"It does not bode well for Indrema trying to break into the console business"
Actually, this might be good news for indrema. With Sega producing software to run on competitor's machines, this could mean a slew of great titles that will not only run on Indrema's hardware but will also run on x86 Linux (with some possible hacking to make your Linux installation compatible with Indrema's Libraries.
If Sega can sell games to Indrema users, it will certainly be worth them doing so.
In the introduction to the above 'chapter', it says that everyone possible was contacted and no one refused permission to have their comments incorporated into Jon's book and that the problem was more percieved than it was real.
I disagree. I think the problem people had was that Slashdot didn't ask permission FIRST instead of doing it as an afterthought.
I believe that the American people deserve a workable plan to prevent mass-extinction from a possible collision with a near-earth-asteroid.
I am commited to providing that system, something that my opponent has failed to do. He has fai.. refu.. I mean, he has not commited to...
Yes, well we are talking about preventing collisions with asteroids. The answer is simple.
Scientists tell us that it would be nearly impossible to insure a direct hit on an asteroid approaching earth. So if we can't be sure to move the asteroid into a new path, we should focus on moving the earth.
I believe that enough nuclear missiles detonated on the eastern hemisphere might be enough to move the earth out of the way of any approaching asteroid. Now. I would like to hear if Vice President Gore has a plan that could be any better than this. He won't because those damn democrats want to take away our right to bear arms.
Actually, I did not say that libertarianism just amounts to giving carte blanche to the large multinationals. I simply said that there is always that danger.
Freedom is a big responsibility. That is the problem. Most people don't want responsibility. When my country (the USA) revolted against King George it was because of the wishes of a vary vocal minority. The Majority of people living in colonies may have been angry at the British for taxing them without allowing them parlimentary representation, but for the most part they weren't willing to do anything about it.
When that vocal minority finally won independence from the British, they put their ideals to paper. First in writing the Articles of Confederation and then, to create a 'more perfect union' they drafted the Constitution of the United States. Both of these documents gave the right to self-government to the People (the citizens).
The "founding fathers" of the USA really believed that the avergage person would be as comitted to liberty as they were. They were wrong.
The Citizenry of the USA has, ever since, been more than willing to give back their rights to self government to politicians. As if they were happier being governed by a King then governed by themselves.
This is where we stand today. The average U.S. Citizen is happy to let the politicians do WHATEVER they want. They don't care about freedom because they take it for granted.
Libertarianism holds the same high ideals as the "Founding Fathers." Libertarians believe that people are better off governing themselves. The problem is, that if government doesn't babysit the citizenry, the citizens will turn over those powers to private corporations in order to establish a sense of security.
Most people are more than happy to give up Liberty for a measure of Security. This is how governments eventually become so corupt that the masses eventually revolt and form new governments (this is historically true.) We give away our freedoms until one day we realize that government has become so terrible that we must FIGHT IT OPENLY to take back our Liberty.
When I was in High School, it was mandatory for all students to read "Romeo and Juliet." The funny thing is, we were never required to read the "Constitution of the United States of America."
Sure, we had to know the basic concepts of the "Bill of Rights." But the Contitution, and all that it means was never something that our teachers seemed interested in getting students to understand.
There is a "Vast Politician Conspiracy" out there to try to get Americans to forget the constitution. We have allowed our politicians to deceive us into giving them more power than the Constitution allows.
Think about this: If Social Security is such a great system, why don't the members of Congress take part? Why should they be exempt from Social Security so that they can take part in a seperate retirement plan that will guarantee them the same salary they are making on Capitol Hill once they have retired?
We must take back control of this Nation from those whose interest in governing is only the advancement of their own power.
If you allow the government to violate the limits of the constitution to finance just one "Government Program" that does a lot of good, you open the door for an ever-increasing government system that will legislate away every right guaranteed by the constitution.
If you allow Congress to pass laws that will remove the right to bear arms, what will stop them from passing laws that remove your right to peacefully assemble? Nazi Germany revoked the rights of it's citizens to arm themselves in the early 1930's... this left Germany's Jewish, Gypsy and Homosexual populations without the means to defend themselves against government aggression.
If you think that this "can't happen in the USA" just remember, in 1930 no one in Germany (except those in power) could have conceived of the Holocaust either.
