Heh, according to the.pdf, "no purpose is served" by proving our innocence. also, "no purpose is served" by requesting that the levy be withdrawn. Apparently this "law" has been in place since 1997 and they've just been bickering over the price and implementation since then.
And to make things more interesting, the going rate for CD-R when the law was proposed (1997) was 77c, while the media itself sold for between $1.00 to about $3.00 depending on quantity/brand/cases.. not a great rate (approx. 25-75% per disc)..
however.. prices of CDs have gone down. I recently bought a couple 100-pack gigastore for $50.. so 50c/disc. Now compare that to $1.23 per disc levy. We're actually going to be paying approximately 250% tax per disc. And that discounts the fact that all of the companies between the manufacturer and the retailer will probably see this as an opportunity to boost their own profits as well.. (the first step will likely jump by well over 1000% since the levy is applied at that time.. giving the middlemen and retailers an excuse to add their 50% markup to a relatively enormous sum, even though they dont have to pay it back in the way of levies)..
so we can likely predict the price of CDs will jump from 50c (and this is from a retailer, its probably cheaper if you know a more direct route from the manufacturer and buy in large quantity).. back to the level of around $2 per disc, if not more (in terms of consumer dollars)..
As far as I can see, this is a tax applied mainly to people who DONT use the discs for personal copying. Most normal people that I see maybe burn a dozen or so discs per YEAR, and most less than that. Really, over the course of a year $24 compared to $6 isnt a big setback.
For someone like me, who uses closer to a dozen discs a week, this adds up to a jump from around $25 per month to somewhere around $100, or from around $300 per year to approximately $1200! Thats more expensive than car insurance for a male driver under 25 (in these parts, that particular category pays usually 30-50% more for insurance than anyone else). Is the chance that I might copy a CD really more of a risk than the chance I might kill someone (or myself) in a car accident?..
Oh and as a last note to really kick it home, most of the popular music here (regardless of my personal opinion about its quality:P) comes up from the states. Does this mean that SOCAN and company are going to be funneling a large portion of this money directly to the US in hopes that the RIAA will be nice and distribute it to their member artists? I find it highly unlikely myself. The cash will stop moving at one of the two places. And probably even SOCAN wont see much of that (they supposedly represent artists, whereas one of the other groups is more RIAA-style where they represent companies. I forget the acronym, not that it matters)..
Sooooo to sum up. I pay 4x as much money to some random Canadian companies to cover the "costs" of a bunch of people with bad taste copying (American) Brittney Spears albums, regardless of the fact that I purchase almost all of small amount of music produced on this side of the ocean that I listen to (oh wait. you mean they arent going to be sending some of this money to the Japanese artists I listen to most of the time?)
(now if only I can remember my password to log in.. ahh there it is:)
a few weeks/months waiting time?:P..
unless you're compiling on a VERY slow machine..
Microsoft and others (including Redhat) are ALWAYS slow to bring out patches.. why? Well first, they have to find and apply the patches themselves (and in Microsoft's case, they have to find the problem first, whereas Linux-based companies can just apply the patch that someone else has created).. but what takes more time, these companies have to be relatively sure that applying the patch wont accidentally break anything else! Applying the patch may well fix a bug, but if 90% of the 3rd party software for whom this particular bug was a problem all created various workarounds, you may end up breaking all that extra software (again, this tends to hit Microsoft harder, since a Linux vendor would probably have just submitted a patch themselves if they happened to run across the bug)..
I've heard similar reasoning to excuse at least a large number (probably not all) of the reported 65,000 bugs in Win2k when it was released. Sure it gives us geeks with our open source a bit of a chuckle, but it does make at least a little business sense to not screw over your 3rd party developers, especially in a world where a good number of your sales are driven by the fact that most 3rd parties still develop exclusively for your OS.
Re:We haven't done this yet..
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Broadband Crackdown
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· Score: 2, Insightful
right after they hit www.mcafee.com:80.. err.. oops
quite easy actually..
sure the telephone system in general is more stable, but a wire dangling a few feet over my head will generally be a fair bit more susceptible to having things fall on it than one thats under the ground..
of course, in my particular case, the electricity went out far more than the telephone, so I couldn't really tell whether cable was still working or not a lot of the time:)..
(yeah yeah like anyone will read a post in an article this old, but oh well I felt like replying:)..
hrm? is the frightening bit where Microsoft has competition, or that a large company would finally be able to tell the truth when they say their product doesnt suck?:P
yes, and I'll be overjoyed when they get video-on-demand over POTS as well.. I dont have stats to back it up, but I'm guessing my cablemodem does video across the internet a fair bit better than a 56k modem (even if you direct-dial and cut the internet out of the picture)
I love idiotic random quibbles like "the internet can't handle video-on-demand so its not as good as the corporately-controlled telephone system"
and if they bothered doing a bit of research, much of the stability in the telephone system is there because it was/regulated/ that the system must remain up in the event of an emergency.. and even then that doesnt mean much.. a well placed tree (especially in more rural areas) can take down the telephone system without much hassle, sometimes leaving it down for hours if the weather/etc conditions aren't conductive to repairing the line (I used to live in a place where this happened.. frequently.. although not nearly as frequently as the power, but thats getting a bit off topic)
As numerous people have already mentioned, Microsoft and other large companies are quite willing to be the ones poking our eyeballs out and stripping us of our sight..
but aside from that. consumer activism. Well, I may be mistaken here, but non-profit organizations such as EFF and EPIC tend to be started by consumers who feel that its time to do something about a problem, at least thats what I'd expect.
