If I took picture of a crime, and the crime was comitted in a public place, then it is perfectly legal for me to take those pictures. I myself have not done anything illegal (except lots of mp3s, but that's not relevent). If the police were looking for tips and such I could, if I chose to do so, give them copies of those pictures in hopes for a reward. I could voluntarily give them whatever I wanted actually. But in order to get a warrant to get stuff from me, a non-criminal... Oh wait. You can't get a warrant for someone without probable cause. The Constitution says so. They have no right to forcibly seize property from non criminals. End of story.
The problem here is that a warrant was issued against a non-criminal. That's not cool. And they are using the Patriot Act on top of it, which is blatantly unconstitutional.
I will again repeat the famous quote of best-ness.
He who trades his civil liberties for an illusion of security deserves neither.
If you aren't using phoenix, and you use linux or windows or both, then start using it now. This browser changed my life. Seriously. Because it takes me less time to surf my daily sites I get more sleep. Read about it in my journal.
I also felt compelled to teach others the majesty of this browser. Check this out. If anyone actually shows up I'll be amazed. And if enough turn up I'll probably do more of them, until I no longer have free time, which will be in about 2 weeks.
I'm glad phoenix changed it's name to Firebird, because now I don't have to change the sweet icons I've got for it. I reccomend using the build from 3/20 and installing at least the tabbed browsing extensions. I believe the 3/20 build is the newest one where importing bookmarks isn't broken, that's why. I also rather like the Phusion theme. The guy who makes it is totally awesome, he updated it after I requested him to. Open source world needs more guys like that.
As others have pointed out the reason only older people play Everquest is because younger people don't have credit cards. If its pay to play you needs dough and a job.
Also, of course it's not only nerds playing. Video gaming has been mainstream since the NES. People from all walks of life have been playing video games since the 80s. That's not news. Tell me when non-nerds are using linux and I'll be shocked.
Lastly, Everquest does indeed suck.
this old slashdot article tells it like it is. End of story.
The problem with MMO games is that social factors directly influence gameplay. The people who make games only know how to deal with technological and game design problems. I strongly believe that there are no technological solutions to social problems.
No, but if I find a way, oh holy crap. Imagine all the geeks being able to manipulate hollywood. Sure it would be great that all the stupid movies wouldn't get made. But there would be too much Star Trek for me to stomach. I'd rather have things be the current evil way.
What really bothers me is graphics. Every video game magazine I've read, and every website, takes graphics into consideration when reviewing a game. If a game doesn't have amazing graphics then it usually gets bad review. The best video games ever all had terrible graphics. Mega Man 2, Zelda 1, Mario 3, River City Ransom, Combat, Breakout, Galaga, Missile Command, Pac-Man, Tetris. All these games had terrible graphics, but they are some of the best video games ever created. Video Game reviewers should only take the following things into consideration when reviewing a game.
1) Is it fun? 2) Will it provide fun for a long period of time, or is it a renter? 3) Does anything in the game annoy you. Are there stupid puzzles. Do the controls not resdpond well. 4) Is the music memorable? Will the player also want the soundtrack?
Apple, makers of iPod and promoters of the fact that the Mac can easily do the mp3 thing. Owning a record company? w00t again! If Apple turns the company around with a new business model that acknowledges where technology is taking us it could show that all the other record companies are just makin' shit up about losing money to pirates.
I wouldn't be too sure that ATI will come out as the winner. It's not like in the Voodoo days where the Voodoo 3 came out and was total crap compared to the TNT2, thus giving Nvidia the huge advantage. ATI vs. NVidia is much more involved and uncertain.
Despite the uncertainties, I predict a role reversal. ATI was always the card that came in Dells and Gateways and such. It was the video card that was good enough to play games, but not good enough for the l33t. ATI made their money by having their video card built into pre-built machines. People learned about ATI through their system tray. NVidia was the card for l33t gamers. You used to not be able to get a computer with an NVidia card in it. What's happening is ATI is becoming the L33t gamers card while NVidia is becoming the thing for the average user. But NVidia also makes the ridiculously expensive card for the millionaire gamer. ATI, with the technologically better Radeon is moved into the smaller market.
