That did occur to me, but I find it hard to believe the game is supposed to be campaigning for nonhuman-sentient equality. That isn't really a big issue in today's society. There would also be certain practical issues - furniture would need to be slightly adapted, species would be a major issue in sport. But there just isn't even a mention.
Evolution to sentience would take far longer than the time the game is set, and produce creatures quite unlike humans in many ways. A more plausible explanation is uplifting - some well-meaning Mad Scientists thought it'd be good idea to genetically modify animals to human-like ability. Or it might be just that we are hugely overthinking this and the real reason is a game designer at a meeting one day says 'We need to increase our appeal with the younger demographic. Add cute animal characters.'
BG&E... I pirated that! Didn't use a gamepad though. I found it rather creepy, but for the wrong reason: Those anthropomorphic characters. I'm a furry, I like the idea, but... they were never acknowledged. They act human, they are treated as human, they sound human. Like there is this gigantic elephant in the room and no-one wants to acknowledge it. Not a single line references the fact that animals are walking around, talking and holding jobs. Even a throwaway joke about the problem of sitting in a chair with a tail would have helped. It feels as if the game was written for all-human characters, and then some joker swapped the 3D resources out.
And thus Israel becomes seen as the agressor for being the first to start shooting. Or worse, given the age of many script kiddies, they are caught killing children. No, Israel wouldn't be that stupid: So long as the hackers don't start getting into anything like military systems, they'll fight with improved security... and maybe the odd counter-DoS.
So... aside from EFS and short names (Which are pointless on unix), aren't all those features supported by ext4? And for that matter, HPFS. And reiser. I think NTFS supports them all too, though Windows doesn't provide any easy means to create a hard link, the feature being present for POSIX support only. If you want to talk about how great ReFS is, you need to at least list some features that isn't already done by widely-deployed technologies.
Although I admit that ReFS has one huge advantage over said technologies: It is supported by Windows Server.
No, the public opposition was greater than expected. Too much to try for a new law so openly. I predict a sneakier approach: An attempt to sneak something SOPA-like through as an obscure amendment to some apparently unrelated piece of legislation, likely something too popular to oppose easily. Using riders to get unpopular laws through before potential opposition even notices is a time-honored tradition in politics.
Because the crappy content is backed up by an incredibly powerful marketing machine that tells people what they want, and the people believe it. Billions of dollars have been spend on the art and science of advertising, and it has become very refined and potent now.
You don't even get that: Even if you have some legal protection for fair use that doesn't involve having to pay your life savings in legal fees to defend it, you still will likely run into DRM which makes it technologically impossible to exercise fair use - and breaking the DRM is itsself a crime in most countries now.
Because extracting the meaning from natural-language is a very difficult task. It is one of those things trivial for humans, very difficult for software.
Re:Internet wins...
on
House Kills SOPA
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Depends whose spectrum. What the US calls the left, we would call the center in Europe. What we call the left, the US would call communist, and what the US calls the right we would call extremist puritan nutcases.
They steal bus shelters in London. Very simple method too: They just wear the uniforms for the bus company, drive a trick up and disassemble the shelter. With the right logo sewn to their jacket, few would question their authority.
Every month on roads in the US, a number of people are killed approximatly equal to the deaths in the September 11 attacks. People care a lot more about deaths caused by deliberate action than they do about deaths occuring by accidents. This holds true for animals as well: There is also news fatigue: Once something like tuna-fishing has been going on long enough, people lose the ability to care.
Dolphins are a recognised Cute Animal. People like them. People love them. People have made a TV series around one. Some people practically worship them.
If a dolphin is killed in action, the public outcry is unpredictable. Maybe it'll be nothing at all, maybe it'll be worse than a human casualty - after all, people expect those. KIA dolphins are unprecidented, there is no telling how it will go PR-wise. Other than that PETA is probably already writing their first letter of complaint, of course.
It doesn't take long for that sort of user to realise that even though they don't know what this strange dialog means, clicking 'yes' usually gives them what they want.
Unsurprising - it reached market saturation. When your core products - Office and Windows - are used in practically every office and desktop PC, there isn't any room for growth other than entering new markets, and Microsoft's history on that is almost as poor as Googles. For every Xbox, there are Zunes.
Microsoft has a lot of not-invented-here issues... or rather not-patented-here. That is why they install such a limited selection of codecs out of the box: WMA/WMV, h264 on the the newer IE versions, with some reluctance MP3, and that's it. No Vorbis, no ogg, no webm video, no theora... all of these would not only compete with WMA/V, but likely *win* because they are also available on non-Microsoft platforms. Most importantly, built into firefox.
They also loathe open source. Really loathe it. Take, as an example, this extract from their licence agreements. I took this particular one from XP home, but it's actually a common section - among other things, it's in the licence for implimenting the ASF specification.
