With how often patents come up on Slashdot, we should at least make an effort to get the basics correct.
Whoooaaaa, hold on a second there. Next thing you're going to suggest the submitters and editors refrain from spinning perfectly innocent articles into inflammatory summaries. Where will it stop?
Clearly the first thing that comes to mind for a Slashdot denizen when discussing video quality is...sex.
I'll leave finding the common link between these two subjects as an exercise for the reader. I'll give one hint though: it does not involve Natalie Portman, petrified or otherwise.
Ok, so following the above scenario to its conclusion we'd end up with Goldman Sachs owning a significant chunk of the electrical grid of Tiny Country X.
So what's country X going to do? Tell Goldman Sachs to shove it? I doubt the US government would be happy about that. And even if they were to look the other way, what's that going to do to your international relations? Countries borrow money too, and it has to come from somewhere.
Sure, the US, Russia and China could get away with it(heck, they already have). For the smaller players that's not an option. We have to play nice with the big boys or we get crushed. The US already has 1 law on the books allowing them to invade us(the Netherlands) for a silly reason, we'd rather not add any more.
That's not the same thing at all, unless they're sending troops to secure it. Any corporation clearly working against the USA (purchased by foreigners and used as a DoS component of some larger attack, say) is going to be nationalized right away anyway, by ANY nation.
In the case of the USA, maybe not. In a smaller country like mine it's a real risk. Let's take the following scenario:
- Company X owns both the infrastructure and a couple of plants to generate power, supplying the remainder of the demand. - Company X wants to build a big shiny energy plant and borrows a bigass chunk of cash from foreign bank Y to do so. - Company X messes up, goes bankrupt and voila, foreign bank Y is now the proud owner of a vital piece of infrastructure.
If an energy supplier goes tits-up, nobody cares. We get a new one without any interruption in service and sort out the details afterwards. But those lines up there are bloody precious. I should know, I've been called out of bed at 4 AM a couple of times because one of them broke;-)
I rather suspect if it were the other way around, (implants for arbitrary interfaces) there would be a bit of a hue and cry. Especially when human subjects are discussed.
Besides, even if the technology cannot be made small enough for an inconspicuous implant, I reckon there's plenty of folks willing to wear a funky looking helmet/contraption on their heads if that means being able to send electrical impulses to their paralyzed lower body.
Trek is "proper" science fiction in the sense that it takes hypothetical scientific advances(matter-energy-matter conversion, FTL travel, artificial intelligence, etc), extrapolates on what kind of impact those changes could have on society and then explores those consequences in the form of fictional storytelling.
Star Wars on the other hand has swords, sorcery and huge dragons...I mean spaceships. Oh, and a cheesy lovestory or 2:P
This is going on in pretty much all of Europe. Following the spree of "privatize! privatize!" from the Reagan/Thatcher era, we've discovered the hard way that:
1. Some infrastructure is too important to subject to the ups and downs of the free market, or to allow it to fall into foreign hands(same thing really). 2. If you want to create a *true* free market for electricity, ADSL, cable, etc. you need to separate the hardware from the product. The infrastructure is public property, the product that gets sold over it is private.
You do realize that computers use electricity, right? Did I miss a/. story somewhere? Is everyone using hand cranks and hamsters?
Yes, they do..use energy that is, not hamsters.;-) However, when there's no computer or reliable broadband available, you need to move your physical body from location A to B to get any work done, which uses a heck of a lot more energy than logging in to the company's network from the comfort of home.
When the government is rotten and corrupt, it *is* bad.
Until you get the big money out of government you get to choose between getting fucked by the corps either directly (free market without the free) or indirectly (not-so-free market with bought regulations).
Stop electing people based on the whiteness of their teeth, the waviness of their hair and their willingness to kiss babies and wear silly pins with the american flag. The kind of representative you actually *want* is the guy/gal that tells mom to piss off when she presents her baby to be kissed.
In this season's last episode of Top Gear there was a review of iirc a Ferrari where the same screen was used for the satnav and the digital speedometer, so one can have either one or the other, but not at the same time. The perfect car for Heisenberg.:)
Ahhh, the original Dune. About once a year I fire up dosbox and play it from beginning to end just for nostalia's sake.