Stop the advance of Government. VOTE ACCORDING TO YOUR CONCIENCE NOT JUST FOR THE "LESSER OF TWO EVILS."
I guess I consider myself a Libertarian (I intend to vote for Harry Browne this election).
If any political viewpoint would be most likely to bring about Gibson's view of the future, I would have to admit that Libertarianism is it.
When the States and the People have their liberty restored there is a distinct possibility that some corporations might take advantage of the situation and begin to setup corporately-run city-states like in Neal Stephenson's Cyber-Parody "SnowCrash".
However, I do believe that Liberty is worth the risk. It is more important to me to live free than to have security.
I would rather have my tax money in my pocket to do with what I will than to "invest" in the crippled social security system.
Liberty is a risk. Do you feel that it is worth it?
The music industry has been looking for a way to produce "pay per play" music for a while now.
Looks like BMG is teaming up with Napster to "catch the hype" and lead the way to a system that will allow music lovers to get only the music that they want (instead of a CD with one good song and 15 pieces of crap). This will be good for the music industry because listeners will be more inclined to pay more for the songs they want.
I think the whole "Napster problem" that the RIAA has been having is simply that Napster beat them to the punch. Now they are suing Napster with the covert goal of using the Napster audience to make a bigger profit.
When I got my cuecat, I don't remember any license agreement.
I have heard some people say that the license agreement was something that they had to sign when they picked up there's at Radio Shack, but I didn't sign anything.
Maybe there is a license agreement during the software installation process. I don't know. I have never installed their software, so I didn't "click" anything to agree.
None of the accompanying paperwork had anything that looked like a license agreement.
Looks like I got away scottfree.
Seriously, from what I understand, the Radio Shack employee is supposed to get you to sign some paperwork when you get your scanner. But they certainly didn't have me sign ANYTHING. Maybe "digital convergence" should be going after Radio Shack instead of hardware hackers.
-----------
On a side note: Has anyone else seen that awful Digital Convergence "Infomercial" about the cuecat? You know, the one where the students and teachers (in our future) revel in the fact that the Cuecat and it's related technologies will be single-most important factor in labotomizing the Internet and the Information Age?
Yes, you are correct. Most parents do suck a looking for porn. This is because children have devious minds and might just make a stash of porn pics by placing them in C:\windows\system and giving them names like klchk32.dll
Since Windows98 and ME both give you instructions that it is bad to look at files in this directory, most parents a) wouldn't look, and b) wouldn't think to check what looks to be a system file to be porn.
A parents only defense is to make sure that their children don't surf alone.
And anyway, who really cares if a child sees sex pics on the internet 99% of all the fathers out there peeked at more then their share of playboy's and penthouses growing up and most have turned out okay.
What worries me are some of these pervs out stalking kids in AOL chat rooms or (less often) on IRC. There was a case in my town here where some 24-year-old male lured two 14-year-old girls over to his office after hours and gave them alcohol and cigarettes... and the pink torpedo.
This is one of the problems with letting machines decide what should be filtered. The machine may filter out all "sex" sites -- including sites concerned with biology, like animal and plant reproduction.
For this to work in a way that does not filter out "non-offensive" sites, it would require HUMAN BEINGS to actually logon and check each site themselves to see what kind of content is on that site.
Another problem is that the institutions doing the filtering could very well find themselves liable for EVERTHING that DOES NOT GET FILTERED. This would be bad.
A few years ago I was in a public library and there were a couple of youths (under 15) downloading pornography to floppy disks. The library in question could have easily filtered this out -- by NOT FACING THE COMPUTERS TOWARD A WALL to allow the 'net users as much privacy as they had. (Of course, they could have popped over to the photographic arts section and found a book that was probably just as thrilling.)
I think the best bet for schools and libraries is to avoid filtering and simply SUPERVISE the children. A little shoulder surfing never killed anyone. And if you are in a public place using a public access terminal, you really have no reasonable right to assume that the teacher or librarian would not do so.
I guess the lesson here is: get your pr0n from home. Dad's bookmarks will probably have all the best sites listed already anyhow.
Slashdot Mirror
"It does not bode well for Indrema trying to break into the console business"
Actually, this might be good news for indrema. With Sega producing software to run on competitor's machines, this could mean a slew of great titles that will not only run on Indrema's hardware but will also run on x86 Linux (with some possible hacking to make your Linux installation compatible with Indrema's Libraries.
