A while ago, 5 Orthodox Jewish guys threatened to sue Yale for making them live in the dorms for two years. I don't know if it even went to court. It's a little different situation, but the lack of an "opt out" was the core issue.
At a private school, the "opt out" would probably be "don't go to that school". The fact that Mystery U is public makes it more complicated.
"Or they fall in love with people who don't return their affection. Or think they're in love, but they're not sure."
I'm sure glad that never happens in off-line relationships. That would be horrible.
I'll quote Chris Rock on this one, "There are always two women. One that you love. One that loves you. One got the best pussy in the world. The other has the best pancakes in the world"
You can't patent the Venturi effect (I hope), but I garantee you that all the applicable carburetor parts designed by Suzuki, Yamaha et al are patented. They put R&D money into designing them and they were subsequently patented. That's how the system is supposed to work.
I can infer how to make a fusion reactor from a high-school textbook. That doesn't mean I can patent one.
Are geodes special in Virgina or something? Here in Indiana, I found dozens when I was a kid. Some were almost as big as a basketball. I used a very scientific technique known as "digging in my back yard".
A few years ago, the company I work for was hit by Happy99. It was a stupid little virus that infected your Winsock32.dll and sent itself to everyone on emailed. It made a backup of your uninfected dll, kept a text file of every email address it had sent itself to and was generally a polite virus. The company only had about 15 workstations at the time and it was no trouble cleaning up. The real problem was that I had to call a few dozen clients and tell them that our stupid client service people had sent them a virus. We looked like complete idiots. It turns out that only a couple of the client folks were infected and I could talk them through a cleanup over the phone. But of course those clients had sent infected emails to a few of their clients. So even the clients we didn't infect knew we had screwed up and the ones we did infect were severely pissed. I don't think anyone dropped up that week, but when our contracts came up for renewal who knows if our virus problem had an influence. So the direct cost of the virus was only a couple hours of my time. The hit to our reputation may have cost us tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Coders? yes. Artists and designers? Probably not many. Professional quality game artistry is a very specific skill that not many people have. The people that can do it are, for the most part, doing it 80 hours a week for some serious money. Sure there are plenty of highly paid programmers that write GPLed code because they love it. But with artists, I just don't think it's the same situation.
1600 X 1200 resolution at 60 fps is over 115 million pixels/second. IIRC, 60 fps is the limit our eyes can see. Also, I'm not sure your pixel to polygon comparison is valid.
If Microsoft allowed rumors to float around anywhere without filling out the right paperwork, then it's their own fault. I work at a pretty small company (~50 people). When we come up with a new product name, or even a short list for a product name, the minute people leave the meeting we're on our way to register domain names and file trademark paperwork. That's just how things work.
Actually, slot machines take between 1 and 5 percent of your money. Some of the slots near the front of major casinos lose money just to keep the lights flashing and to let people see jackpots hitting.
Last month, I won $600 bucks playing slots while waiting for my friend to get out of the bathroom. It's not my preferred form of gambling, but I know a woman who has consistently won thousands only playing slots.
1) The machines really were random and your "system" just happened to work.
2) The machines were rigged by some cruise line that didn't have to report to a gaming commission.
In larger gambling establishments, (Vegas, Atlantic City, and even riverboats) you have gaming commisions making sure the machines are on the up and up. Ignoring gaming commisions, large casinos run legit games for two reasons. First, they can make a whole lot of money running legit games. Second, if a place like Ceasers Palace was ever caught cheating or even accused loudly enough, they would go out of business. There are a thousand places to gamble on basically the same games. If people even suspect that one is rigged, they'll go elsewhere.