Don't believe it? Look at NForce. It's a beautiful thing. It allows for technologies gamers want like dual AGP bandwith to the RAM and AMD processors. While at the same time you can get one that has integrated GeForce4 Video, sound, and ethernet to save the average user money. The best of both worlds. If NVidia was just trying to take the gamers market why would they make a chipset with integrated video?
I bought my current computer a long time ago. It's a Pentium 3 450 with a TNT2. I bought the TNT2 the day the TNT2 came out. I bought a Viewsonic GS771 monitor for two reasons. It was specially designed to have a 17" screen while having a 15" footprint. Not quite the space savings of LCD, but still significant. Also I like the birds.
I bought the monitor from www.buy.com. buy.com still has great deals on monitors and free shipping on lots of stuff. I would definitely buy from them because they sell monitors you can't get in a brick + mortar store at good prices and free shipping is possible.
At first it was just brand loyalty for Viewsonic. I actually thought that the Sony Trinitron was a better monitor. Then I went to CompUSA to buy my friend a monitor. They have a display with a bunch of monitors all running XP. One of them was obviously brighter and better than the others. It stuck out like a sore thumb. It was the Viewsonic! Apparently I picked the right company to be loyal to randomly. The birds did mean something! Viewsonic now makes really awesome Tablet PCs and wireless monitors. Oh holy crap.
The best thing is that I realized the other day that LCD monitors aren't all $1000. A high quality viewsonic 17" LCD monitor with DVI in and res of 1280x1024 can be gotten for $400-$500. In my opinion that's a steal.
My ideal setup would probably include two 19" Viewsonic Professional series monitors. However, the Graphics series (model numbers beginning with G) are the best value/performance deal.
If you are 18 years old you can run for school board. All the other 18 year olds you know can vote for you. Once you are on the school board you can get rid of this system. Isn't it nice how our government works? In the town and county levels there isn't the corruption that exists up top. You can fix things there.
Propellerhead software makes a lot of really good stuff.
http://www.propellerheads.se/
Especially Reason. It may be expensive and non-free. But it can emulate audio hardware that you'll never be able to afford in your life. Technically it has infinite rack space. It may not be midi, but I know a lot of people who swear by it for making electronic music and remixes. It's cheaper and easier than actually buying the hardware, and it works almost just as well. If you have Rebirth Reason and Recycle you can make some really crazy shite.
For midi I hear Cakewalk is still numero uno. There's not much more to say there.
And for wav editing Cooledit seems to still be the best. My roomate has it and swears by it.
You are correct in that the dividing factor between PC games and Console games is mainly the controller. However, there are other factors that keep the ftps, rts genres on the pc and fighting, platform genres on the console.
First of all there's the problem of the keyboard for a console. There's nowhere to rest it. I play console games lying on the floor or couch. Can't lie down with a mouse and keyboard. Attatching a console to my monitor and sitting at desk, um no. Console tv, PC monitor.
Gamepads for PC? They exist, Gravis. But since the day of the Gravis Gamepad we are now in USB land. Direct Input and USB are king. There is no standard and there never will be. When designing a console game you have to know the layout of the controller. Try to think of how to play wind waker with a PS2 or XBoX controller, it aint happening. Unless someone comes out and says "this is the standard pc gamepad" those genres wont make it to pc.
Games like RTS, FPS, CIV/MOO, Moonbase Commander, wont work on a TV. There is too much text. There are too many details in the game. The resolution of a TV, even an HDTV, is too low. You can't give the player all the info at once. Console games give you very little info in big numbers and pictures. Smash Bros for example. A single 1-3 digit number with pictures above it is all you get.