"Hello Paul. I'm duke Leto Atreides, your father."
Gee, thanks for reminding me...dad.
Additionally, companies like EA and Infogrames are sitting on piles of rapidly decaying cultural heritage, including the whole portfolios of Bullfrog and Origin.
Yeah, thanks for that. Instead of spending my next weekend in a productive way I'll be stuck replaying Syndicate.;-)
The Constitution of the USA is not based on such a premise. If it is the USA of which you speak, then you make a fundamental error. The basis of it is not that rights can be granted. The basis of it is that we have inalienable rights because we are human beings. We have those rights merely because we exist. The purpose of governemnt, then, is to recognize and protect those rights. That's the reason we have a legal system. Such rights are absolutely not "granted" or "given" but are merely acknowledged and honored.
Which is a lovely philosophy, but that is all it is, a philosophy. An extremely powerful one, but when faced with an assault rifle, all rights turn out to be figments of our collective human imagination.
The *only* reason those of us who have free speech do so is because we collectively decide that this right is important, and we hire people with guns to make sure it is protected.
I was in Enschede when the fireworks storage exploded in 2000.
Aside from the really bad devastation to the surrounding area, the blast also broke pretty much every window in the inner city. Within less than 5 minutes people were looting from the stores that had thus been exposed.
The layer of veneer between our civilization and the return to good old "my club is bigger than yours so hand over everything you have" barbarism is very, very thin indeed.
If I ran into Assange right now, I'd kill him with my own bare hands. He's a traitor.
Ehmm, no, he's not, and no, you wouldn't. You're just an internet tough guy.
This is what was told to me. There's some truth to this too.
Ahhh, so you didn't even bother to think it through for yourself, you just blindly accepted the opinion of someone else who doesn't know the definition of traitor? And you're willing to state you'd commit murder based on that?
I don't think it's evil as a whole, but if people are dying due to the individual parts, then perhaps the issue is not so simple as "good || bad".
I don't know.
Now *that* is a good starting point. You don't know all the facts. Neither do I. How about we do some hard thinking *before* contemplating murder?
Yawn. If you really thought there was a 'substantial risk of losing it' you wouldn't take it out, unless you already had a backup that was nearly as good, if not better, or enough isks lying around that you could afford to lose it.
Well, yes, obviously. Doesn't change the fact that losing a 350mil Ishtar hurts in the wallet, and makes the wartargets very happy when they get to pick through the faction loot.
All the EVE advcotes will boast about how they aren't pussies, and how they love risk and a challenge. But they only love risk and challenge when they are heavily favored to win. What do they do when a stronger force shows up? They run away. God forbid they actually fight something that might beat them. Of course, this is the 'intelligent' thing to do in EVE, so you can't fault them.
Not necessarily. Some of my most memorable fights were in heavily outnumbered situations, either because I simply *couldn't* disengage or because I decided to take the bait and spring the trap. And yes, fighting 3 battleships in your single one is *fun*.
Get involved in 4 or 5 fair fights and there is an overwhelming chance you'll lose at least once. And you only need to lose once to wipe out any profit you might have made from the other 4.
Who cares? If you fight an equal enemy and come out victorious 4 times out of 5 you're playing one heck of a game. Which for those of us who are in the mercenary business means contracts, reputation and more money.
The game rewards preying on the weak, and brutally punishes standing up for yourself when outmatched.
The weak tend to have very little of value worth stealing and destroying. The game rewards preying on the stupid, the ignorant and the undefended. And there are many succesful pvp pilots who started their careers by manning up when confronted with a superior force and going in for the fight. Guys like me *respect* when the little guys fight back, and we give massive props when they manage to get away with it.
Sorry, but clearly EVE isn't for you. As per my post above, you're a victim...by choice.
Net Neutrality was *never* about making all types of traffic equal. All it does is ensure that within a given type of traffic no priority is given to one website/videohost/whatever over another.
*Noone* sane is saying torrent traffic should get the same priority as VOIP. Net neutrality is about making sure that an ISP doesn't get to cut a deal where Bing video gets priority over Youtube or the other way around.
