Depending on how carefully they word the rules, how about using the bottle as a launcher for something like a 20g aero-dart "vehicle" (aka projectile)? You'd probably need cinder blocks at the end of your course to stop it...;)
And let's not forget that it's also being used to cover the DMCA's tail. Disney & Co. want to keep the debate focussed on "How much further should we go," instead of "Why the hell did we go as far as the DMCA in the first place?"
They need a sign in Congress that says "Don't feed the lawyers".
Just as an FYI about 50% of both Congress and Senate are members of the American Bar Association, as were the outgoing President and her husband. Separation of powers, my huge hairy arse.
Look, this really isn't that bad. Thanks for the synopsis, Alien54, and the rest of you, read it first, then comment. A few of the stranger and nastier provisions are:
Triples the number of Border Patrol, Customs Service and INS inspectors at the northern border
Didn't all the September 11th hijackers enter openly and legally? What's with "Blame Canada"?
Grants authority to the president to restrict exports of agricultural products, medicine or medical devices to the Taliban or the territory of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban
Business as usual. The US people are the best and kindest in the world. The US government are stone cold evil murdering motherfuckers. It's a shame that so many of the people had to suffer for that.:(
The trouble with RSS's is that they're helluva frustrating. Ever played Hidden And Dangerous? And I'm not talking about the irritating crash bugs, the actual gameplay is so realistic that it can send you into screaming fits. You're crawling along in cover for ten minutes, then there's a crack and one of your men goes "Urgh" and curls up. You can't even see the enemy; in some missions, you can be shot from beyond the far clip plane. The solution is often to charge your 4 men forwards until you spot the sniper (getting cut down as you go), then reload the level, creep forwards, and saturate the far clip plane at that point with machine gun fire. A small tweak to the engine, to randomly place the enemy, would remove even this cheat, and make the game so "realistic" as to be unplayable.
So realism and gameplay don't necessarily go hand in hand. You have to allow some "cheats", like static enemy placement, which then ruins the value of the application as a training tool.
On the other hand, I'd rather see something like Hidden and Dangerous than Solider of Fortune. "Realism" in Soldier of Fortune means that you can blow your enemies into screaming, writhing piles of organs and detatched limbs (the ostensible message being that "Guns are no joke, kids!"), but the effect on enemy fire on you is to whittle a little off your health bar, and a medikit will fix that right back up and let you get back on with breaking the 1000 kill barrier. Just like in real life! Hmmm.
24-Oct-2001; the day I metamodded 10 decent comments that had all been modded Off Topic, Flamebait or Troll.
A bit off-topic, but I think mark more than half of the moderations as unfair, it silently discards your selections and subtracts a couple points of karma.
Oh, I know. The primary function of the moderation and karma system is to ensure conformance with the majority/. attitudes. Unpopular but insightful posts might stil get modded up, but the modders get punished in the metamodding. How delightful.
4: Game support (MS isn't saying "This isn't a gaming OS" this time, so things will be much better.)
That was always FUD plus early driver problems. I have exactly zero problems developing or running games on Win2K. With recent driver revisions from Nvidia and others, games even run marginally faster on Win2K than Win98.
The fast boot would be nice, but OTOH, I hibernate my Win2K. The only time that I actually shut it down is to swap out some hardware.
And it was very useful on WinME, for the few weeks I wasted on that abomination. OTOH, I've been developing on Win2K for a year, regularly changing my hardware and using every dodgy beta driver that I could get my hands on, and I've never once managed to get it into an unstable state. The recovery feature is nice, but it's about as useful as fitting airbags to a house.
I'm going out tonight to buy XP, but only because my gaming machine is 98, and I'd like a bit more stability in it
Why not buy Win2K? I know for a fact that some games now run slightly faster on Win2K than Win98SE, due to a switch in emphasis by driver developers. I've been developing and playing DirectX and OpenGL based games on Win2K for a year or so, and am generally happy with its stability and speed.
So really, why buy WinXP? It's just Win2K with phone home and some more GUI knobs and whistles that slow it down (that you'll immediately turn off if you're bothered about performance).
I'm betting that it was specification (as you said, it was a new model) and probably price.
I'll further bet that you didn't consider reliability (of that specific product, as it was new) or Dell's customer support or returns policy.
As long as we keep buying the cheapest, flashiest products, not the products made by the most reliable manufacturers, we're sending a clear message to them, and they will act on that message.
I was watching the mission control footage, when the satellite came out of Mars' shadow, two mission control geeks went to high five each other, and missed. That's NASA for you: nerding it old school.;-)
Although some of its 1,000 employees will get laid off as a result of the shutdown, DiGioia expects most will find employment somewhere else with AT&T Wireless. Those that don't, he said, will get help finding a job externally
Given the current telecomms climate, I expect that they'll be given the industry standard mentoring and advisement program:
"The door's over there. Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out."
