The problem with this is that should you actually try to "sell" the game you'll be in for a legal battle with the Big-N. You need to be licensed to sell games for any videogame console. The reason for this is that you have to pay license fees for each game sold.
However if you want to release agame under the GPL there isn't anything nintendo can do to you. There is of course a third option. Often times companies like konami will release a game from another smaller developer using thier brand. While this in effect means you've got two middle men, companies that can't otherwise sell legitimate gameboy advance games can use this method.
Usually this is most benificial for popular japanese rpg developers that make a great game but have no presence in america.
Well they iPod does 1394...
And the 1 GB microdrive is selling for $370.
I suppose Sony will probablly be the next out with a firewire portable HD Based mp3 player, possibly that is compatable with the PS2.
I'm also sure that all the major USB HD MP3 players will be announcing USB 2.0 support in the next model year.
The micro drive is pretty amazing, but I can't see myself buying one.
Well, Considering that they consider Microsoft a branch of the amercian govermnent, and are planning on using linux, I would hope that they focus on GPLed code. This would solve a couple problems neatly. First off Linux would have a rather large coder base with the political clout to get hardware vendors to support All the features of the latest in hardware.
Secondly if they're making GPL code they're contributing to the entire world, instead of 'stealing' jobs. In a truly global economy you can't 'steal' every money making industry from your neighbors. If you focus on one area another is loosing that focus, which means the other countries would have to mess up to loose in the short run even.
Although you can write closed source software even from linux machines, there is the potential for the chinese to break into new markets by writing software applications for linux that previously were only good quality on windows or mac.
For people really worried about china stealing all the jobs away I would like to point this out. Did all those $5 made in china radios and cassette players put Sony out of business? If china fails to pruduce better programmers with better code, then they will not be able to steal the market from anyone. On the other hand, if companies like microsoft are putting out an inferior operating system to the one the chinese are putting out, then yes they are at risk. Of course as long as the chinese base any OS development on linux that will ensure that it is released under the GPL, and as such other countries will be able to improve the code as well, for the benefit of all software developers -- except one.
step 1.) Connect to cable modem
step 2.) send an e-mail - subject: Hey Osama We're ready to blow up the Whitehouse Tomorrow
step 3.) let the FBI deal with it they carnivore captures the e-mail and puts it on their priority list to read.
You know I keep on hearing how bandwith costs have plummeted. And part of the internet bubble was how much companies could with simple modification 50X multiply the capacity of existing fiber. Then there was the story about how 50%+ of the backbone is unlit fiber.
Paradoxically DSL and cable internet providers are going out of buisness left and right. To be fair the cap on my cable modem recently went from 560/128 to 800/200 kbit/s so I at least have gained a small improvement in bandwith for my money.
Also, to be fair the best use I can think of for this 5000 foot ethernet technology is a Secure neighboorhood network. I could see a geek or two wiring a few dozen neighboors with underground phone cabling, charging for access to internet/mp3 collection;-)
Funny I've seen places already using existing copper for 10mbit ethernet... In fact it played all hell with their phone system because the cable was all unshielded.
While heart disease has been around for thousands of years (many high ranking chinese have been proven to have died of heart attacks) The contributing factors to it are 40% diet 40% exercise and 20% genetics. When salt was an expensive spice it was used exclusively for preserving foods, and as a seasoning for the rich. Most fatty foods were also out of the reach of most peasants. Fatty foods were by affordability eaten in moderation.
As for cancer, without exposure to 'modern' chemicals, technologies etc, the primary source of cancer would be sunlight. Skin cancer almost never goes malignant so that would leave only a handful of people actually dying of cancer.
Disease is the one area we've really made advances in. Most of the deadly illnesses we've reduced or eliminated tend only to be truly life threatening to the elderly. Anyone getting infected younger ends up immune. The bubonic plauge is one of the more deadly and outbreaks of it have changed history. In general though ever person 5 and under we keep from dying has exponential difference in average lifespan compared to keeping a 45 year old person from dying.
Also, Social Security is in danger not because people are living longer, but rather because people aren't having 8-9 kids instead they have 1-2 kids. Social security is the ultimate pyramid scheme, and the narrower the base becomes the harder it is to make it work.