I can't explain why people like that kind of thing but there you go. For them, there is EVE. For everyone else, there is WoW:D.
We like a challenge. When I take my favorite ship into combat there's a substantial risk of losing it. Higher risks make the rewards of victory that much sweeter.
You can lose nearly everything under the right circumstances.
Those circumstances being a player being a total idiot?
Those that derive their pleasure from causing pain to others love it.
We generally don't derive pleasure from causing pain. However, we positively love seeing people squirm and scream about how things are not unfair after they did something epically stupid.
There's 2 types of players in EVE, winners and victims. Which group any given player falls into is 10% talent, 10% dedication and 80% attitude.
Trading. If there's a 20% price difference between Jita(where these were bought) and, say, Rens (a 15 minute flight in a small ship) you can make a tidy profit for relatively little work.
Hardcore players are more likely to stick around because they don't have to pay anymore, and newer players have a way of converting real life money into ingame resources. Since the ingame prices for these items are balanced solely by supply and demand(and a good chunk of market manipulation but let's leave that out of scope for now) it all balances out in a way that the players want.
Interesting note: barring some exceptions, by far the majority of players that invests out-of-game cash to acquire in-game assets is too stupid to use them properly anyway. Hence why those of us who play the "hard way" don't complain about them being able to cheat;-)
What's the point of using an escort? A suicide gank is over in seconds, there's nothing an escort could do.
Either move the stuff in a ship full of plates(extra hitpoints for the uninitiated) or fly a cov ops(cloaked ship, practically impossible to catch). This guy was just plain stupid and got appropriately punished for it.
Slashdot Mirror
With how often patents come up on Slashdot, we should at least make an effort to get the basics correct.
Whoooaaaa, hold on a second there. Next thing you're going to suggest the submitters and editors refrain from spinning perfectly innocent articles into inflammatory summaries. Where will it stop?
Clearly the first thing that comes to mind for a Slashdot denizen when discussing video quality is...sex.
I'll leave finding the common link between these two subjects as an exercise for the reader. I'll give one hint though: it does not involve Natalie Portman, petrified or otherwise.
Ok, so following the above scenario to its conclusion we'd end up with Goldman Sachs owning a significant chunk of the electrical grid of Tiny Country X.
So what's country X going to do? Tell Goldman Sachs to shove it? I doubt the US government would be happy about that. And even if they were to look the other way, what's that going to do to your international relations? Countries borrow money too, and it has to come from somewhere.
Sure, the US, Russia and China could get away with it(heck, they already have). For the smaller players that's not an option. We have to play nice with the big boys or we get crushed. The US already has 1 law on the books allowing them to invade us(the Netherlands) for a silly reason, we'd rather not add any more.
That's not the same thing at all, unless they're sending troops to secure it. Any corporation clearly working against the USA (purchased by foreigners and used as a DoS component of some larger attack, say) is going to be nationalized right away anyway, by ANY nation.
In the case of the USA, maybe not. In a smaller country like mine it's a real risk. Let's take the following scenario:
- Company X owns both the infrastructure and a couple of plants to generate power, supplying the remainder of the demand.
- Company X wants to build a big shiny energy plant and borrows a bigass chunk of cash from foreign bank Y to do so.
- Company X messes up, goes bankrupt and voila, foreign bank Y is now the proud owner of a vital piece of infrastructure.
If an energy supplier goes tits-up, nobody cares. We get a new one without any interruption in service and sort out the details afterwards. But those lines up there are bloody precious. I should know, I've been called out of bed at 4 AM a couple of times because one of them broke ;-)
I rather suspect if it were the other way around, (implants for arbitrary interfaces) there would be a bit of a hue and cry. Especially when human subjects are discussed.
Besides, even if the technology cannot be made small enough for an inconspicuous implant, I reckon there's plenty of folks willing to wear a funky looking helmet/contraption on their heads if that means being able to send electrical impulses to their paralyzed lower body.