Now if everyone decided to drop their current jobs and join some activist group, how much actual work would ever get done?
On the other side, you may not particularly like Coke or Pepsi, but I bet you still drink stuff. One or the other of those two basically own everything that comes in a bottle or can, and equally evil companies own pretty much everything else. Sometimes consumers have to consume, even if they dont like it. Face it, no matter what you buy, somewhere down the line you're probably feeding a megacompany. (What about the stuff you picked from your garden? Well where did you get the seeds from? heh!)..
Then theres people like me. I live in Canada. Sure there's lots of battles to be fought up here as well (and yes I tend to be on the apathetic side, but I still see whats happening even if I dont bother doing anything about it), but when it comes to anything related to computers, pretty much everything interesting (in either the good or bad sense) happens in the US. What does this mean? Well it means I can't write a letter to my senator (I dont have one), I cant easily obtain membership in many activist groups (although I'm sure they'd be able to take my money as a donation if I had any.. but its not the same thing as actually doing something now is it?)..
Yet I still have to deal with Microsoft products on a daily basis..
Yes I can whine at my local Microsoft branch, but even if they care, I doubt they'd be listened to down south..
Yes I can "vote with my wallet", as long as I don't mind wasting the time finding/recreating my favorite apps in linux (mostly anime.. which means, a decent newsgroup binary downloader, an IRC client, and software to play the various media types.. I dont get much chance to use X but the command line variants that I've seen of the first two were not sufficiently useful for my purposes.. but that was around RH6 days.. maybe stuff has improved by now:P).. again, that apathy thing..
I still won't ever purchase WinXP though.. why? Well, firstly, I can't afford to pay every year/month/second/whatever their scheme turns out to be, and also, Win2K is perfectly useful (minus not being able to reinstall without formatting the drive)..
So.. the point of this ramble? Lets see:
a) The purpose of organizations like EFF is to do the activism thing for all of us who are too busy/lazy.
b) You pretty much can't avoid megacorps. There's almost nothing you can do that doesn't feed into their pockets (who do you think made those CDs you burned your Linux iso's onto?)
c) The non-US population of the world has to put up with the fact that almost anything related to the internet (and most everything else computer-wise) is based in the US, where anything we say/do is pretty much completely ignored. And to make it better, US companies feel they have the right to prosecute non-US citizens doing legal acts in their country under US law (the DeCSS kid especially, he wasn't even on US soil as Dmitry was.. and under 18 at the time to boot. Go MPAA).
Not to mention it being complete BS to begin with..
Take oh.. anyone. Pick some arbitrary 70 hours of "relaxation" time from them (meaning, time during which they're doing what they want. This could include work for workaholics and the such)..
Ok.. now, during those 70 hours, make them do something they probably dont want to..
Let me guess, they started suffering from "withdrawl" symptoms (things like.. utter boredom, edginess.. which is most likely caused by said boredom.. other such nifty things)..
Such a stupid correlation has nothing to do with the fact that the kid was an obsessive gamer, it has to do with the fact that he probably doesnt want to be doing whatever else is available to him during the 70 hours he'd rather be gaming.. if he WAS interested in doing something else, he probably wouldnt be gaming so much in the first place!
no they wont.. they'll do something more along the lines of:
"you cant do the old thing anymore..
but here, we'll give you this little box for free, and you'll get an extra 17.6 channels.. or you can go out and buy a new HDTV which will now plug right into this thing, and we wont even degrade your quality to below-analog standards as it goes through the box! oh the possibilities!
the big thing though, will be giving out the little digital->analog box for free.. if it gives people more channels, most of them will be quite happy to use it (even though they only watch 5 out of the 60 or 70 channels they have now).. doesnt cost them anything (at least, on the surface) and gives them benefit.. any sane person would take that deal.. Of course, below the surface things get a little murkier.. you wont be able to watch TV on more than one set at a time for starters (since you only have one box. Want another one? pay more!) I think that will be the only really outwardly visible difference (since the box would give you a standard low-quality analog output usable by current generation TV/VCRs).. But then, most cable companies tell you that you're only allowed one TV per connection now anyways, so in their eyes, this would just enforce rules that they've wanted to have in place for years (their current method of enforcement amounts to basically scare tactics.. "dont do this or we'll cut you off".. I know of no one who cares both about hooking up 2 TVs AND about what the cable company says.. not to mention the signal degredation that a splitter introduces)..
I know I'd personally miss the ability to split the signal.. I don't watch the same things my family does (not that any of us watch much of the crap that comes down the wire these days.. but when we do..)
