So you have a phone that can OCR scan. Who would buy a phone specifically because of this feature? In the US, probably college students. Now imagine the circumstances in which a college student would use the scanner.
Congratulations. The phone's unique feature has been crippled in such a way to make it unusable in many circumstances.
That's at the federal level. Obviously, it seems that you didn't know that. Perhaps if gamers like you paid more attention to issues that concern you, we'd have less problems.
Of course, at the state and local level, you have even more power. But perhaps that would require just a tad too much effort.
Get off your ass and vote, damnit. Why are the republicans and democrats voting for legislation like this? Because the people that elected them want legislation like this.
How much resources do you want to take away from other causes to devote to global warming?
Lets limit it to ecological causes. Should we preserve less habitat? How about clean up less toxic sites? Perhaps remove it from wildlife law enforcement?
TANSTAAFL. Lets assume global warming is real. We'll even go with the ICCC's report that we'll its like we'll be 3 degree warmer climate in 2100. What will the effects be? How much should we spend mitigating those effects? Is that the best use of that money? Or would the ecosystem be better off if we spent that money on habitat preservation and on moving the people in the worst environments?
I'm sorry but not being able to get music and movies for free is not oppression.
No, but it may lead to less oppression.
American TV and movies export American culture. Part of American culture is traditionally strong protection of personal freedoms. While American TV and movies will often prevent a flawed view of the US to enhance the plot, its still presenting a view of the American culture.
Imagine what would happen if P2P and the internet existed in Soviet Russia back in the 80s? Would it have hastened the collapse of the USSR if the Soviet citizens could see TV shows detailing the plentiful consumer goods and freedoms available in the US?
Of course, China is currently trying to control the internet, without killing the benefits of the internet. I suspect that such an operation may be futile -- the more a country controls the flow of information, the less productive that country wil be.
I'm wondering about that as well. Currently I'm in the midst of writing yet another not-soM MORPG.
So what is a "graphic depiction of physical injuries"? If I have a full-body image with damage depicted on it (similar to the PC's head in Doom), does that count? How about if a parent gets mad in a conservative town and I'm in front of a judge who has never played a computer game in his life?
Its laws like these that makes me consider having a sign-in with a click-through verifying that all players are 18 or older.
Shouldn't Nethack get a nod? It may not be a well-known game, and the graphics are a tad primitive, but its supporting most of the roguelike genre, and its a hell of a game.
[Snip story about how all code that runs on linux must be GPLed.]
But surely, Windows is out of the question as well, since your code that runs on windows must surely fall under MS copyright. At least with the GPL, you can sell your binaries, even if you have to give away the source.
This must be why [Free|Net|Open]BSD is so popular -- the liberal license allows you to both sell your code and keep it private. Just don't accidentally confuse a linux box with a BSD box, or else you'll have to GPL the code. Be careful about Windows as well. Microsoft is making a new unix-like shell called MSH just to try to confuse you into giving your code to them.
Remember, BSD is the only platform for independent software developers.
Other then a house, I don't think about "what if" scenarios for 15 year from now when I purchase something.
I have books that I'll reread 15 years down the road. I have movies that I'll rewatch 15 years down the road. Why not video games that I'll replay 15 years down the road?
The first rule of risk management is that the amount of time, effort, and money that you spend on security should be proprortional to the probability of a breach times the amount of damage it would cause. I guess Louisana didn't get the memo.
People frequently ignore the writing on the wall.
I'm living close to the site of one of the most intense earthquakes in US history: New Madrid, Missouri.
The fault hasn't had another "big one" yet, but there is 90% chance of a magnitude 6+ earthquake within 50 years, and a 10% chance of another magnitude 8+ earthquake within 50 years.
Due to the soil in the rivervalleys, these quakes will probably have a fair amount of damage.
Yet from what I've seen in western TN, the building codes don't address these issues.
Hopefully, everyone is wrong about a future New Madrid "big one". But it doesn't look that way.
Whether that's global warmings fault is debatable, but certainly plausible.
If its global warming's fault, global warming is really selective. Globally, we haven't seen more, powerful storms. Regionally, the North Atlantic has increased the number of yearly hurricanes, but that seems to be due to a multi-year cycle in hurricane intensity. Even this isn't an extremely strong trend -- the years 1991 - 1994 had an extremely low number of Atlantic hurricanes, but few people want to attribute a decrease in hurricanes to global warming.;)
Build a reinforced bunker going from a basement to two stories. Built a bamboo and paper house around it.