Console games have big things. They are designed for a big screen. Bigger monitors are good on PCs, but 36"+ is excessive. I don't think me and all my friends woudl be comfortable playing Mario Party around my desk. Nor do I think I would be comfortable computing on the floor.
Just imaging yourself playing Quake, with a keyboard and mouse, all on the floor, in front of a huge screen. It aint happening. Every game genre has its place, and it's not just for controller reasons.
Windows CE will not dominate in a few years. I think the way we are headed is towards tablet PCs with wireless for people on the go, and smaller more powerful desktops at home. Multimedia will be controlled by the PC but put out the TV and home theatre. Games will still be seperated, but perhaps linked in some cases. Wireless networks with wireless thin clients will also be prevalent in homes as cpus get so powerful that a whole family can use one PC at once without slow down. Viewsonic's wireless monitor is a start.
I still just don't get you spam people. Yes, I think spammers are bad because people who pay for bandwith and have mail servers end up having to pay lots of money. Yes it is super annoying and time wasting to have to sift through spam. Yes there are filters that work really well. But you know what?
I don't get spam. I just don't get any. I don't let my e-mail get out to stupid places on the net where a spider will get them. I don't sign up for weird things. I avoid anything slightly untrustworthy. And as a result I get no spam. I can't lie, I don't get no spam. I get maybe 1 spam every 2 weeks. That's right, 1. If I have managed to prevent myself from getting more than 2 spams a month so can you. So do it and stop complaining.
Oh, and if you have an aol,msn,hotmail,yahoo e-mail address then you don't have a right to complain about spam.
The trueness. I use Xine because it has an easy GUI, it plays all types of files well without me having to do anything special. It comes with my distro. Oh yeah, it has a GUI.
This is a public service announement. There are two types of open source projects out there. The first kind is the kind where someone will write software for themselves and share the source to be nice and help others. The other kind is where someone writes software they want lots of other people to use and they develop it using the open source model.
If you are making the second kind of software you need to make a gui. You need to make an easy installer. You need to think about all the things a closed source company thinks about. The way I see it there are very few of the second type that have succeeded. gaim, Mozilla, CDex, DC++. That's about it. Every other piece of OSS has failed miserably in some way.
mplayer is one of those that has failed. I know how amazing it plays video. But the effort of making it work is greater than the benefit of using it. It should come in a single executable file that installs it. It should then have a GUI that works no matter what and never crashes. And it should play everything out of the box. It doesn't, so it is the loser.
This is easy. If Joe knows he will get a heart disease, he's in the clear. All he has to do is take the money he would have spent on insurance and save it instead of giving it to the insurance company. Now Joe can pay for his own treatment when the time comes.
The more likely scenario however is this. If we have the knowledge of DNA sequences to know 100% that someone will get a certain disease in X years it is extremely likely that we can prevent this person from getting the disease altogether. It is even more likley considering they have X years to figure it out if they don't know already.
Now let's say they don't have a way to prevent or cure the disease. And let's also say that Joe can't afford it no matter how much he saves.
I personally believe you can't be faulted for inaction. Doing good things is good and doing bad things is bad.
Someone who is a murderer is bad. Someone who saves someone else's life is good. If you stand there and watch someone die, and you didn't do it, and you could have saved them, but you don't save them. You are neither good or bad. There are other circumstances that could change it slightly, such as how much you would have risked in order to save them. But overall you can't be considered a bad person, you didn't kill them and it wasn't your fault. But you can't be considered a good person you let someone die when they didn't have to.
Insurance is gambling. If you get insurance you're betting that you're going to die. If the outcome is known in say, a horse race, you can't you can't blame someone for refusing to bet, or not betting on the loser.
I think that's enough examples.
Re:Anybody have a working binary?
on
Duke3d in Linux
·
· Score: 1
but you wouldn't mind putting say a new movie or a few mp3s up for download would you? You know, because that's illegal too.