I was also impressed by the ratings. NBC only promised advertisers a 4-5, but got twice that. But before everyone gets carried away with the amazing success, let's wait until next Monday. I think that many of the viewers have seen what the hype was about and just weren't that impressed. Last week, Salon.com had an article about how the target demographic, 12-24 year old males, just are not in front of televisions on Saturday nights. I'm a 22 year old male and I spent most of last Saturday night at a strip bar. There was a TV showing the game near me, but I wasn't paying much attention. The article also stated that the last network hit to air on Saturday nights was Golden Girls. Fricking GOLDEN GIRLS. Anyway, Vince McMahon is a brilliant showman and he got people's attention for one weekend. The showmanship is going to wear off quickly and the quality of the football is going to keep viewers.
IIRC nobody ever denied that the Dreamcast was being axed. They denied that any official statement had been made (which was true). Now the official statement HAS been made and all the press releases are out and all the proper people have been briefed.
I knew someone was going to post that. For my interpretation of Godwin's Law, you have to make a *comparison* to Hitler or Nazis. I used Hitler as an example of someone who worked their way up, but was still rather evil. No comparison- no Godwin's Law. Close.
"but you have to give them some credit... they worked their way up"
And so did Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Henry Ford, and Adolf Hitler (OK, Hitler didn't own a company, but he did work his way up from rejected art student to super-tyrant). A whole lot of giant evil companies started in someone's garage. That doesn't make them any less evil.
I haven't seen much written about a per-song fee. If they charge per song and can't control the quality (see my three points above) of the songs, people are going to get pissy. I really don't see them wanting the hassle.
Another thing I haven't seen much about: What is to prevent any entire high school from using the same account? If they try the "one concurrent login per account", they'll get another ton of pissed of customers. I have this really bad feeling that everyone at Napster HQ is thinking "It'll be pretty much like before, but now we'll make a ton of money".
I have seen this "ten dollar" figure tossed all over the place. I'll paste from the article: "Mr Barry said that details of the size and scope of the membership fee are yet to be finalised."
On free Napster, you are correct, I am a begger and have no right to choose. With a T1 at work and cable at home, I make use of the "shotgun" method you described, downloading a bunch and trashing the crap. Once I pay ANY cash, I really am not a begger anymore. For $5-10/month I will put up with a fair ammount of crap, but not like it is now.
But I have a feeling that in order to give the record companies the kind of money that they want, the fee will be in the $20-30 range. The Pay Napster argument will be "It's just the cost of 2 CDs a month". My argument is "For ~350 bucks a year, I want some damn good service".
PS- There is some good reggae on Napster, you just have to look hard.
I would be willing to pay a few bucks, even if the files were stored on another subscriber's computer. The three things I want are:
1) Correct artist name & song title (This would probably halve the number of "Phish" songs traded)
2) Complete songs
3) Half decent quality recordings. No bleeps, no crazy eq settings.
I'm not sure how Napster would implement this for songs stored on user's computers, but I'm just the idea guy.
"My (wild) guess is that you'll see quite a lot of these instant replays at the center of the field..."
Unfortunately, most of the things you would want to see a replay of don't happen in the center of the field. Fumbles are about it. What I think would be the best use of this technology is looking for feet in or out of bounds. That puts the object all the way on one side of the field.
Anyway, I can't wait to see what they do on Sunday.
There are a few replies to my post similar to this, but I'll reply to this one:
The key word in the point I was trying to make is "reasonable". I even try to address that with my crypto comment.
I am a liberal person. I feel very strongly about civil liberties. I have no problem with pornography in general. Like most guys, I own a small collection of porno. But when it comes to kiddie porn, there needs to special laws for a special situation. In my opinion, giving up the "right" to view CG kiddie porn is worth the price if it convicts one guy really sexually abusing kids. This is the point where someone yells "Slippery slope! When do we draw the line?" That's for the judges to decide, on a case by case basis.
I think that everyone who is fanaticly fighting censorship here just because it's censorship and that's Bad, needs to take a breath. We're talking about young kids and sexual abuse. Maybe there are some things where you err on the side of caution.
I think this kind of "virtual" porn should be illegal, but not for the reasons that I've seen written about. With computer graphics getting better and better every day, how long will it be before CG stuff becomes imperceptable from the real stuff? If a guy gets busted with kid porn on him computer, he can just say that he created it. We need to remove any reasonable boundries that prevent the prosecution of child pornographers. Outlawing crypo? No. Outlawing niche market virtual child porn? Yeah.