If Sega can sell games to Indrema users, it will certainly be worth them doing so.
In the introduction to the above 'chapter', it says that everyone possible was contacted and no one refused permission to have their comments incorporated into Jon's book and that the problem was more percieved than it was real.
I disagree. I think the problem people had was that Slashdot didn't ask permission FIRST instead of doing it as an afterthought.
I believe that the American people deserve a workable plan to prevent mass-extinction from a possible collision with a near-earth-asteroid. I am commited to providing that system, something that my opponent has failed to do. He has fai.. refu.. I mean, he has not commited to... Yes, well we are talking about preventing collisions with asteroids. The answer is simple. Scientists tell us that it would be nearly impossible to insure a direct hit on an asteroid approaching earth. So if we can't be sure to move the asteroid into a new path, we should focus on moving the earth. I believe that enough nuclear missiles detonated on the eastern hemisphere might be enough to move the earth out of the way of any approaching asteroid. Now. I would like to hear if Vice President Gore has a plan that could be any better than this. He won't because those damn democrats want to take away our right to bear arms.
Actually, I did not say that libertarianism just amounts to giving carte blanche to the large multinationals. I simply said that there is always that danger.
Freedom is a big responsibility. That is the problem. Most people don't want responsibility. When my country (the USA) revolted against King George it was because of the wishes of a vary vocal minority. The Majority of people living in colonies may have been angry at the British for taxing them without allowing them parlimentary representation, but for the most part they weren't willing to do anything about it.
When that vocal minority finally won independence from the British, they put their ideals to paper. First in writing the Articles of Confederation and then, to create a 'more perfect union' they drafted the Constitution of the United States. Both of these documents gave the right to self-government to the People (the citizens).
The "founding fathers" of the USA really believed that the avergage person would be as comitted to liberty as they were. They were wrong.
The Citizenry of the USA has, ever since, been more than willing to give back their rights to self government to politicians. As if they were happier being governed by a King then governed by themselves.
This is where we stand today. The average U.S. Citizen is happy to let the politicians do WHATEVER they want. They don't care about freedom because they take it for granted.
Libertarianism holds the same high ideals as the "Founding Fathers." Libertarians believe that people are better off governing themselves. The problem is, that if government doesn't babysit the citizenry, the citizens will turn over those powers to private corporations in order to establish a sense of security.
Most people are more than happy to give up Liberty for a measure of Security. This is how governments eventually become so corupt that the masses eventually revolt and form new governments (this is historically true.) We give away our freedoms until one day we realize that government has become so terrible that we must FIGHT IT OPENLY to take back our Liberty.
You bet your silly ass politics are important.
When I was in High School, it was mandatory for all students to read "Romeo and Juliet." The funny thing is, we were never required to read the "Constitution of the United States of America."
Sure, we had to know the basic concepts of the "Bill of Rights." But the Contitution, and all that it means was never something that our teachers seemed interested in getting students to understand.
There is a "Vast Politician Conspiracy" out there to try to get Americans to forget the constitution. We have allowed our politicians to deceive us into giving them more power than the Constitution allows.
Think about this: If Social Security is such a great system, why don't the members of Congress take part? Why should they be exempt from Social Security so that they can take part in a seperate retirement plan that will guarantee them the same salary they are making on Capitol Hill once they have retired?
We must take back control of this Nation from those whose interest in governing is only the advancement of their own power.
If you allow the government to violate the limits of the constitution to finance just one "Government Program" that does a lot of good, you open the door for an ever-increasing government system that will legislate away every right guaranteed by the constitution.
If you allow Congress to pass laws that will remove the right to bear arms, what will stop them from passing laws that remove your right to peacefully assemble? Nazi Germany revoked the rights of it's citizens to arm themselves in the early 1930's... this left Germany's Jewish, Gypsy and Homosexual populations without the means to defend themselves against government aggression.
If you think that this "can't happen in the USA" just remember, in 1930 no one in Germany (except those in power) could have conceived of the Holocaust either.
Stop the advance of Government. VOTE ACCORDING TO YOUR CONCIENCE NOT JUST FOR THE "LESSER OF TWO EVILS."
I guess I consider myself a Libertarian (I intend to vote for Harry Browne this election).
