"I checked with an Arabic speaker in the company who was also a Muslim about what the chant meant and it was from the Koran. He went ballistic. It was an incredible insult to Islam." He asked for the game to be withdrawn but it was issued against his advice in the United States in the belief that it would not be noticed.
Seems to me that the real problem will not be solved by holding geography classes. Here the problem was clearly identified within the company before product release. The warning was ignored because someone thought that software released in the US would remain isolated within the target market. Americans understanding Arabic? or software released in the US ending up in the middle east? What were the odds of that, eh?
What it shows is that neither nations nor "markets" can adequately define people. Can you imagine how silly it would be for them to make a release of Football-game software specifically for each team's home region so as not to offend the local fans? Did you know that some radio stations are already playing songs tailored in just this way?!? To me, the fact that some corporate marketing goons think they can classify me and expect me to like it... that's offensive.
Refuse to be classified! Don't let something arbitrary isolate you from other people; not nation, not religion or customs, not even language. Cross a line. Overcome a barrier.
This is one of the main reasons I encourage people to learn Esperanto like I'm doing. What kind of difference do you think it might make, for example, if the people of Iraq and the US were able to freely communicate? Not just a few foreign-educated men but factory workers and dentists, grocery-clerks and stay-at-home moms... What if you had a pen-pal in Iraq? Do you think you might get a different story than what you're being fed by the news media?
No matter whether you're on Mars or in any nation on earth, the issue of property "rights" will be decided not only by a governing body's ability to defend its territory by force but also by its ability to enforce its own laws within that territory.
Historically, law enforcement in colonial situations has tended to be weak. This has often meant that posession didn't follow the rules of property-related law.
No point "breathing air" at that temperature.
on
X43-A on to Mach 10
·
· Score: 1
Is there any point in doing any sort of "air
breathing engine" experiments at mach 10? In such a
short flight, what's the benefit over rocket engines
or over simple ballistic projection?
This "experiment" just seems like a pointless attempt
to cross a line that doesn't need crossing. They aren't
likely to learn anything from it at all. They should
just tell it like it is and call it a "stunt".
I agree that men shouldn't automatically assume that women
will go for the cute-and-fluffy or dress-up stuff. It's nice
to give that sort of thing to little girls but women
have a long reputation for a different appetite.
Homer's Odyssey (which some claim may have been originally
written by a woman [maybe the swineherd's
daughter]) talks about women cheering for bloody fights.
The bible talks about women getting right in on a fight by
grabbing her man's opponent by the naughty bits!
(This is a big no-no, girls.)
Clearly, women can enjoy the games which wouldn't
be considered civilized or "pretty". Otherwise, what fun
would women be?
Be careful who you listen to about "schizophrenia",
especially as to exactly what they think schizophrenia
is, because there seem to be some
vastly different modern diagnoses which have a
little foot-note in their definitions like, "once
considered a form of schizophrenia."
It's a vague term at best, and you should try to find
out more about the specific form you're dealing with.
Publicity, whether "good" or "bad", is still publicity.
The report is part of a book Brown is writing on open
source software...
So it seems obvious that this obviously inflammatory "news"
has been released as a publicity stunt, to boost the sales
of a book by seeding the author's name and his association
with open source software into our minds a little while
before his book release.
Thanks to Slashdot, he got even more publicity
than he ever deserved. It's a pity that this author
will end up being helped by the same people
who would rather see his work gathering dust on the
shelves of a dollar-store.
It just occurred to me recently that the people who
code the installers for spyware have an
extremely valuable skill. Their success depends upon
making their install so utterly automatic and
unobtrusive that the user oftentimes doesn't even
realize that anything has been installed at all.
Don't you wish the software you want
could install so easily?
"Two million" Linux users. Jeez. I don't care if that's not
an accurate number. There are supposed to be more speakers of
Esperanto than that.
The interviewer's complaint that his favorite computer can't
play DVDs must have sounded like he was whining that he didn't
want to spend a little money on a DVD player.
The real issue to Valenti is intellectual property. The
ham-fisted laws he's lobbying for are the only way he knows
to preserve intellectual property the way he thinks it should
be. What he needs is an example of how that way might not
be such a good way in the first place.
The real issue is that the law should not
be made to stop people from being able to do things
which might infringe upon others' rights but rather
should make certain that punishment and restitution
(justice, if you will) can be had when someone actually
does infringe someone else's rights.