"The new regime may signal a new era by walking away from the antitrust victory the Justice Department won against Microsoft last year"
Says Katz.
To quote a cnet article "Given the political and practical realities, the new administration is not going to tamper with the case in the short term," said Bill Kovacic, a professor at the George Washington University Law School."
I actually used to like Katz. I thought some of his Columbine-era stuff was pretty brilliant. But now he's just a scare-monger. He knows what scares geeks, and yells "fire" with no facts backing him up. Everything I've heard and read says that GW Bush does not particularly think MS should be broken up, but doesn't want to interfere with an issue that really isn't his deal. Katz comes in, thinks to himself, "Bush is a conservative, conservatives are pro-business. Dubya must be on the phone right now putting a stop the the Microsoft trial". It's just bad reporting. There are so many things GW has actually done and said for us to rag about. Don't make up stuff.
Here is the article I quoted above:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-4288788.htm l
1) Make sure it is junkmail.
The company I work for sends out large, somewhat plain, letters on behalf of people's employers. People aren't specifically expecting a letter from XX corp and assume it's junkmail. We get this empty return trick sometimes, often with some funny profanity on the envelope.
2) Don't put anything in the envelope.
Sometimes, people put junkmail inside our return envelopes. They think it will increase the postage bill, but I think the return is a flat rate (I don't know, I'm not in the mail room). The thing is that every once in a while people accidentally send us credit card applications and/or statements. One woman sent us some private insurance documents. Less trustworthy people might do bad things with these.
Slashdot Mirror
A while ago, 5 Orthodox Jewish guys threatened to sue Yale for making them live in the dorms for two years. I don't know if it even went to court. It's a little different situation, but the lack of an "opt out" was the core issue.
At a private school, the "opt out" would probably be "don't go to that school". The fact that Mystery U is public makes it more complicated.
-B
ConsumptionJunction rules
"Or they fall in love with people who don't return their affection. Or think they're in love, but they're not sure."
I'm sure glad that never happens in off-line relationships. That would be horrible.
I'll quote Chris Rock on this one, "There are always two women. One that you love. One that loves you. One got the best pussy in the world. The other has the best pancakes in the world"
-B
You can't patent the Venturi effect (I hope), but I garantee you that all the applicable carburetor parts designed by Suzuki, Yamaha et al are patented. They put R&D money into designing them and they were subsequently patented. That's how the system is supposed to work.
I can infer how to make a fusion reactor from a high-school textbook. That doesn't mean I can patent one.
-B
Are geodes special in Virgina or something? Here in Indiana, I found dozens when I was a kid. Some were almost as big as a basketball. I used a very scientific technique known as "digging in my back yard".
-B
A few years ago, the company I work for was hit by Happy99. It was a stupid little virus that infected your Winsock32.dll and sent itself to everyone on emailed. It made a backup of your uninfected dll, kept a text file of every email address it had sent itself to and was generally a polite virus. The company only had about 15 workstations at the time and it was no trouble cleaning up. The real problem was that I had to call a few dozen clients and tell them that our stupid client service people had sent them a virus. We looked like complete idiots. It turns out that only a couple of the client folks were infected and I could talk them through a cleanup over the phone. But of course those clients had sent infected emails to a few of their clients. So even the clients we didn't infect knew we had screwed up and the ones we did infect were severely pissed. I don't think anyone dropped up that week, but when our contracts came up for renewal who knows if our virus problem had an influence. So the direct cost of the virus was only a couple hours of my time. The hit to our reputation may have cost us tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
-B
That is hilarious. I did not know you could trademark a pose. Can I submit pictures of Run DMC circa 1985 as prior art?