What would be nice is if their little box would take the incoming digital signal, and fully convert it to the standard (ie: multichannel, missing the "extra" digital chans or whatever) analog signal and send that out one wire, while the high(er)-quality, full # of channels, whatever comes out on the standard channel 3 (channel selection handled by the box of course to prevent splitting of that signal)..
Of course, they wont do that (hrm.. if its even possible.. I'm not sure whether digital cable transmits all channels at once like standard TV, or does something sane and only sends the channel you're watching.. I'd guess the latter but who knows), because, as I mentioned, they dont want you to be able to split..
Its made up and bogus:)..
Human brains and computer "brains" work quite differently. If you want an example, go program something like a 4th order differential equation in your favorite language. Run it on a data set of I dunno, 1000 points. Do them yourself. Who was faster? Bet it was the computer..
Now tell your computer to figure out where you derived the equation from. Do it yourself. Who was faster? I bet the computer didn't even get started.. (assuming the equation was derived at all! You may have just made something up. Can the computer tell you that what you made up wasn't derived from anywhere and has no bearing to any real-world or mathematical problems outside of being a candidate for a textbook example?)..
We don't know how the brain works completely. We make best guesses based on things like MRI scans while having the test subject perform some task, and see what parts of the brain become active.
We do know however, that the brain does not work in binary. We know that our brains do some things better (image recognition, heuristics, natural language), while computers do other things better (mathematics, logic).. Any direct comparison between the two is completely and utterly bogus at this stage in the game, and is generally created to justify some psychology professor getting a new hard drive so he can store pr0n (err.. or something like that;)..
Re:We are already dependent on old technology.
on
A.I. and the Future
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· Score: 1
Well I don't know why I'm bothering to respond to this post instead of the other 3 or 4 above it that say the same thing, but...
the difference between Artificial Intelligence and fire is that Intelligence thing.. assuming we ever get it right, there is some small chance that while we become increasingly dependent on the easy lifestyle it gives us, it may in turn become increasingly annoyed with us and eventually decide (since decision is a fairly major part of intelligence, I'm sure you'll agree) that humans have become a useless burden on their backs and do away with us (terminator, matrix, etc, take your pick)..
then again, they may not do away with us and we may end up just killing ourselves off, and the AI beings will spend millenia trying to figure out how to bring us back (AI).. but either way, the point is (again, assuming we get it right), that unlike fire, a true AI would have a fairly good chance of surpassing us as the dominant "life" form on the planet.. fire simply can't do that..
now the same COULD be said for other intelligent life (artificially created or not), but a dumb machine/fire/etc could never take over (a vaccine may accidentally kill us all off or something, but it wouldnt do so with the intention of taking control.. it would be a slip up on the part of the vaccine manufacturer (ie: a human) behind the occurance)..
1) Speed limits in the US are about the same as speed limits in Europe, other then the German autobahns. However we measure in miles, not Kilometers, so 55 is about the same as 100, which is a typical speed for back roads. Major roads are faster.
uhm.. well first, 55mph is the same as 88km/h.. unless europe has a different idea of how long a km is, but I think thats pretty standard.. (Hmm.. they might have a different idea of how long a mile is, but going by context I'm assuming we're talking about miles in the US so that point is moot even if its true)..
also.. 100 (or even 88) is VERY fast. You get a very very large fine if you're caught driving 100 down a 'back road' (100 is generally max on a major road.. there might be a few here and there that allow 110 or 120, but not much over that)..
Up here in Canada (Alberta to be precise), 50 is the max speed in urban areas (unless otherwise posted -- ie: highways and such).. 60 happens on the busier streets (especially if the buildings are several meters.. I dunno exact measures but I'd say maybe 5-10m+) away from the roadway), 70+ is pretty much highway and only happens on very busy streets through areas that are a fair distance from any buildings (probably 15-20m at least.. maybe more).. (and even then, they are usually barracaded so that little johnny can't go play in traffic as easily)..
someone needs to get a stupid patent for the method of coming up with really stupid patents, and then file suit against practically every "computer" patent created over the last few years.
Now THAT would be interesting..
of course, I suppose there would be lots of prior art.. I doubt stupidity is all that new..
Re:Quit razzing on Katz... (small spoiler or two)
on
Review: Final Fantasy
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· Score: 1
You just can't do that with computer animation
Sure you can.. just takes time & effort.. likely more than was available with the technology and budget they were running. Hey, its a first shot attempt at making a realistic-looking CG movie.. .. and my "cool attention to detail".. you could see the veins on the back of Aki's hands in at least one scene (forget which one.. was one of the lovey-dovey scenes with grey though)..
why there is a Cid IN EVERY SINGLE FF from FF2 on?
character recognition, continuity.. and the ability to make you go "smirk" the first time you see it.. I've heard that Cid even had a small role in the original (NES) FF (from a comment on a previous article).. I havent played it in many years so I can't confirm that..
