Whoops, looks like the message was actually sent in French. It used the word "exploser", which literally means "explode". I don't speak French, so if I saw that I would think he meant it literally, but it is entirely possible it is common slang for, well, "blow away" in the innocent sense.
This guy was from Quebec, whose official language is technically French, so it seems entirely possible that whichever law enforcement agent (the provincial police arrested him) heard about it was not, in fact, a native English speaker as such.
Most Canadians do speak English, but Quebec is the primarily French section of Canada. Haven't been there, but from what I've heard about it from my Canadian friends, this seems possible. Still an over-reaction, obviously.
Right, Anonymous does have a few competent people who are of course in no way, shape, or form their leaders, they just happen to direct the actions of everyone else in Anonymous and do most of the stuff that keeps Anonymous relevant. But they are not their leaders, because Anonymous doesn't have leaders, everyone knows that.
I think it's great, in a roundabout way. Now you have $50-60 to spend on something else. Go take a look around Steam's indie games. Support the little guys. Some of them are amazingly good, better than most of what companies like Ubisoft put out.
Ubisoft forgets one key thing: no one has to put up with their shit on the PC. On the console, while there are quite a few indie games, if you want a "good" (well, some of them are pretty fun anyways) game that you can spend 10-20 hours on, chances are you need to buy from a big-name company, because only they can afford the licensing and distribution costs. On the PC, I personally have spent 20+ hours in Terraria and know people who have spent hundreds. I have no need to buy from Ubisoft, even though, like you, I might have bought Far Cry 3. But I simply don't need to. There are so many other options out there.
I can't imagine this entire process coming to this point without someone, somewhere in the decision process saying "Who gives a shit what they think? Just do whatever's cheapest right now"
I think that about sums up Ubisoft's entire attitude towards video games.
Ubisoft have already stopped releasing some games on the PC, because of "piracy". Ubisoft Blames Piracy For Non-Release of PC Game. I rejoiced when I read that, because it means maybe Ubisoft will stop making their shitty games on the PC anymore and nearly tricking me into buying them (almost bought Anno 2070 until I noticed the Ubisoft publisher. Well, and the TAGES protection, but I noticed and decided not to buy it after seeing the publisher first.)
Ubisoft just doesn't get it. When you make crappy games with crappy DRM protection, of course people will pirate it instead of buying. It just isn't worth paying when you get less for doing so.
Actually, it can very much be less than 44 years for the people making the trip. Could only take a few months for them, actually, which makes the whole problem of interstellar travel a lot simpler, since if you can travel fast enough, time dilation effects will mean the people inside will live more than long enough to make the trip. Any trip, technically, if you can go fast enough, since the effect asymptotically approaches infinity as the velocity approaches c.
Not so useful for the people stuck here on Earth, but it does make interstellar travel a very real possibility. Eventually.
The problem is *why* they claim that power. Specifically, the fact that the process uses imported medical equipment, and therefore everything done with that equipment can be regulated by the Interstate Commerce Clause. It's like saying because home-grown wheat that never leaves the farm means you don't have to buy wheat off the open market, they can regulate that too... oh wait, they've already said they can do that. BTW, this sort of bullshit is why I oh so badly want states to have their constitutionally granted rights back.
So you count the 16 tonnes a year from a nuclear reaction that may or may not be there, but you ignore the effects of space rockets, some of which have payloads in the hundreds of metric tonnes? (the Saturn V can carry 45 tonnes to a Lunar Injection orbit and over twice that to LEO.) Huh, interesting.
Also, what is this about the weight of the Costa Concordia? I want to know how many Libraries of Congress that is per year, damnit.
The problem is not the mere existence of lawyers, which really is a necessity. The problem is we have too many lawyers, and too many of them are involved in writing laws. The result is massive legal complexity, so that even the simplest laws require lawyers, and often specialized ones at that, merely to understand. This is necessary, in many cases, simply to give the lawyers jobs.
In some cases, the entire system is designed so that the only ones who really end up profiting are the lawyers. The law is the fundamental problem, but as I said, the law ends up being written by lawyers, who somewhat understandably try to keep themselves as necessary as possible. The result is an expensive mess for anyone who isn't a lawyer.