-B
Coders? yes. Artists and designers? Probably not many. Professional quality game artistry is a very specific skill that not many people have. The people that can do it are, for the most part, doing it 80 hours a week for some serious money. Sure there are plenty of highly paid programmers that write GPLed code because they love it. But with artists, I just don't think it's the same situation.
-B
1600 X 1200 resolution at 60 fps is over 115 million pixels/second. IIRC, 60 fps is the limit our eyes can see. Also, I'm not sure your pixel to polygon comparison is valid.
-B
If Microsoft allowed rumors to float around anywhere without filling out the right paperwork, then it's their own fault. I work at a pretty small company (~50 people). When we come up with a new product name, or even a short list for a product name, the minute people leave the meeting we're on our way to register domain names and file trademark paperwork. That's just how things work.
Actually, slot machines take between 1 and 5 percent of your money. Some of the slots near the front of major casinos lose money just to keep the lights flashing and to let people see jackpots hitting.
Last month, I won $600 bucks playing slots while waiting for my friend to get out of the bathroom. It's not my preferred form of gambling, but I know a woman who has consistently won thousands only playing slots.
-B
One of two things happened on your cruise:
1) The machines really were random and your "system" just happened to work.
2) The machines were rigged by some cruise line that didn't have to report to a gaming commission.
In larger gambling establishments, (Vegas, Atlantic City, and even riverboats) you have gaming commisions making sure the machines are on the up and up. Ignoring gaming commisions, large casinos run legit games for two reasons. First, they can make a whole lot of money running legit games. Second, if a place like Ceasers Palace was ever caught cheating or even accused loudly enough, they would go out of business. There are a thousand places to gamble on basically the same games. If people even suspect that one is rigged, they'll go elsewhere.
-B
I was also impressed by the ratings. NBC only promised advertisers a 4-5, but got twice that. But before everyone gets carried away with the amazing success, let's wait until next Monday. I think that many of the viewers have seen what the hype was about and just weren't that impressed. Last week, Salon.com had an article about how the target demographic, 12-24 year old males, just are not in front of televisions on Saturday nights. I'm a 22 year old male and I spent most of last Saturday night at a strip bar. There was a TV showing the game near me, but I wasn't paying much attention. The article also stated that the last network hit to air on Saturday nights was Golden Girls. Fricking GOLDEN GIRLS. Anyway, Vince McMahon is a brilliant showman and he got people's attention for one weekend. The showmanship is going to wear off quickly and the quality of the football is going to keep viewers.
-B
I noticed that, too. Why is the joystick right next to his hand? I thought the point was that you didn't need a joystick anymore. Phallic imagery?
-B
IIRC nobody ever denied that the Dreamcast was being axed. They denied that any official statement had been made (which was true). Now the official statement HAS been made and all the press releases are out and all the proper people have been briefed.
-B
I knew someone was going to post that. For my interpretation of Godwin's Law, you have to make a *comparison* to Hitler or Nazis. I used Hitler as an example of someone who worked their way up, but was still rather evil. No comparison- no Godwin's Law. Close.
-B
"but you have to give them some credit... they worked their way up"
And so did Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Henry Ford, and Adolf Hitler (OK, Hitler didn't own a company, but he did work his way up from rejected art student to super-tyrant). A whole lot of giant evil companies started in someone's garage. That doesn't make them any less evil.
-B
I haven't seen much written about a per-song fee. If they charge per song and can't control the quality (see my three points above) of the songs, people are going to get pissy. I really don't see them wanting the hassle.
Another thing I haven't seen much about: What is to prevent any entire high school from using the same account? If they try the "one concurrent login per account", they'll get another ton of pissed of customers. I have this really bad feeling that everyone at Napster HQ is thinking "It'll be pretty much like before, but now we'll make a ton of money".
In conclusion:
PAYING CUSTOMERS WANT REAL SERVICE
-B
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I have seen this "ten dollar" figure tossed all over the place. I'll paste from the article: "Mr Barry said that details of the size and scope of the membership fee are yet to be finalised."