Trek is "proper" science fiction in the sense that it takes hypothetical scientific advances(matter-energy-matter conversion, FTL travel, artificial intelligence, etc), extrapolates on what kind of impact those changes could have on society and then explores those consequences in the form of fictional storytelling.
Star Wars on the other hand has swords, sorcery and huge dragons...I mean spaceships. Oh, and a cheesy lovestory or 2 :P
Pumping out enough renewable energy over a state of the art grid means being able to fuel electric cars en masse.
More electric cars -> less oil.
Besides, there is a direct correlation between the current price for oil(which is based off of demand) and the price of other energy resources.
This is going on in pretty much all of Europe. Following the spree of "privatize! privatize!" from the Reagan/Thatcher era, we've discovered the hard way that:
1. Some infrastructure is too important to subject to the ups and downs of the free market, or to allow it to fall into foreign hands(same thing really).
2. If you want to create a *true* free market for electricity, ADSL, cable, etc. you need to separate the hardware from the product. The infrastructure is public property, the product that gets sold over it is private.
You do realize that computers use electricity, right? Did I miss a /. story somewhere? Is everyone using hand cranks and hamsters?
Yes, they do..use energy that is, not hamsters. ;-) However, when there's no computer or reliable broadband available, you need to move your physical body from location A to B to get any work done, which uses a heck of a lot more energy than logging in to the company's network from the comfort of home.
When the government is rotten and corrupt, it *is* bad.
Until you get the big money out of government you get to choose between getting fucked by the corps either directly (free market without the free) or indirectly (not-so-free market with bought regulations).
Stop electing people based on the whiteness of their teeth, the waviness of their hair and their willingness to kiss babies and wear silly pins with the american flag. The kind of representative you actually *want* is the guy/gal that tells mom to piss off when she presents her baby to be kissed.
Gotta love the wording...
"The initial document dump by WikiLeaks last month is reported to have disclosed the names of hundreds of Afghan civilians (emphasis mine)
In other words, "I didn't actually check it myself but I gotta write this piece so I'll just go with whatever sounds the worst"
In this season's last episode of Top Gear there was a review of iirc a Ferrari where the same screen was used for the satnav and the digital speedometer, so one can have either one or the other, but not at the same time. The perfect car for Heisenberg. :)
Ahhh, the original Dune. About once a year I fire up dosbox and play it from beginning to end just for nostalia's sake.
"Hello Paul. I'm duke Leto Atreides, your father."
Gee, thanks for reminding me...dad.
Additionally, companies like EA and Infogrames are sitting on piles of rapidly decaying cultural heritage, including the whole portfolios of Bullfrog and Origin.
Yeah, thanks for that. Instead of spending my next weekend in a productive way I'll be stuck replaying Syndicate. ;-)
The Constitution of the USA is not based on such a premise. If it is the USA of which you speak, then you make a fundamental error. The basis of it is not that rights can be granted. The basis of it is that we have inalienable rights because we are human beings. We have those rights merely because we exist. The purpose of governemnt, then, is to recognize and protect those rights. That's the reason we have a legal system. Such rights are absolutely not "granted" or "given" but are merely acknowledged and honored.
Which is a lovely philosophy, but that is all it is, a philosophy. An extremely powerful one, but when faced with an assault rifle, all rights turn out to be figments of our collective human imagination.
The *only* reason those of us who have free speech do so is because we collectively decide that this right is important, and we hire people with guns to make sure it is protected.
It was. But then the furious masturbating killed the very kittens the site was showing and it went out of business. ;-)
I was in Enschede when the fireworks storage exploded in 2000.
Aside from the really bad devastation to the surrounding area, the blast also broke pretty much every window in the inner city. Within less than 5 minutes people were looting from the stores that had thus been exposed.
The layer of veneer between our civilization and the return to good old "my club is bigger than yours so hand over everything you have" barbarism is very, very thin indeed.
If I ran into Assange right now, I'd kill him with my own bare hands. He's a traitor.
Ehmm, no, he's not, and no, you wouldn't. You're just an internet tough guy.
This is what was told to me. There's some truth to this too.
Ahhh, so you didn't even bother to think it through for yourself, you just blindly accepted the opinion of someone else who doesn't know the definition of traitor? And you're willing to state you'd commit murder based on that?