3.3 Identified Software. If you use the Redistributables, then in addition to your compliance with the applicable distribution requirements described for the Redistributables, the following also applies. Your license rights to Redistributables are conditioned on you (a) not incorporating Identified Software into or combining Identified Software with the Redistributables; (b) not distributing Identified Software in conjunction with the Redistributables; and (c) not using Identified Software in the development of a derivative work of Sample Code.... Identified Software includes, without limitation, any software that requires as a condition of its use, modification and/or distribution that any other software incorporated into, derived from or distributed with such software must also be (f) disclosed or distributed in source code form, (g) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works, or (h) redistributable at no charge.
I have actually broken this contract myself, in implimenting an ASF header analyser: I edited the code in emacs, and didn't realise until a little while later that I was violating section c (The ASF version actually refers to using the specification, not to redistributables as the Windows EULA does, but the rest of the text is the same) which prohibits using identified software in development. Worse, I compiled it in GCC. I'm not the only programmer to run into this: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.core/3570
Microsoft loaths open source with such intensity that to access the specification for ASF (The container used in the WMA and WMV formats) you have to agree not even to use an open-source editor to write the code. Oh, and just to add further insult, one of the other clauses forbids giving your software the ability to save in any format *other* than ASF... the idea being that once media is in ASF, it'd be impossible to convert it into any other format. The developer of Virtualdub had to pull ASF support after a Microsoft lawyer threatened to sue him for patent infringement.
But there is nothing to stop a studio going up to a congressperson and pointing out that they will donate to politicians who advance their business interests, and ergo will donate to any politician who expresses their support for SOPA. It isn't bribery, but it achieves the same result.
Because:
1. He is funny. If you make copyright that absolute, you deprive people of his works entirely - in which case copyright isn't fulfilling its intended purpose of promoting the creation of new works.
2. When you specialise in reviews, it is rather difficult not to use someone elses work.
3. Because almost every original piece ever created is actually based in some part upon what went before. Even Disney, the great copyright empire and symbol of creativity to many, built its business around animated adaptations of classic stories. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc.
The Brits are facinated by US politics because it is just so much more entertaining than our own. You have epic personalities over there - real showmen. We have... well, when Gordon Brown left the office of Prime Minister, I don't think anyone really noticed. About the most exciting thing to happen in our politics in a decade was the uneasy alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and that type of infighting is a daily occurance in the US Republican party with it's constant vicious fight between the social conservatives and the economic conservatives. British politics is just dull in comparison to the circus that is the US.
Standard procedure in any corrupt system of law, I imagine. First make the law so strict that almost every person has done something criminal - then, if someone starts making trouble for those in power, it only takes a little digging to find something they have done that they can be jailed for. Avoids all the hastle of having to pay off the police to frame them if they actually are guilty.
Slashdot Mirror
That did occur to me, but I find it hard to believe the game is supposed to be campaigning for nonhuman-sentient equality. That isn't really a big issue in today's society. There would also be certain practical issues - furniture would need to be slightly adapted, species would be a major issue in sport. But there just isn't even a mention.
Evolution to sentience would take far longer than the time the game is set, and produce creatures quite unlike humans in many ways. A more plausible explanation is uplifting - some well-meaning Mad Scientists thought it'd be good idea to genetically modify animals to human-like ability. Or it might be just that we are hugely overthinking this and the real reason is a game designer at a meeting one day says 'We need to increase our appeal with the younger demographic. Add cute animal characters.'
BG&E... I pirated that! Didn't use a gamepad though. I found it rather creepy, but for the wrong reason: Those anthropomorphic characters. I'm a furry, I like the idea, but... they were never acknowledged. They act human, they are treated as human, they sound human. Like there is this gigantic elephant in the room and no-one wants to acknowledge it. Not a single line references the fact that animals are walking around, talking and holding jobs. Even a throwaway joke about the problem of sitting in a chair with a tail would have helped. It feels as if the game was written for all-human characters, and then some joker swapped the 3D resources out.
And thus Israel becomes seen as the agressor for being the first to start shooting. Or worse, given the age of many script kiddies, they are caught killing children. No, Israel wouldn't be that stupid: So long as the hackers don't start getting into anything like military systems, they'll fight with improved security... and maybe the odd counter-DoS.
I can't access youtube from work, but I imagine the 'baked bads' from FiM. Which is awesome.
So... aside from EFS and short names (Which are pointless on unix), aren't all those features supported by ext4? And for that matter, HPFS. And reiser. I think NTFS supports them all too, though Windows doesn't provide any easy means to create a hard link, the feature being present for POSIX support only. If you want to talk about how great ReFS is, you need to at least list some features that isn't already done by widely-deployed technologies.
Although I admit that ReFS has one huge advantage over said technologies: It is supported by Windows Server.
