Drawing too much attention to yourself on a battlefield tends not to be the best of ideas. Since they enemy then knows where to target their weapons
What weapons though? Projectiles? This thing is designed to shoot them down, and it's not going to get harder if they're aimed right at it. Other beam weapons? Well, then you're in a line-of-sight slugging match, and the best technology (and economy) wins.
Actually, the biggest downside that I can see if the increased chance of friendly fire incidents. If you have a system that is designed to respond to a threat within seconds, you're really going to have to pick up the IFF and battlefield communication.
Re:More bias/social engineering from the hawks at
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this is a LOBBYING EFFORT to raise taxes for yet another military boondoggle. It's just pretend news
Yup. Let's not forget that during the Gulf War, the press was reporting that Patriots were shooting down 90%+ of the Scuds raining down on Kuwait and Israel.
As it turned out, what the military was very carefully claiming was a 90%+ "interception" rate. The press cheerfully interpreted that as "shooting down". In the enquiries afterwards, it turned out that "interception" meant that the Patriot had exploded in the vicinity of the Scud. When pressed as to how many Scuds had actually been shot down by Patriots, the number of confirmed kills turned out to be of the order of zero. Zilch. Nada.
And also let's not forget that early laser tests were carried out on flimsy target drones painted black.
So when I read an article saying that a laser has "destroyed" 25 Katyusha rockets, I take it with a huge pinch of salt. Where did the word "destroyed" come from? 25 out of how many launches? What colour were they painted, and what modifications had been made to them (like covering them in thermite to simulate "future enhancements" to the laser)?
I'll believe it when the grunts say it's working, and not before.
preaching to the/. choir is pointless. There's only one number the politicians will look at. And it's [opinion polls]
You're being too simplistic. Other numbers that can effect their decision:
Number of $50 bills in the brown paper bag passed under the table in the diner.
Number of roofied cheerleaders in the back of the limo.
Number of useless idiot nephews who can be given PR jobs with a fat expense account and no job description within the bidder's company.
This isn't meant to be funny. We have honest politicians, but not enough, and a system where 90% of career incumbents are re-elected doesn't exactly encourage honesty or integrity.
I think we've already lost the national ID card argument. All we have to worry about now is how well the system is implemented, and how many false positives it will generate when despatching the MIBs to apprehend evil doers. Given that law enforcement in increasingly using SWAT tactics these days (whether they're trained in them or not) even for such dangerous criminals as computer crackers, I'd hope that whatever system we settle on actually works, especially if it's going to be used by all branches of government at all levels.
If Sally Secretary is going to initiate a paramilitary action against Karl Kracker just by typing in his ID number, I'd far rather that there are safeguards in place to ensure that the goons actually go to Karl's house and not mine. In that respect, an Oracle system might be the least of a host of evils.
Consider the alternative: who do you want to make go away today?
I work in a small company (50 employees) so I've never seen really big networks. But somehow, 2000 computers doesn't seem like [that many]
5000+, not 2000. But 50 is an interesting number. It's approaching the limit of systems that one guy can set up and physically keep track of.
Once you're over that number, you're delegating and trusting your minions and (heh heh) your users not to screw it up. The best initial setup in the world won't help if Vinny Volunteer decides to start screwing with it. If I was setting this up (god forbid), I'd be looking to install absolutely minimal systems with no floppy (or locked floppy), no CD-ROM and perhaps even (gasp) diskless workstations that boot from the network.
If I was really freaked about security, I might even take a leaf out of Microsoft's book and ponder security through obscurity. Windows - no thanks. Every Joe Backoffice thinks he knows how to fiddle with that. Linux would be better, but Linux users tend to be tinkerers, and they might have a stab at BSD as well. MacOS - god knows if you can lock that down. Strange thought, but how about OS/2? Or even something wierder like VMS? Runs on a toaster, solid as a rock, you'd need nuts the size of Nebraska to try fiddling with it.
These will be total failures. [...] Maybe they are being set up to fail?
When this sentiment was being touted a year and a half ago, it was viewed as cynical paranoia. Now I'm hearing it more and more, and I think a lot more people are getting it.