Also, don't forget Cid's "it's warm" at the end.. completely out of place for the movie, but almost every ff (perhaps even all of them) had a warm light at one point or another.. people who've played the games a lot would know this.. anyone else would think "that was a stupid thing to say.. totally out of place".. I think squaresoft did a much better takeoff of the games than people realize.. mainly because of these somewhat "hidden" elements that make it into pretty much every game in the series, even though the storylines are completely different..
now there were a few quirks in the movie that made it less than perfect (although it still blows away a lot of other crap out there.. although this summer has been relatively good for movies for a change).. things like.. why the aliens were attacking.. they explained why the aliens were there, but didnt make much reference to why they were malicious.. (in fact, there were a few places where it seemed like they were almost purposely dodging that issue)..
and of course the worst part of the movie.. no one cast a 'fire3' spell dammit!:)
Because MS products are pretty much enforced on most people.. sure Linux/BSD/whatever else can all be used by someone with enough brain, but unfortunately thats a small percentage of the computer-using population at this point in time..
AOL is pretty much only used by script kiddies and people who dont realize a frisbee when they see one..
logitech is even less visible.. most people have their standard microsoft mouse (that comes with pretty much every pc these days that I've seen) right from the time of purchasing their systems until the day they chuck it and get a new one..
now as other posters have stated, if this werent likely going to be just a mass-ad ploy it could actually be quite useful and cool..
Well I'm likely far too late to actually have anyone read this, but.. I don't really see hypocrisy here.. at least not between the examples you mentioned..
first.. corporations taking over the country.. generally considered to screw the people in bad ways.. at least by those of us who aren't getting rich off it (which amounts to what? something like 1-5% of the population? been a while since I saw the statistics but its something like that)..
secondly.. invasion/destruction of individual rights.. Also considered a very bad thing..
So lets sum it up.. on one hand, Jon is ranting about the average person getting screwed. On the other hand, he's ranting about the average person getting screwed. I'm not seeing the hypocrisy.. The only common connection is that laws can be made in either direction (what you call "democratic" control.. which isnt really democratic at all. A fair number of politicians these days represent the corporations who paid their absurd campaign fees, not the people who were suckered by said campaigns..
and even if you happen to run across a politician who actually still has some morals, they're still acting on their own.. You elect them based on what their campaign team says their beliefs are.. you have NO control over what they do beyond that.. They try to use their best judgement, and they try to speak for everyone who voted for them.. but lets face it, its hard to get two people to agree, never mind an entire country.. and throw into that mix things like advertising from lobbyist groups (both corporate and not.. although the non-corporate ones rarely get much say as they typically dont have the fundage)..
ok well now I'm going off on a rant of my own here so I'll cut it short:)
The general idea is good (especially global undo/redo! Imagine being able to undo the last time you stupidly walked right in front of a rocket!).. I see some problems with it though..
firstly, not all applications can use the same interface. Period. Can you imagine trying to play Quake using a MS word (or emacs.. or vi.. or pretty much anything not remotely related to 3d navigation) interface? Or for that matter, trying to type out that document the boss wants in 20 minutes if you have to use a mouse/keyboard combination to pick letters from your latest Quake/text editor mix?.. it just cant be done.. its like trying to create a car using the "interface" of a pair of rollerskates.
secondly.. modes.. I agree that modes can be a pain in the @$$ (especially when Word decides to change modes for you when you dont want it to).. but really.. how are you going to get around this?.. if you want to allow bold/italic/underscored/different font/etc text, you need some way of specifying what you want. You obviously cant have an enormous keyboard with a set of keys for bold, another set for italic, etc (not to mention that that would likely be more confusing and distracting than accidentally bolding some text).. that leaves basically two options.. dont allow bold (unlikely), or have the text editor do it all for you.. and we've all seen that THAT doesnt work very well these days.. (maybe when they get direct-brain-control working and we can just think it the way we want:)
thirdly is legal.. MS has already attempted to meld things together, and found themselves slapped with a nice big antitrust lawsuit (not that I dont agree with that, but the point is there).. so we know this cant be done within one company (at least, not one that has any reasonable sized portion of the market share, and smaller companies dont have the funds for the R&D needed I'd guess).. open source/free software might be able to have a go at it here, but I doubt anyone would bother on any sort of large scale:P..
oh.. and about that bit about removing the file structures and stuff from the user view.. uhmm.. no.. a user might not care if the extension is ".rtf" or ".doc", but they DO care where their files are put.. having a billion files in the same place is NOT cool.. thats why we invented directories and libraries and whatnot in the first place! organization!
actually.. AOL(/MSN/any other large network) might be a good thing in this case.. I'm not sure theres a _great_ deal of people who would care enough to surf for pr0n on their gaming system (as opposed to say.. playing games), and these large user bases open you up to a LOT of competition..
then again, I suppose this would limit the market for pr0n-based games?
Of course they will.. msbsod32.dll.o (placed in the/lib directory since they'll need root access to install anyway and it seems like a good place, right?)..
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, according to the .pdf, "no purpose is served" by proving our innocence.
also, "no purpose is served" by requesting that the levy be withdrawn. Apparently this "law" has been in place since 1997 and they've just been bickering over the price and implementation since then.