When was the last time you heard anyone have any major gripes with the US government on TV or anywhere except the 'net? Hmmm... Patrick Norton of TSS was thrown in Jail for a poorly phrased comment about copying music digitally though. America isn't a police state, but we've been on the road to becoming one for a while.
As for the ukraine issue, well it's things like that people like Osama Bin Laden hate america for in part. If we don't want more people like him to be popping up we ought to consider how important an action is before making massive threats like tarrifs/embargos.
This is only with extremely old versions of ICQ. I can't believe you're still running the old icq98 client -- it's been four years already and that version crashed virtually every computer I ran it on.
Not only can you change your connection status independantly for each network, you can sustain multiple connections to each network. I currently find that I need to run two connections to AIM in order to see who is really online. This is probablly due to server side issues, it IS AOL afterall.
That bug is old news... I used it for months until I remembered my ICQ password. It's 9 charachters not 15 ICQ doesn't allow passwords greater than 8 characters. While some sites won't allow a password shorter than 8 characters ICQ won't allow a longer one... Nice to see how security conscious mirabilis was and still is now that AOL owns them.
Actually though I think the earliest ICQ implimentations performed the password authentication locally, which is why the 8 character limit on passwords exists in icq.
A 9 character password response meant the authentication was done by the client.
"There is this whole history that free software is developed often in the academic environment, where basically government money funded that work. And then commercial work is done. TCP/IP came out of the university environment. Now, 90 percent of the implementations you buy are commercially tuned and supported. And then the companies that do that commercial work pay taxes, create jobs, so the government keeps funding more research, primarily in universities. So that ecosystem where you have free software and commercial software, and customers always get to decide which they use, that's a very important and healthy ecosystem."
First of all, in many college based 'free' software it is the programmer or group of programmer who 'pays' for the development, in the manner of paying for thier education and sacraficing time they could have spent at a job, studying or with friends. In rare cases there are Government grants for that lobbyists have pushed through congress, because politicians are cheaper than developing the software yourself.
This is why GPL is a 'Threat.' It is a threat to government funding to get the best and brightest upcoming programmers to implement the newest developments in software. Under a "free" license the software company with the money to push these bills through congress will also be able to snap up patents and copyrights which the can then 'license' to third party developers.
Free software development is not a 'healthy' ecosystem. Many time the people who put the most effort into 'free' software have turned around to find themselves being sued out of exsitance for violating patents or copyrights on code they wrote. Worse still is the independant software developer, should they wish to write a routine they first have to check who has patents on that. Even if they wish to write from scratch they may have to pay as much as $25 per piece of software they 'ship' depending on what it is they're trying to do. This obviously benenfits the major players, those who have the money to get patents or copyrights on 'obvious' code. This is why as soon as a freeware or shareware app becomes good it's author finds themselves in deep legal waters. Once a program is 'good enough' it is a threat to anyone with a similar, more costly program. If that company has a legal staff they can sue, or better yet Cease-and-desist letter out of existance anyone who poses a threat.
Myself I don't mind that a company like say apple is capable of using BSD code to write a stable Operating system, as long as apple is crediting the authors and isn't turning around suing BSD developers. While not a scientific statistic according to google.com about 2,180 pages have the phrase "Microsoft Sues" on them. I didn't have any luck finding how many companies microsoft sued last year but I seem to recall it was twice as many as sued Microsoft. Also is you take away piracy the hit result is still over 1500. Some other interesting addendums is that adding the word 'patent' outsite the quotes narrows it to some 200 hits, and adding 'copyright' only narrows it to 1500 pages. In the interest of fairness "apple sues" matches 1500 hits and "linux sues" matches 7. However apparently "Linus sues" can't be found anywhere on the internet (until google indexes this page anyways.)
If I had to sum up the software development market in one catch phrase "Innovation through Litigation" is the one that comes to mind, although "If you can't code it, Sue for it." comes in a close second.
I tend to have a very good ear, not quite perfect pitch but I can always tell when something is off key, I just couldn't tell you what key it was or was supposed to be. It was my understanding that AC3 and higher bitrate mp3 are mathematically lossless, since only canaries, dogs, and elephants, and perhaps a few other animals can actually hear the removed segments. As for the Vinal issue, there are some nice plugins that use the data within the mp3 itself to generate acoustic distortion akin to the style caused by vinyl. Perhaps these plugins aren't good enough for some, but they are an interesting toy for parties. It's always fun to have people ask where your record collection is at anyways, and point at a PC.