We enjoy chuckling at the apparently idiocy of the music industry, and their attemps to charge us for content in formats that we don't want, and we think we're oh so clever for cracking each attempt as it comes. It's funny right now, but he who laughs last laughs longest.
I think we need to wake up and realise that the music industry isn't run by idiots. It's run by ruthless bastards who will go to any lengths to protect their monopolies. They do see a genuine threat in file sharing, a situation that they've brought on themselves by selling overpriced albums full of filler. They could change their model to compensate (drop the million dollar videos, for example) but I think they reckon they don't have to.
Every time one of these schemes falls flat, it gives them a littel more ammunition to use to force an SSSCA through a Congress that's proved to be a real soft touch for business. They'll just make it illegal to own hardware and software that's capable of accessing raw data, and if you believe that's unthinkable, consider how you might vote on an issue that bored you (e.g. taxation or construction regulations) if you've just been treated to a limosine full of roofied cheerleaders, or a big paper bag full of unmarked non sequential small bills.
So while it's great that we'll no doubt crack this in a few days and show just how idiotic a scheme it is, let's not get distracted. The long term objective here is to keep letting our elected representatives know that we're watching them, and that we know exactly what's going on. We'll buy music when it's offered to us on our terms: high quality (content and encoding), with a price that reflects the production of the music - not the marketing or the videos - and without any content control. If you treat us like thieves, you'll just keep encouraging us to act like thieves. Although, as sulli says, maybe that's exactly the intention.
Re:What it'll do for me
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Clueless. Compare pollution generated by even small diesel scooters with pollution generated by generating power in massive amounts for use by electric vehicles
Doofus (as we're swapping insults). Compare pollution generated by the construction, maintenance and use of any powered vehicle with lifetime pollution caused by bicycles, push scooters, rollerblades or feet.
Did you miss the part where I said Joe Sixpack would overcharge his NiCd/NiMH's? He will. He'll also dump them into a landfill when they stop getting him to the Kwik-e-Mart and back.
I'm not saying this is worse than a fossil fuelled vehicle, but it's not zero pollution, which is what I was responding to. Read the context before mouthing off.
Re:IT's not for you!
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Its for postmen
And walking is so bad beeeeecause? Does it make a lot of sense to have to lug a 30kg lump of metal up and down stairs and rough paths, or leave the same $3000 trinket standing around while you go and deliver items?
and chinamen. Ever been to a crowded asian city? What a nightmare
So, it is going to shove pedestrians off the sidewalks to be mown down by bicycles and motor vehicles, or do you see people doing the honourable thing and taking to the roads themselves to be mown down by bikes and motor vehicles?
This thing does 8mph, is less manouverable than a pedestrian but less predictable than a bicycle in where it's going, costs a lot (technology and raw materials, not just inflated US retail price), has *ongoing* costs in replacing the NiCd / NiMH cells and requires about a jillion power outlets everywhere. Maybe you're right, but the bicycle seems to be doing a fair job as it is, and I'm not seeing a huge incentive to switch.
Re:Innovation? Yes. Better than a scooter? No.
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Have you ever tried to balance on a scooter? This thing is revolutionary, I tell you
Uh, have you ever tried to balance on a Segway? This thing is marketing, I tell you.
Re:Speaking of retards.
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the elderly
Who won't be able to lug it around everywhere, but will have to leave $3000 worth of aspirational toy parked up outside the Kwik-e-mart.
the handicapped
But this presupposes someone who can stand for long periods of time but not walk. How are they going to lug it around with the power off?
people too young for a driver's license
And too rich to consider a bike, or rollerblades? Oh, how my heart does bleed for them.
people who live in communities with noise-abatement laws
See my previous comment, but add a derisory snort.
This is a trinket. All your high ideals won't make it otherwise.
Re:What it'll do for me
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Get around town generating absolutely no pollution
Apart from the pollution produced by the plant charging up your NiCd / NiMH cells. Oh, and the pollution from replacing the cells ever few months after you ("you" being Joe Sixpack in this case) overcharge them and give yourself a range of about ten yards.