And to make things more interesting, the going rate for CD-R when the law was proposed (1997) was 77c, while the media itself sold for between $1.00 to about $3.00 depending on quantity/brand/cases.. not a great rate (approx. 25-75% per disc)..
however.. prices of CDs have gone down. I recently bought a couple 100-pack gigastore for $50.. so 50c/disc. Now compare that to $1.23 per disc levy. We're actually going to be paying approximately 250% tax per disc. And that discounts the fact that all of the companies between the manufacturer and the retailer will probably see this as an opportunity to boost their own profits as well.. (the first step will likely jump by well over 1000% since the levy is applied at that time.. giving the middlemen and retailers an excuse to add their 50% markup to a relatively enormous sum, even though they dont have to pay it back in the way of levies)..
so we can likely predict the price of CDs will jump from 50c (and this is from a retailer, its probably cheaper if you know a more direct route from the manufacturer and buy in large quantity).. back to the level of around $2 per disc, if not more (in terms of consumer dollars)..
As far as I can see, this is a tax applied mainly to people who DONT use the discs for personal copying. Most normal people that I see maybe burn a dozen or so discs per YEAR, and most less than that. Really, over the course of a year $24 compared to $6 isnt a big setback.
For someone like me, who uses closer to a dozen discs a week, this adds up to a jump from around $25 per month to somewhere around $100, or from around $300 per year to approximately $1200!
Thats more expensive than car insurance for a male driver under 25 (in these parts, that particular category pays usually 30-50% more for insurance than anyone else). Is the chance that I might copy a CD really more of a risk than the chance I might kill someone (or myself) in a car accident?..
Oh and as a last note to really kick it home, most of the popular music here (regardless of my personal opinion about its quality:P) comes up from the states. Does this mean that SOCAN and company are going to be funneling a large portion of this money directly to the US in hopes that the RIAA will be nice and distribute it to their member artists? I find it highly unlikely myself. The cash will stop moving at one of the two places. And probably even SOCAN wont see much of that (they supposedly represent artists, whereas one of the other groups is more RIAA-style where they represent companies. I forget the acronym, not that it matters)..
Sooooo to sum up. I pay 4x as much money to some random Canadian companies to cover the "costs" of a bunch of people with bad taste copying (American) Brittney Spears albums, regardless of the fact that I purchase almost all of small amount of music produced on this side of the ocean that I listen to (oh wait. you mean they arent going to be sending some of this money to the Japanese artists I listen to most of the time?)
(now if only I can remember my password to log in.. ahh there it is:)
Heh.. if MS can sit there and basically ignore the DOJ, I doubt some small company like Be is going to make them think twice about anything..
a few weeks/months waiting time? :P..
unless you're compiling on a VERY slow machine..
Microsoft and others (including Redhat) are ALWAYS slow to bring out patches.. why? Well first, they have to find and apply the patches themselves (and in Microsoft's case, they have to find the problem first, whereas Linux-based companies can just apply the patch that someone else has created).. but what takes more time, these companies have to be relatively sure that applying the patch wont accidentally break anything else! Applying the patch may well fix a bug, but if 90% of the 3rd party software for whom this particular bug was a problem all created various workarounds, you may end up breaking all that extra software (again, this tends to hit Microsoft harder, since a Linux vendor would probably have just submitted a patch themselves if they happened to run across the bug)..
I've heard similar reasoning to excuse at least a large number (probably not all) of the reported 65,000 bugs in Win2k when it was released. Sure it gives us geeks with our open source a bit of a chuckle, but it does make at least a little business sense to not screw over your 3rd party developers, especially in a world where a good number of your sales are driven by the fact that most 3rd parties still develop exclusively for your OS.
right after they hit www.mcafee.com:80.. err.. oops
quite easy actually.. :)..
:)..
sure the telephone system in general is more stable, but a wire dangling a few feet over my head will generally be a fair bit more susceptible to having things fall on it than one thats under the ground..
of course, in my particular case, the electricity went out far more than the telephone, so I couldn't really tell whether cable was still working or not a lot of the time
(yeah yeah like anyone will read a post in an article this old, but oh well I felt like replying
hrm? is the frightening bit where Microsoft has competition, or that a large company would finally be able to tell the truth when they say their product doesnt suck? :P
yes, and I'll be overjoyed when they get video-on-demand over POTS as well.. I dont have stats to back it up, but I'm guessing my cablemodem does video across the internet a fair bit better than a 56k modem (even if you direct-dial and cut the internet out of the picture) /regulated/ that the system must remain up in the event of an emergency.. and even then that doesnt mean much.. a well placed tree (especially in more rural areas) can take down the telephone system without much hassle, sometimes leaving it down for hours if the weather/etc conditions aren't conductive to repairing the line (I used to live in a place where this happened.. frequently.. although not nearly as frequently as the power, but thats getting a bit off topic)
I love idiotic random quibbles like "the internet can't handle video-on-demand so its not as good as the corporately-controlled telephone system"
and if they bothered doing a bit of research, much of the stability in the telephone system is there because it was
As numerous people have already mentioned, Microsoft and other large companies are quite willing to be the ones poking our eyeballs out and stripping us of our sight..
but aside from that. consumer activism. Well, I may be mistaken here, but non-profit organizations such as EFF and EPIC tend to be started by consumers who feel that its time to do something about a problem, at least thats what I'd expect.
