I have been thinking about getting this game. I'm pretty busy (work fulltime with classes every night), and don't play many games, so I try and pick just a few of the best. I love all of Tim Schafer's graphic adventure games, but I hate platform jumping games. This seems like a mix of the two. Do you think there is enough of the former to make up for the latter?
First on the issue of throwing votes away. It only takes one vote over 50% to win, so any amount over that is unnecesarry - ie wasted. Therefore, unless the race is close, and you have a chance of casting the deciding vote, then voting for a major party has just as little practical effect on the result of the election as voting for a third party.
Secondly, if the democrats actually defended civil liberties, then I would start considering the lesser of two evils. But they are just as bad as the republicans when it comes to throwing out our freedoms to appear tough on crime or terrorism. Furthermore the progressives have gotten as bad as the religious right when it comes to forcing everyone to live the way they want them to. The only civil rights issue that the democrats still defend are equal rights for gays, and other minorites. While I give them credit for this, it doesn't matter much if you are systematically eliminating everyone's rights.
As an aside, you cannot blame liberals voting for third parties for the result of the last presidential election or for democrats poor showing in congress. That is due to more people voting republican, not third party.
I vote for the candidate I think is best in almost every election. The only time I vote for the lesser of two evils is when all the following are true:
One of the two major candidates really is significantly worse than the other.
the race is close
I am in a swing state/district
The race is close in my state/district
The last presidential election was the very few times that has happened in many years.
If the only "realistic option" is to vote for a major party, then we might as well admit that there is no solution to the problems that are facing the country today, because they are the ones who created them and they show no signs of changing track. I don't think that voting third party is a waste, but even if it is, I would rather waste my vote than be complicit in the destruction of our country.
From what I understand this happens with every successfull movie. It is just part of the game that actors and directors know that they will be paid their salary, but won't get agreed upon royalties unless they get lawyers involved. So if the movie does mediocre they don't bother, and the studio get the extra money (creatively funneled to other projects/people to avoid tax), but if it does there is an obligatory lawsuit. Since it is so common and expected the only people that get burned by it are those who are not familiar with hollywood (like novel or comic book writers). I doubt that this event hurt the relationship between Peter Jackson and the studio, and that statement about not doing the next movie was most likley just a bargaining card to negotiate a better deal, not a sign of bad blood between the two, or a real threat that he will not do the movie.
Law has a long basis of judging degree of guilt depending on intent, and for good reason: someone who did it intentionally is more likely do it again.
I agree that intent != thoughtcrime, but this is a horrible justification of it. The reason that intent is an acceptable criterion is because it shows how cupable, or how much at fault you were for the crime. If someone dies at your hands as the result of negligance you are more at fault than if they died as the result of an unpreventable accident. If you willingly and knowingly maintain a dangerous work environment, then you are more at fault than someone whose negligance was due to ignorance. If you plan and and carry out a murder you are more at fault than the guy you coerced into participating. The punishment for any offence should be capped at the damage it caused to the victim and society at whole, in this case, death penalty and costs of policing murders. However, it is perfectly just to have a lesser punishment than this if you are not entirely at fault for the crime, in fact it is necissary for justice to be upheld.
On the other hand if the only way that you can justify increasing someone's punishment is that they more likely to commit another crime, then you are punishing them for something that they have not done - you are punishing them for precrime. It doesn't matter that they commited a crime in the past - once they have served a reasonable sentence for their crime then they are done, and are just as innocent as anyone else in society. Any additional punishment placed on top of them without additional crime committed is unjust.
Keyboard and Mouse isn't necessarily better, you can make the argument that the mouse is more accurate but are you sure you don't prefer that method simply because that's the control mechanism you learned how to play FPSs with?
There is more to it than familiarity. The mouse has capabilities that the gamepad doesn't. For example, in a FPS, measure how long it takes to turn 90 degrees with a gamepad, compared to how long it takes with a mouse. The advantage of the mouse is that it is both accurate and fast. With a joystick you can get one or the other but not both.
Of course, there isn't any reason that you can't design a game that uses either effectively, but I wouldn't want to be playing a FPS using a gamepad against people with mice.
Logically, the only reason to be torn is if you think that one of the parties needs to be declared the innocent good guy. Emotionally, I would be worried if you weren't torn.