Or maybe there should be laws against other things which
might be used in rights-infringing ways? The
classic example of how one has the right to swing one's
fist but not into someone else's nose would have to be
re-evaluated. Too many people seem to be taking advantage
of that old-fashioned "right", and perhaps fist-swinging
should be illegal for all but certified professionals?
Just to be on the safe side, maybe they should outlaw
making a fist at all?
The point again, is that a better way to
make law is not to legislate what cannot be done but rather
to make plain and sure the dire consequences should we
choose to infringe others' rights or damage items
of public trust.
I'm aware of the legal precedent, but
I wish people would get over the idea that
precident is somehow a permanent thing.
Judges don't write Laws. They interpret them as they apply to each case. They may use precedent as guidance but precedent is not The Law.
Obviously, a judge would tend to rule in accordance with those courts to which a case could later be appealed, to avoid the hassle of having his/her decisions overturned all the time, but I don't think they're required to do so.
This is not the law of the Medes and the Persians described in the biblical book of Daniel, where rulers make arbitrary pronouncements which are written down to be henceforth and forever binding. The law of this land (US) is written by "legislators" (SURPRISE!) elected by the people, not by the judges.
The lawsuit claims the law violates WhenU's
constitutionally-protected right to advertise.
...well, I must have missed that part. Which article of
the Constitution of the United States of America protects
the 'right' of a corporation to advertise?
There have been articles about this before under the label of "self censorship".
Customizable news sources help their users to fit themselves with invisible blinders. They become more biased as they're innundated with information about only what they're already aware of or already interested in.
Don't read censored news. Read something from a source which you can't control.
Gnome is going Mono... which is C#. The language is
sweet! Yeah, I know that C# development has
been done largely at our favorite place-to-hate
but the developers were clearly open-source fans...
They wrote the syntax coloring code for VIM to handle
C# before the language itself was even released!
"How many companies these days are willing to drop money into some technology that may not turn a profit for many years?"
"Willing" isn't enough. Too many companies don't make adequate plans for preserving the technologies which they develop for the urgent needs of today's market. Four years from now, half the team is gone and nobody knows what happened to the source code archive much less any design documents.
A company has to first have a strategy for conserving the technologies they develop, as they are developed, before developing anything which may not be marketable for five or ten years. They'd also have to slow down their employee turn-over rate.
Anyone else catch the phrases, "historic icon" and "scientific pilgrimage" in one quote from the leading 'discoverer'?
I wonder how many ships of the same class as the HMS Beagle were made, and how much it'll cost the locals to get it endorsed as 'authentic'?
And isn't it amazing how these fans of evolutionary theory are almost religious about it all?
Evolutionism is a religion when they say that they know how something evolved. Creationism is a science when they find a fossilized hat and disprove the accuracy of commonly accepted dating methods.
Sure, Internet connectivity can help farmers. Access to information can help anyone. But what's wrong with a bullock cart?
An ox can go through narrow streets and flooded fields. It can pull. It can carry. Its requirements are easily found and inexpensive. A simple cart can be built and maintained by one's self and local craftsmen with no need for dealer-authorized training nor expensive tools which might only work on one kind of cart.
And how many people ever get run over by ox carts? Do you have any idea what happens to an automobile's driver and passengers after they've rounded a blind corner and hit somebody in a remote Indian village?
Googling for comments about EarthStation 5 turned up some
interesting words from the founders. They talked about how
they're just trying to feed their families and so-on.
One quote, tacked onto the end of the typical, "Nya-nya,
come 'n get us!" went like this:
"We're entitled to eat, too."
Um... That's an odd bit of entitlement, isn't it?
Am I "entitled to eat"? Exactly who provides
the substance of that entitlement?
Sounds to me like someone has been accustomed to hand-outs
for far too long.
There was a short story in "Analog" some years ago where the protagonist used just such a bacteria to defeat invading aliens which had an iron-based skeletal structure...
Did anyone else make it to the bottom of the included note,
where the letter claimed that it is intended only for
the recipient and prohibits copying and/or use by anyone else?
Those are privacy-related restrictions which can only be
invoked between real people, not by
crude filename-grepping scripts dumping output to
automatically-selected e-mail addresses.
And where does whoever wrote that varbage get off, saying that
no one other than the intended recipient is allowed to act upon
the information? What law backs that up?