Now if everyone decided to drop their current jobs and join some activist group, how much actual work would ever get done?
On the other side, you may not particularly like Coke or Pepsi, but I bet you still drink stuff. One or the other of those two basically own everything that comes in a bottle or can, and equally evil companies own pretty much everything else. Sometimes consumers have to consume, even if they dont like it. Face it, no matter what you buy, somewhere down the line you're probably feeding a megacompany. (What about the stuff you picked from your garden? Well where did you get the seeds from? heh!)..
Then theres people like me. I live in Canada. Sure there's lots of battles to be fought up here as well (and yes I tend to be on the apathetic side, but I still see whats happening even if I dont bother doing anything about it), but when it comes to anything related to computers, pretty much everything interesting (in either the good or bad sense) happens in the US. What does this mean? Well it means I can't write a letter to my senator (I dont have one), I cant easily obtain membership in many activist groups (although I'm sure they'd be able to take my money as a donation if I had any.. but its not the same thing as actually doing something now is it?)..
Yet I still have to deal with Microsoft products on a daily basis..
Yes I can whine at my local Microsoft branch, but even if they care, I doubt they'd be listened to down south..
Yes I can "vote with my wallet", as long as I don't mind wasting the time finding/recreating my favorite apps in linux (mostly anime.. which means, a decent newsgroup binary downloader, an IRC client, and software to play the various media types.. I dont get much chance to use X but the command line variants that I've seen of the first two were not sufficiently useful for my purposes.. but that was around RH6 days.. maybe stuff has improved by now:P).. again, that apathy thing..
I still won't ever purchase WinXP though.. why? Well, firstly, I can't afford to pay every year/month/second/whatever their scheme turns out to be, and also, Win2K is perfectly useful (minus not being able to reinstall without formatting the drive)..
So.. the point of this ramble? Lets see: a) The purpose of organizations like EFF is to do the activism thing for all of us who are too busy/lazy.
b) You pretty much can't avoid megacorps. There's almost nothing you can do that doesn't feed into their pockets (who do you think made those CDs you burned your Linux iso's onto?)
c) The non-US population of the world has to put up with the fact that almost anything related to the internet (and most everything else computer-wise) is based in the US, where anything we say/do is pretty much completely ignored. And to make it better, US companies feel they have the right to prosecute non-US citizens doing legal acts in their country under US law (the DeCSS kid especially, he wasn't even on US soil as Dmitry was.. and under 18 at the time to boot. Go MPAA).
Not to mention it being complete BS to begin with..
Take oh.. anyone. Pick some arbitrary 70 hours of "relaxation" time from them (meaning, time during which they're doing what they want. This could include work for workaholics and the such)..
Ok.. now, during those 70 hours, make them do something they probably dont want to..
Let me guess, they started suffering from "withdrawl" symptoms (things like.. utter boredom, edginess.. which is most likely caused by said boredom.. other such nifty things)..
Such a stupid correlation has nothing to do with the fact that the kid was an obsessive gamer, it has to do with the fact that he probably doesnt want to be doing whatever else is available to him during the 70 hours he'd rather be gaming.. if he WAS interested in doing something else, he probably wouldnt be gaming so much in the first place!
Adobe probably patented ROT13 already. Prior art doesn't seem to hold much meaning anymore anyway.
no they wont.. they'll do something more along the lines of:
"you cant do the old thing anymore.. but here, we'll give you this little box for free, and you'll get an extra 17.6 channels.. or you can go out and buy a new HDTV which will now plug right into this thing, and we wont even degrade your quality to below-analog standards as it goes through the box! oh the possibilities!
the big thing though, will be giving out the little digital->analog box for free.. if it gives people more channels, most of them will be quite happy to use it (even though they only watch 5 out of the 60 or 70 channels they have now).. doesnt cost them anything (at least, on the surface) and gives them benefit.. any sane person would take that deal.. Of course, below the surface things get a little murkier.. you wont be able to watch TV on more than one set at a time for starters (since you only have one box. Want another one? pay more!) I think that will be the only really outwardly visible difference (since the box would give you a standard low-quality analog output usable by current generation TV/VCRs).. But then, most cable companies tell you that you're only allowed one TV per connection now anyways, so in their eyes, this would just enforce rules that they've wanted to have in place for years (their current method of enforcement amounts to basically scare tactics.. "dont do this or we'll cut you off".. I know of no one who cares both about hooking up 2 TVs AND about what the cable company says.. not to mention the signal degredation that a splitter introduces)..
I know I'd personally miss the ability to split the signal.. I don't watch the same things my family does (not that any of us watch much of the crap that comes down the wire these days.. but when we do..)
