So, given that I've bought my blank media, I've paid my piracy tax -- isn't this an implicit license to copy the material?
Not in the legal sense, but I certainly agree that you're morally entitled to copy music onto it now that you've already been established to be guilty (and even paid for it).
Some more authentic ones.
on
Fling-A-Keg
·
· Score: 1
These ones are built from historical references. They have a larger one now, with ranges in excess of 200m.
The record industry's absurd claims about how much money is being lost to piracy is just as ridiculous as/. posters who justify their theft with "Well I wouldn't have bought it anyway."
So if you're on/., you are automatically disqualified from being someone who "wouldn't have bought it anyway"? Because unless some percentage of those 300 people who download a song "wouldn't have bought it anyway", the record industry's claims ARE valid.
Compare the spunky Princess Leia to the boring Padme -- where Princess Leia had to show a lot of fire and guts in facing Vader then escaping the Death Star, Padme was just kinda "there" [...]
I have to disagree. While Padme's actions (and, indeed, all of Ep1) are much more internalized and less action-oriented, she makes some very tough decisions. She also behaves as an actual queen, as opposed to a certain princess.
While ANH was a great action romp, TPM painted a much more interesting political behind-the-scenes picture, especially considering the larger context (Palpatine's rise to power).
How is this better than a device that can read the serial number on currency?
Harder to fake.
What's to stop the counterfeiters from including these chips in their money, too?
They'll presumably be exceedingly hard to obtain. Additionally, you could sign the serial number with a US Mint secret key, making it not only hard, but impossible for them to place a valid serial number in the chips even if they could procure them
How much extra is it going to cost to print money using this technology? Who is going to pay the cost?
The issuer of the money will of course pay. It will probably be more expensive, but then US money are already super cheap to make due to their practically non-existent anti-counterfeiting provisions.
What would happen...?
First of all, how would "disconnected transactions" help locate forgers? They wouldn't; only a scan which produced the wrong/no response would, and only at the point of use. Secondly, I expect any government would instantly recognize the infeasibility of tracking cash (or someone would be doing so right using serial number scanners.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
If people dislike the DVD restrictions so much, why do we buy them?
Simple: Because we want the movies, and more specifically because we want the picture quality, audio quality and extras that the format provides.
Mind you, most people I know have region-free DVD players, and just buy whichever versions they prefer (usually R1, since they come out earlier and often have more extras). Also, shops in Denmark sell both R1 and R2 discs (too little demand for others), so in practice, the region coding system is simply not in effect over here. Or rather, it's only in effect for those who don't know about it, or are not willing to pay extra to get earlier or better versions.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
If innocent people get burned, then the system is immoral and should be changed. As William Blackstone put it: "It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"Several" was a bit overstated, since "some" would be plenty to justify the existence of Dogme 95. Still: The Celebration, The Idiots, Mifune and Italian for beginners. Four films which did well at the box office, as well as received many awards and favorable reviews. Also some of the best movie experiences I've had in recent years.
It doesn't really matter if you've seen them (though I'd strongly urge you to if you haven't). The point is that they're good films which might not have existed, were it not for Dogme 95. If Dogma 2001 spawns four games offering experiences this good, I'll consider it a great success.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Whatever you may feel about the merits of the Dogme 95 rules (I myself find them pretentious and to a large degree superfluous), the undeniable fact is that several very good films have come out of them, as measured by awards, ticket sales, reviews and, most importantly, the films themselves.
Those same movies might have been made if they'd just gone "okay, poeple, let's make some good stories", or they might have required something as drastic as the Dogme rules. We'll never know, but if Dogma 2001 can be the catalyst for a similar rash of great games, then I say go for it--flawed idea or not.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
I agree that there is no reason to become overly worried about the technology from a content POV. However, Microsoft has to sign the drivers. This means that if XP (and content-controlled.wma or other formats using the same engine) gains enough market penetration, they will have unprecedented control over sound and video hardware manufacturers. That is what really scares me about their new technology.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
You're willing to shut off someone's connection for distributing spamming software, but if someone posts instructions for making a bomb, that's free speech?
No, he's willing to let private entities use any kind of filter they want. The issue here is not one of free speech. These are a bunch of people who have decided to use a filter on their network. Hell, they would be perfectly within their right to filter completely arbitrary IPs, or, to stay in your analogy, to filter according to a list which someone claimed contained IPs of people who made bombs (or had ever thought about making bombs, for that matter).
That said, this is very poor practice on the part of MAPS, and definitely something which would make me find out whether my provider used RBL, and switch if that were the case. But then, I wouldn't support a provider who used any kind of filter.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Unfortunately, having a.fr address does not guarantee you leave in France and the contrary is obviously the same.
