Documents that describe how something should work out and the reasons for it, whether in the legal or the engineering realms, necessarily require technical jargon and precise structure, if they are to have predictable results. The legal "programming language suffers the grave disadvantage of having been crafted over centuries by thousands of people. Some of them were dickering in court, who were often interested in dealing with their particular case, and others were working in legislatures, who are often interested in something else entirely. The result is a language with the clarity of Assembler and the efficiency of COBOL.
"Even if every geek out there installed Firefox and AdBlock, that leaves 80+% of the machines belonging to the great unwashed masses who can punch all the monkeys they want. As long as Joe Sixpack is out there generating eyeballs for these sites, I'm going to free ride the whole trip."
What site that's worth viewing fits this criterion?
"So how about a revolution against these dire marketing tactics, that would turn the web into one big advertising board - I'd say that it's entirely possible to thwart these corporate assholes at thier own game, track thier methods and just jerk them around until they start to lose revenue."
How about a revolution against those who put the ads in their page in the first place? I don't know who to blame (if anyone), but for every Double Click ad you see there are two parties involved (well, three if you could those who use Double Click to advertise).
"Whenever a company goes from small and usefull to large and not-so-useful, we should be aware that the service we get might change. The larger google gets, the more revenue they will need. In the past, google has only used text advertising in search results. Will the whole first page of results one day be based on paid companies?"
They will no longer be "Google" if they start doing that, and people would go somewhere else.
"The key is to not let google become the only success in town. If google has serious competition, and we can limit the size of google, then all will be well. We don't want google to become the next microsoft, that dictates to all of us the rules."
If Google becomes the next bloated crappy search engine, there will be room for a new Google2. There's always room for a good search engine. If one exists, good; if not, then anyone can fill the space with a good one.
1) Private company freely provides service 2) It is found useful by individuals and companies for finding one another 3) Its use becomes wide-spread and significant in the success of companies (maybe) 4) One particular company sues provider of this free service for not catering to them
Not that this is the first one to bite the hand that feeds.
Just in case you'd like to visit Kinderstart's website and oh, er, use some bandwidth while viewing as much of it as you can, don't let me stop you!
What an offensive tagline, "Because kids don't come with an instruction manual." Evolution builds the instruction manual right into the parents and kids. Idiots.
That's pretty disappointing. One thing that I've always seen as an advantage of consoles is their true insert-and-play functionality and invulnerability to software corruption (besides loss of saved games). Now that they contain flash memory, they are presumably susceptible to the same bullshit as on the mainstream PC operating system. What's to stop companies from putting monitor-ware into the BIOS and having it phone home with your play data?
Not that I've bothered even playing any consoles after the Playstation and Nintendo 64.
"What's the difference between Google and the Gov't? People have no problem forking over all of their personal information to the private sector."
Google has to deliver a good service or product to get funding for its operations, so it can't waste this on unprofitable ventures. The government forces people to fund its operations, so it cares not a bit what you want.
Maybe it's grown as much as it's supposed to? Why this attitude of "It must keep growing forever; any slowdown is bad. BAAAD!!" Believe it or not, at some point things are able to serve their purpose and have no need for further change.
In the human body unchecked growth has a name: cancer
"The point he was tyrying to make is that the standard advise of ripping up credit card offers is worthless if any random person can tape the pieces together and apply for credit in your name fraudulently."
Wait a minute. If we're talking about fraudulent applications, why not just go get a blank one from the bank and fill it out with someone else's information? Or take one addressed to you in the mail and fill it out as someone else?
"It has nothing to do with the "evilness of RFID" and with the stupidity of the backend. An RFID tag is just a string of text. It's up to the backend application to sort it out."
Someone could write really bad barcode reader software with the same vulnerability, or they could even (I know, I'm stretching things here) write software that overflowed based on how much a user typed into the keyboard. Somehow "if length > maximum" is too much to ask for.
"The cash cost of the settlement is hard to value but Sony says that the value of album downloads are $10 per album. If the 5 million people affected by MediaMax get a free album download that's a cost of $50 million to Sony. That's before the $7.50 per album for the 3 million XCP users and the extra downloads that they get, or the replacement music for the MediaMax 3 users."
Buying an album download: $10 Cost of providing download: $0.10 (I'm being generous)
Here's my "assume no wrong" take on it. A preview of a game can show what technologies and features might be in the game. A preview has had more time on adding neat things than cleaning up problems, therefore it is a more reliable indicator of what neat things might be in the game (and proof that they are even possible), but not as reliable an indicator of what might be wrong with the game, since fixing problems doesn't require as much (unpredictable) creative inspiration.