I will have to add however that some codecs are far worse than others at producing an MP3. Some source CDs also seem to cause distortion. I have yet to see a Garth Brooks CD that was capable of being turned into a decent sounding 128kbit mp3, yet most albums work generally fine at that bitrate, the lossyness hardly noticable.
The one thing you're missing is this.
some mp3.com 'artists' were making as much as $50,000 A Month through the 'pay per play' program.
These were people who didn't have record contracts. people who didn't 'sell thier soul' the the labels. The sad part is that even a gold-record artist gets paid less then the average McDonald's employee. Now that mp3.com is 'part' of the labels you can bet things are already changing. now a visitor to the website sees not the most popular songs but rather the 'strategically placed' singles of label signed artists. You can bet that all the revenue is going to pay off the labels from all the lawsuits mp3.com lost too.
The bitrate the parent was talking about are Equal to or exceed CD-quality sound. CD quality sound uses around 10MB/minute. 350k ogg uses 2.6MB/minute that is Well within mathamatically perfect compression of sound waves. Technically those DVDs many people love so much are actually using AC3 which incorperates 4:1 ratio mathamatically lossless compression.
While a 128kbit stream is a 'lossy' compression 350k is not. Oh and CD isn't high quality either. Try litening to some professionally sampled streams at bitrates that make CDDA look small by comparison.
The only thing Osama bin laden and Hillary rosen agree on is that no one has a right to own music.
Aside from that minor point their philosophy is as different as Day and Night. Osama beleives that america's capitalism and the way we 'spread' our philosophies to be evil. Hillary believes in Amercian capitolism.
However, If Hillary was a patriotic american she would see that the constitution sides with the artists, composers, and the listeners of music. Not the distribution companies. Distribution companies came about from the power of technology to redistribute music in mass quantities. Now that anyhone with internet access and a computer can serve the same role as a distribution company they truly have become obsolete.
The railroads in thier arrogance blocked airports from being built whenever they could. They even bought airlines to make sure they didn't compete with the rails. Now in america the passenger rails are in part funded by the government. The lesson of history is that you can't fight a technological change. Your only options are to embrace the change or evolve your business model.
I went to that movie on a date... and I liked it. A nice japanese cinema style movie.
FF:TSW and now that you can get a super computer for $6,000 is a little scary -- how long until companies buy the rights to peoples appearance. Then force them to get plastic surgery, and have computers make all the footage for the news anchors/commercials.
Funny I play my GBA in a room with about 40-48 watts of compact fluorescent lighting which is I guess equivalent to about 150-200 watts of conventional bulbs. Or about the same amount of light for reading. Which is funny because I play GBA in the same spots I read. Funny huh? The advantage of the GBA is that it doesn't wash out the way even a TFT backlit sceen does. While I wouldn't mind an improved OLED display or a Side-lit screen using special materials, the price was right for a reflective display.
Oh The GBA is targeted at classic gamers _and_ kids. It's the last best hope for 2-d tile based gaming. Oh well there is always Emulation to fall back on if gaming companies abandon us 2-d classic gamers.
As for the artic circle that midnight sun during summer has to be a real seasonal boon for GBA users.
Re:Duh. The backlight is for the *next* version...
on
GBA Getting Bluetooth
·
· Score: 1
Hopefully they opt for OLEDs instead of a washy backlit screen. Even a TFT backlit LCD is far from a perfect image. While OLEDs might be too expensive now, I'm sure that for a screen the size of the GameBoy Advance they could make them reasonable within the lifespan of the system.
If they have just a 'backlit' version it isn't worth my money, I'll just use a gameshark advance to copy my gamesaves to PC and run an emulator.
It's a sad thing but China is going to be more Free than america within a decade. The chinese have decided that they're going to use linux because 'Microsoft is an extention on the US government.' Which is a Scary thought... FBI: "we've determined you're using linux, and we've come to arrest you.."
China does supress a number of civil liberties, but soon america will be suppressing those liberties, and requiring you to use 'approved' hardware and software.
I just hope I'm wrong about this. I guess I better study those nuclear physics or start playing around with genetic engineering in my bathtub if I wan't to stand a chance against the oppressive police state that america is moving towards.
I have to agree with you there... the founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves...
The founding fathers expected...