Either the court will be satisfied that they're trying, or they'll simply have to get a list of all IP blocks assigned to french ISPs, and block out those at the routers. That'll also have the effect of creating a hell of a stir in France, when no-one can access any part of Yahoo (the funniest part will be those people with Yahoo emails).
This is probably what it'll take for them to wake up, and hopefully strike down some of these stupid laws in the process--and no, I will not sympathize with their excuses for having them, even though my country was just as occupied as France in WWII. People died in that war to combat exactly this kind of evil.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
I doubt the Norwegian Parliament would give him an award for publishing it if it were illegal!!
Of course, that might still mean it were illegal in the EU, as Norway isn't a member state.
Reverse engineering is, fortunately, completely legal in the EU, although several multinational organizations are lobbying hard for a change. Included in the mix are the recording and film industry's international organizations, such as IFPI, Microsoft and other software firms, and the US government (presumably because they feel that others need to share the misery that is the DMCA). So it might not be too long before we Europeans get a DMCA of our very own to fight:/
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
How will we ever preserve things for future generations with our current technologies?
This is a very interesting question indeed. We're spending enourmous amounts of resources on restoring old paper records, yet we store much of our current data on media that degrades even faster than paper. Very few organizations consider this at all, unless they actively need the data on a regular basis. I'll bet a lot of data is currently archived on tapes that will degrade before anyone needs them again.
Another thing that can keep data accessible is increased storage needs: At the Danish Meteorological Institute where I sysadmin'ed at one point, they need to access their terabytes of old weather data for research projects. More importantly, they store more and more weather data, and so their storage needs grow fast enough that they actually migrate all existing data to a new tape system every 10 years at the very least. This is unfortunately rare.
An ironic thing about this whole data preservation problem: With privacy being such a hot topic, it's interesting to note that the data being compiled by DoubleClick and their ilk is exactly the kind of data that future historians would love to get their hands on! Is our privacy more important than future generations? I know, a spurious question, but it leads to an important point: Historians are increasingly focusing their efforts on discovering how the common man/woman lived. Data about these things is as important to preserve as headlines and politics. This kind of data is currently being collected (and massively, at that), but is it preserved? Will anyone want to make that data live on when DoubleClick dies, if the data isn't personally identifiable?
Also, somewhat off-topic, current IP legislation means that copyright lasts longer than most media. This is definitely not helping us preserve our cultural heritage.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
If you're using "Linux" tools under Windows, the question changes from Why develop on Linux? to Why develop on Windows?
A lot of people I know are forced by management to run Outlook (so that they can schedule meetings and so on). This means that their choice boils down to either purchasing VMware (out of their own pocket) or using the supplied Windows. Many also need Windows in order to test their work under IE5 (for web work).
That aside, however, I can't see any reason not to strive for the best of both worlds by installing Cygwin, Perl, Emacs etc. under Windows.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Because of the way windows works, you may see something like "PamelaAndersonMovie.mov.vbs", much like the ILOVEYOU virus had. But more often, Windows defaults to not showing the extension on.vbs files.
This is not entirely true--".mov" is usually also a registered extension (I think it is by default, in fact), so you'd see "PamelaAndersonMovie", with the VBScript icon. I doubt any of the people who have extensions turned off know what the different icons look like, though, so they click it anyway.
Which makes me wonder: Am I the only one with the distinct sensation that only the clueful users actually know and recognize different types of icons? I mean, they're supposed to make it easier for clueless users to figure out what things are, but in practice it seems that this is exactly the class of users who don't get them.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
From the user point of view, this change is really transparent. Just have a look!
Well, that certainly is transparent. In fact, I only realized I'd left yahoo.fr because yahoo.com recognized my username. I also found a couple of war memorabilia on there, although none of them had any swastikas.
So yes, Yahoo could be more up front about the fact that you're being moved to a non-french server, and it looks like the auction is being hosted on the French site. It isn't, however, so it's still an issue of wanting to punish someone for linking to a given piece of information, and thus still Wrong for a large number of reasons (among these the issues of deep linking and changing content).
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- this is not "France trying to rule the Internet". Yahoo France is a registered company here, and the problem was because these auctions were accessible from the yahoo.fr portal.
According to both the referenced articles, these items weren't accessible from yahoo.fr, only from yahoo.com--which yahoo.fr of course links to. That would mean that this, even before touching upon the content itself (or, indeed, the laws in question), is Yet Another Linking Lawsuit(TM), the very concept of which I hope we can agree is absurd. If, on the other hand, Reuter's and AP have it wrong, could you post a link to an article with the real facts?