What bothers me is that I should be able to find somewhere to buy old dos games for like a buck each, but you can't. That's why things like abandonware eist.
Damn straight. When my SBLive! works in linux properly then, something awesome. Currently it works, but sound only comes out 2 of 4 speakers. There's no way to fix it that I've found. Creative, write a driver!
Yeah, that's just great. But it's not like I have a laptop here. I'm out of the house in a library using public computers, or in a lab on campus. If I had a computer I could install software on I would probably have some sort of sync thing. No wait. I wouldn't. I would just have a shortcut to the shared folder. The entire campus has the wirelessness. And if I had a laptop and I was leaving campus the effort it would take to sync them would be like nothing. I could still get at my stuff as long as I could connect to the internet anyway. So I'd just go home and plug into the dsl. I guess for people who have laptops that might go somewhere without a net connection might need a sync thing. I sure don't.
I use phoenix. I put phoenix in a shared folder in windows. I export my bookmarks in html format to another share folder. This gives me my bookmarks everywhere, and here is how.
If I am out of the house and using windows
I access the share via typing \\mypc.mydomain.edu and then launch phoenix and import bookmarks.html
If I am out of the house and using *nix
I access my pc via ssh, launch phoenix using X-forwarding, sftp bookmarks.html over the line and import it.
If I am out of the house using a Mac
It hasn't happened yet, but if I buy one of those titanium thingies (which I would if I had my choice of portable computing) It would have OSX, which can SSH and X-Forward AFAIK.
Problem solved. Same browser everywhere same bookmarks.
I agree with most people here in saying that "why would I buy a car to get free music, when it's free?" Giving away free things for free with a non-free thing doesn't add incentive to buy that non-free thing.
However, there is one way in which it adds a very small incentive. This small incentive could be larger if record companies did not exist.
Right now I've got an mp3 of every song I like that I can think of. I am at college and can download piles and piles of mp3s day and night. And disregarding storage space the only thing keeping me from doing it is the fact that I can't think of what to get! You have to know the artists/band/singer and/or the song title in order to get a song! Knowing all the words and the melody doesn't even help if you don't know which words are the title. Google might be able to find the title to go with the lyrics, but that's about it.
Giving away 1000s of songs for free with other stuff would add incentive to buying it because it saves me the trouble of having to know song names and titles. Heck, they could just give me a list of bands and I'd be like, oh yeah! those guys! that's the one I forgot! (downloading....).
Here is how it could make a lot of money if record companies didn't exist.
1) put no-name bands on the cd, one or two songs from each. 2) since they are no-name it will be hard to find their songs on p2p networks. So the band's website will get hits where there will be links to buy the cd, download a couple more tracks, and concert dats. 3) if the band is good, then this scenario will result in them making lots of money. That's if record companies didn't exist.
Isn't it great when someone comes along and makes assumptions about technology that doesn't exist yet. Not only does this guy do that, but he doesn't even seem to understand current technology. He claims that a computer that can change its own goals might select weird goals and appear crazy. Or that it might be set with two conflicting goals at once and mess up.
With current computer technology this is not a possibility. And older computer will just crash or wont do anything because multitasking is not an option. A newer computer will do it just fine. I could have one program that formats the hard drive and another that writes data to all of it and I can make the both go at the same time, and it will work.
Everything else in the article about a theoretical AI or an intelligent computer is bs. As I said he is assuming things about a technology that doesn't exist yet. It really pisses me off when someone says "when we have this a long time from now, this is how you have to go about fixing it". You can't know how to fix something if you don't know how to make it in the first place! Common sense. The scary thing is that I think this guy is getting paid to write this stuff. Where to I sign up??
Slashdot Mirror
If I took picture of a crime, and the crime was comitted in a public place, then it is perfectly legal for me to take those pictures. I myself have not done anything illegal (except lots of mp3s, but that's not relevent). If the police were looking for tips and such I could, if I chose to do so, give them copies of those pictures in hopes for a reward. I could voluntarily give them whatever I wanted actually. But in order to get a warrant to get stuff from me, a non-criminal... Oh wait. You can't get a warrant for someone without probable cause. The Constitution says so. They have no right to forcibly seize property from non criminals. End of story.