The men who provided sensitive personal information to an anonymous stranger were foolish and took a big risk. The guy who posted this private information on a public forum did commit an immoral and illegal act. The foolishness of the doms one does not absolve Jason of his offenses, and his violation of their trust does not change the fact that it was stupid of them to trust him to begin with, nor does it absolve the ones who were cheating on their wives. These men have faced the unfortunate consequences of their actions, now it is time for Jason to face the consequences of his.
On the other hand, it is a good that you can feel bad for what happened to someone while recognizing that they brought it on themselves. I mean that for both sides - the ones that had their trust violated, and the one who was to immature to realize that what he was doing wasn't just a prank. It only becomes a problem when people turn empathy into whitewash, or recognition of guilt into an excuse to demonize.
I agree with you for the most part, however, I would be reluctant to make school admission too merit-based at that level. My mom was an elementary school teacher for about 20 years (now teaching music) and at her school the teachers always got notes about student performance from their teachers the previous year. The notes were only predictive of their performance in a small majority of the students. Some kids would do better in a strongly directed environment other would do better in something more open-ended. Some students would misbehave a lot because it was easy to push a certain teacher's buttons, but would stop when put in another class where it wasn't as entertaining. Kids would make new friends in their new classes which would affect their behavior and attitudes towards schools. Standardized tests were an even worse predictor of the student's abilities.
And I don't think that requiring strict admissions is necessary for a good school. I think the main reason it is done because some limit has to be drawn and prestige has more advantages to the individual institution. The college I went to had lenient admission requirements, but a difficult program. As a result, only a third of the incoming freshman ended up graduating from there. For the most part the students that did well in high school were the ones that did well in college, but there were a significant minority who had poor HS grades and test scores, but ended up excelling in college. There were other students that were not the smartest in their class, but worked really hard, and ended up mastering the material. There are many reasons you could give to explain this, but regardless it would have been a shame to not have given these people the chance to do well.
As more advanced or honor schools become prevalent (which I agree must happen if things are to improve), most of the good teachers are going to want to teach there, and most of the good students will want to go there, leaving the rest of the schools in worse shape that they are now. Students that end up at those schools will have less exposure to challenging teachers and positive peer influence, and will be more likely to under perform in that environment. Again, I think that this better than the situation we have now, but we need to try and prevent pigeon-holing of students at too young of an age.
Or to put it another way, I don't have a problem with the fact that some people will naturally end up smarter, or wealthier, or more successful than others, and policies that try to force everyone into equal well-being or performance do more harm then good. However, I have a big problem when our policies put up barriers that make it harder for people to improve themselves. Economic equality is not important to me but economic mobility is.
I would make the admissions a mixture of past performance and lottery. One possibility is if half the incoming slots were filled by the applicants with the best grades and test scores, while the other half of the slots were filled by lottery from a pool of decent applicants (say in the top 50th percentile of all students in the area).
I am fine with the possibility that there is a lot of normal matter which is not detectable from earth. I am also fine with the idea that more exotic forms of matter and energy might exist. The current dark energy models are the best matches for astronomical observations thus far. And when it is all said and done, if dark energy continues to be the best description, it will prevail, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop testing it.
At one time, all the scientists thought there was this stuff called ether, and it was the best explanation for the observations we had. Then people did more tests, and discovered incongruities. In the end it was proven an incorrect idea, and was supplanted with a better model.
Einstein spent many years trying to find a deterministic alternative to quantum mechanics. There were many respectable scientists that felt that QM was merely a useful approximation, but after years of testing, a the consensus finally turned, and the community accepted that the non-deterministic aspects of QM were real.
Should we have blindly accepted Ether or QM, just because preliminary results showed promise with the ideas? No - we continued to question them and test them until they were disproved or time had shown them to be solid ideas. Dark Matter is in the same place as these theories once were. I don't know whether it will turn out to be correct or not, but I do know we should continue to challenge it, to think of new ways to test it, and to think of alternative explanations, because that is what science is about and that is how we take good ideas and turn them into a rigorous and well-established understanding of the universe.