While normally I might take issue with the rhetorical usage of "base elements use in agent orange" as hyperbole meant to generate an emotional response against chemicals which are, by themselves, not nearly as dangerous as Agent Orange itself (albeit still moderately toxic), in this case I will make an exception, because FUCK MONSANTO.
Evil filthy scumbag bastards who sue farmers after the cross-pollination from Monsanto corn caused their patented genes to show up in the farmers crops. Yes, they will sue a farmer because of an act of nature. If the devil founded a company, it would probably look something like Monsanto.
So much for Do No Evil. I'm sure it will be spun into how this makes Blogger a better experience for everyone.
Actually, yes, yes it will. Instead of being forced by law to remove the content from everyone's view or be forceably blocked by that country (or sued), Google is allowing everyone else to see the censored content, and only blocking it where the law demands it.
Respecting the law of a country is not "evil". It may not be the right thing to do (depends on the country and law at hand, certain laws/governments are unjust and should be protested), but it is also not evil.
Oh, and you can still see the censored content anyways (www.google.com/ncr), so, there is that, also.
Under actual news, IE 6 market share grows.
on
Firefox 10 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I wish I was joking. IE 6 as a precent of desktop web browser views went up by 0.72% last month. FF as a whole went down, as did Chrome.
Surely they would had cleaned up their act if they were indeed found acting unlawful. What happend was completely unnecessary.
While I agree at least partially with the last sentence of your post, the problem was MegaUpload knew they were acting unlawfully, and profited through such behavior, with full knowledge of the illegality of the content they were hosting. They wouldn't have changed. In fact, they didn't, after repeated notifications. Google even ceased doing business with them. Two years ago, which is (probably not coincidentally) around the time this investigation started. When other legitimate businesses stop doing business with you because they think you are breaking the law, that is a good sign you need to clean up.
With that said, the whole mess is blown out of proportion and was taken way too far. I think someone is trying to make an example out of MegaUpload.
The system is composed of individuals. If you can drag the corruption of individuals out into the public and hold them responsible, you can make others think twice (or more) about their own actions. If reform is to come, it must come one step at a time. It is simply wishful thinking to believe the entire system can be fixed all at once. The starting point is to take individuals to task for their actions. Once that starts happening, you can think about working on the system as a whole. You drag out enough of the corrupt individuals, you will already have a good start on fixing the system.
If you only work on fixing the system, the still-corrupt individuals will find ways around, somehow. They always do (they always have).
The 6000 series mostly was the 5000 series. The high end may be a bit different, but the upper-midrange (6770, 6870 stuff) was literally the same chips with some minor stuff tacked on. 3D and some more advanced video support mainly, IIRC.
People expect AMD to be cheaper, even when they are competitive on a performance standpoint. AMD usually aims for the mid-range market more, so I expect seeing a top-end card from them (at top-end prices) is a little surprising.
IDK what you're smoking, because you are just plain wrong. The benchmarks show the 7950 as faster than the 6970, the fastest last-gen AMD card (except for the dual-GPU monstrosity that is the 6990, of course). Unless you actually meant the dual-GPU card, of course, which is not in any way shape or form a fair comparison.
That is 10cm *long*, not in diameter. The 120mm cannon is 120mm in diameter. A 10cm diameter bullet couldn't really be called a "bullet", and self guiding would be pretty easy, we already make missiles that size.
Just synchronize the firing of the rifle with the activation of the laser. He sees the flash and the laser at the same time, and that is assuming he is looking at exactly the right spot. Easy enough to do. You could probably do it manually, if necessary, with some practice. The laser doesn't have to be on before the gun is fired, after all, or even immediately after firing: most of the flight is still going to be influenced by ballistics.
However, when people record the info when you pay for something, that person becomes directly traceable. I.e. if the police look into the matter, they can almost certainly quickly find out who is responsible. The RFID method is completely 100% anonymous (unless you memorize the faces of everyone you pass on the street, and even then you simply will not be able to trace down the person responsible). This adds a psychological, if not a real, barrier to CC skimming for employees.
The RFID system is quick, anonymous, and can collect potentially hundreds of cards in a matter of hours, just by standing at a subway station with the right equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoops, looks like the message was actually sent in French. It used the word "exploser", which literally means "explode". I don't speak French, so if I saw that I would think he meant it literally, but it is entirely possible it is common slang for, well, "blow away" in the innocent sense.