The problem here is that a warrant was issued against a non-criminal. That's not cool. And they are using the Patriot Act on top of it, which is blatantly unconstitutional.
I will again repeat the famous quote of best-ness.
He who trades his civil liberties for an illusion of security deserves neither.
If you aren't using phoenix, and you use linux or windows or both, then start using it now. This browser changed my life. Seriously. Because it takes me less time to surf my daily sites I get more sleep. Read about it in my journal.
I also felt compelled to teach others the majesty of this browser. Check this out. If anyone actually shows up I'll be amazed. And if enough turn up I'll probably do more of them, until I no longer have free time, which will be in about 2 weeks.
I'm glad phoenix changed it's name to Firebird, because now I don't have to change the sweet icons I've got for it. I reccomend using the build from 3/20 and installing at least the tabbed browsing extensions. I believe the 3/20 build is the newest one where importing bookmarks isn't broken, that's why. I also rather like the Phusion theme. The guy who makes it is totally awesome, he updated it after I requested him to. Open source world needs more guys like that.
read about it in the new Mozilla roadmap. It will either be taken care of later, or made into an extension. Patience.
As others have pointed out the reason only older people play Everquest is because younger people don't have credit cards. If its pay to play you needs dough and a job.
Also, of course it's not only nerds playing. Video gaming has been mainstream since the NES. People from all walks of life have been playing video games since the 80s. That's not news. Tell me when non-nerds are using linux and I'll be shocked.
Lastly, Everquest does indeed suck.
this old slashdot article tells it like it is. End of story.
The problem with MMO games is that social factors directly influence gameplay. The people who make games only know how to deal with technological and game design problems. I strongly believe that there are no technological solutions to social problems.
incorrect
the correct question was
"Who is Mandrake?"
No, but if I find a way, oh holy crap. Imagine all the geeks being able to manipulate hollywood. Sure it would be great that all the stupid movies wouldn't get made. But there would be too much Star Trek for me to stomach. I'd rather have things be the current evil way.
What really bothers me is graphics. Every video game magazine I've read, and every website, takes graphics into consideration when reviewing a game. If a game doesn't have amazing graphics then it usually gets bad review. The best video games ever all had terrible graphics. Mega Man 2, Zelda 1, Mario 3, River City Ransom, Combat, Breakout, Galaga, Missile Command, Pac-Man, Tetris. All these games had terrible graphics, but they are some of the best video games ever created.
Video Game reviewers should only take the following things into consideration when reviewing a game.
1) Is it fun?
2) Will it provide fun for a long period of time, or is it a renter?
3) Does anything in the game annoy you. Are there stupid puzzles. Do the controls not resdpond well.
4) Is the music memorable? Will the player also want the soundtrack?
Apple, makers of iPod and promoters of the fact that the Mac can easily do the mp3 thing. Owning a record company? w00t again! If Apple turns the company around with a new business model that acknowledges where technology is taking us it could show that all the other record companies are just makin' shit up about losing money to pirates.
I wouldn't be too sure that ATI will come out as the winner. It's not like in the Voodoo days where the Voodoo 3 came out and was total crap compared to the TNT2, thus giving Nvidia the huge advantage. ATI vs. NVidia is much more involved and uncertain.
Despite the uncertainties, I predict a role reversal. ATI was always the card that came in Dells and Gateways and such. It was the video card that was good enough to play games, but not good enough for the l33t. ATI made their money by having their video card built into pre-built machines. People learned about ATI through their system tray. NVidia was the card for l33t gamers. You used to not be able to get a computer with an NVidia card in it. What's happening is ATI is becoming the L33t gamers card while NVidia is becoming the thing for the average user. But NVidia also makes the ridiculously expensive card for the millionaire gamer. ATI, with the technologically better Radeon is moved into the smaller market.