According to an old book I have about 1890s Japan, at least parts of Japan built storehouses called 'kuras', which were supposed to be fireproof. In times of fire, they'd quickly move belongings to the kura and wait it out inside, while the fire destroyed the town.
This book is the only time I've heard about kuras. I'm not sure if there is an alternative spelling or if they are forgetten about now.
From what I could tell it looked like the Baidu search was tailored for music copyright violation. Google couldn't get away with that being a US company, but Baidu seems to have no qualms giving the finger to the RIAA.
Problem: Google has Chinese Competition.
Solution:
Submit story to Slashdot about Baidu.
Casually mention that it supports media search.
Geek horde engages in massive piracy.
RIAA/MPAA, following footsteps of geek horde, launches a legal strike through dark incantations of international copyright law.
Lexmark discounts certain cartridges with the understanding that the user will return the spent cartridges to Lexmark. Lexmark recycles the cartridges and sells them again. Lexmark got their panties in a bunch because another company was taking their prebated cartridges and recycling them, causing Lexmark to lose money. Lexmark isn't being quite as evil as they are made out to be, in this case.
I have a confession -- I often buy the loss leader in store. Stores frequently mark down a few products to encourage people to shop at that store, with the understanding that most people will buy other items, increasing the profit on that sale.
I frequently visit stores and only buy items which are loss leaders, without buying the other items with the standard profit margin. I may be costing the stores money on each trip.
You better lock me up now, since I have full understanding why a certain product is dirt cheap this week, yet I take advantage of it.
It's possible to build a 4x4 around an efficient engine, why not make it compulsory and if you feel the need to pay 150% for the fact your car is 3' taller and makes you feel 'safer' on the road then more fool you.
For the few of us who actually *gasp* use big hulking V8s to do more than just run to the grocery store, how will your fuel efficient engine perform?
I know in my wife's Dakota with a V6, as soon as there is two tons of towing weight on the back, the vehicle is about as sluggish as a rock and starts crying at the sight of hills.:(
My older V8 is much better at pulling heavy loads, even if the truck normally bathes in gasoline. (Something like 8-10mpg. Its an older truck. Needless to say, this truck isn't the daily driver.)
While there seems to be a large amount of people using V8s and 4x4s to fill in some psychological deficiency in their lives, a small minority use these vehicles to get work done.
Let capitalism take its course -- I may not like it, but I can afford filling up my tank at $3/gallon. The casual SUV owns may look at the same cost and decide that it isn't worth owning a SUV when a minivan would work just as well. More power to them.
Btw, just for fun -- I use 8 gallons of gas per week driving the Dakota to/from work and shopping. Assuming I could double my mpg from 17 to 34 with a $2k car, I would save $12 dollars a week. It would take me over three years to just break even on gas! Reselling the Dakota isn't really an option. Its a northern truck, and I'm in the south. They don't like rust down here. I think I'll keep driving the Dakota into the ground.
I go to certain IRC channels where the question wouldn't be off-topic and ask "I'm trying to do in , and I've found several different projects out there by googling. Can anyone recommend a specific application for ?"
Of course, that takes knowing the right IRC channels, and there is no way I'm posting that for the/. trolls.:)
Certain usenet groups and mailing lists are also very helpful.
Shame on you for pointing out that Nuclear Fission provides cost-effective
energy with today's technology, already tested, and will scale up.;)
But this is slashdot, and we all find future tech to be much more interesting.
Just today I was reading a proposal to fly wind turbines like a kite, tethered
to the ground, to harness high energy winds. A rather interesting concept,
although decades away from being implimented as a power source, even if it
does pan out.
There is also a project that is planning to build a rather powerful (by
solar-energy standards, not by conventional power plant MW standards)
solar tower in New South Wales. If built, it will have a tower 1 kilometer
in height. A rather ambitious project for the projected returns on what
it will cost, but I'd like to see a kilometer high tower.:)
Or, he could pick up something like a Dell PowerEdge SC420. Depending on various deals they run between $200-300. I've got a sc400 celery that has been running 24x7 as my home server for nearly 2 years. It was a brand new machine, not some pentium retread. It is extremely quiet, and reasonbly miserly on power. My 1000va UPS will run it for over 45 minutes. That would give him SATA support and gig ethernet too.
He still has to pay for power, and for any hard drive upgrades.