Once again for luck: storage cell technology is not the answer.
Re:Why can't anyone see the implications of this?
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Can't you see that a vehicle which uses Dynamic Stability to be driven as an extension of your own body movements is a great innovation?
I see that it'll be great for lawyers.
You fall off a bike or scooter because you have lousy balance - your fault.
You fall off one of these because it failed to fix your lousy balance - lawsuit!
Just for the record I was interviewed by two secret service agents today over a comment I made on another internet forum
Assuming this is true, then it's a sad, sad indictment of the "intelligence" services.
You posted a discussion of a hypothetical scenario for infecting the Vice President with a curable disease. Similar scenarios can be found in any number of Tom Clancy-esque pulp novels. You detailed why the method you suggested probably wouldn't work. You used your real name, and you provided your full details and address voluntarily, a few clicks away.
And the secret service decided that it was a good use of their resources to send a couple of goons to check your loyalty?
OK, the SS screwed the pooch on September 11th. They'll be super paranoid now (in the proper clinical sense). But if they can't distinguish between jawing and plotting, they have no chance of stopping the next attacks. None.
For what it's worth, it sounds like you handled this the right way. The agents themselves probably weren't morons. The problem is with the moron who sent them. He or she needs a good kicking.
For the record, one way to do this would be to trip him or her up, then kick him or her sharply and repeatedly in the kidneys.
Uh oh. What have I said? Now evil terrorists will know how to do it! Where should I report for my loyalty check?
He was talking about "non-Americans" not everyone visiting America or illegally enterying America is an American
Remind me, do we hold it self evidently true that all Americans are created equal?
If we can place historical revisionism aside for a second, let's not forget that the writers of the US constitution actually considered themselves as British (or German). Their point was that people of other nations must be treated with respect. "Other" from their (initial) point of view mean "America".
<sarcasm> What exactly is the big problem with letting people decide for themselves to get totally messed up on steroids, let alone genetic modification? </sarcasm>
The problem, as you well know, is that it screws people up, and often they're not given a choice.
Right. We can address that in two ways:
We can genetically engineer our competitive nature out of ourselves.
We can ban all competitions, or at least all viewing or sponsorship of them. No, wait, that's actually just a special case of 1
Our competitiveness isn't going to go away, and banning all use of enhancements is delusional. Let's get enhancement of athletes out in the open, study and understand the effects, and allow governing bodies to make rational decisions about marginalising extreme examples of abuse. Banning everything will just encourage trainers to use everything, on the basis that you may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.
Before my cable monopoly upgraded its network, I couldn't get any service at all that wasn't long distance dialup. My advice to you: count your blessings, and find a different way to solve the problem.
Wait... do you think that your cable monopoly upgraded its network because:
A: You sat on your arse and counted your blessings.
B: You, or people like you, kept asking and expecting more from them.
No, I don't think counting your blessings is a particularly useful way of dealing with this issue long term. It's been my experience that whining and griping like a spoilt bitch is the only way to get action. The very same people who will berate you for doing that will be the first ones to jump onto the new services that you help to create through your demands.
Drug use is already endemic in professional athletics. Those athletes that don't use banned drugs benefit to various degrees from accessibility to non-banned training drugs, diets, therapy (including surgery), sponsorship and equipment
It's delusional to think that we can catch reliably all use of all banned substances, nor even that we'd want to unless we want some very, very empty stadia. We've already got athletes competing doped to the gills, with pins in their bones, covered in surgical scars and supportive strapping, and wearing cutting edge footwear and outfits. Cyborgs by any other name. So let's not get too worried over a bit more tweaking. It's only different by degree.
Yes, there's a very valid argument that drugs, training and now gene tweaking victimises vulnerable young athletes. But this happens in societies where these athletes generally wouldn't have any other prospects, so let's not get too preachy and overprotective.