Don't believe it? Look at NForce. It's a beautiful thing. It allows for technologies gamers want like dual AGP bandwith to the RAM and AMD processors. While at the same time you can get one that has integrated GeForce4 Video, sound, and ethernet to save the average user money. The best of both worlds. If NVidia was just trying to take the gamers market why would they make a chipset with integrated video?
I bought my current computer a long time ago. It's a Pentium 3 450 with a TNT2. I bought the TNT2 the day the TNT2 came out. I bought a Viewsonic GS771 monitor for two reasons. It was specially designed to have a 17" screen while having a 15" footprint. Not quite the space savings of LCD, but still significant. Also I like the birds.
I bought the monitor from www.buy.com. buy.com still has great deals on monitors and free shipping on lots of stuff. I would definitely buy from them because they sell monitors you can't get in a brick + mortar store at good prices and free shipping is possible.
At first it was just brand loyalty for Viewsonic. I actually thought that the Sony Trinitron was a better monitor. Then I went to CompUSA to buy my friend a monitor. They have a display with a bunch of monitors all running XP. One of them was obviously brighter and better than the others. It stuck out like a sore thumb. It was the Viewsonic! Apparently I picked the right company to be loyal to randomly. The birds did mean something! Viewsonic now makes really awesome Tablet PCs and wireless monitors. Oh holy crap.
The best thing is that I realized the other day that LCD monitors aren't all $1000. A high quality viewsonic 17" LCD monitor with DVI in and res of 1280x1024 can be gotten for $400-$500. In my opinion that's a steal.
My ideal setup would probably include two 19" Viewsonic Professional series monitors. However, the Graphics series (model numbers beginning with G) are the best value/performance deal.
If you are 18 years old you can run for school board. All the other 18 year olds you know can vote for you. Once you are on the school board you can get rid of this system. Isn't it nice how our government works? In the town and county levels there isn't the corruption that exists up top. You can fix things there.
Propellerhead software makes a lot of really good stuff.
http://www.propellerheads.se/
Especially Reason. It may be expensive and non-free. But it can emulate audio hardware that you'll never be able to afford in your life. Technically it has infinite rack space. It may not be midi, but I know a lot of people who swear by it for making electronic music and remixes. It's cheaper and easier than actually buying the hardware, and it works almost just as well. If you have Rebirth Reason and Recycle you can make some really crazy shite.
For midi I hear Cakewalk is still numero uno. There's not much more to say there.
And for wav editing Cooledit seems to still be the best. My roomate has it and swears by it.
that one day, when the patriot act is finally challenged in the supreme court it will be destroyed.
You are correct in that the dividing factor between PC games and Console games is mainly the controller. However, there are other factors that keep the ftps, rts genres on the pc and fighting, platform genres on the console.
First of all there's the problem of the keyboard for a console. There's nowhere to rest it. I play console games lying on the floor or couch. Can't lie down with a mouse and keyboard. Attatching a console to my monitor and sitting at desk, um no. Console tv, PC monitor.
Gamepads for PC? They exist, Gravis. But since the day of the Gravis Gamepad we are now in USB land. Direct Input and USB are king. There is no standard and there never will be. When designing a console game you have to know the layout of the controller. Try to think of how to play wind waker with a PS2 or XBoX controller, it aint happening. Unless someone comes out and says "this is the standard pc gamepad" those genres wont make it to pc.
Games like RTS, FPS, CIV/MOO, Moonbase Commander, wont work on a TV. There is too much text. There are too many details in the game. The resolution of a TV, even an HDTV, is too low. You can't give the player all the info at once. Console games give you very little info in big numbers and pictures. Smash Bros for example. A single 1-3 digit number with pictures above it is all you get.