You would call these people pseudo-scientists, and yet your only argument an application of Occam's Razor (and as others pointed out, faulty understanding of principles). But that's the funny thing about Occam's Razor - it is dependant on one's personal opinion of what is the most likely, or most simple explanation. Some would consider making up new particles that we have never observed a real stretch, others consider tweaking the existing rules a hack. That someone has a different view of what is elegant than you, does not make their ideas pseudo-science. What matters is if they are predictive and falsifiable, which these are.
Honestly, if you can't tell the difference between people that present testable alternative hypothesis, and people whose best "theory" that they could present amounts to "does this not appear irreducible", then you are the one that needs a refresher on what is and is not science.
If someone sold audio books bundled with searchable pdfs, they would have my business in a heartbeat. For a lot of subjects, audio books are much more convienient than paper books, as you listen to them while you are doing something else like driving or cooking. But they are inferior to books for use as a reference. E-books are even better than hardcopies for searching and reference purposes, and are easier to store (I don't like owning walls of books) but are less enjoyable to read cover to cover. If you were to combine the two into one purchase you would have the best of all worlds.
As it is now, I never buy audio-books because I only ever listen to them once, and I won't buy e-books on their own because I can't stand reading that much material on a computer. Instead I'll either rent the audio-book, or buy the hardcopy. I would happily pay the retail price of an audio book for a bundled download, maybe even a little more.
I have never liked the term viral applied to the GPL, not because I want to hide the fact that you have to license your modifications under the GPL, but because it was deliberately chosen for its negative connotations, and isn't really an accurate description of how the GPL works anyway.
The main criterion for something being viral is that it is self-propagating. It goes and injects itself into your body (or computer, or software) without permission. The GPL doesn't do this. You choose to use the GPL in exchange for putting your code under the GPL, or you choose not too.
Secondly, viruses are almost always regarded as a negative thing. Not only does it sneak in behind your back, but it makes you sick, slows down your computer, brings networks to their knees and sends your personal information out to shady people. Neither I nor thousands of other free software developers consider releasing software under the GPL to be harmful to us.
People have been burned by writing large pieces of software that used GPLed code in it, without understanding what their obligations under the GPL were until they had already made a significant investment into using it. It is a shame that those misconceptions occur, but it wasn't because the GPL tricked them into it. The FSF and other free software developers don't want to dupe their users into doing something that they don't want. We want them to make informed decisions about how they use their code.
The use of the word viral to describe the GPL feeds off of misunderstandings to create the appearance of malice where it doesn't exist, and that is why it shouldn't be used.
I guess they could just use non-DRM AAC for the DRM. Oh wait.
It was pretty obvious that he was talking about DRMed AAC files. If you are going to be pendantic about the name you might as well yell at him for using the term WMA when he meant Janus DRM.
All DRM is easily cracked unless the keys are burned into hardware. The point is to make it complex enough that most people won't bother. Given that this is for online listening only, they'll probably just use a flash-based player. That way it works for "everyone", and most people won't know or care where it is downloading the actual files from. If they really want to get fancy, they could implement some sort of authentication to prevent programs other than the flash player to connect to the file server. The flash player could have it's keys changed as often as they like. Writing a program that scrapes the key from the player and uses it to download the files, would violate the DMCA, and could be prosecuted. The number of connections from a single IP could be limited or logged to find people that were bypassing the flash player and going straight to the files.
At that point it would be easier and safer to use a filesharing program or burn a friend's CD.
I can't think of any IT departments that buy Alienware PCs. The only people that buy them are gamers, most of whom are capable of using a screwdriver, so building your own is a better way to go. In fact, the most time-consuming part of building your own machine is figuring out what components are fast and reliable at the moment, so getting the specs from a company that does guarantee their machines is a really good suggestion.
For a low-end desktop, a home-built machine can't beat Dell's prices. In the IT world, the labor costs of building your own far outshadow the savings in purchase price. But for a hot-rod gaming machine, building your own is still the way to go.
Clinton tried for years to open up stem-cell research using embryos from pregnancy clinics, but the Republican dominiated congress ammended or voted down any law he put forth. People are right to place the blame on the republicans (and religious right) for the lack of funding for stem-cell research. Putting it all on the current "head" of the party isn't exactly correct, but not completely off base.
PS - sorry for using wikipedia as a reference, I'm at work and don't have time to look up a better one.
I know what you mean, but you do realise what that L stands for, right?