Personally, I'd rather we stopped even pretending to disapprove of drug use, and say that you can do anything you like to yourself before or during the competition, but you'll compete in issue equipment, or naked. Hey, it was good enough for the Greeks.;-)
The law makes the distinction all the time between things whose main use is illegal and things that incidentally can be used for breaking the law.
Are you aware of the Sony Decision? That the Supremes decided that the "main use" of VCR's is illegal, but that even the possibility of non-infringing uses meant that the VCR itself could not be banned.
This was a clear precedent which is now being ignored by ignorant revisionist judges who are apparently being swayed by the completely extra-legal argument of "corporate/national interest". We have judges now who are not just misinterpreting the law, but are blatantly adding whole new clauses to it in an attempt to outdo each other in seeing the Big Picture and bring themselves to the attention of their masters in Congress (50% of whom are members of the American Bar Association, and who decide on promotion to the Supreme Court, so separation of powers my huge hairy ass).
Please go and do some basic research before you shoot your mouth off here.
DeCSS was explicitly developed to get access to the contents of DVD in a form that could be reprocessed and shared. Yes, I know this, I'm not guessing.
And yet strangely you don't feel any need to provide a single reference to back that up.
We're listening. But you can't change our minds just by making an assertion and then slinking back to the shadows.
LOTR, and it's supposed to be a simultaneous worldwide release on December 19th. How is it then, that in Austalia, it's being released on December 26th? Was he wrong
Release dates. Starting on Mexico on 7th December, UK on the 10th, the bulk on the 19th, 20th and 21st, then Australia on the 26th and the rest up to the 18th of January 2002, with Japan bringing up the read in March 2002.
Yes, that still blows chunks, but it's getting better. Much better. I recall SW:E1:TPM was supposed to be a worldwide release, but the US distributors nixed that to protect their markets (theatre, video sales and rentals) from pirate imports. It was futile, as VCD's (hard copies and down DSL and cable lines) of Phantom Menace came in from the far east almost immediately after launch. As this is a much tighter schedule, I wonder if maybe, just maybe, it's an admission that the concept of staggered releases is now pointless, and we're in a truly global market.
If you're going to pirate something, at least admit to yourself that you're ripping off someone
And there's the problem. To you, it's utterly clear that this is "ripping off", by which I assume you mean theft, that I am depriving someone of something which they have or to which you think they are absolutely entitled. You believe that I should see it this way, and that I am merely fooling myself, or pretending to fool myself otherwise.
The problem is, you're wrong on all counts. You're wrong that I'm fooling myself, and you're wrong that it's theft. I'll just assert that latter one, because that's all you did. It's clearly obvious to me that if the copyright owner (a music company, not an artist) failed to persuade me to pay the amount that they demand for access to the work on their terms, then they've already lost the sale, and so there's nothing left for me to deprive them of.
So you can sit there wagging your finger sternly and saying "This is right, this is wrong, that's the way it's always been, that's the way it always will be" while a new generation of music listeners sniggers quietly behind their hands - or laughs out loud at you - and gets on with doing what people have really always done, which is to redefine both morality and legality by the weight of their actions and opinions.
Our [Disney] tour guide said [...] some pervert had left up a XXX e-mail and changed the wallpaper [on a public terminal]. He wouldn't elaborate on what it was, but he said it shocked even him
Probably some of that sick, perverted, Godless Pixar stuff.;-)
it'd take a week or so to port [a game which used a mesa/openal engine] to Linux but noone is willing to do it
It would take a week in programmer planning time, which equates to about a month in real time of tweaking and wrestling with an unfamiliar compiler and debugger and coming up with different workarounds for the known buggy bits, then another six man months (minumum) of testing, and X thousand dollars training up support staff, and positioning a new development channel, and persuading retailers to carry the boxen. Then you sell 5 copies, and the project manager that authorised it is looking for another job.
Ex-games programmer speaking. I'd love to see more games developed cross platform from day 1, but it's a matter of brute economics. No matter how cheap it looks, the fixed overheads for developing, testing and supporting a Linux port override the sales potential. Even MacOS ports are risky propositions.