1. Local and state militia to 'defend' the nation. National 'armies' were to be limited by only allowing them to be funded for 2 years at a time.
2. Presidents were meant to be impeached. At the time the impeachment proceeding was drafted they kind of expected that every third or fourth president would need to be 'impeached.' If they were doing bad enough things they would be removed from office as a result. Instead only three presidents have ever even come Close to being impeached. None were removed from office, although Nixon did resign.
3. The government to be overthrown when it became less of a republic. The three ways I know for doing this are: Constitutional Congress, Milita marching on the capital, and Succession. So far only one was attempted and that was for less-than pure motives. This war resulted in a change in the election process for president which forever changed the party system in america.
Keep in mind that the founding fathers also wanted a confederate system, but they couldn't pull it off and instead went with a republic.
I think right now they're working on removing our rights to intellectual property. Eventually there won't be any form of intellectual property that belongs to 'everyone.' Once they control every bit of IP space they have the same lock the nazi's had on information. Then they can abolish the democracy in favor of a facist police state, where the police have secret courts and can wire tap anyone. Wait a minute... The FBI has secret courts and can wire tap anyone.
you were right about 3/4ths but there are TWO methods to ratify ammendments...
"or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments"
3/4ths is to ratify. 2/3rds of both houses OR 2/3rds of the states. Remember the first 10 ammendments were drafted by the states themselves. Because they wouldn't sign the constitution otherwise.
The department of redundancy department would like to remind you that you must be reminded to fill out three copies of the forms in triplicate. Any forms filed without the proper redundancy will require that you requisition the form for refiling forms not filled out in triplicate form.
Constitutional ammendments are Ratified by the States. Not the 'congress.' Of course they need a 2/3rds of the states to ratify a constitutional ammendment. As long as the MPAA and RIAA can keep 20 states in thier back pocket we'd never have that kind of ammendment.
Besides, the DMCA already violates the constitution and some of the ammendmends. The problem is getting the law overturned in court.
One could also argue that the right to bear arms already applies to computers. Since they Can be used as a weapon, people have a constitutional right to have them.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with this is that should you actually try to "sell" the game you'll be in for a legal battle with the Big-N. You need to be licensed to sell games for any videogame console. The reason for this is that you have to pay license fees for each game sold.
However if you want to release agame under the GPL there isn't anything nintendo can do to you. There is of course a third option. Often times companies like konami will release a game from another smaller developer using thier brand. While this in effect means you've got two middle men, companies that can't otherwise sell legitimate gameboy advance games can use this method.
Usually this is most benificial for popular japanese rpg developers that make a great game but have no presence in america.
Well they iPod does 1394...
And the 1 GB microdrive is selling for $370.
I suppose Sony will probablly be the next out with a firewire portable HD Based mp3 player, possibly that is compatable with the PS2.
I'm also sure that all the major USB HD MP3 players will be announcing USB 2.0 support in the next model year.
The micro drive is pretty amazing, but I can't see myself buying one.
Well, Considering that they consider Microsoft a branch of the amercian govermnent, and are planning on using linux, I would hope that they focus on GPLed code. This would solve a couple problems neatly. First off Linux would have a rather large coder base with the political clout to get hardware vendors to support All the features of the latest in hardware.
Secondly if they're making GPL code they're contributing to the entire world, instead of 'stealing' jobs. In a truly global economy you can't 'steal' every money making industry from your neighbors. If you focus on one area another is loosing that focus, which means the other countries would have to mess up to loose in the short run even.
Although you can write closed source software even from linux machines, there is the potential for the chinese to break into new markets by writing software applications for linux that previously were only good quality on windows or mac.
For people really worried about china stealing all the jobs away I would like to point this out. Did all those $5 made in china radios and cassette players put Sony out of business? If china fails to pruduce better programmers with better code, then they will not be able to steal the market from anyone. On the other hand, if companies like microsoft are putting out an inferior operating system to the one the chinese are putting out, then yes they are at risk. Of course as long as the chinese base any OS development on linux that will ensure that it is released under the GPL, and as such other countries will be able to improve the code as well, for the benefit of all software developers -- except one.
step 1.) Connect to cable modem
step 2.) send an e-mail - subject: Hey Osama We're ready to blow up the Whitehouse Tomorrow
step 3.) let the FBI deal with it they carnivore captures the e-mail and puts it on their priority list to read.