I know you were joking,but you do realize what that A stands for, right?:) It is an Agreement between two parties, AKA a contract, in which you agree to both the terms of the copyright license, and several other terms which are outside the scope of copyright law.
Because they take something cheap (an idea), and turn in into something valuable (a monopoly on any implementations).
If ideas are so difficult to develop then why has almost every major invention been developed independantly by multiple people?
Creating a quality product has less to to with a single big idea and more to do with getting all the little details right. Which is why Blackberries are still the best handheld email device , even though many others have come along, and why the iPod was so successfull even though many other mp3 players existed before it.
I am surprised that more devices don't use a (mouse-like) scroll wheel for navigation like the Blackberry or Rio Karma. It is much nicer than the up-down buttons that are universal for cellphone menu navigation. It has an advantage over the apple touch-wheel in that you have tactile feedback for moving up/or down a single menu item - on my iPod I am constantly moving two spaces when I meant to move one. Of course it has the disadvantage of having to pick up your finger. As far as reliability goes, I know the Rio Karma had problems with it breaking, but that device had QA issues galore, and AFAIK they seem to survive on the Blackberry just fine. Is the use of a scroll-wheel on a handheld device patented by RIM or someone else?
Oh and in the process, devastating the economies and agricultural markets of third world countries causing widespread famine and poverty.
That is bull. We may not be supporting third-world economies as much as we could by buying thier crops exclusively rather than a mix of domestic and imported agriculture, but that does not equate to devistating them. Furthermore, all the major recent famines have been due to lack of rain or corrupt local governments - not the first-world countries.
Evolution selects for traits that are sufficient for the current environment, and does not necisarrily result in "improvement" in general. In CmdrTaco's case, he has become perfectly adapted for the situation of holding a job where "pants are optional".
I am definately going to upgrade. I skipped over Tiger, as none of the improvements aimed for users mattered to me - my files are better organized than my house, so spotlight wasn't a big deal, and I am comfortable with applescript, so didn't care about automator. Dashboard looked spiffy but not really worth the upgrade. The new development features looked sweet, but I don't do any Mac development professionally, knew I wouldn't have time to play with them on my own, as a big deadline was approaching.
The two big user features anounced for Leopard on the other hand, are both very important to me. While expose is much nicer than a window list, I often have over 50 windows open when working on some projects, and have been dying for X11-like virtual displays to group them (the third party ones I tried didn't hack it). Timeline looks very convenient, and more importantly, it looks like a backup system easy enough for my parents to use. I have been meaning to get them a mac ever since the intels came out (they have one or two windows programs they can't do without), but this clenches it.
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I have been thinking about getting this game. I'm pretty busy (work fulltime with classes every night), and don't play many games, so I try and pick just a few of the best. I love all of Tim Schafer's graphic adventure games, but I hate platform jumping games. This seems like a mix of the two. Do you think there is enough of the former to make up for the latter?
Secondly, if the democrats actually defended civil liberties, then I would start considering the lesser of two evils. But they are just as bad as the republicans when it comes to throwing out our freedoms to appear tough on crime or terrorism. Furthermore the progressives have gotten as bad as the religious right when it comes to forcing everyone to live the way they want them to. The only civil rights issue that the democrats still defend are equal rights for gays, and other minorites. While I give them credit for this, it doesn't matter much if you are systematically eliminating everyone's rights.
As an aside, you cannot blame liberals voting for third parties for the result of the last presidential election or for democrats poor showing in congress. That is due to more people voting republican, not third party.
I vote for the candidate I think is best in almost every election. The only time I vote for the lesser of two evils is when all the following are true:
The last presidential election was the very few times that has happened in many years.
If the only "realistic option" is to vote for a major party, then we might as well admit that there is no solution to the problems that are facing the country today, because they are the ones who created them and they show no signs of changing track. I don't think that voting third party is a waste, but even if it is, I would rather waste my vote than be complicit in the destruction of our country.
From what I understand this happens with every successfull movie. It is just part of the game that actors and directors know that they will be paid their salary, but won't get agreed upon royalties unless they get lawyers involved. So if the movie does mediocre they don't bother, and the studio get the extra money (creatively funneled to other projects/people to avoid tax), but if it does there is an obligatory lawsuit. Since it is so common and expected the only people that get burned by it are those who are not familiar with hollywood (like novel or comic book writers). I doubt that this event hurt the relationship between Peter Jackson and the studio, and that statement about not doing the next movie was most likley just a bargaining card to negotiate a better deal, not a sign of bad blood between the two, or a real threat that he will not do the movie.