While I'm thinking about it, you should actively help out by carrying a weapon with you everywhere. Not necessarily a firearm. A tazer, pepper spray, brass knuckles, you pick one.
No? It's against your contract to carry a weapon at work?
Since when did a contract override the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution?
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
For anyone not getting it, you are "the people". Not just the guy in the rentacop uniform, or even just the guy with the FBI badge. The security of the nation is under threat, and it is your personal responsibility to have and to bear the tools to protect it.
We've had decades of chipping away at this basic right, because it hasn't been necessary, because employers and airlines and the government have said "Sure, you can have arms, as long as they're the arms we say, and they're licensed, and you can even bear them, as long as you bear them where we say, and in the manner we say." We've accepted that it's OK to be told that if we don't like it, we don't have to get on a plane, or enter a school, or a Federal building, or a mall.
Once again for luck: the security of a free State is your personal responsibility.
Depending on your state see if you can get a permit to carry a concealed weapon around. Encourage co-workers to do the same who have clean backgrounds and no possible link to any terrorist organization
Welcome to the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution. An armed and effective militia. The Constitution places the defence of the nation in the hands of the people, not in the hands of a few appointed representatives.
Before you pack KY Jelly, make sure sodomy is not illegal in MD
Tsk tsk. KY has plenty of non sexual uses, quite apart from as a substitute or helper for natural vaginal lubrication (plus, it doesn't dissolve latex like oil based lubricants). Also, it's non toxic and edible, if you really want to make a point.;-)
Would you support my right to hire my own rentacop (or lawyer) and demand a right to search or question your rentacop before he approaches me, to ensure my personal security?
"Watching the watchers" in action. I'm happy with the necessity for this, but I can't help but feel that there will be one rule for "them" and another for "us", which rankles.
In other words; who's searching George W. Bush before letting him enter a Federal building? If that sounds extreme, then you draw the cut off line. Who is lofty enough to be presumed innocent and who is base, common and popular enough to be presumed guilty?
You should be *happy* they are doing these searches. They are protecting you. [My bold]
Sure, I'm happy about you searching Bob to protect me, and I'm sure Bob's happy about you searching me to protect Bob. But who's searching you?
I'd be OK about this as long as everybody gets searched. Management, executives, visiting politicos and dignitaries, the security guards themselves (sign me up, I'll do it), visiting police and federal agents, everyone up to and including George W. himself.
There cannot be one rule for them and another for us.
As an Israeli, I know that this should be moderated insightful, and not funny
It seems like everybody is knee-jerking on this one. Do you have a reference that shows statistics on how well the tight security in Israel has caught/discouraged terrorists?
Its too bad that when it crashes, and when it has problems, it will just be blamed on Microsoft
What an interesting comment. It's Microsoft specified hardware, running a Microsoft operating system modified by Microsoft, and the games are (allegedly) tested and certified by Microsoft (at great expense).
This isn't such a whacked out idea - Microsoft want to change from EULA (End User License Agreements) to a kind of EUUA (End User Usage Agreements), to prohibit people from using (e.g.) Frontpage to create anti-Microsoft content.
Using that precedent, if you can find an OS license that doesn't prohibit adding this kind of licensing restriction, then feel free to go for it. It should be an interesting experiment.
for scientific uses and in the industry, truly flexible and programmable computers will be needed
I'm sure the final SSSCA (or Son of SSSCA) will contain a provision to allow limited numbers of licensed unrestricted devices.
Compare with gun control. Bring in restrictions, little by little, arguing that there's no valid / legal / non-special interest use of unrestricted devices. Transfer responsibility from the users to the manufacturers. Assume that people are guilty, and make them people prove their innocence and good intent through registration. Get them used to the idea that their rights are now priveledges that they have to ask nicely for.
SSSCA actually leapfrogs gun control, but this is a first draft. Expect to see it watered down to something that doesn't look too bad - at first.
Casual recreational drug use is so widespread today that it's not so far from the mass civil disobedience and general contempt for "no victim" laws that we saw during prohibition. And the only material effect is to make a few crime lords very, very rich.
I do take your point about SSSCA being much like prohibition though. For "speakeasy", read "share-easy". Or for Orwell's conspiratorial whisper of "I have a room without an Eye in it", read "I have a CD-RW without an SSSCA chip in it."
My telephone. This is quite high-tech for a phone. I interact with it, and it's full of digital circuitry.
I hear you. I'm developing an IP phone right now. The one in front of me has 2 x RJ-45 and 2 x RJ-11 ports, and a text web browser on it. It also has blanks for USB and PS-2 ports in future versions, plus another couple of blanks for ports that I don't even know about yet. It's perfectly capable of sending and receiving copyrighted audio and text (eBooks?)