This guy was from Quebec, whose official language is technically French, so it seems entirely possible that whichever law enforcement agent (the provincial police arrested him) heard about it was not, in fact, a native English speaker as such.
Most Canadians do speak English, but Quebec is the primarily French section of Canada. Haven't been there, but from what I've heard about it from my Canadian friends, this seems possible. Still an over-reaction, obviously.
Right, Anonymous does have a few competent people who are of course in no way, shape, or form their leaders, they just happen to direct the actions of everyone else in Anonymous and do most of the stuff that keeps Anonymous relevant. But they are not their leaders, because Anonymous doesn't have leaders, everyone knows that.
I think it's great, in a roundabout way. Now you have $50-60 to spend on something else. Go take a look around Steam's indie games. Support the little guys. Some of them are amazingly good, better than most of what companies like Ubisoft put out.
Ubisoft forgets one key thing: no one has to put up with their shit on the PC. On the console, while there are quite a few indie games, if you want a "good" (well, some of them are pretty fun anyways) game that you can spend 10-20 hours on, chances are you need to buy from a big-name company, because only they can afford the licensing and distribution costs. On the PC, I personally have spent 20+ hours in Terraria and know people who have spent hundreds. I have no need to buy from Ubisoft, even though, like you, I might have bought Far Cry 3. But I simply don't need to. There are so many other options out there.
I can't imagine this entire process coming to this point without someone, somewhere in the decision process saying "Who gives a shit what they think? Just do whatever's cheapest right now"
I think that about sums up Ubisoft's entire attitude towards video games.
Ubisoft have already stopped releasing some games on the PC, because of "piracy". Ubisoft Blames Piracy For Non-Release of PC Game. I rejoiced when I read that, because it means maybe Ubisoft will stop making their shitty games on the PC anymore and nearly tricking me into buying them (almost bought Anno 2070 until I noticed the Ubisoft publisher. Well, and the TAGES protection, but I noticed and decided not to buy it after seeing the publisher first.)
Ubisoft just doesn't get it. When you make crappy games with crappy DRM protection, of course people will pirate it instead of buying. It just isn't worth paying when you get less for doing so.
Actually, it can very much be less than 44 years for the people making the trip. Could only take a few months for them, actually, which makes the whole problem of interstellar travel a lot simpler, since if you can travel fast enough, time dilation effects will mean the people inside will live more than long enough to make the trip. Any trip, technically, if you can go fast enough, since the effect asymptotically approaches infinity as the velocity approaches c.
Not so useful for the people stuck here on Earth, but it does make interstellar travel a very real possibility. Eventually.
We need that and viable human-lift capable VTOL transportation vehicles. Might be a slight problem, there.
The problem is *why* they claim that power. Specifically, the fact that the process uses imported medical equipment, and therefore everything done with that equipment can be regulated by the Interstate Commerce Clause. It's like saying because home-grown wheat that never leaves the farm means you don't have to buy wheat off the open market, they can regulate that too... oh wait, they've already said they can do that. BTW, this sort of bullshit is why I oh so badly want states to have their constitutionally granted rights back.
Ah right, hadn't thought of that, thanks.
So you count the 16 tonnes a year from a nuclear reaction that may or may not be there, but you ignore the effects of space rockets, some of which have payloads in the hundreds of metric tonnes? (the Saturn V can carry 45 tonnes to a Lunar Injection orbit and over twice that to LEO.) Huh, interesting.
Also, what is this about the weight of the Costa Concordia? I want to know how many Libraries of Congress that is per year, damnit.
The problem is not the mere existence of lawyers, which really is a necessity. The problem is we have too many lawyers, and too many of them are involved in writing laws. The result is massive legal complexity, so that even the simplest laws require lawyers, and often specialized ones at that, merely to understand. This is necessary, in many cases, simply to give the lawyers jobs.
In some cases, the entire system is designed so that the only ones who really end up profiting are the lawyers. The law is the fundamental problem, but as I said, the law ends up being written by lawyers, who somewhat understandably try to keep themselves as necessary as possible. The result is an expensive mess for anyone who isn't a lawyer.
While normally I might take issue with the rhetorical usage of "base elements use in agent orange" as hyperbole meant to generate an emotional response against chemicals which are, by themselves, not nearly as dangerous as Agent Orange itself (albeit still moderately toxic), in this case I will make an exception, because FUCK MONSANTO.