I have a "pentium retread" at home. Its been my server/router for about four or five years now (continually running). Relatively quiet, extremely stable. I can't complain. The server won't run slashdot, but lets be honest -- that's not what it is there for.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree.
So you have a phone that can OCR scan. Who would buy a phone specifically because of this feature? In the US, probably college students. Now imagine the circumstances in which a college student would use the scanner.
Congratulations. The phone's unique feature has been crippled in such a way to make it unusable in many circumstances.
Its nice how your assumption results in a world where you don't have to get off your lazy ass and vote.
Btw, here is a list of the 19 democrats and 2 republics in the house who voted no against H.RES.376, a resolution to call upon the FTC to investigate Rockstar Games over the 'Hot Coffee' mod. Unfortunately, not any of my state's representitives voted no. :( YMMV.
That's at the federal level. Obviously, it seems that you didn't know that. Perhaps if gamers like you paid more attention to issues that concern you, we'd have less problems.
Of course, at the state and local level, you have even more power. But perhaps that would require just a tad too much effort.
Get off your ass and vote, damnit. Why are the republicans and democrats voting for legislation like this? Because the people that elected them want legislation like this.
Okay, lets be pragmatic.
How much resources do you want to take away from other causes to devote to global warming?
Lets limit it to ecological causes. Should we preserve less habitat? How about clean up less toxic sites? Perhaps remove it from wildlife law enforcement?
TANSTAAFL. Lets assume global warming is real. We'll even go with the ICCC's report that we'll its like we'll be 3 degree warmer climate in 2100. What will the effects be? How much should we spend mitigating those effects? Is that the best use of that money? Or would the ecosystem be better off if we spent that money on habitat preservation and on moving the people in the worst environments?
No, but it may lead to less oppression.
American TV and movies export American culture. Part of American culture is traditionally strong protection of personal freedoms. While American TV and movies will often prevent a flawed view of the US to enhance the plot, its still presenting a view of the American culture.
Imagine what would happen if P2P and the internet existed in Soviet Russia back in the 80s? Would it have hastened the collapse of the USSR if the Soviet citizens could see TV shows detailing the plentiful consumer goods and freedoms available in the US?
Of course, China is currently trying to control the internet, without killing the benefits of the internet. I suspect that such an operation may be futile -- the more a country controls the flow of information, the less productive that country wil be.
Just my $.02 of unproven speculation.
I'm wondering about that as well. Currently I'm in the midst of writing yet another not-soM MORPG.
So what is a "graphic depiction of physical injuries"? If I have a full-body image with damage depicted on it (similar to the PC's head in Doom), does that count? How about if a parent gets mad in a conservative town and I'm in front of a judge who has never played a computer game in his life?
Its laws like these that makes me consider having a sign-in with a click-through verifying that all players are 18 or older.
How does not evacuating protect your possessions in the case of a flood?
And its still under development. It has also inspired other games within the last 10 years, most notably Diablo.
Shouldn't Nethack get a nod? It may not be a well-known game, and the graphics are a tad primitive, but its supporting most of the roguelike genre, and its a hell of a game.
I had been professionally trained to touch-type in school.
However, it was MUDs that honed my skills. Speed and accuracy is rewarded in MUDs. Typos can be fatal.
If you quit and find that you have more money in your new job as pizza delivery boy, then you were underpaid.
Actually happened to a coworker of mine. He was in retail sales. :(
But surely, Windows is out of the question as well, since your code that runs on windows must surely fall under MS copyright. At least with the GPL, you can sell your binaries, even if you have to give away the source.
This must be why [Free|Net|Open]BSD is so popular -- the liberal license allows you to both sell your code and keep it private. Just don't accidentally confuse a linux box with a BSD box, or else you'll have to GPL the code. Be careful about Windows as well. Microsoft is making a new unix-like shell called MSH just to try to confuse you into giving your code to them.
Remember, BSD is the only platform for independent software developers.
Mods: I know I'm joking. ;)
I have books that I'll reread 15 years down the road. I have movies that I'll rewatch 15 years down the road. Why not video games that I'll replay 15 years down the road?
People frequently ignore the writing on the wall.
I'm living close to the site of one of the most intense earthquakes in US history: New Madrid, Missouri.
The fault hasn't had another "big one" yet, but there is 90% chance of a magnitude 6+ earthquake within 50 years, and a 10% chance of another magnitude 8+ earthquake within 50 years.
Due to the soil in the rivervalleys, these quakes will probably have a fair amount of damage.