If any political viewpoint would be most likely to bring about Gibson's view of the future, I would have to admit that Libertarianism is it.
When the States and the People have their liberty restored there is a distinct possibility that some corporations might take advantage of the situation and begin to setup corporately-run city-states like in Neal Stephenson's Cyber-Parody "SnowCrash".
However, I do believe that Liberty is worth the risk. It is more important to me to live free than to have security.
I would rather have my tax money in my pocket to do with what I will than to "invest" in the crippled social security system.
Liberty is a risk. Do you feel that it is worth it?
The music industry has been looking for a way to produce "pay per play" music for a while now.
Looks like BMG is teaming up with Napster to "catch the hype" and lead the way to a system that will allow music lovers to get only the music that they want (instead of a CD with one good song and 15 pieces of crap). This will be good for the music industry because listeners will be more inclined to pay more for the songs they want.
I think the whole "Napster problem" that the RIAA has been having is simply that Napster beat them to the punch. Now they are suing Napster with the covert goal of using the Napster audience to make a bigger profit.
When I got my cuecat, I don't remember any license agreement.
I have heard some people say that the license agreement was something that they had to sign when they picked up there's at Radio Shack, but I didn't sign anything.
Maybe there is a license agreement during the software installation process. I don't know. I have never installed their software, so I didn't "click" anything to agree.
None of the accompanying paperwork had anything that looked like a license agreement.
Looks like I got away scottfree.
Seriously, from what I understand, the Radio Shack employee is supposed to get you to sign some paperwork when you get your scanner. But they certainly didn't have me sign ANYTHING. Maybe "digital convergence" should be going after Radio Shack instead of hardware hackers.
-----------
On a side note: Has anyone else seen that awful Digital Convergence "Infomercial" about the cuecat? You know, the one where the students and teachers (in our future) revel in the fact that the Cuecat and it's related technologies will be single-most important factor in labotomizing the Internet and the Information Age?
Yes, you are correct. Most parents do suck a looking for porn. This is because children have devious minds and might just make a stash of porn pics by placing them in C:\windows\system and giving them names like klchk32.dll
Since Windows98 and ME both give you instructions that it is bad to look at files in this directory, most parents a) wouldn't look, and b) wouldn't think to check what looks to be a system file to be porn.
A parents only defense is to make sure that their children don't surf alone.
And anyway, who really cares if a child sees sex pics on the internet 99% of all the fathers out there peeked at more then their share of playboy's and penthouses growing up and most have turned out okay.
What worries me are some of these pervs out stalking kids in AOL chat rooms or (less often) on IRC. There was a case in my town here where some 24-year-old male lured two 14-year-old girls over to his office after hours and gave them alcohol and cigarettes... and the pink torpedo.
Anyone ever notice that if you started doing the "GNU/Linux" type thing with KDE it would end up sounding something like "Nuked"?
Seriously, this is a good thing for those of us who are still using GUI's (yeah, yeah yeah, I plan on upgrading to nothing but BASH... someday.)
I am greatly looking forward to having the task list integrated with the bottom panel (a feature that I have always wanted with KDE.)
Anyway. I'm ready to upgrade (in a few weeks when I have the time and the mirrors cool down.)
This is one of the problems with letting machines decide what should be filtered. The machine may filter out all "sex" sites -- including sites concerned with biology, like animal and plant reproduction.
For this to work in a way that does not filter out "non-offensive" sites, it would require HUMAN BEINGS to actually logon and check each site themselves to see what kind of content is on that site.
Another problem is that the institutions doing the filtering could very well find themselves liable for EVERTHING that DOES NOT GET FILTERED. This would be bad.
A few years ago I was in a public library and there were a couple of youths (under 15) downloading pornography to floppy disks. The library in question could have easily filtered this out -- by NOT FACING THE COMPUTERS TOWARD A WALL to allow the 'net users as much privacy as they had. (Of course, they could have popped over to the photographic arts section and found a book that was probably just as thrilling.)
I think the best bet for schools and libraries is to avoid filtering and simply SUPERVISE the children. A little shoulder surfing never killed anyone. And if you are in a public place using a public access terminal, you really have no reasonable right to assume that the teacher or librarian would not do so.
I guess the lesson here is: get your pr0n from home. Dad's bookmarks will probably have all the best sites listed already anyhow.