You know I keep on hearing how bandwith costs have plummeted. And part of the internet bubble was how much companies could with simple modification 50X multiply the capacity of existing fiber. Then there was the story about how 50%+ of the backbone is unlit fiber. ;-)
Paradoxically DSL and cable internet providers are going out of buisness left and right. To be fair the cap on my cable modem recently went from 560/128 to 800/200 kbit/s so I at least have gained a small improvement in bandwith for my money.
Also, to be fair the best use I can think of for this 5000 foot ethernet technology is a Secure neighboorhood network. I could see a geek or two wiring a few dozen neighboors with underground phone cabling, charging for access to internet/mp3 collection
Funny I've seen places already using existing copper for 10mbit ethernet... In fact it played all hell with their phone system because the cable was all unshielded.
While heart disease has been around for thousands of years (many high ranking chinese have been proven to have died of heart attacks) The contributing factors to it are 40% diet 40% exercise and 20% genetics. When salt was an expensive spice it was used exclusively for preserving foods, and as a seasoning for the rich. Most fatty foods were also out of the reach of most peasants. Fatty foods were by affordability eaten in moderation.
As for cancer, without exposure to 'modern' chemicals, technologies etc, the primary source of cancer would be sunlight. Skin cancer almost never goes malignant so that would leave only a handful of people actually dying of cancer.
Disease is the one area we've really made advances in. Most of the deadly illnesses we've reduced or eliminated tend only to be truly life threatening to the elderly. Anyone getting infected younger ends up immune. The bubonic plauge is one of the more deadly and outbreaks of it have changed history. In general though ever person 5 and under we keep from dying has exponential difference in average lifespan compared to keeping a 45 year old person from dying.
Also, Social Security is in danger not because people are living longer, but rather because people aren't having 8-9 kids instead they have 1-2 kids. Social security is the ultimate pyramid scheme, and the narrower the base becomes the harder it is to make it work.
When was the last time you heard anyone have any major gripes with the US government on TV or anywhere except the 'net? Hmmm... Patrick Norton of TSS was thrown in Jail for a poorly phrased comment about copying music digitally though. America isn't a police state, but we've been on the road to becoming one for a while.
As for the ukraine issue, well it's things like that people like Osama Bin Laden hate america for in part. If we don't want more people like him to be popping up we ought to consider how important an action is before making massive threats like tarrifs/embargos.
This is only with extremely old versions of ICQ. I can't believe you're still running the old icq98 client -- it's been four years already and that version crashed virtually every computer I ran it on.
Not only can you change your connection status independantly for each network, you can sustain multiple connections to each network. I currently find that I need to run two connections to AIM in order to see who is really online. This is probablly due to server side issues, it IS AOL afterall.
That bug is old news... I used it for months until I remembered my ICQ password. It's 9 charachters not 15 ICQ doesn't allow passwords greater than 8 characters. While some sites won't allow a password shorter than 8 characters ICQ won't allow a longer one... Nice to see how security conscious mirabilis was and still is now that AOL owns them.
Actually though I think the earliest ICQ implimentations performed the password authentication locally, which is why the 8 character limit on passwords exists in icq.
A 9 character password response meant the authentication was done by the client.
"There is this whole history that free software is developed often in the academic environment, where basically government money funded that work. And then commercial work is done. TCP/IP came out of the university environment. Now, 90 percent of the implementations you buy are commercially tuned and supported. And then the companies that do that commercial work pay taxes, create jobs, so the government keeps funding more research, primarily in universities. So that ecosystem where you have free software and commercial software, and customers always get to decide which they use, that's a very important and healthy ecosystem."
First of all, in many college based 'free' software it is the programmer or group of programmer who 'pays' for the development, in the manner of paying for thier education and sacraficing time they could have spent at a job, studying or with friends. In rare cases there are Government grants for that lobbyists have pushed through congress, because politicians are cheaper than developing the software yourself.
This is why GPL is a 'Threat.' It is a threat to government funding to get the best and brightest upcoming programmers to implement the newest developments in software. Under a "free" license the software company with the money to push these bills through congress will also be able to snap up patents and copyrights which the can then 'license' to third party developers.