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
If the Nazis occupied your country, killed your countrymen, killed and opressed you and your family, would you believe that people should have a right to carry Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols? Even if you're a so called Libertarian, can you be 100% sure how you'd feel after living through that?
Yes--and I'm Danish; they did occupy my country and kill my countrymen. Especially with a grandfather who fought in the war, and a great uncle who had to live in hiding for several years as a member of the Danish resistance, I am absolutely firm in my opinion that we should not stop anyone from carrying these symbols. Outlawing the Nazis would invalidate everything these two men were prepared to give their life for. Had either of them been killed by the Nazis, I would feel even more strongly about this. I want the Nazi scumbags in the open, where anyone can see how twisted and wrong they are. This is why I find the positions of France, Germany and others utterly wrong and immoral.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
I'd like to see a suggestion on how the French government could deal with the situation that does not include breaking thier own laws or ignoring them.
Here's a bunch: Do like Australia did and forbid hosting the things inside the country. Prosecute those who actually traffick in these kinds of items. Require all French ISPs to screen out the material. Fine people who view it anyway. Do anything you want in your own country, as long as you don't start imposing your law on other nations.
What's that, you say? The above suggestions won't keep anyone from viewing the material if they really want to? Well, duh. Welcome to the year 2000.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Can you just understand why we can't accept some people making money on a subject so many have die to fight against?
No. Living in Denmark, which was also occupied, I'm still unable to agree with banning the sale of historical artifacts, especially since it's such a self-centered position: You won't see any French court having a problem with the sale of Stalin, Mao or Idi Amin memorabilia, even though these dictators were even worse.
"These bad people were bad to
us, so you can't collect their stuff. Go ahead and collect stuff from all the other bad people, as long as they were bad far away".
In fact, I find this position of bigotry impossible to defend--even reprehensible in nature.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
And yes, I realize that the freedoms I seen deteriorate in the States aren't necessarily granted anywhere else in the world.
Not necessarily, no, but it is the UN itself which tries to promote the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), article 19 of which says:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Note the part about "imparting information and ideas through any media": The UN, if it attempted to actually remove speech that it found offensive, would be violating it's own UDHR.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
OTOH, it may be possible to simulate all of these things. But then your not really living, are you?
This is the whole "The Matrix" thing over again: Is there some magical quality that makes the world we currently perceive distinguishable from a bit-by-bit copy? In other words: If your brain receives the exact same input from the computer program as it would from your skin, how can it tell that it isn't real skin being shone upon by a real sun?
My theory is that it can't: Once you have the sensory information, the source of that information becomes impossible to determine, and thus irrelevant. Consequently, a perfect simulation is indistinguishable from the real thing. Not only would it feel just the same; you would be unaware that it wasn't. In fact, if someone were to tell you that it wasn't, you'd probably regard them as mystics.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Anybody know about what we can do about display efficiency in terms of power?
Electronic ink. All the major manufacturers are developing it; the main obstacle right now is update speed. My projection: We'll see monochrome E-Ink displays on the market for e-book type appliances within 2-3 years. The beauty with this technology is that they can achieve 300 DPI easily, and the speed isn't very important in this type of machine. Whether we'll se LCD-speed color E-Ink displays any time soon (if ever) is still a big question.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Slashdot Mirror
And that is precisely why we need legislation to make this explicitly legal (and even to make it impossible for peopl to opt-out).
Not in the legal sense, but I certainly agree that you're morally entitled to copy music onto it now that you've already been established to be guilty (and even paid for it).
These ones are built from historical references. They have a larger one now, with ranges in excess of 200m.
The record industry's absurd claims about how much money is being lost to piracy is just as ridiculous as /. posters who justify their theft with "Well I wouldn't have bought it anyway."
So if you're on /., you are automatically disqualified from being someone who "wouldn't have bought it anyway"? Because unless some percentage of those 300 people who download a song "wouldn't have bought it anyway", the record industry's claims ARE valid.
Compare the spunky Princess Leia to the boring Padme -- where Princess Leia had to show a lot of fire and guts in facing Vader then escaping the Death Star, Padme was just kinda "there" [...]
I have to disagree. While Padme's actions (and, indeed, all of Ep1) are much more internalized and less action-oriented, she makes some very tough decisions. She also behaves as an actual queen, as opposed to a certain princess.
While ANH was a great action romp, TPM painted a much more interesting political behind-the-scenes picture, especially considering the larger context (Palpatine's rise to power).
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Simple: Because we want the movies, and more specifically because we want the picture quality, audio quality and extras that the format provides.