I don't think it's evil as a whole, but if people are dying due to the individual parts, then perhaps the issue is not so simple as "good || bad".
I don't know.
Now *that* is a good starting point. You don't know all the facts. Neither do I. How about we do some hard thinking *before* contemplating murder?
Yawn. If you really thought there was a 'substantial risk of losing it' you wouldn't take it out, unless you already had a backup that was nearly as good, if not better, or enough isks lying around that you could afford to lose it.
Well, yes, obviously. Doesn't change the fact that losing a 350mil Ishtar hurts in the wallet, and makes the wartargets very happy when they get to pick through the faction loot.
All the EVE advcotes will boast about how they aren't pussies, and how they love risk and a challenge. But they only love risk and challenge when they are heavily favored to win. What do they do when a stronger force shows up? They run away. God forbid they actually fight something that might beat them. Of course, this is the 'intelligent' thing to do in EVE, so you can't fault them.
Not necessarily. Some of my most memorable fights were in heavily outnumbered situations, either because I simply *couldn't* disengage or because I decided to take the bait and spring the trap. And yes, fighting 3 battleships in your single one is *fun*.
Get involved in 4 or 5 fair fights and there is an overwhelming chance you'll lose at least once. And you only need to lose once to wipe out any profit you might have made from the other 4.
Who cares? If you fight an equal enemy and come out victorious 4 times out of 5 you're playing one heck of a game. Which for those of us who are in the mercenary business means contracts, reputation and more money.
The game rewards preying on the weak, and brutally punishes standing up for yourself when outmatched.
The weak tend to have very little of value worth stealing and destroying. The game rewards preying on the stupid, the ignorant and the undefended. And there are many succesful pvp pilots who started their careers by manning up when confronted with a superior force and going in for the fight. Guys like me *respect* when the little guys fight back, and we give massive props when they manage to get away with it.
Sorry, but clearly EVE isn't for you. As per my post above, you're a victim...by choice.
You, sir, are going down!
Net Neutrality was *never* about making all types of traffic equal. All it does is ensure that within a given type of traffic no priority is given to one website/videohost/whatever over another.
*Noone* sane is saying torrent traffic should get the same priority as VOIP. Net neutrality is about making sure that an ISP doesn't get to cut a deal where Bing video gets priority over Youtube or the other way around.
Doesn't matter. The chance of getting a kill like that, even if the odds of actually getting the loot out intact is 0 is too good to pass up.
I can't explain why people like that kind of thing but there you go. For them, there is EVE. For everyone else, there is WoW :D.
We like a challenge. When I take my favorite ship into combat there's a substantial risk of losing it. Higher risks make the rewards of victory that much sweeter.
You can lose nearly everything under the right circumstances.
Those circumstances being a player being a total idiot?
Those that derive their pleasure from causing pain to others love it.
We generally don't derive pleasure from causing pain. However, we positively love seeing people squirm and scream about how things are not unfair after they did something epically stupid.
There's 2 types of players in EVE, winners and victims. Which group any given player falls into is 10% talent, 10% dedication and 80% attitude.
I can't see any reason at all to move them.
Trading. If there's a 20% price difference between Jita(where these were bought) and, say, Rens (a 15 minute flight in a small ship) you can make a tidy profit for relatively little work.
Hardcore players are more likely to stick around because they don't have to pay anymore, and newer players have a way of converting real life money into ingame resources. Since the ingame prices for these items are balanced solely by supply and demand(and a good chunk of market manipulation but let's leave that out of scope for now) it all balances out in a way that the players want.
Interesting note: barring some exceptions, by far the majority of players that invests out-of-game cash to acquire in-game assets is too stupid to use them properly anyway. Hence why those of us who play the "hard way" don't complain about them being able to cheat ;-)
What's the point of using an escort? A suicide gank is over in seconds, there's nothing an escort could do.
Either move the stuff in a ship full of plates(extra hitpoints for the uninitiated) or fly a cov ops(cloaked ship, practically impossible to catch). This guy was just plain stupid and got appropriately punished for it.