I'm having a hard time thinking how I could argue that it's exempt from SSSCA. There's a pretty thought for you; we'll have to tag any voice traffic originating on the RJ-11 as being owned by "public domain", or whatever scheme the SSSCA comes up with.
SSSCA is a nasty, dumb, horrid bill, and I hope it dies a huge death and is buried very deep, in a very dark place and never surfaces again. Ever.
Slashdot Mirror
Depending on how carefully they word the rules, how about using the bottle as a launcher for something like a 20g aero-dart "vehicle" (aka projectile)? You'd probably need cinder blocks at the end of your course to stop it... ;)
And let's not forget that it's also being used to cover the DMCA's tail. Disney & Co. want to keep the debate focussed on "How much further should we go," instead of "Why the hell did we go as far as the DMCA in the first place?"
Just as an FYI about 50% of both Congress and Senate are members of the American Bar Association, as were the outgoing President and her husband. Separation of powers, my huge hairy arse.
Look, this really isn't that bad. Thanks for the synopsis, Alien54, and the rest of you, read it first, then comment. A few of the stranger and nastier provisions are:
Didn't all the September 11th hijackers enter openly and legally? What's with "Blame Canada"?
Business as usual. The US people are the best and kindest in the world. The US government are stone cold evil murdering motherfuckers. It's a shame that so many of the people had to suffer for that. :(
Yet Another Realistic Soldier Sim?
The trouble with RSS's is that they're helluva frustrating. Ever played Hidden And Dangerous? And I'm not talking about the irritating crash bugs, the actual gameplay is so realistic that it can send you into screaming fits. You're crawling along in cover for ten minutes, then there's a crack and one of your men goes "Urgh" and curls up. You can't even see the enemy; in some missions, you can be shot from beyond the far clip plane. The solution is often to charge your 4 men forwards until you spot the sniper (getting cut down as you go), then reload the level, creep forwards, and saturate the far clip plane at that point with machine gun fire. A small tweak to the engine, to randomly place the enemy, would remove even this cheat, and make the game so "realistic" as to be unplayable.
So realism and gameplay don't necessarily go hand in hand. You have to allow some "cheats", like static enemy placement, which then ruins the value of the application as a training tool.
On the other hand, I'd rather see something like Hidden and Dangerous than Solider of Fortune. "Realism" in Soldier of Fortune means that you can blow your enemies into screaming, writhing piles of organs and detatched limbs (the ostensible message being that "Guns are no joke, kids!"), but the effect on enemy fire on you is to whittle a little off your health bar, and a medikit will fix that right back up and let you get back on with breaking the 1000 kill barrier. Just like in real life! Hmmm.
- 24-Oct-2001; the day I metamodded 10 decent comments that had all been modded Off Topic, Flamebait or Troll.
A bit off-topic, but I think mark more than half of the moderations as unfair, it silently discards your selections and subtracts a couple points of karma.Oh, I know. The primary function of the moderation and karma system is to ensure conformance with the majority /. attitudes. Unpopular but insightful posts might stil get modded up, but the modders get punished in the metamodding. How delightful.
That was always FUD plus early driver problems. I have exactly zero problems developing or running games on Win2K. With recent driver revisions from Nvidia and others, games even run marginally faster on Win2K than Win98.
The fast boot would be nice, but OTOH, I hibernate my Win2K. The only time that I actually shut it down is to swap out some hardware.
And it was very useful on WinME, for the few weeks I wasted on that abomination. OTOH, I've been developing on Win2K for a year, regularly changing my hardware and using every dodgy beta driver that I could get my hands on, and I've never once managed to get it into an unstable state. The recovery feature is nice, but it's about as useful as fitting airbags to a house.
Why not buy Win2K? I know for a fact that some games now run slightly faster on Win2K than Win98SE, due to a switch in emphasis by driver developers. I've been developing and playing DirectX and OpenGL based games on Win2K for a year or so, and am generally happy with its stability and speed.
So really, why buy WinXP? It's just Win2K with phone home and some more GUI knobs and whistles that slow it down (that you'll immediately turn off if you're bothered about performance).
Ask yourself this: what influenced your purchase?
I'm betting that it was specification (as you said, it was a new model) and probably price.
I'll further bet that you didn't consider reliability (of that specific product, as it was new) or Dell's customer support or returns policy.
As long as we keep buying the cheapest, flashiest products, not the products made by the most reliable manufacturers, we're sending a clear message to them, and they will act on that message.
I was watching the mission control footage, when the satellite came out of Mars' shadow, two mission control geeks went to high five each other, and missed. That's NASA for you: nerding it old school. ;-)
Given the current telecomms climate, I expect that they'll be given the industry standard mentoring and advisement program:
"The door's over there. Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out."