Console games have big things. They are designed for a big screen. Bigger monitors are good on PCs, but 36"+ is excessive. I don't think me and all my friends woudl be comfortable playing Mario Party around my desk. Nor do I think I would be comfortable computing on the floor.
Just imaging yourself playing Quake, with a keyboard and mouse, all on the floor, in front of a huge screen. It aint happening. Every game genre has its place, and it's not just for controller reasons.
Windows CE will not dominate in a few years. I think the way we are headed is towards tablet PCs with wireless for people on the go, and smaller more powerful desktops at home. Multimedia will be controlled by the PC but put out the TV and home theatre. Games will still be seperated, but perhaps linked in some cases. Wireless networks with wireless thin clients will also be prevalent in homes as cpus get so powerful that a whole family can use one PC at once without slow down. Viewsonic's wireless monitor is a start.
I still just don't get you spam people. Yes, I think spammers are bad because people who pay for bandwith and have mail servers end up having to pay lots of money. Yes it is super annoying and time wasting to have to sift through spam. Yes there are filters that work really well. But you know what?
I don't get spam. I just don't get any. I don't let my e-mail get out to stupid places on the net where a spider will get them. I don't sign up for weird things. I avoid anything slightly untrustworthy. And as a result I get no spam. I can't lie, I don't get no spam. I get maybe 1 spam every 2 weeks. That's right, 1. If I have managed to prevent myself from getting more than 2 spams a month so can you. So do it and stop complaining.
Oh, and if you have an aol,msn,hotmail,yahoo e-mail address then you don't have a right to complain about spam.
The trueness. I use Xine because it has an easy GUI, it plays all types of files well without me having to do anything special. It comes with my distro. Oh yeah, it has a GUI.
This is a public service announement. There are two types of open source projects out there. The first kind is the kind where someone will write software for themselves and share the source to be nice and help others. The other kind is where someone writes software they want lots of other people to use and they develop it using the open source model.
If you are making the second kind of software you need to make a gui. You need to make an easy installer. You need to think about all the things a closed source company thinks about. The way I see it there are very few of the second type that have succeeded. gaim, Mozilla, CDex, DC++. That's about it. Every other piece of OSS has failed miserably in some way.
mplayer is one of those that has failed. I know how amazing it plays video. But the effort of making it work is greater than the benefit of using it. It should come in a single executable file that installs it. It should then have a GUI that works no matter what and never crashes. And it should play everything out of the box. It doesn't, so it is the loser.
Definitely in agreement here. I used to need all that stuff like win98 boot disks (DOS w/CD) and old versions of winzip on disks, etc. etc.
Now, all you need is Knoppix. Knoppix is besto. I'll be using it to tweak out my new pc when I buy it before I install any OS's on the drives.
This is easy. If Joe knows he will get a heart disease, he's in the clear. All he has to do is take the money he would have spent on insurance and save it instead of giving it to the insurance company. Now Joe can pay for his own treatment when the time comes.
The more likely scenario however is this. If we have the knowledge of DNA sequences to know 100% that someone will get a certain disease in X years it is extremely likely that we can prevent this person from getting the disease altogether. It is even more likley considering they have X years to figure it out if they don't know already.
Now let's say they don't have a way to prevent or cure the disease. And let's also say that Joe can't afford it no matter how much he saves.
I personally believe you can't be faulted for inaction. Doing good things is good and doing bad things is bad.
Someone who is a murderer is bad. Someone who saves someone else's life is good. If you stand there and watch someone die, and you didn't do it, and you could have saved them, but you don't save them. You are neither good or bad. There are other circumstances that could change it slightly, such as how much you would have risked in order to save them. But overall you can't be considered a bad person, you didn't kill them and it wasn't your fault. But you can't be considered a good person you let someone die when they didn't have to.
Insurance is gambling. If you get insurance you're betting that you're going to die. If the outcome is known in say, a horse race, you can't you can't blame someone for refusing to bet, or not betting on the loser.