WineX is an interesting alternative. You really can spend a week tweaking to get your game to run on WineX, which might be worth the extra 1% sales you'll get through your existing channel. But there's still the tech support issue though; even if you put "WE DO NOT SUPPORT THIS PRODUCT UNDER WINEX" in Second Coming font all over it, people will still phone up and ask.
"I've bought versions of Windows many times over the years, and sometimes it does recognise all my hardware. When it doesn't instantly blue screen, sometimes I can play my favourite game for ten, twenty or even thirty minutes. Once I heard that someone completed a game under Windows, but it crashed a lot. Anyways, isn't Windows great?"
"Once we have reached our subscription goals, we plan to release all of the WineX source code under the Wine license, which will allow it to be directly integrated with the core Wine project code hosted at www.winehq.com. Until then, we will periodically submit selected portions of our code for integration with the Wine project."
Either you didn't know that, or you think they're liars and chose not to give them even the benefit of the doubt by bringing it to our attention. Of course, that still leaves the "problem" that WINE is BSD rather than GPL.
Here's the thing. If you, or another GPL evanglist wants to replicate Transgaming's work (or the whole of WINE) under a GPL license, there's nothing stopping you. They've even given you their source code to look at to help you clean room it. That fact that you choose not to do that does not reflect on Transgaming or WINE, it reflects on you.
Perhaps you think that it's better to have nobody doing this than to have a "poisoner" like Trangaming doing it? If you really think that, I'd be delighted to hear you explain why. Is it GPL or nothing for you, and if so, why not spend your time being part of the solution rather than casting slings and arrows at Transgaming?
Slashdot Mirror
What weapons though? Projectiles? This thing is designed to shoot them down, and it's not going to get harder if they're aimed right at it. Other beam weapons? Well, then you're in a line-of-sight slugging match, and the best technology (and economy) wins.
Actually, the biggest downside that I can see if the increased chance of friendly fire incidents. If you have a system that is designed to respond to a threat within seconds, you're really going to have to pick up the IFF and battlefield communication.
Yup. Let's not forget that during the Gulf War, the press was reporting that Patriots were shooting down 90%+ of the Scuds raining down on Kuwait and Israel.
As it turned out, what the military was very carefully claiming was a 90%+ "interception" rate. The press cheerfully interpreted that as "shooting down". In the enquiries afterwards, it turned out that "interception" meant that the Patriot had exploded in the vicinity of the Scud. When pressed as to how many Scuds had actually been shot down by Patriots, the number of confirmed kills turned out to be of the order of zero. Zilch. Nada.
And also let's not forget that early laser tests were carried out on flimsy target drones painted black.
So when I read an article saying that a laser has "destroyed" 25 Katyusha rockets, I take it with a huge pinch of salt. Where did the word "destroyed" come from? 25 out of how many launches? What colour were they painted, and what modifications had been made to them (like covering them in thermite to simulate "future enhancements" to the laser)?
I'll believe it when the grunts say it's working, and not before.
You're being too simplistic. Other numbers that can effect their decision:
This isn't meant to be funny. We have honest politicians, but not enough, and a system where 90% of career incumbents are re-elected doesn't exactly encourage honesty or integrity.
I think we've already lost the national ID card argument. All we have to worry about now is how well the system is implemented, and how many false positives it will generate when despatching the MIBs to apprehend evil doers. Given that law enforcement in increasingly using SWAT tactics these days (whether they're trained in them or not) even for such dangerous criminals as computer crackers, I'd hope that whatever system we settle on actually works, especially if it's going to be used by all branches of government at all levels.
If Sally Secretary is going to initiate a paramilitary action against Karl Kracker just by typing in his ID number, I'd far rather that there are safeguards in place to ensure that the goons actually go to Karl's house and not mine. In that respect, an Oracle system might be the least of a host of evils.
Consider the alternative: who do you want to make go away today?
5000+, not 2000. But 50 is an interesting number. It's approaching the limit of systems that one guy can set up and physically keep track of.