Evil filthy scumbag bastards who sue farmers after the cross-pollination from Monsanto corn caused their patented genes to show up in the farmers crops. Yes, they will sue a farmer because of an act of nature. If the devil founded a company, it would probably look something like Monsanto.
So much for Do No Evil. I'm sure it will be spun into how this makes Blogger a better experience for everyone.
Actually, yes, yes it will. Instead of being forced by law to remove the content from everyone's view or be forceably blocked by that country (or sued), Google is allowing everyone else to see the censored content, and only blocking it where the law demands it.
Respecting the law of a country is not "evil". It may not be the right thing to do (depends on the country and law at hand, certain laws/governments are unjust and should be protested), but it is also not evil.
Oh, and you can still see the censored content anyways (www.google.com/ncr), so, there is that, also.
I wish I was joking. IE 6 as a precent of desktop web browser views went up by 0.72% last month. FF as a whole went down, as did Chrome.
Surely they would had cleaned up their act if they were indeed found acting unlawful. What happend was completely unnecessary.
While I agree at least partially with the last sentence of your post, the problem was MegaUpload knew they were acting unlawfully, and profited through such behavior, with full knowledge of the illegality of the content they were hosting. They wouldn't have changed. In fact, they didn't, after repeated notifications. Google even ceased doing business with them. Two years ago, which is (probably not coincidentally) around the time this investigation started. When other legitimate businesses stop doing business with you because they think you are breaking the law, that is a good sign you need to clean up.
With that said, the whole mess is blown out of proportion and was taken way too far. I think someone is trying to make an example out of MegaUpload.
The system is composed of individuals. If you can drag the corruption of individuals out into the public and hold them responsible, you can make others think twice (or more) about their own actions. If reform is to come, it must come one step at a time. It is simply wishful thinking to believe the entire system can be fixed all at once. The starting point is to take individuals to task for their actions. Once that starts happening, you can think about working on the system as a whole. You drag out enough of the corrupt individuals, you will already have a good start on fixing the system.
If you only work on fixing the system, the still-corrupt individuals will find ways around, somehow. They always do (they always have).
The 6000 series mostly was the 5000 series. The high end may be a bit different, but the upper-midrange (6770, 6870 stuff) was literally the same chips with some minor stuff tacked on. 3D and some more advanced video support mainly, IIRC.
People expect AMD to be cheaper, even when they are competitive on a performance standpoint. AMD usually aims for the mid-range market more, so I expect seeing a top-end card from them (at top-end prices) is a little surprising.
IDK what you're smoking, because you are just plain wrong. The benchmarks show the 7950 as faster than the 6970, the fastest last-gen AMD card (except for the dual-GPU monstrosity that is the 6990, of course). Unless you actually meant the dual-GPU card, of course, which is not in any way shape or form a fair comparison.
electrodes had to be *surgically implanted* into the test persons' skull.
Looks like it's time for everyone to upgrade to the titanium hat.
That is 10cm *long*, not in diameter. The 120mm cannon is 120mm in diameter. A 10cm diameter bullet couldn't really be called a "bullet", and self guiding would be pretty easy, we already make missiles that size.
Just synchronize the firing of the rifle with the activation of the laser. He sees the flash and the laser at the same time, and that is assuming he is looking at exactly the right spot. Easy enough to do. You could probably do it manually, if necessary, with some practice. The laser doesn't have to be on before the gun is fired, after all, or even immediately after firing: most of the flight is still going to be influenced by ballistics.
However, when people record the info when you pay for something, that person becomes directly traceable. I.e. if the police look into the matter, they can almost certainly quickly find out who is responsible. The RFID method is completely 100% anonymous (unless you memorize the faces of everyone you pass on the street, and even then you simply will not be able to trace down the person responsible). This adds a psychological, if not a real, barrier to CC skimming for employees.
The RFID system is quick, anonymous, and can collect potentially hundreds of cards in a matter of hours, just by standing at a subway station with the right equipment.
After they were voted into office Clinton's speech went something like this, "I don't care what you got voted in for, it's not going to happen."
So you are mad at the Republicans because a Democratic president prevented them from doing what they said they were going to do?
You just keep on not voting, that's just fine with me.