I think that's enough examples.
but you wouldn't mind putting say a new movie or a few mp3s up for download would you? You know, because that's illegal too.
What bothers me is that I should be able to find somewhere to buy old dos games for like a buck each, but you can't. That's why things like abandonware eist.
Damn straight. When my SBLive! works in linux properly then, something awesome. Currently it works, but sound only comes out 2 of 4 speakers. There's no way to fix it that I've found. Creative, write a driver!
Yeah, that's just great. But it's not like I have a laptop here. I'm out of the house in a library using public computers, or in a lab on campus. If I had a computer I could install software on I would probably have some sort of sync thing. No wait. I wouldn't. I would just have a shortcut to the shared folder. The entire campus has the wirelessness. And if I had a laptop and I was leaving campus the effort it would take to sync them would be like nothing. I could still get at my stuff as long as I could connect to the internet anyway. So I'd just go home and plug into the dsl. I guess for people who have laptops that might go somewhere without a net connection might need a sync thing. I sure don't.
I use phoenix. I put phoenix in a shared folder in windows. I export my bookmarks in html format to another share folder. This gives me my bookmarks everywhere, and here is how.
If I am out of the house and using windows
I access the share via typing \\mypc.mydomain.edu and then launch phoenix and import bookmarks.html
If I am out of the house and using *nix
I access my pc via ssh, launch phoenix using X-forwarding, sftp bookmarks.html over the line and import it.
If I am out of the house using a Mac
It hasn't happened yet, but if I buy one of those titanium thingies (which I would if I had my choice of portable computing) It would have OSX, which can SSH and X-Forward AFAIK.
Problem solved. Same browser everywhere same bookmarks.
I agree with most people here in saying that "why would I buy a car to get free music, when it's free?" Giving away free things for free with a non-free thing doesn't add incentive to buy that non-free thing.
However, there is one way in which it adds a very small incentive. This small incentive could be larger if record companies did not exist.
Right now I've got an mp3 of every song I like that I can think of. I am at college and can download piles and piles of mp3s day and night. And disregarding storage space the only thing keeping me from doing it is the fact that I can't think of what to get! You have to know the artists/band/singer and/or the song title in order to get a song! Knowing all the words and the melody doesn't even help if you don't know which words are the title. Google might be able to find the title to go with the lyrics, but that's about it.
Giving away 1000s of songs for free with other stuff would add incentive to buying it because it saves me the trouble of having to know song names and titles. Heck, they could just give me a list of bands and I'd be like, oh yeah! those guys! that's the one I forgot! (downloading....).
Here is how it could make a lot of money if record companies didn't exist.
1) put no-name bands on the cd, one or two songs from each.
2) since they are no-name it will be hard to find their songs on p2p networks. So the band's website will get hits where there will be links to buy the cd, download a couple more tracks, and concert dats.
3) if the band is good, then this scenario will result in them making lots of money. That's if record companies didn't exist.
Isn't it great when someone comes along and makes assumptions about technology that doesn't exist yet. Not only does this guy do that, but he doesn't even seem to understand current technology. He claims that a computer that can change its own goals might select weird goals and appear crazy. Or that it might be set with two conflicting goals at once and mess up.
With current computer technology this is not a possibility. And older computer will just crash or wont do anything because multitasking is not an option. A newer computer will do it just fine. I could have one program that formats the hard drive and another that writes data to all of it and I can make the both go at the same time, and it will work.
Everything else in the article about a theoretical AI or an intelligent computer is bs. As I said he is assuming things about a technology that doesn't exist yet. It really pisses me off when someone says "when we have this a long time from now, this is how you have to go about fixing it". You can't know how to fix something if you don't know how to make it in the first place! Common sense. The scary thing is that I think this guy is getting paid to write this stuff. Where to I sign up??
Current interpretations of quantum theory says that X will happen.
Y happens.
Answer? Current interpretations of quantum theory are incorrect.
Heck, even I can figure this one out, and I'm a cs major!