Looks like there will soon be a market for gizmos which can
burn out RFID tags. It shouldn't be too hard to drive enough
energy into them to make them go "pop" somwhere inside.
Small ones could become a problem for store owners who
try to rely on RFID to catch shoplifters though.
Two phones in the same building would still need the WEP and an IP protocol router (if it's not in the WEP) to address each other by IP address.
Here's what you missed:
Both phones can "hear" each others' radio signals... so why don't they just talk directly with each other via radio instead of going through the WEP/router combo?
This is what got me about those nifty cell phones with the walkie-talkie-like group communication function... Even though they weren't paying for a "call", the phones were still sending everything through the nearest tower. These
new VoIP phones have just replaced the tower with a WEP.
But with digital networking technology, it's not necessary. If the phones are within reasonable radio range of each other, they could
communicate directly via radio rather than loading the
tower/WEP at all.
This VoIP phone gets close by not requiring a centralized server to pass
the data... but all the data still has to go through the WEP/router when
talking to the phone in the next room. That shouldn't be necessary.
What would really be cool is if phones would
PARTICIPATE in the Internet Protocol as routers
instead of just soaking off it as leaf nodes.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me that the real problem will not be solved by holding geography classes. Here the problem was clearly identified within the company before product release. The warning was ignored because someone thought that software released in the US would remain isolated within the target market. Americans understanding Arabic? or software released in the US ending up in the middle east? What were the odds of that, eh?
What it shows is that neither nations nor "markets" can adequately define people. Can you imagine how silly it would be for them to make a release of Football-game software specifically for each team's home region so as not to offend the local fans? Did you know that some radio stations are already playing songs tailored in just this way?!? To me, the fact that some corporate marketing goons think they can classify me and expect me to like it... that's offensive.
Refuse to be classified! Don't let something arbitrary isolate you from other people; not nation, not religion or customs, not even language. Cross a line. Overcome a barrier.
This is one of the main reasons I encourage people to learn Esperanto like I'm doing. What kind of difference do you think it might make, for example, if the people of Iraq and the US were able to freely communicate? Not just a few foreign-educated men but factory workers and dentists, grocery-clerks and stay-at-home moms... What if you had a pen-pal in Iraq? Do you think you might get a different story than what you're being fed by the news media?
No matter whether you're on Mars or in any nation on earth, the issue of property "rights" will be decided not only by a governing body's ability to defend its territory by force but also by its ability to enforce its own laws within that territory.
Historically, law enforcement in colonial situations has tended to be weak. This has often meant that posession didn't follow the rules of property-related law.
This "experiment" just seems like a pointless attempt to cross a line that doesn't need crossing. They aren't likely to learn anything from it at all. They should just tell it like it is and call it a "stunt".
Just browse their version control for prior art.
Homer's Odyssey (which some claim may have been originally written by a woman [maybe the swineherd's daughter]) talks about women cheering for bloody fights. The bible talks about women getting right in on a fight by grabbing her man's opponent by the naughty bits! (This is a big no-no, girls.)
Clearly, women can enjoy the games which wouldn't be considered civilized or "pretty". Otherwise, what fun would women be?
It's a vague term at best, and you should try to find out more about the specific form you're dealing with.
So it seems obvious that this obviously inflammatory "news" has been released as a publicity stunt, to boost the sales of a book by seeding the author's name and his association with open source software into our minds a little while before his book release.
Thanks to Slashdot, he got even more publicity than he ever deserved. It's a pity that this author will end up being helped by the same people who would rather see his work gathering dust on the shelves of a dollar-store.
Don't you wish the software you want could install so easily?
The real issue to Valenti is intellectual property. The ham-fisted laws he's lobbying for are the only way he knows to preserve intellectual property the way he thinks it should be. What he needs is an example of how that way might not be such a good way in the first place.
The real issue is that the law should not be made to stop people from being able to do things which might infringe upon others' rights but rather should make certain that punishment and restitution (justice, if you will) can be had when someone actually does infringe someone else's rights.
Or maybe there should be laws against other things which might be used in rights-infringing ways? The classic example of how one has the right to swing one's fist but not into someone else's nose would have to be re-evaluated. Too many people seem to be taking advantage of that old-fashioned "right", and perhaps fist-swinging should be illegal for all but certified professionals? Just to be on the safe side, maybe they should outlaw making a fist at all?
The point again, is that a better way to make law is not to legislate what cannot be done but rather to make plain and sure the dire consequences should we choose to infringe others' rights or damage items of public trust.
