where the $$$ is anymore. In that case I just wandered into the wrong conversation altogether. Who gives a fuck? I am not a vendor. Why is this even considered newsworthy? Is there really such a high percentage of slashdot readers that sell hardware? Someone please explain to me what this conversation is even about.
I resent being called an asshole for not swallowing your opinion whole without thinking for myself.
I also resent having my internet search skills insulted by someone who fails basic reading comprehension.
I am now offering reading lessons to everyone one slashdot, only 10USD/hour. Seriously who the fuck modded this funny?
You asked for specific citations for those specific issues (hassling journalists, "emergency" dictatorial powers, and the oulaw of gun ownership). You were given those citations, then you moved the goalposts. The other crap you are talking about is spread between Putin and Chavez. Funny how you talk about bias, but you are about as pro-Chavez biased as I have ever seen in my life. I personally don't give a fuck either way, nor do I own a TV, or read from places like CNN except for getting stories for situations like this.
No I didn't, read it again. No I wasn't read it again. I am the most pro Chavez person you have ever seen? Wow. Let me just repeat the words of praise I have lavished on him:
I disagree with the charges and believe that journalists should be able to say what they want, I think the Chavez administration has overstepped its authority in this case.
I am actually concerned about state repression of the media in Venezuela.
Chavez is a politician. He is not better or worse than bush or blair or merkel, he may be cruder, poorer and less sophisticated but I nothing but contempt for all of them.