On free Napster, you are correct, I am a begger and have no right to choose. With a T1 at work and cable at home, I make use of the "shotgun" method you described, downloading a bunch and trashing the crap. Once I pay ANY cash, I really am not a begger anymore. For $5-10/month I will put up with a fair ammount of crap, but not like it is now.
But I have a feeling that in order to give the record companies the kind of money that they want, the fee will be in the $20-30 range. The Pay Napster argument will be "It's just the cost of 2 CDs a month". My argument is "For ~350 bucks a year, I want some damn good service".
PS- There is some good reggae on Napster, you just have to look hard.
-B
I would be willing to pay a few bucks, even if the files were stored on another subscriber's computer. The three things I want are:
1) Correct artist name & song title (This would probably halve the number of "Phish" songs traded)
2) Complete songs
3) Half decent quality recordings. No bleeps, no crazy eq settings.
I'm not sure how Napster would implement this for songs stored on user's computers, but I'm just the idea guy.
-B
"My (wild) guess is that you'll see quite a lot of these instant replays at the center of the field..."
Unfortunately, most of the things you would want to see a replay of don't happen in the center of the field. Fumbles are about it. What I think would be the best use of this technology is looking for feet in or out of bounds. That puts the object all the way on one side of the field.
Anyway, I can't wait to see what they do on Sunday.
-B
There are a few replies to my post similar to this, but I'll reply to this one:
The key word in the point I was trying to make is "reasonable". I even try to address that with my crypto comment.
I am a liberal person. I feel very strongly about civil liberties. I have no problem with pornography in general. Like most guys, I own a small collection of porno. But when it comes to kiddie porn, there needs to special laws for a special situation. In my opinion, giving up the "right" to view CG kiddie porn is worth the price if it convicts one guy really sexually abusing kids. This is the point where someone yells "Slippery slope! When do we draw the line?" That's for the judges to decide, on a case by case basis.
I think that everyone who is fanaticly fighting censorship here just because it's censorship and that's Bad, needs to take a breath. We're talking about young kids and sexual abuse. Maybe there are some things where you err on the side of caution.
-B
I think this kind of "virtual" porn should be illegal, but not for the reasons that I've seen written about. With computer graphics getting better and better every day, how long will it be before CG stuff becomes imperceptable from the real stuff? If a guy gets busted with kid porn on him computer, he can just say that he created it. We need to remove any reasonable boundries that prevent the prosecution of child pornographers. Outlawing crypo? No. Outlawing niche market virtual child porn? Yeah.
-B
"The new regime may signal a new era by walking away from the antitrust victory the Justice Department won against Microsoft last year"
m l
Says Katz.
To quote a cnet article "Given the political and practical realities, the new administration is not going to tamper with the case in the short term," said Bill Kovacic, a professor at the George Washington University Law School."
I actually used to like Katz. I thought some of his Columbine-era stuff was pretty brilliant. But now he's just a scare-monger. He knows what scares geeks, and yells "fire" with no facts backing him up. Everything I've heard and read says that GW Bush does not particularly think MS should be broken up, but doesn't want to interfere with an issue that really isn't his deal. Katz comes in, thinks to himself, "Bush is a conservative, conservatives are pro-business. Dubya must be on the phone right now putting a stop the the Microsoft trial". It's just bad reporting. There are so many things GW has actually done and said for us to rag about. Don't make up stuff.
Here is the article I quoted above:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-4288788.ht
-B
1) Make sure it is junkmail.
The company I work for sends out large, somewhat plain, letters on behalf of people's employers. People aren't specifically expecting a letter from XX corp and assume it's junkmail. We get this empty return trick sometimes, often with some funny profanity on the envelope.
2) Don't put anything in the envelope.
Sometimes, people put junkmail inside our return envelopes. They think it will increase the postage bill, but I think the return is a flat rate (I don't know, I'm not in the mail room). The thing is that every once in a while people accidentally send us credit card applications and/or statements. One woman sent us some private insurance documents. Less trustworthy people might do bad things with these.
Just trying to help
-B