Mind you, most people I know have region-free DVD players, and just buy whichever versions they prefer (usually R1, since they come out earlier and often have more extras). Also, shops in Denmark sell both R1 and R2 discs (too little demand for others), so in practice, the region coding system is simply not in effect over here. Or rather, it's only in effect for those who don't know about it, or are not willing to pay extra to get earlier or better versions.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"Several" was a bit overstated, since "some" would be plenty to justify the existence of Dogme 95. Still: The Celebration, The Idiots, Mifune and Italian for beginners. Four films which did well at the box office, as well as received many awards and favorable reviews. Also some of the best movie experiences I've had in recent years.
It doesn't really matter if you've seen them (though I'd strongly urge you to if you haven't). The point is that they're good films which might not have existed, were it not for Dogme 95. If Dogma 2001 spawns four games offering experiences this good, I'll consider it a great success.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Those same movies might have been made if they'd just gone "okay, poeple, let's make some good stories", or they might have required something as drastic as the Dogme rules. We'll never know, but if Dogma 2001 can be the catalyst for a similar rash of great games, then I say go for it--flawed idea or not.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
You're willing to shut off someone's connection for distributing spamming software, but if someone posts instructions for making a bomb, that's free speech?
No, he's willing to let private entities use any kind of filter they want. The issue here is not one of free speech. These are a bunch of people who have decided to use a filter on their network. Hell, they would be perfectly within their right to filter completely arbitrary IPs, or, to stay in your analogy, to filter according to a list which someone claimed contained IPs of people who made bombs (or had ever thought about making bombs, for that matter).
That said, this is very poor practice on the part of MAPS, and definitely something which would make me find out whether my provider used RBL, and switch if that were the case. But then, I wouldn't support a provider who used any kind of filter.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Unfortunately, having a .fr address does not guarantee you leave in France and the contrary is obviously the same.
Either the court will be satisfied that they're trying, or they'll simply have to get a list of all IP blocks assigned to french ISPs, and block out those at the routers. That'll also have the effect of creating a hell of a stir in France, when no-one can access any part of Yahoo (the funniest part will be those people with Yahoo emails).
This is probably what it'll take for them to wake up, and hopefully strike down some of these stupid laws in the process--and no, I will not sympathize with their excuses for having them, even though my country was just as occupied as France in WWII. People died in that war to combat exactly this kind of evil.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
I doubt the Norwegian Parliament would give him an award for publishing it if it were illegal!!
Of course, that might still mean it were illegal in the EU, as Norway isn't a member state.
Reverse engineering is, fortunately, completely legal in the EU, although several multinational organizations are lobbying hard for a change. Included in the mix are the recording and film industry's international organizations, such as IFPI, Microsoft and other software firms, and the US government (presumably because they feel that others need to share the misery that is the DMCA). So it might not be too long before we Europeans get a DMCA of our very own to fight :/
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
How will we ever preserve things for future generations with our current technologies?
This is a very interesting question indeed. We're spending enourmous amounts of resources on restoring old paper records, yet we store much of our current data on media that degrades even faster than paper. Very few organizations consider this at all, unless they actively need the data on a regular basis. I'll bet a lot of data is currently archived on tapes that will degrade before anyone needs them again.
Another thing that can keep data accessible is increased storage needs: At the Danish Meteorological Institute where I sysadmin'ed at one point, they need to access their terabytes of old weather data for research projects. More importantly, they store more and more weather data, and so their storage needs grow fast enough that they actually migrate all existing data to a new tape system every 10 years at the very least. This is unfortunately rare.
An ironic thing about this whole data preservation problem: With privacy being such a hot topic, it's interesting to note that the data being compiled by DoubleClick and their ilk is exactly the kind of data that future historians would love to get their hands on! Is our privacy more important than future generations? I know, a spurious question, but it leads to an important point: Historians are increasingly focusing their efforts on discovering how the common man/woman lived. Data about these things is as important to preserve as headlines and politics. This kind of data is currently being collected (and massively, at that), but is it preserved? Will anyone want to make that data live on when DoubleClick dies, if the data isn't personally identifiable?
Also, somewhat off-topic, current IP legislation means that copyright lasts longer than most media. This is definitely not helping us preserve our cultural heritage.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
If you're using "Linux" tools under Windows, the question changes from Why develop on Linux? to Why develop on Windows?
A lot of people I know are forced by management to run Outlook (so that they can schedule meetings and so on). This means that their choice boils down to either purchasing VMware (out of their own pocket) or using the supplied Windows. Many also need Windows in order to test their work under IE5 (for web work).