Free software development is not a 'healthy' ecosystem. Many time the people who put the most effort into 'free' software have turned around to find themselves being sued out of exsitance for violating patents or copyrights on code they wrote. Worse still is the independant software developer, should they wish to write a routine they first have to check who has patents on that. Even if they wish to write from scratch they may have to pay as much as $25 per piece of software they 'ship' depending on what it is they're trying to do. This obviously benenfits the major players, those who have the money to get patents or copyrights on 'obvious' code. This is why as soon as a freeware or shareware app becomes good it's author finds themselves in deep legal waters. Once a program is 'good enough' it is a threat to anyone with a similar, more costly program. If that company has a legal staff they can sue, or better yet Cease-and-desist letter out of existance anyone who poses a threat.
Myself I don't mind that a company like say apple is capable of using BSD code to write a stable Operating system, as long as apple is crediting the authors and isn't turning around suing BSD developers. While not a scientific statistic according to google.com about 2,180 pages have the phrase "Microsoft Sues" on them. I didn't have any luck finding how many companies microsoft sued last year but I seem to recall it was twice as many as sued Microsoft. Also is you take away piracy the hit result is still over 1500. Some other interesting addendums is that adding the word 'patent' outsite the quotes narrows it to some 200 hits, and adding 'copyright' only narrows it to 1500 pages. In the interest of fairness "apple sues" matches 1500 hits and "linux sues" matches 7. However apparently "Linus sues" can't be found anywhere on the internet (until google indexes this page anyways.)
If I had to sum up the software development market in one catch phrase "Innovation through Litigation" is the one that comes to mind, although "If you can't code it, Sue for it." comes in a close second.
I tend to have a very good ear, not quite perfect pitch but I can always tell when something is off key, I just couldn't tell you what key it was or was supposed to be. It was my understanding that AC3 and higher bitrate mp3 are mathematically lossless, since only canaries, dogs, and elephants, and perhaps a few other animals can actually hear the removed segments. As for the Vinal issue, there are some nice plugins that use the data within the mp3 itself to generate acoustic distortion akin to the style caused by vinyl. Perhaps these plugins aren't good enough for some, but they are an interesting toy for parties. It's always fun to have people ask where your record collection is at anyways, and point at a PC.
I will have to add however that some codecs are far worse than others at producing an MP3. Some source CDs also seem to cause distortion. I have yet to see a Garth Brooks CD that was capable of being turned into a decent sounding 128kbit mp3, yet most albums work generally fine at that bitrate, the lossyness hardly noticable.
The one thing you're missing is this.
some mp3.com 'artists' were making as much as $50,000 A Month through the 'pay per play' program.
These were people who didn't have record contracts. people who didn't 'sell thier soul' the the labels. The sad part is that even a gold-record artist gets paid less then the average McDonald's employee. Now that mp3.com is 'part' of the labels you can bet things are already changing. now a visitor to the website sees not the most popular songs but rather the 'strategically placed' singles of label signed artists. You can bet that all the revenue is going to pay off the labels from all the lawsuits mp3.com lost too.
The bitrate the parent was talking about are Equal to or exceed CD-quality sound. CD quality sound uses around 10MB/minute. 350k ogg uses 2.6MB/minute that is Well within mathamatically perfect compression of sound waves. Technically those DVDs many people love so much are actually using AC3 which incorperates 4:1 ratio mathamatically lossless compression.
While a 128kbit stream is a 'lossy' compression 350k is not. Oh and CD isn't high quality either. Try litening to some professionally sampled streams at bitrates that make CDDA look small by comparison.
The only thing Osama bin laden and Hillary rosen agree on is that no one has a right to own music.
Aside from that minor point their philosophy is as different as Day and Night. Osama beleives that america's capitalism and the way we 'spread' our philosophies to be evil. Hillary believes in Amercian capitolism.
However, If Hillary was a patriotic american she would see that the constitution sides with the artists, composers, and the listeners of music. Not the distribution companies. Distribution companies came about from the power of technology to redistribute music in mass quantities. Now that anyhone with internet access and a computer can serve the same role as a distribution company they truly have become obsolete.
The railroads in thier arrogance blocked airports from being built whenever they could. They even bought airlines to make sure they didn't compete with the rails. Now in america the passenger rails are in part funded by the government. The lesson of history is that you can't fight a technological change. Your only options are to embrace the change or evolve your business model.