Once you're over that number, you're delegating and trusting your minions and (heh heh) your users not to screw it up. The best initial setup in the world won't help if Vinny Volunteer decides to start screwing with it. If I was setting this up (god forbid), I'd be looking to install absolutely minimal systems with no floppy (or locked floppy), no CD-ROM and perhaps even (gasp) diskless workstations that boot from the network.
If I was really freaked about security, I might even take a leaf out of Microsoft's book and ponder security through obscurity. Windows - no thanks. Every Joe Backoffice thinks he knows how to fiddle with that. Linux would be better, but Linux users tend to be tinkerers, and they might have a stab at BSD as well. MacOS - god knows if you can lock that down. Strange thought, but how about OS/2? Or even something wierder like VMS? Runs on a toaster, solid as a rock, you'd need nuts the size of Nebraska to try fiddling with it.
When this sentiment was being touted a year and a half ago, it was viewed as cynical paranoia. Now I'm hearing it more and more, and I think a lot more people are getting it.
We enjoy chuckling at the apparently idiocy of the music industry, and their attemps to charge us for content in formats that we don't want, and we think we're oh so clever for cracking each attempt as it comes. It's funny right now, but he who laughs last laughs longest.
I think we need to wake up and realise that the music industry isn't run by idiots. It's run by ruthless bastards who will go to any lengths to protect their monopolies. They do see a genuine threat in file sharing, a situation that they've brought on themselves by selling overpriced albums full of filler. They could change their model to compensate (drop the million dollar videos, for example) but I think they reckon they don't have to.
Every time one of these schemes falls flat, it gives them a littel more ammunition to use to force an SSSCA through a Congress that's proved to be a real soft touch for business. They'll just make it illegal to own hardware and software that's capable of accessing raw data, and if you believe that's unthinkable, consider how you might vote on an issue that bored you (e.g. taxation or construction regulations) if you've just been treated to a limosine full of roofied cheerleaders, or a big paper bag full of unmarked non sequential small bills.
So while it's great that we'll no doubt crack this in a few days and show just how idiotic a scheme it is, let's not get distracted. The long term objective here is to keep letting our elected representatives know that we're watching them, and that we know exactly what's going on. We'll buy music when it's offered to us on our terms: high quality (content and encoding), with a price that reflects the production of the music - not the marketing or the videos - and without any content control. If you treat us like thieves, you'll just keep encouraging us to act like thieves. Although, as sulli says, maybe that's exactly the intention.
Doofus (as we're swapping insults). Compare pollution generated by the construction, maintenance and use of any powered vehicle with lifetime pollution caused by bicycles, push scooters, rollerblades or feet.
Did you miss the part where I said Joe Sixpack would overcharge his NiCd/NiMH's? He will. He'll also dump them into a landfill when they stop getting him to the Kwik-e-Mart and back.
I'm not saying this is worse than a fossil fuelled vehicle, but it's not zero pollution, which is what I was responding to. Read the context before mouthing off.
And walking is so bad beeeeecause? Does it make a lot of sense to have to lug a 30kg lump of metal up and down stairs and rough paths, or leave the same $3000 trinket standing around while you go and deliver items?
So, it is going to shove pedestrians off the sidewalks to be mown down by bicycles and motor vehicles, or do you see people doing the honourable thing and taking to the roads themselves to be mown down by bikes and motor vehicles?
This thing does 8mph, is less manouverable than a pedestrian but less predictable than a bicycle in where it's going, costs a lot (technology and raw materials, not just inflated US retail price), has *ongoing* costs in replacing the NiCd / NiMH cells and requires about a jillion power outlets everywhere. Maybe you're right, but the bicycle seems to be doing a fair job as it is, and I'm not seeing a huge incentive to switch.
Uh, have you ever tried to balance on a Segway? This thing is marketing, I tell you.
Who won't be able to lug it around everywhere, but will have to leave $3000 worth of aspirational toy parked up outside the Kwik-e-mart.
But this presupposes someone who can stand for long periods of time but not walk. How are they going to lug it around with the power off?
And too rich to consider a bike, or rollerblades? Oh, how my heart does bleed for them.
See my previous comment, but add a derisory snort.