I'm aware of the legal precedent, but I wish people would get over the idea that precident is somehow a permanent thing. Judges don't write Laws. They interpret them as they apply to each case. They may use precedent as guidance but precedent is not The Law.
Obviously, a judge would tend to rule in accordance with those courts to which a case could later be appealed, to avoid the hassle of having his/her decisions overturned all the time, but I don't think they're required to do so.
This is not the law of the Medes and the Persians described in the biblical book of Daniel, where rulers make arbitrary pronouncements which are written down to be henceforth and forever binding. The law of this land (US) is written by "legislators" (SURPRISE!) elected by the people, not by the judges.
Customizable news sources help their users to fit themselves with invisible blinders. They become more biased as they're innundated with information about only what they're already aware of or already interested in.
Don't read censored news. Read something from a source which you can't control.
Gnome is going Mono... which is C#. The language is sweet! Yeah, I know that C# development has been done largely at our favorite place-to-hate but the developers were clearly open-source fans...
They wrote the syntax coloring code for VIM to handle C# before the language itself was even released!
The Acrobat Reader ad/link graphic at the bottom of the main page says,
So this very likely is not a legitimate graphic from Adobe, Inc. but rather something that this PG-2 site may have made up themselves.
"Willing" isn't enough. Too many companies don't make adequate plans for preserving the technologies which they develop for the urgent needs of today's market. Four years from now, half the team is gone and nobody knows what happened to the source code archive much less any design documents.
A company has to first have a strategy for conserving the technologies they develop, as they are developed, before developing anything which may not be marketable for five or ten years. They'd also have to slow down their employee turn-over rate.
I'm pretty sure I replied to the Beagle Found article... I don't know how this got stuck under the adjacent one.
I wonder how many ships of the same class as the HMS Beagle were made, and how much it'll cost the locals to get it endorsed as 'authentic'?
And isn't it amazing how these fans of evolutionary theory are almost religious about it all?
Evolutionism is a religion when they say that they know how something evolved. Creationism is a science when they find a fossilized hat and disprove the accuracy of commonly accepted dating methods.
An ox can go through narrow streets and flooded fields. It can pull. It can carry. Its requirements are easily found and inexpensive. A simple cart can be built and maintained by one's self and local craftsmen with no need for dealer-authorized training nor expensive tools which might only work on one kind of cart.
And how many people ever get run over by ox carts? Do you have any idea what happens to an automobile's driver and passengers after they've rounded a blind corner and hit somebody in a remote Indian village?
One clue as to the reliability of any claim is whether the person has any record of expertise in the matter.
A TV actor dressed in a white smock, for example, may not be a reliable source of medical advice.
Like there aren't any other dry surfaces on objects being toted around by people passing through hospital wards?
Oh, come on.
Um... That's an odd bit of entitlement, isn't it?
Am I "entitled to eat"? Exactly who provides the substance of that entitlement?
Sounds to me like someone has been accustomed to hand-outs for far too long.
There was a short story in "Analog" some years ago where the protagonist used just such a bacteria to defeat invading aliens which had an iron-based skeletal structure...
Those are privacy-related restrictions which can only be invoked between real people, not by crude filename-grepping scripts dumping output to automatically-selected e-mail addresses.
And where does whoever wrote that varbage get off, saying that no one other than the intended recipient is allowed to act upon the information? What law backs that up?
Small ones could become a problem for store owners who try to rely on RFID to catch shoplifters though.
Two phones in the same building would still need the WEP and an IP protocol router (if it's not in the WEP) to address each other by IP address.
Here's what you missed:
Both phones can "hear" each others' radio signals... so why don't they just talk directly with each other via radio instead of going through the WEP/router combo?
This is what got me about those nifty cell phones with the walkie-talkie-like group communication function... Even though they weren't paying for a "call", the phones were still sending everything through the nearest tower. These new VoIP phones have just replaced the tower with a WEP.
But with digital networking technology, it's not necessary. If the phones are within reasonable radio range of each other, they could communicate directly via radio rather than loading the tower/WEP at all.
This VoIP phone gets close by not requiring a centralized server to pass the data... but all the data still has to go through the WEP/router when talking to the phone in the next room. That shouldn't be necessary.
What would really be cool is if phones would PARTICIPATE in the Internet Protocol as routers instead of just soaking off it as leaf nodes.