You and your precise terminology.
We all know that LotR is actually one book of six books published in three books.
Law has a long basis of judging degree of guilt depending on intent, and for good reason: someone who did it intentionally is more likely do it again.
I agree that intent != thoughtcrime, but this is a horrible justification of it. The reason that intent is an acceptable criterion is because it shows how cupable, or how much at fault you were for the crime. If someone dies at your hands as the result of negligance you are more at fault than if they died as the result of an unpreventable accident. If you willingly and knowingly maintain a dangerous work environment, then you are more at fault than someone whose negligance was due to ignorance. If you plan and and carry out a murder you are more at fault than the guy you coerced into participating. The punishment for any offence should be capped at the damage it caused to the victim and society at whole, in this case, death penalty and costs of policing murders. However, it is perfectly just to have a lesser punishment than this if you are not entirely at fault for the crime, in fact it is necissary for justice to be upheld.
On the other hand if the only way that you can justify increasing someone's punishment is that they more likely to commit another crime, then you are punishing them for something that they have not done - you are punishing them for precrime. It doesn't matter that they commited a crime in the past - once they have served a reasonable sentence for their crime then they are done, and are just as innocent as anyone else in society. Any additional punishment placed on top of them without additional crime committed is unjust.
Keyboard and Mouse isn't necessarily better, you can make the argument that the mouse is more accurate but are you sure you don't prefer that method simply because that's the control mechanism you learned how to play FPSs with?
There is more to it than familiarity. The mouse has capabilities that the gamepad doesn't. For example, in a FPS, measure how long it takes to turn 90 degrees with a gamepad, compared to how long it takes with a mouse. The advantage of the mouse is that it is both accurate and fast. With a joystick you can get one or the other but not both.
Of course, there isn't any reason that you can't design a game that uses either effectively, but I wouldn't want to be playing a FPS using a gamepad against people with mice.
Logically, the only reason to be torn is if you think that one of the parties needs to be declared the innocent good guy. Emotionally, I would be worried if you weren't torn.
The men who provided sensitive personal information to an anonymous stranger were foolish and took a big risk. The guy who posted this private information on a public forum did commit an immoral and illegal act. The foolishness of the doms one does not absolve Jason of his offenses, and his violation of their trust does not change the fact that it was stupid of them to trust him to begin with, nor does it absolve the ones who were cheating on their wives. These men have faced the unfortunate consequences of their actions, now it is time for Jason to face the consequences of his.
On the other hand, it is a good that you can feel bad for what happened to someone while recognizing that they brought it on themselves. I mean that for both sides - the ones that had their trust violated, and the one who was to immature to realize that what he was doing wasn't just a prank. It only becomes a problem when people turn empathy into whitewash, or recognition of guilt into an excuse to demonize.
I agree with you for the most part, however, I would be reluctant to make school admission too merit-based at that level. My mom was an elementary school teacher for about 20 years (now teaching music) and at her school the teachers always got notes about student performance from their teachers the previous year. The notes were only predictive of their performance in a small majority of the students. Some kids would do better in a strongly directed environment other would do better in something more open-ended. Some students would misbehave a lot because it was easy to push a certain teacher's buttons, but would stop when put in another class where it wasn't as entertaining. Kids would make new friends in their new classes which would affect their behavior and attitudes towards schools. Standardized tests were an even worse predictor of the student's abilities.
And I don't think that requiring strict admissions is necessary for a good school. I think the main reason it is done because some limit has to be drawn and prestige has more advantages to the individual institution. The college I went to had lenient admission requirements, but a difficult program. As a result, only a third of the incoming freshman ended up graduating from there. For the most part the students that did well in high school were the ones that did well in college, but there were a significant minority who had poor HS grades and test scores, but ended up excelling in college. There were other students that were not the smartest in their class, but worked really hard, and ended up mastering the material. There are many reasons you could give to explain this, but regardless it would have been a shame to not have given these people the chance to do well.