I went to that movie on a date... and I liked it. A nice japanese cinema style movie.
FF:TSW and now that you can get a super computer for $6,000 is a little scary -- how long until companies buy the rights to peoples appearance. Then force them to get plastic surgery, and have computers make all the footage for the news anchors/commercials.
Funny I play my GBA in a room with about 40-48 watts of compact fluorescent lighting which is I guess equivalent to about 150-200 watts of conventional bulbs. Or about the same amount of light for reading. Which is funny because I play GBA in the same spots I read. Funny huh? The advantage of the GBA is that it doesn't wash out the way even a TFT backlit sceen does. While I wouldn't mind an improved OLED display or a Side-lit screen using special materials, the price was right for a reflective display.
Oh The GBA is targeted at classic gamers _and_ kids. It's the last best hope for 2-d tile based gaming. Oh well there is always Emulation to fall back on if gaming companies abandon us 2-d classic gamers.
As for the artic circle that midnight sun during summer has to be a real seasonal boon for GBA users.
Hopefully they opt for OLEDs instead of a washy backlit screen. Even a TFT backlit LCD is far from a perfect image. While OLEDs might be too expensive now, I'm sure that for a screen the size of the GameBoy Advance they could make them reasonable within the lifespan of the system.
If they have just a 'backlit' version it isn't worth my money, I'll just use a gameshark advance to copy my gamesaves to PC and run an emulator.
It's a sad thing but China is going to be more Free than america within a decade. The chinese have decided that they're going to use linux because 'Microsoft is an extention on the US government.' Which is a Scary thought... FBI: "we've determined you're using linux, and we've come to arrest you.."
China does supress a number of civil liberties, but soon america will be suppressing those liberties, and requiring you to use 'approved' hardware and software.
I just hope I'm wrong about this. I guess I better study those nuclear physics or start playing around with genetic engineering in my bathtub if I wan't to stand a chance against the oppressive police state that america is moving towards.
"the USA act is a mere tiny step away from the two way, always on televisions of 1984." What about interactive TV complete with targeted ads etc?
I have to agree with you there... the founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves...
The founding fathers expected...
1. Local and state militia to 'defend' the nation. National 'armies' were to be limited by only allowing them to be funded for 2 years at a time.
2. Presidents were meant to be impeached. At the time the impeachment proceeding was drafted they kind of expected that every third or fourth president would need to be 'impeached.' If they were doing bad enough things they would be removed from office as a result. Instead only three presidents have ever even come Close to being impeached. None were removed from office, although Nixon did resign.
3. The government to be overthrown when it became less of a republic. The three ways I know for doing this are: Constitutional Congress, Milita marching on the capital, and Succession. So far only one was attempted and that was for less-than pure motives. This war resulted in a change in the election process for president which forever changed the party system in america.
Keep in mind that the founding fathers also wanted a confederate system, but they couldn't pull it off and instead went with a republic.
I think right now they're working on removing our rights to intellectual property. Eventually there won't be any form of intellectual property that belongs to 'everyone.' Once they control every bit of IP space they have the same lock the nazi's had on information. Then they can abolish the democracy in favor of a facist police state, where the police have secret courts and can wire tap anyone. Wait a minute... The FBI has secret courts and can wire tap anyone.
you were right about 3/4ths but there are TWO methods to ratify ammendments...
"or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments"
3/4ths is to ratify. 2/3rds of both houses OR 2/3rds of the states. Remember the first 10 ammendments were drafted by the states themselves. Because they wouldn't sign the constitution otherwise.
grep -c default.ida /var/log/httpd-access.log
My High Score is 7283 -- and I only run apache to put a random file or two where my friends can get them.
The department of redundancy department would like to remind you that you must be reminded to fill out three copies of the forms in triplicate. Any forms filed without the proper redundancy will require that you requisition the form for refiling forms not filled out in triplicate form.
Constitutional ammendments are Ratified by the States. Not the 'congress.' Of course they need a 2/3rds of the states to ratify a constitutional ammendment. As long as the MPAA and RIAA can keep 20 states in thier back pocket we'd never have that kind of ammendment.
Besides, the DMCA already violates the constitution and some of the ammendmends. The problem is getting the law overturned in court.
One could also argue that the right to bear arms already applies to computers. Since they Can be used as a weapon, people have a constitutional right to have them.