Yet from what I've seen in western TN, the building codes don't address these issues.
Hopefully, everyone is wrong about a future New Madrid "big one". But it doesn't look that way.
If its global warming's fault, global warming is really selective. Globally, we haven't seen more, powerful storms. Regionally, the North Atlantic has increased the number of yearly hurricanes, but that seems to be due to a multi-year cycle in hurricane intensity. Even this isn't an extremely strong trend -- the years 1991 - 1994 had an extremely low number of Atlantic hurricanes, but few people want to attribute a decrease in hurricanes to global warming. ;)
More detailed information, for the curious.
According to an old book I have about 1890s Japan, at least parts of Japan built storehouses called 'kuras', which were supposed to be fireproof. In times of fire, they'd quickly move belongings to the kura and wait it out inside, while the fire destroyed the town.
This book is the only time I've heard about kuras. I'm not sure if there is an alternative spelling or if they are forgetten about now.
Problem: Google has Chinese Competition.
Solution:
I have a confession -- I often buy the loss leader in store. Stores frequently mark down a few products to encourage people to shop at that store, with the understanding that most people will buy other items, increasing the profit on that sale.
I frequently visit stores and only buy items which are loss leaders, without buying the other items with the standard profit margin. I may be costing the stores money on each trip.
You better lock me up now, since I have full understanding why a certain product is dirt cheap this week, yet I take advantage of it.
I'll go quietly, I swear.
There is a big annual convention of Ham radio + related people in Ohio each year.
Worth going to if you are in the area...
For the few of us who actually *gasp* use big hulking V8s to do more than just run to the grocery store, how will your fuel efficient engine perform?
I know in my wife's Dakota with a V6, as soon as there is two tons of towing weight on the back, the vehicle is about as sluggish as a rock and starts crying at the sight of hills. :(
My older V8 is much better at pulling heavy loads, even if the truck normally bathes in gasoline. (Something like 8-10mpg. Its an older truck. Needless to say, this truck isn't the daily driver.)
While there seems to be a large amount of people using V8s and 4x4s to fill in some psychological deficiency in their lives, a small minority use these vehicles to get work done.
Let capitalism take its course -- I may not like it, but I can afford filling up my tank at $3/gallon. The casual SUV owns may look at the same cost and decide that it isn't worth owning a SUV when a minivan would work just as well. More power to them.
Btw, just for fun -- I use 8 gallons of gas per week driving the Dakota to/from work and shopping. Assuming I could double my mpg from 17 to 34 with a $2k car, I would save $12 dollars a week. It would take me over three years to just break even on gas! Reselling the Dakota isn't really an option. Its a northern truck, and I'm in the south. They don't like rust down here. I think I'll keep driving the Dakota into the ground.
Yes, oil shale is profitable now, with current technology.
But OPEC still has enough oil to flood the markets if it wants to.
If OPEC dumps oil at low cost to drive out the competition, few people in the US will complain, and these companies will go out of business.
Parents need something to blame.
Unfortunately, Satanic Panic is rather old, and nobody plays D&D anymore, so we are left with video games.
I go to certain IRC channels where the question wouldn't be off-topic and ask "I'm trying to do in , and I've found several different projects out there by googling. Can anyone recommend a specific application for ?"
Of course, that takes knowing the right IRC channels, and there is no way I'm posting that for the /. trolls. :)
Certain usenet groups and mailing lists are also very helpful.
I'm using 2.4 under Debian (Woody, or Old-Stable) for the past 2-3 years.
It works with my hardware, and I consider it a proven kernel.
Why should I upgrade a working kernel?
Shame on you for pointing out that Nuclear Fission provides cost-effective energy with today's technology, already tested, and will scale up. ;)
But this is slashdot, and we all find future tech to be much more interesting.
Just today I was reading a proposal to fly wind turbines like a kite, tethered to the ground, to harness high energy winds. A rather interesting concept, although decades away from being implimented as a power source, even if it does pan out.
There is also a project that is planning to build a rather powerful (by solar-energy standards, not by conventional power plant MW standards) solar tower in New South Wales. If built, it will have a tower 1 kilometer in height. A rather ambitious project for the projected returns on what it will cost, but I'd like to see a kilometer high tower. :)
He still has to pay for power, and for any hard drive upgrades.
I have a "pentium retread" at home. Its been my server/router for about four or five years now (continually running). Relatively quiet, extremely stable. I can't complain. The server won't run slashdot, but lets be honest -- that's not what it is there for.