As more advanced or honor schools become prevalent (which I agree must happen if things are to improve), most of the good teachers are going to want to teach there, and most of the good students will want to go there, leaving the rest of the schools in worse shape that they are now. Students that end up at those schools will have less exposure to challenging teachers and positive peer influence, and will be more likely to under perform in that environment. Again, I think that this better than the situation we have now, but we need to try and prevent pigeon-holing of students at too young of an age.
Or to put it another way, I don't have a problem with the fact that some people will naturally end up smarter, or wealthier, or more successful than others, and policies that try to force everyone into equal well-being or performance do more harm then good. However, I have a big problem when our policies put up barriers that make it harder for people to improve themselves. Economic equality is not important to me but economic mobility is.
I would make the admissions a mixture of past performance and lottery. One possibility is if half the incoming slots were filled by the applicants with the best grades and test scores, while the other half of the slots were filled by lottery from a pool of decent applicants (say in the top 50th percentile of all students in the area).
I am fine with the possibility that there is a lot of normal matter which is not detectable from earth. I am also fine with the idea that more exotic forms of matter and energy might exist. The current dark energy models are the best matches for astronomical observations thus far. And when it is all said and done, if dark energy continues to be the best description, it will prevail, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop testing it.
At one time, all the scientists thought there was this stuff called ether, and it was the best explanation for the observations we had. Then people did more tests, and discovered incongruities. In the end it was proven an incorrect idea, and was supplanted with a better model.
Einstein spent many years trying to find a deterministic alternative to quantum mechanics. There were many respectable scientists that felt that QM was merely a useful approximation, but after years of testing, a the consensus finally turned, and the community accepted that the non-deterministic aspects of QM were real.
Should we have blindly accepted Ether or QM, just because preliminary results showed promise with the ideas? No - we continued to question them and test them until they were disproved or time had shown them to be solid ideas. Dark Matter is in the same place as these theories once were. I don't know whether it will turn out to be correct or not, but I do know we should continue to challenge it, to think of new ways to test it, and to think of alternative explanations, because that is what science is about and that is how we take good ideas and turn them into a rigorous and well-established understanding of the universe.
You would call these people pseudo-scientists, and yet your only argument an application of Occam's Razor (and as others pointed out, faulty understanding of principles). But that's the funny thing about Occam's Razor - it is dependant on one's personal opinion of what is the most likely, or most simple explanation. Some would consider making up new particles that we have never observed a real stretch, others consider tweaking the existing rules a hack. That someone has a different view of what is elegant than you, does not make their ideas pseudo-science. What matters is if they are predictive and falsifiable, which these are.
Honestly, if you can't tell the difference between people that present testable alternative hypothesis, and people whose best "theory" that they could present amounts to "does this not appear irreducible", then you are the one that needs a refresher on what is and is not science.
If someone sold audio books bundled with searchable pdfs, they would have my business in a heartbeat. For a lot of subjects, audio books are much more convienient than paper books, as you listen to them while you are doing something else like driving or cooking. But they are inferior to books for use as a reference. E-books are even better than hardcopies for searching and reference purposes, and are easier to store (I don't like owning walls of books) but are less enjoyable to read cover to cover. If you were to combine the two into one purchase you would have the best of all worlds.
As it is now, I never buy audio-books because I only ever listen to them once, and I won't buy e-books on their own because I can't stand reading that much material on a computer. Instead I'll either rent the audio-book, or buy the hardcopy. I would happily pay the retail price of an audio book for a bundled download, maybe even a little more.
I have never liked the term viral applied to the GPL, not because I want to hide the fact that you have to license your modifications under the GPL, but because it was deliberately chosen for its negative connotations, and isn't really an accurate description of how the GPL works anyway.
The main criterion for something being viral is that it is self-propagating. It goes and injects itself into your body (or computer, or software) without permission. The GPL doesn't do this. You choose to use the GPL in exchange for putting your code under the GPL, or you choose not too.
Secondly, viruses are almost always regarded as a negative thing. Not only does it sneak in behind your back, but it makes you sick, slows down your computer, brings networks to their knees and sends your personal information out to shady people. Neither I nor thousands of other free software developers consider releasing software under the GPL to be harmful to us.