This is a trinket. All your high ideals won't make it otherwise.
Apart from the pollution produced by the plant charging up your NiCd / NiMH cells. Oh, and the pollution from replacing the cells ever few months after you ("you" being Joe Sixpack in this case) overcharge them and give yourself a range of about ten yards.
Once again for luck: storage cell technology is not the answer.
I see that it'll be great for lawyers.
You fall off a bike or scooter because you have lousy balance - your fault.
You fall off one of these because it failed to fix your lousy balance - lawsuit!
No, I am not joking.
Assuming this is true, then it's a sad, sad indictment of the "intelligence" services.
You posted a discussion of a hypothetical scenario for infecting the Vice President with a curable disease. Similar scenarios can be found in any number of Tom Clancy-esque pulp novels. You detailed why the method you suggested probably wouldn't work. You used your real name, and you provided your full details and address voluntarily, a few clicks away.
And the secret service decided that it was a good use of their resources to send a couple of goons to check your loyalty?
OK, the SS screwed the pooch on September 11th. They'll be super paranoid now (in the proper clinical sense). But if they can't distinguish between jawing and plotting, they have no chance of stopping the next attacks. None.
For what it's worth, it sounds like you handled this the right way. The agents themselves probably weren't morons. The problem is with the moron who sent them. He or she needs a good kicking.
For the record, one way to do this would be to trip him or her up, then kick him or her sharply and repeatedly in the kidneys.
Uh oh. What have I said? Now evil terrorists will know how to do it! Where should I report for my loyalty check?
Remind me, do we hold it self evidently true that all Americans are created equal?
If we can place historical revisionism aside for a second, let's not forget that the writers of the US constitution actually considered themselves as British (or German). Their point was that people of other nations must be treated with respect. "Other" from their (initial) point of view mean "America".
The problem, as you well know, is that it screws people up, and often they're not given a choice.
Right. We can address that in two ways:
Our competitiveness isn't going to go away, and banning all use of enhancements is delusional. Let's get enhancement of athletes out in the open, study and understand the effects, and allow governing bodies to make rational decisions about marginalising extreme examples of abuse. Banning everything will just encourage trainers to use everything, on the basis that you may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.
Wait... do you think that your cable monopoly upgraded its network because:
No, I don't think counting your blessings is a particularly useful way of dealing with this issue long term. It's been my experience that whining and griping like a spoilt bitch is the only way to get action. The very same people who will berate you for doing that will be the first ones to jump onto the new services that you help to create through your demands.
Drug use is already endemic in professional athletics. Those athletes that don't use banned drugs benefit to various degrees from accessibility to non-banned training drugs, diets, therapy (including surgery), sponsorship and equipment
It's delusional to think that we can catch reliably all use of all banned substances, nor even that we'd want to unless we want some very, very empty stadia. We've already got athletes competing doped to the gills, with pins in their bones, covered in surgical scars and supportive strapping, and wearing cutting edge footwear and outfits. Cyborgs by any other name. So let's not get too worried over a bit more tweaking. It's only different by degree.
Yes, there's a very valid argument that drugs, training and now gene tweaking victimises vulnerable young athletes. But this happens in societies where these athletes generally wouldn't have any other prospects, so let's not get too preachy and overprotective.
Personally, I'd rather we stopped even pretending to disapprove of drug use, and say that you can do anything you like to yourself before or during the competition, but you'll compete in issue equipment, or naked. Hey, it was good enough for the Greeks. ;-)
Are you aware of the Sony Decision? That the Supremes decided that the "main use" of VCR's is illegal, but that even the possibility of non-infringing uses meant that the VCR itself could not be banned.
This was a clear precedent which is now being ignored by ignorant revisionist judges who are apparently being swayed by the completely extra-legal argument of "corporate/national interest". We have judges now who are not just misinterpreting the law, but are blatantly adding whole new clauses to it in an attempt to outdo each other in seeing the Big Picture and bring themselves to the attention of their masters in Congress (50% of whom are members of the American Bar Association, and who decide on promotion to the Supreme Court, so separation of powers my huge hairy ass).