No, the public opposition was greater than expected. Too much to try for a new law so openly. I predict a sneakier approach: An attempt to sneak something SOPA-like through as an obscure amendment to some apparently unrelated piece of legislation, likely something too popular to oppose easily. Using riders to get unpopular laws through before potential opposition even notices is a time-honored tradition in politics.
Because the crappy content is backed up by an incredibly powerful marketing machine that tells people what they want, and the people believe it. Billions of dollars have been spend on the art and science of advertising, and it has become very refined and potent now.
You don't even get that: Even if you have some legal protection for fair use that doesn't involve having to pay your life savings in legal fees to defend it, you still will likely run into DRM which makes it technologically impossible to exercise fair use - and breaking the DRM is itsself a crime in most countries now.
Because extracting the meaning from natural-language is a very difficult task. It is one of those things trivial for humans, very difficult for software.
Depends whose spectrum. What the US calls the left, we would call the center in Europe. What we call the left, the US would call communist, and what the US calls the right we would call extremist puritan nutcases.
"When we take the resulting theories out to the world, they are treated with respect"
Hah.
They steal bus shelters in London. Very simple method too: They just wear the uniforms for the bus company, drive a trick up and disassemble the shelter. With the right logo sewn to their jacket, few would question their authority.
Every month on roads in the US, a number of people are killed approximatly equal to the deaths in the September 11 attacks. People care a lot more about deaths caused by deliberate action than they do about deaths occuring by accidents. This holds true for animals as well: There is also news fatigue: Once something like tuna-fishing has been going on long enough, people lose the ability to care.
Dolphins are a recognised Cute Animal. People like them. People love them. People have made a TV series around one. Some people practically worship them. If a dolphin is killed in action, the public outcry is unpredictable. Maybe it'll be nothing at all, maybe it'll be worse than a human casualty - after all, people expect those. KIA dolphins are unprecidented, there is no telling how it will go PR-wise. Other than that PETA is probably already writing their first letter of complaint, of course.
It doesn't take long for that sort of user to realise that even though they don't know what this strange dialog means, clicking 'yes' usually gives them what they want.
Unsurprising - it reached market saturation. When your core products - Office and Windows - are used in practically every office and desktop PC, there isn't any room for growth other than entering new markets, and Microsoft's history on that is almost as poor as Googles. For every Xbox, there are Zunes.
They also loathe open source. Really loathe it. Take, as an example, this extract from their licence agreements. I took this particular one from XP home, but it's actually a common section - among other things, it's in the licence for implimenting the ASF specification.
I have actually broken this contract myself, in implimenting an ASF header analyser: I edited the code in emacs, and didn't realise until a little while later that I was violating section c (The ASF version actually refers to using the specification, not to redistributables as the Windows EULA does, but the rest of the text is the same) which prohibits using identified software in development. Worse, I compiled it in GCC. I'm not the only programmer to run into this: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.core/3570
Microsoft loaths open source with such intensity that to access the specification for ASF (The container used in the WMA and WMV formats) you have to agree not even to use an open-source editor to write the code. Oh, and just to add further insult, one of the other clauses forbids giving your software the ability to save in any format *other* than ASF... the idea being that once media is in ASF, it'd be impossible to convert it into any other format. The developer of Virtualdub had to pull ASF support after a Microsoft lawyer threatened to sue him for patent infringement.
I remember being in tech support when Office switched to Ribbon. That was a busy period.
The cant-stand argument seems to be just part of human instinct. I've seen it come up a lot in internet debate, from left and right alike.
But there is nothing to stop a studio going up to a congressperson and pointing out that they will donate to politicians who advance their business interests, and ergo will donate to any politician who expresses their support for SOPA. It isn't bribery, but it achieves the same result.
A religion is defined by it's followers: Custom and law are one and the same.
Because:
1. He is funny. If you make copyright that absolute, you deprive people of his works entirely - in which case copyright isn't fulfilling its intended purpose of promoting the creation of new works.
2. When you specialise in reviews, it is rather difficult not to use someone elses work.
3. Because almost every original piece ever created is actually based in some part upon what went before. Even Disney, the great copyright empire and symbol of creativity to many, built its business around animated adaptations of classic stories. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc.
The Brits are facinated by US politics because it is just so much more entertaining than our own. You have epic personalities over there - real showmen. We have... well, when Gordon Brown left the office of Prime Minister, I don't think anyone really noticed. About the most exciting thing to happen in our politics in a decade was the uneasy alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and that type of infighting is a daily occurance in the US Republican party with it's constant vicious fight between the social conservatives and the economic conservatives. British politics is just dull in comparison to the circus that is the US.
Think more of things like backup software with a GUI interface, or antivirus.
Standard procedure in any corrupt system of law, I imagine. First make the law so strict that almost every person has done something criminal - then, if someone starts making trouble for those in power, it only takes a little digging to find something they have done that they can be jailed for. Avoids all the hastle of having to pay off the police to frame them if they actually are guilty.