People have been burned by writing large pieces of software that used GPLed code in it, without understanding what their obligations under the GPL were until they had already made a significant investment into using it. It is a shame that those misconceptions occur, but it wasn't because the GPL tricked them into it. The FSF and other free software developers don't want to dupe their users into doing something that they don't want. We want them to make informed decisions about how they use their code.
The use of the word viral to describe the GPL feeds off of misunderstandings to create the appearance of malice where it doesn't exist, and that is why it shouldn't be used.
I guess they could just use non-DRM AAC for the DRM.
Oh wait.
It was pretty obvious that he was talking about DRMed AAC files. If you are going to be pendantic about the name you might as well yell at him for using the term WMA when he meant Janus DRM.
All DRM is easily cracked unless the keys are burned into hardware. The point is to make it complex enough that most people won't bother. Given that this is for online listening only, they'll probably just use a flash-based player. That way it works for "everyone", and most people won't know or care where it is downloading the actual files from. If they really want to get fancy, they could implement some sort of authentication to prevent programs other than the flash player to connect to the file server. The flash player could have it's keys changed as often as they like. Writing a program that scrapes the key from the player and uses it to download the files, would violate the DMCA, and could be prosecuted. The number of connections from a single IP could be limited or logged to find people that were bypassing the flash player and going straight to the files.
At that point it would be easier and safer to use a filesharing program or burn a friend's CD.
I can't think of any IT departments that buy Alienware PCs. The only people that buy them are gamers, most of whom are capable of using a screwdriver, so building your own is a better way to go. In fact, the most time-consuming part of building your own machine is figuring out what components are fast and reliable at the moment, so getting the specs from a company that does guarantee their machines is a really good suggestion.
For a low-end desktop, a home-built machine can't beat Dell's prices. In the IT world, the labor costs of building your own far outshadow the savings in purchase price. But for a hot-rod gaming machine, building your own is still the way to go.
Clinton tried for years to open up stem-cell research using embryos from pregnancy clinics, but the Republican dominiated congress ammended or voted down any law he put forth. People are right to place the blame on the republicans (and religious right) for the lack of funding for stem-cell research. Putting it all on the current "head" of the party isn't exactly correct, but not completely off base.
PS - sorry for using wikipedia as a reference, I'm at work and don't have time to look up a better one.
Or Neil Gaiman's Death.
If ideas are so difficult to develop then why has almost every major invention been developed independantly by multiple people?
Creating a quality product has less to to with a single big idea and more to do with getting all the little details right. Which is why Blackberries are still the best handheld email device , even though many others have come along, and why the iPod was so successfull even though many other mp3 players existed before it.
Common editors, you have been doing this for how long, and you still don't know the difference between patents and trademarks?
I am surprised that more devices don't use a (mouse-like) scroll wheel for navigation like the Blackberry or Rio Karma. It is much nicer than the up-down buttons that are universal for cellphone menu navigation. It has an advantage over the apple touch-wheel in that you have tactile feedback for moving up/or down a single menu item - on my iPod I am constantly moving two spaces when I meant to move one. Of course it has the disadvantage of having to pick up your finger. As far as reliability goes, I know the Rio Karma had problems with it breaking, but that device had QA issues galore, and AFAIK they seem to survive on the Blackberry just fine. Is the use of a scroll-wheel on a handheld device patented by RIM or someone else?
Evolution selects for traits that are sufficient for the current environment, and does not necisarrily result in "improvement" in general. In CmdrTaco's case, he has become perfectly adapted for the situation of holding a job where "pants are optional".
I am definately going to upgrade. I skipped over Tiger, as none of the improvements aimed for users mattered to me - my files are better organized than my house, so spotlight wasn't a big deal, and I am comfortable with applescript, so didn't care about automator. Dashboard looked spiffy but not really worth the upgrade. The new development features looked sweet, but I don't do any Mac development professionally, knew I wouldn't have time to play with them on my own, as a big deadline was approaching.
The two big user features anounced for Leopard on the other hand, are both very important to me. While expose is much nicer than a window list, I often have over 50 windows open when working on some projects, and have been dying for X11-like virtual displays to group them (the third party ones I tried didn't hack it). Timeline looks very convenient, and more importantly, it looks like a backup system easy enough for my parents to use. I have been meaning to get them a mac ever since the intels came out (they have one or two windows programs they can't do without), but this clenches it.