What would be nice is if their little box would take the incoming digital signal, and fully convert it to the standard (ie: multichannel, missing the "extra" digital chans or whatever) analog signal and send that out one wire, while the high(er)-quality, full # of channels, whatever comes out on the standard channel 3 (channel selection handled by the box of course to prevent splitting of that signal)..
Of course, they wont do that (hrm.. if its even possible.. I'm not sure whether digital cable transmits all channels at once like standard TV, or does something sane and only sends the channel you're watching.. I'd guess the latter but who knows), because, as I mentioned, they dont want you to be able to split..
Its made up and bogus :)..
Human brains and computer "brains" work quite differently. If you want an example, go program something like a 4th order differential equation in your favorite language. Run it on a data set of I dunno, 1000 points. Do them yourself. Who was faster? Bet it was the computer..
Now tell your computer to figure out where you derived the equation from. Do it yourself. Who was faster? I bet the computer didn't even get started.. (assuming the equation was derived at all! You may have just made something up. Can the computer tell you that what you made up wasn't derived from anywhere and has no bearing to any real-world or mathematical problems outside of being a candidate for a textbook example?)..
We don't know how the brain works completely. We make best guesses based on things like MRI scans while having the test subject perform some task, and see what parts of the brain become active.
We do know however, that the brain does not work in binary. We know that our brains do some things better (image recognition, heuristics, natural language), while computers do other things better (mathematics, logic).. Any direct comparison between the two is completely and utterly bogus at this stage in the game, and is generally created to justify some psychology professor getting a new hard drive so he can store pr0n (err.. or something like that;)..
Well I don't know why I'm bothering to respond to this post instead of the other 3 or 4 above it that say the same thing, but...
the difference between Artificial Intelligence and fire is that Intelligence thing.. assuming we ever get it right, there is some small chance that while we become increasingly dependent on the easy lifestyle it gives us, it may in turn become increasingly annoyed with us and eventually decide (since decision is a fairly major part of intelligence, I'm sure you'll agree) that humans have become a useless burden on their backs and do away with us (terminator, matrix, etc, take your pick)..
then again, they may not do away with us and we may end up just killing ourselves off, and the AI beings will spend millenia trying to figure out how to bring us back (AI).. but either way, the point is (again, assuming we get it right), that unlike fire, a true AI would have a fairly good chance of surpassing us as the dominant "life" form on the planet.. fire simply can't do that..
now the same COULD be said for other intelligent life (artificially created or not), but a dumb machine/fire/etc could never take over (a vaccine may accidentally kill us all off or something, but it wouldnt do so with the intention of taking control.. it would be a slip up on the part of the vaccine manufacturer (ie: a human) behind the occurance)..
1) Speed limits in the US are about the same as speed limits in Europe, other then the German autobahns. However we measure in miles, not Kilometers, so 55 is about the same as 100, which is a typical speed for back roads. Major roads are faster.
uhm.. well first, 55mph is the same as 88km/h..
unless europe has a different idea of how long a km is, but I think thats pretty standard.. (Hmm.. they might have a different idea of how long a mile is, but going by context I'm assuming we're talking about miles in the US so that point is moot even if its true)..
also.. 100 (or even 88) is VERY fast. You get a very very large fine if you're caught driving 100 down a 'back road' (100 is generally max on a major road.. there might be a few here and there that allow 110 or 120, but not much over that)..
Up here in Canada (Alberta to be precise), 50 is the max speed in urban areas (unless otherwise posted -- ie: highways and such).. 60 happens on the busier streets (especially if the buildings are several meters.. I dunno exact measures but I'd say maybe 5-10m+) away from the roadway), 70+ is pretty much highway and only happens on very busy streets through areas that are a fair distance from any buildings (probably 15-20m at least.. maybe more).. (and even then, they are usually barracaded so that little johnny can't go play in traffic as easily)..
someone needs to get a stupid patent for the method of coming up with really stupid patents, and then file suit against practically every "computer" patent created over the last few years.
Now THAT would be interesting..
of course, I suppose there would be lots of prior art.. I doubt stupidity is all that new..
You just can't do that with computer animation
.. and my "cool attention to detail".. you could see the veins on the back of Aki's hands in at least one scene (forget which one.. was one of the lovey-dovey scenes with grey though)..
:)
Sure you can.. just takes time & effort.. likely more than was available with the technology and budget they were running. Hey, its a first shot attempt at making a realistic-looking CG movie..
why there is a Cid IN EVERY SINGLE FF from FF2 on?
character recognition, continuity.. and the ability to make you go "smirk" the first time you see it.. I've heard that Cid even had a small role in the original (NES) FF (from a comment on a previous article).. I havent played it in many years so I can't confirm that..