Thus, you can reliably determine that a game will have some cool new idea, but not as reliably determine whether it will still have the problems you encounter in the preview.
"This is really starting to piss me off. Why is it that we must label everything that is not perfectly matched to our current society's customs as a disorder?"
Because it's an easy way to avoid having these people affect the position of those in power. If it's diseased, well obviously the solution is to eliminate it. Why, we have scientific studies that prove it's a disease, so no question about what to do.
"I am ADHD."
You just labeled yourself as disordered. Do you subscribe to that viewpoint or not?
"How about focusing an creating teaching environments where people with ADHD can thrive and harness th advatanges ADHD gives them while minimizing its disadvantages? It has been said that some of the greatest forththright thinkers and creative minds of out time have had ADHD."
You answered your question. They don't want great thinkers, because that upsets the established order. Great thinkers see through the bullshit that is everywhere.
"PC games is simplicity and compatibility. About 10 years ago, installing a computer game wasn't as simple as it is today, and you were never sure if it would run on your computer."
Don't worry, PC game manufacturers are working hard to bring back the good old days when you didn't know whether a game would install and work. Consoles have always been superior in this regard; just put the game in and play.
"The bill defines the phrase 'extremely violent video game' as 'a video game in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being,"
I've never played a video game in which I could do any of the above. The most I could do was press buttons, see colorful images on screen and hear sounds (well, and dance around like a dork for one particular game). The only violence was when I threw the controller out of frustration. Anyone who claims that video games involve anything more than this is confusing fantasy with reality.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's obscene!"
Documents that describe how something should work out and the reasons for it, whether in the legal or the engineering realms, necessarily require technical jargon and precise structure, if they are to have predictable results. The legal "programming language suffers the grave disadvantage of having been crafted over centuries by thousands of people. Some of them were dickering in court, who were often interested in dealing with their particular case, and others were working in legislatures, who are often interested in something else entirely. The result is a language with the clarity of Assembler and the efficiency of COBOL.
Parsing failed: unterminated string
"Even if every geek out there installed Firefox and AdBlock, that leaves 80+% of the machines belonging to the great unwashed masses who can punch all the monkeys they want. As long as Joe Sixpack is out there generating eyeballs for these sites, I'm going to free ride the whole trip."
What site that's worth viewing fits this criterion?
"So how about a revolution against these dire marketing tactics, that would turn the web into one big advertising board - I'd say that it's entirely possible to thwart these corporate assholes at thier own game, track thier methods and just jerk them around until they start to lose revenue."
How about a revolution against those who put the ads in their page in the first place? I don't know who to blame (if anyone), but for every Double Click ad you see there are two parties involved (well, three if you could those who use Double Click to advertise).
"Dammit, can't they make a Windows killer?"
Windows Vista seems a good candidate for that.
"Whenever a company goes from small and usefull to large and not-so-useful, we should be aware that the service we get might change. The larger google gets, the more revenue they will need. In the past, google has only used text advertising in search results. Will the whole first page of results one day be based on paid companies?"
They will no longer be "Google" if they start doing that, and people would go somewhere else.
"The key is to not let google become the only success in town. If google has serious competition, and we can limit the size of google, then all will be well. We don't want google to become the next microsoft, that dictates to all of us the rules."
If Google becomes the next bloated crappy search engine, there will be room for a new Google2. There's always room for a good search engine. If one exists, good; if not, then anyone can fill the space with a good one.
Let me get this straight...
1) Private company freely provides service
2) It is found useful by individuals and companies for finding one another
3) Its use becomes wide-spread and significant in the success of companies (maybe)
4) One particular company sues provider of this free service for not catering to them
Not that this is the first one to bite the hand that feeds.
Just in case you'd like to visit Kinderstart's website and oh, er, use some bandwidth while viewing as much of it as you can, don't let me stop you!
What an offensive tagline, "Because kids don't come with an instruction manual." Evolution builds the instruction manual right into the parents and kids. Idiots.
That's pretty disappointing. One thing that I've always seen as an advantage of consoles is their true insert-and-play functionality and invulnerability to software corruption (besides loss of saved games). Now that they contain flash memory, they are presumably susceptible to the same bullshit as on the mainstream PC operating system. What's to stop companies from putting monitor-ware into the BIOS and having it phone home with your play data?
Not that I've bothered even playing any consoles after the Playstation and Nintendo 64.