That aside, however, I can't see any reason not to strive for the best of both worlds by installing Cygwin, Perl, Emacs etc. under Windows.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Because of the way windows works, you may see something like "PamelaAndersonMovie.mov.vbs", much like the ILOVEYOU virus had. But more often, Windows defaults to not showing the extension on .vbs files.
This is not entirely true--".mov" is usually also a registered extension (I think it is by default, in fact), so you'd see "PamelaAndersonMovie", with the VBScript icon. I doubt any of the people who have extensions turned off know what the different icons look like, though, so they click it anyway.
Which makes me wonder: Am I the only one with the distinct sensation that only the clueful users actually know and recognize different types of icons? I mean, they're supposed to make it easier for clueless users to figure out what things are, but in practice it seems that this is exactly the class of users who don't get them.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
From the user point of view, this change is really transparent. Just have a look!
Well, that certainly is transparent. In fact, I only realized I'd left yahoo.fr because yahoo.com recognized my username. I also found a couple of war memorabilia on there, although none of them had any swastikas.
So yes, Yahoo could be more up front about the fact that you're being moved to a non-french server, and it looks like the auction is being hosted on the French site. It isn't, however, so it's still an issue of wanting to punish someone for linking to a given piece of information, and thus still Wrong for a large number of reasons (among these the issues of deep linking and changing content).
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
- this is not "France trying to rule the Internet". Yahoo France is a registered company here, and the problem was because these auctions were accessible from the yahoo.fr portal.
According to both the referenced articles, these items weren't accessible from yahoo.fr, only from yahoo.com--which yahoo.fr of course links to. That would mean that this, even before touching upon the content itself (or, indeed, the laws in question), is Yet Another Linking Lawsuit(TM), the very concept of which I hope we can agree is absurd. If, on the other hand, Reuter's and AP have it wrong, could you post a link to an article with the real facts?
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
If the Nazis occupied your country, killed your countrymen, killed and opressed you and your family, would you believe that people should have a right to carry Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols? Even if you're a so called Libertarian, can you be 100% sure how you'd feel after living through that?
Yes--and I'm Danish; they did occupy my country and kill my countrymen. Especially with a grandfather who fought in the war, and a great uncle who had to live in hiding for several years as a member of the Danish resistance, I am absolutely firm in my opinion that we should not stop anyone from carrying these symbols. Outlawing the Nazis would invalidate everything these two men were prepared to give their life for. Had either of them been killed by the Nazis, I would feel even more strongly about this. I want the Nazi scumbags in the open, where anyone can see how twisted and wrong they are. This is why I find the positions of France, Germany and others utterly wrong and immoral.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
I'd like to see a suggestion on how the French government could deal with the situation that does not include breaking thier own laws or ignoring them.
Here's a bunch: Do like Australia did and forbid hosting the things inside the country. Prosecute those who actually traffick in these kinds of items. Require all French ISPs to screen out the material. Fine people who view it anyway. Do anything you want in your own country, as long as you don't start imposing your law on other nations.
What's that, you say? The above suggestions won't keep anyone from viewing the material if they really want to? Well, duh. Welcome to the year 2000.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Can you just understand why we can't accept some people making money on a subject so many have die to fight against?
No. Living in Denmark, which was also occupied, I'm still unable to agree with banning the sale of historical artifacts, especially since it's such a self-centered position: You won't see any French court having a problem with the sale of Stalin, Mao or Idi Amin memorabilia, even though these dictators were even worse.
In fact, I find this position of bigotry impossible to defend--even reprehensible in nature."A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Not necessarily, no, but it is the UN itself which tries to promote the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights), article 19 of which says:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Note the part about "imparting information and ideas through any media": The UN, if it attempted to actually remove speech that it found offensive, would be violating it's own UDHR.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
This is the whole "The Matrix" thing over again: Is there some magical quality that makes the world we currently perceive distinguishable from a bit-by-bit copy? In other words: If your brain receives the exact same input from the computer program as it would from your skin, how can it tell that it isn't real skin being shone upon by a real sun?
My theory is that it can't: Once you have the sensory information, the source of that information becomes impossible to determine, and thus irrelevant. Consequently, a perfect simulation is indistinguishable from the real thing. Not only would it feel just the same; you would be unaware that it wasn't. In fact, if someone were to tell you that it wasn't, you'd probably regard them as mystics.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Electronic ink. All the major manufacturers are developing it; the main obstacle right now is update speed. My projection: We'll see monochrome E-Ink displays on the market for e-book type appliances within 2-3 years. The beauty with this technology is that they can achieve 300 DPI easily, and the speed isn't very important in this type of machine. Whether we'll se LCD-speed color E-Ink displays any time soon (if ever) is still a big question.
"A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."