Also, don't forget Cid's "it's warm" at the end.. completely out of place for the movie, but almost every ff (perhaps even all of them) had a warm light at one point or another.. people who've played the games a lot would know this.. anyone else would think "that was a stupid thing to say.. totally out of place".. I think squaresoft did a much better takeoff of the games than people realize.. mainly because of these somewhat "hidden" elements that make it into pretty much every game in the series, even though the storylines are completely different..
now there were a few quirks in the movie that made it less than perfect (although it still blows away a lot of other crap out there.. although this summer has been relatively good for movies for a change).. things like.. why the aliens were attacking.. they explained why the aliens were there, but didnt make much reference to why they were malicious.. (in fact, there were a few places where it seemed like they were almost purposely dodging that issue)..
and of course the worst part of the movie.. no one cast a 'fire3' spell dammit!
Because MS products are pretty much enforced on most people.. sure Linux/BSD/whatever else can all be used by someone with enough brain, but unfortunately thats a small percentage of the computer-using population at this point in time.. AOL is pretty much only used by script kiddies and people who dont realize a frisbee when they see one..
logitech is even less visible.. most people have their standard microsoft mouse (that comes with pretty much every pc these days that I've seen) right from the time of purchasing their systems until the day they chuck it and get a new one..
now as other posters have stated, if this werent likely going to be just a mass-ad ploy it could actually be quite useful and cool..
Well I'm likely far too late to actually have anyone read this, but.. I don't really see hypocrisy here.. at least not between the examples you mentioned..
:)
first.. corporations taking over the country.. generally considered to screw the people in bad ways.. at least by those of us who aren't getting rich off it (which amounts to what? something like 1-5% of the population? been a while since I saw the statistics but its something like that)..
secondly.. invasion/destruction of individual rights.. Also considered a very bad thing..
So lets sum it up.. on one hand, Jon is ranting about the average person getting screwed. On the other hand, he's ranting about the average person getting screwed. I'm not seeing the hypocrisy.. The only common connection is that laws can be made in either direction (what you call "democratic" control.. which isnt really democratic at all. A fair number of politicians these days represent the corporations who paid their absurd campaign fees, not the people who were suckered by said campaigns..
and even if you happen to run across a politician who actually still has some morals, they're still acting on their own.. You elect them based on what their campaign team says their beliefs are.. you have NO control over what they do beyond that.. They try to use their best judgement, and they try to speak for everyone who voted for them.. but lets face it, its hard to get two people to agree, never mind an entire country.. and throw into that mix things like advertising from lobbyist groups (both corporate and not.. although the non-corporate ones rarely get much say as they typically dont have the fundage)..
ok well now I'm going off on a rant of my own here so I'll cut it short
now programmers can use gestures along with our incantations to perform their magic!
The general idea is good (especially global undo/redo! Imagine being able to undo the last time you stupidly walked right in front of a rocket!).. I see some problems with it though.. :P..
firstly, not all applications can use the same interface. Period. Can you imagine trying to play Quake using a MS word (or emacs.. or vi.. or pretty much anything not remotely related to 3d navigation) interface? Or for that matter, trying to type out that document the boss wants in 20 minutes if you have to use a mouse/keyboard combination to pick letters from your latest Quake/text editor mix?.. it just cant be done.. its like trying to create a car using the "interface" of a pair of rollerskates.
secondly.. modes.. I agree that modes can be a pain in the @$$ (especially when Word decides to change modes for you when you dont want it to).. but really.. how are you going to get around this?.. if you want to allow bold/italic/underscored/different font/etc text, you need some way of specifying what you want. You obviously cant have an enormous keyboard with a set of keys for bold, another set for italic, etc (not to mention that that would likely be more confusing and distracting than accidentally bolding some text).. that leaves basically two options.. dont allow bold (unlikely), or have the text editor do it all for you.. and we've all seen that THAT doesnt work very well these days.. (maybe when they get direct-brain-control working and we can just think it the way we want:)
thirdly is legal.. MS has already attempted to meld things together, and found themselves slapped with a nice big antitrust lawsuit (not that I dont agree with that, but the point is there).. so we know this cant be done within one company (at least, not one that has any reasonable sized portion of the market share, and smaller companies dont have the funds for the R&D needed I'd guess).. open source/free software might be able to have a go at it here, but I doubt anyone would bother on any sort of large scale
oh.. and about that bit about removing the file structures and stuff from the user view.. uhmm.. no.. a user might not care if the extension is ".rtf" or ".doc", but they DO care where their files are put.. having a billion files in the same place is NOT cool.. thats why we invented directories and libraries and whatnot in the first place! organization!
except that I patented revolts, so you're not allowed.. nyah nyah! :P..
I tend to use the term USers *duck*
actually.. AOL(/MSN/any other large network) might be a good thing in this case.. I'm not sure theres a _great_ deal of people who would care enough to surf for pr0n on their gaming system (as opposed to say.. playing games), and these large user bases open you up to a LOT of competition..
then again, I suppose this would limit the market for pr0n-based games?
hmm.. heart of kernel32.dll for linux?
void WINAPI WinBrain()
{ srand(time(0)),(rand(32767)?return:raise(11)); }
Of course they will.. msbsod32.dll.o (placed in the /lib directory since they'll need root access to install anyway and it seems like a good place, right?)..