"What's the difference between Google and the Gov't? People have no problem forking over all of their personal information to the private sector."
Google has to deliver a good service or product to get funding for its operations, so it can't waste this on unprofitable ventures. The government forces people to fund its operations, so it cares not a bit what you want.
"Heck ... I can picture the defense getting a 80GB archive tape and being told that was all messages recieved. Yes, 99.999% of them are spam. Enjoy."
Wow, an actual use for SPAM! Maybe those spammers knew what they were doing after all.
Maybe it's grown as much as it's supposed to? Why this attitude of "It must keep growing forever; any slowdown is bad. BAAAD!!" Believe it or not, at some point things are able to serve their purpose and have no need for further change.
In the human body unchecked growth has a name: cancer
"The point he was tyrying to make is that the standard advise of ripping up credit card offers is worthless if any random person can tape the pieces together and apply for credit in your name fraudulently."
Wait a minute. If we're talking about fraudulent applications, why not just go get a blank one from the bank and fill it out with someone else's information? Or take one addressed to you in the mail and fill it out as someone else?
"It has nothing to do with the "evilness of RFID" and with the stupidity of the backend. An RFID tag is just a string of text. It's up to the backend application to sort it out."
Someone could write really bad barcode reader software with the same vulnerability, or they could even (I know, I'm stretching things here) write software that overflowed based on how much a user typed into the keyboard. Somehow "if length > maximum" is too much to ask for.
Have you hugged a cocaine molecule today?
In other news, dogs are arguing that this will eliminate hundreds of jobs, putting many on the street to fend for themselves.
"...come out with an equation that explains your shell of a social life."
Brilliant! We can model this as electron shells and changes in energy level. Three more years and I'll figure out why I've made no friends!
"The
cash cost of the settlement is hard to value but Sony says that the
value of album downloads are $10 per album. If the 5 million people
affected by MediaMax get a free album download that's a cost of $50
million to Sony. That's before the $7.50 per album for the 3 million
XCP users and the extra downloads that they get, or the replacement
music for the MediaMax 3 users."
Buying an album download: $10
Cost of providing download: $0.10 (I'm being generous)
Not much of a pain to Sony.
Maybe I'm clueless, but isn't the "fix" to simply change your root password after installation?
Here's my "assume no wrong" take on it. A preview of a game can show what technologies and features might be in the game. A preview has had more time on adding neat things than cleaning up problems, therefore it is a more reliable indicator of what neat things might be in the game (and proof that they are even possible), but not as reliable an indicator of what might be wrong with the game, since fixing problems doesn't require as much (unpredictable) creative inspiration.
Thus, you can reliably determine that a game will have some cool new idea, but not as reliably determine whether it will still have the problems you encounter in the preview.
"This is really starting to piss me off. Why is it that we must label everything that is not perfectly matched to our current society's customs as a disorder?"
Because it's an easy way to avoid having these people affect the position of those in power. If it's diseased, well obviously the solution is to eliminate it. Why, we have scientific studies that prove it's a disease, so no question about what to do.
"I am ADHD."
You just labeled yourself as disordered. Do you subscribe to that viewpoint or not?
"How about focusing an creating teaching environments where people with ADHD can thrive and harness th advatanges ADHD gives them while minimizing its disadvantages? It has been said that some of the greatest forththright thinkers and creative minds of out time have had ADHD."
You answered your question. They don't want great thinkers, because that upsets the established order. Great thinkers see through the bullshit that is everywhere.
Is the information is correct or just bogus data planted?
Is this "story" itself planted by the CIA? (not that we'd care either way)
2600? Funny number there.
"PC games is simplicity and compatibility. About 10 years ago, installing a computer game wasn't as simple as it is today, and you were never sure if it would run on your computer."
Don't worry, PC game manufacturers are working hard to bring back the good old days when you didn't know whether a game would install and work. Consoles have always been superior in this regard; just put the game in and play.
"The bill defines the phrase 'extremely violent video game' as 'a video game in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being,"
I've never played a video game in which I could do any of the above. The most I could do was press buttons, see colorful images on screen and hear sounds (well, and dance around like a dork for one particular game). The only violence was when I threw the controller out of frustration. Anyone who claims that video games involve anything more than this is confusing fantasy with reality.
"What will be left that isn't essentially Windows XP with a much larger greed for memory and other hardware requirements?"
Look on the bright side; you can be sure they won't remove those features.
The original comment was probably intended to be funny, so no Grammar Nazis here (except me, but I'm off duty right now).