While I'm thinking about it, you should actively help out by carrying a weapon with you everywhere. Not necessarily a firearm. A tazer, pepper spray, brass knuckles, you pick one.
No? It's against your contract to carry a weapon at work?
Since when did a contract override the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution?
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
For anyone not getting it, you are "the people". Not just the guy in the rentacop uniform, or even just the guy with the FBI badge. The security of the nation is under threat, and it is your personal responsibility to have and to bear the tools to protect it.
We've had decades of chipping away at this basic right, because it hasn't been necessary, because employers and airlines and the government have said "Sure, you can have arms, as long as they're the arms we say, and they're licensed, and you can even bear them, as long as you bear them where we say, and in the manner we say." We've accepted that it's OK to be told that if we don't like it, we don't have to get on a plane, or enter a school, or a Federal building, or a mall.
Once again for luck: the security of a free State is your personal responsibility.
Welcome to the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution. An armed and effective militia. The Constitution places the defence of the nation in the hands of the people, not in the hands of a few appointed representatives.
- I know that sodomy is illegal in many states. Goat porn is also illegal.
Speaking from experience?Yup, sounds like someone hard to learn the hard way not to get the pictures of him sodomising a goat developed at Fotomat.
Tsk tsk. KY has plenty of non sexual uses, quite apart from as a substitute or helper for natural vaginal lubrication (plus, it doesn't dissolve latex like oil based lubricants). Also, it's non toxic and edible, if you really want to make a point. ;-)
Would you support my right to hire my own rentacop (or lawyer) and demand a right to search or question your rentacop before he approaches me, to ensure my personal security?
"Watching the watchers" in action. I'm happy with the necessity for this, but I can't help but feel that there will be one rule for "them" and another for "us", which rankles.
In other words; who's searching George W. Bush before letting him enter a Federal building? If that sounds extreme, then you draw the cut off line. Who is lofty enough to be presumed innocent and who is base, common and popular enough to be presumed guilty?
Sure, I'm happy about you searching Bob to protect me, and I'm sure Bob's happy about you searching me to protect Bob. But who's searching you?
I'd be OK about this as long as everybody gets searched. Management, executives, visiting politicos and dignitaries, the security guards themselves (sign me up, I'll do it), visiting police and federal agents, everyone up to and including George W. himself.
There cannot be one rule for them and another for us.
It seems like everybody is knee-jerking on this one. Do you have a reference that shows statistics on how well the tight security in Israel has caught/discouraged terrorists?
What an interesting comment. It's Microsoft specified hardware, running a Microsoft operating system modified by Microsoft, and the games are (allegedly) tested and certified by Microsoft (at great expense).
Who should we be blaming?
This isn't such a whacked out idea - Microsoft want to change from EULA (End User License Agreements) to a kind of EUUA (End User Usage Agreements), to prohibit people from using (e.g.) Frontpage to create anti-Microsoft content.
Using that precedent, if you can find an OS license that doesn't prohibit adding this kind of licensing restriction, then feel free to go for it. It should be an interesting experiment.
I'm sure the final SSSCA (or Son of SSSCA) will contain a provision to allow limited numbers of licensed unrestricted devices.
Compare with gun control. Bring in restrictions, little by little, arguing that there's no valid / legal / non-special interest use of unrestricted devices. Transfer responsibility from the users to the manufacturers. Assume that people are guilty, and make them people prove their innocence and good intent through registration. Get them used to the idea that their rights are now priveledges that they have to ask nicely for.
SSSCA actually leapfrogs gun control, but this is a first draft. Expect to see it watered down to something that doesn't look too bad - at first.
Casual recreational drug use is so widespread today that it's not so far from the mass civil disobedience and general contempt for "no victim" laws that we saw during prohibition. And the only material effect is to make a few crime lords very, very rich.
I do take your point about SSSCA being much like prohibition though. For "speakeasy", read "share-easy". Or for Orwell's conspiratorial whisper of "I have a room without an Eye in it", read "I have a CD-RW without an SSSCA chip in it."
I hear you. I'm developing an IP phone right now. The one in front of me has 2 x RJ-45 and 2 x RJ-11 ports, and a text web browser on it. It also has blanks for USB and PS-2 ports in future versions, plus another couple of blanks for ports that I don't even know about yet. It's perfectly capable of sending and receiving copyrighted audio and text (eBooks?)
I'm having a hard time thinking how I could argue that it's exempt from SSSCA. There's a pretty thought for you; we'll have to tag any voice traffic originating on the RJ-11 as being owned by "public domain", or whatever scheme the SSSCA comes up with.
SSSCA is a nasty, dumb, horrid bill, and I hope it dies a huge death and is buried very deep, in a very dark place and never surfaces again. Ever.