Please go and do some basic research before you shoot your mouth off here.
And yet strangely you don't feel any need to provide a single reference to back that up.
We're listening. But you can't change our minds just by making an assertion and then slinking back to the shadows.
Release dates. Starting on Mexico on 7th December, UK on the 10th, the bulk on the 19th, 20th and 21st, then Australia on the 26th and the rest up to the 18th of January 2002, with Japan bringing up the read in March 2002.
Yes, that still blows chunks, but it's getting better. Much better. I recall SW:E1:TPM was supposed to be a worldwide release, but the US distributors nixed that to protect their markets (theatre, video sales and rentals) from pirate imports. It was futile, as VCD's (hard copies and down DSL and cable lines) of Phantom Menace came in from the far east almost immediately after launch. As this is a much tighter schedule, I wonder if maybe, just maybe, it's an admission that the concept of staggered releases is now pointless, and we're in a truly global market.
And there's the problem. To you, it's utterly clear that this is "ripping off", by which I assume you mean theft, that I am depriving someone of something which they have or to which you think they are absolutely entitled. You believe that I should see it this way, and that I am merely fooling myself, or pretending to fool myself otherwise.
The problem is, you're wrong on all counts. You're wrong that I'm fooling myself, and you're wrong that it's theft. I'll just assert that latter one, because that's all you did. It's clearly obvious to me that if the copyright owner (a music company, not an artist) failed to persuade me to pay the amount that they demand for access to the work on their terms, then they've already lost the sale, and so there's nothing left for me to deprive them of.
So you can sit there wagging your finger sternly and saying "This is right, this is wrong, that's the way it's always been, that's the way it always will be" while a new generation of music listeners sniggers quietly behind their hands - or laughs out loud at you - and gets on with doing what people have really always done, which is to redefine both morality and legality by the weight of their actions and opinions.
Neat! I posted a cut-and-paste of that sentence, so Transgaming have updated it very rapidly. Good for them.
Probably some of that sick, perverted, Godless Pixar stuff. ;-)
It would take a week in programmer planning time, which equates to about a month in real time of tweaking and wrestling with an unfamiliar compiler and debugger and coming up with different workarounds for the known buggy bits, then another six man months (minumum) of testing, and X thousand dollars training up support staff, and positioning a new development channel, and persuading retailers to carry the boxen. Then you sell 5 copies, and the project manager that authorised it is looking for another job.
Ex-games programmer speaking. I'd love to see more games developed cross platform from day 1, but it's a matter of brute economics. No matter how cheap it looks, the fixed overheads for developing, testing and supporting a Linux port override the sales potential. Even MacOS ports are risky propositions.
WineX is an interesting alternative. You really can spend a week tweaking to get your game to run on WineX, which might be worth the extra 1% sales you'll get through your existing channel. But there's still the tech support issue though; even if you put "WE DO NOT SUPPORT THIS PRODUCT UNDER WINEX" in Second Coming font all over it, people will still phone up and ask.
"I've bought versions of Windows many times over the years, and sometimes it does recognise all my hardware. When it doesn't instantly blue screen, sometimes I can play my favourite game for ten, twenty or even thirty minutes. Once I heard that someone completed a game under Windows, but it crashed a lot. Anyways, isn't Windows great?"
From the Transgaming sources page:
Either you didn't know that, or you think they're liars and chose not to give them even the benefit of the doubt by bringing it to our attention. Of course, that still leaves the "problem" that WINE is BSD rather than GPL.
Here's the thing. If you, or another GPL evanglist wants to replicate Transgaming's work (or the whole of WINE) under a GPL license, there's nothing stopping you. They've even given you their source code to look at to help you clean room it. That fact that you choose not to do that does not reflect on Transgaming or WINE, it reflects on you.
Perhaps you think that it's better to have nobody doing this than to have a "poisoner" like Trangaming doing it? If you really think that, I'd be delighted to hear you explain why. Is it GPL or nothing for you, and if so, why not spend your time being part of the solution rather than casting slings and arrows at Transgaming?