If enough people really want to see $100 million plus movies, they'll pay to see them. They'll realise pretty quickly that if they don't pay to see spider man, there's not gonna be a spider man 2. And if they refuse to pay, then they didn't want to see it so badly in the first place.
Either that or they understand the Prisoner's Dilemma with two people and they realize how more hopeless it is with two hundred million.
I understand skepticism, but you're a bit over the top. There's no Red Hat junta out to trick Slashdot into thinking that RPM has more features than it does.
Specifically, it represents the "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" aspect of communism.
Microsoft, on the other hand, represents the "Central planning enforced via coercion from an unaccountable monopoly" aspect of communism.
If Gates & co. are going to try and keep the communism analogy alive, this more precise view ought to be brought up to reporters at every opportunity. I can't speak for everyone, but I know all my negative associations with Communism come from its relation to totalitarianism, not its relation to sharing.
Why not just use something like cmod to handle all your PATH (MANPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, et. al.) related problems?
For one thing, it's a lesser known software package, which means that after you get your Ph.D. the slackers left administering your old research lab may be forced to learn new tools.;-)
Keeping files in FHS locations has a few other benefits: most of your files can be static and shared between computers, and if your applications are FHS compliant then it's not too complex to make most of the filesystem read-only and/or network mounted. Doing so forces you to use something like RPM or DPKG, but their other features like dependency checking and checksumming are nice to have anyway.
The Mormon position on marriage has changed repeatedly - 150 years ago their prophets preached that monogamy was an institution the devil created to subvert God's polygamists and that God's Law for marriage with a black person would always be "death on the spot". It's still been less than 30 years since they started marrying blacks and part-black couples after a period of intense public pressure, and now even some faithful Mormons believe that their past racism wasn't because God was against interracial marriage or ordaining blacks, it was because He was working with a culture that just wasn't ready to tolerate it.
In that context, it's quite understandable that gay or gay-friendly Mormons might expect their religion to become even more tolerant of different marriages and relationships in the future, and that they might hope applying public and social pressure in that direction would speed the process. You're right that it isn't homophobic of Card to disagree, but it is myopic.
The remaining 74 percent is spent in the United States to generate profits and jobs.
Do these jobs generate goods and services that are given to Israel? If so, then is it really such a big difference? If not, then why are they accounted as financing for Israel?
In fact, the opposite seems to be occuring: after I pointed out that you were insisting on a false dichotomy, why are you continuing to repeat the same false dichotomy? Releasing Halo for the PC (or for the Mac, or the PS2, or whatever) does not imply not releasing Halo for the XBox. The decision here is not "selling Halo-XBox copies" vs. "selling fewer Halo-PC copies", it's "selling Halo-XBox copies" vs. "selling more Halo-XBox and Halo-PC copies".
I'm not suggesting that Halo shouldn't have been released for the XBox, as you appear to be assuming - I'm suggesting that any non-Microsoft company would have wanted to release Halo for the XBox (making millions of sales) as well as for the PC (making even more sales with very little additional work) and probably PS2, Mac, and Gamecube.
It's not very complicated: Being compatible with more game platforms makes your market larger, which means more people buy your game. Being compatible with fewer game platforms means fewer people buy your game, but the most diehard fans buy the whole platform as well. If you sell games but not game platforms, then unless a platform manufacturer is giving you kickbacks you want to make the former decision. If you sell game platforms, and in particular if you sell a game platform that's so new it's still being criticized for "not having enough good games", then you want to make the latter decision.
You call me a troll while simultaneously basing your whole post on a false dilemma?
As you may have noticed, the eventual release of Halo for the PC did not cause anyone's XBox to explode - the XBox copies of Halo kept working, just the same as ever. Making Halo a "PC game" didn't prevent it from being an "XBox game" as well - games are just software.
If such things as "XBox and PC games" are possible to write, then, one is left to wonder why making Halo (a game which was originally written to be cross platform and include PC support!) one of them took two years. It could be because of the vast architectural differences between the XBox and PC, of course, or it could be because of Microsoft's inexperience writing Windows programs - but I don't think I'm being a conspiracy nut by identifying one other contributing factor: each of those Halo-PC copies was just a $50 sale, whereas many of those Halo-XBox sales were $250 sales, to people who would have bought a PS2 (or for those "PC people", no game console at all) if they hadn't found their hardware choices restricted by software compatibility.
It's easy to imagine Halo 2 at high resolution: you just have to imagine a world in which Microsoft didn't buy Bungie, and so the Halo games were published to sell games rather than to sell game consoles.
What stops your correspondent from sending your messages to something like Stamper before you publish the temporary key? After the temporary key is published it will be possible to forge messages signed by that key, but it won't be possible without the collaboration of the timestamping service to forge messages signed by that key and dated before it's publication.
Take a look at the non-arc episodes of B5. There are a couple outstanding ones ("Passing Through Gethsemane" comes to mind) but IMHO the reason why Season 1 was so mediocre was that it was mostly these self-contained, 42 minute episodes, and JMS usually couldn't both create and conclude an engaging story in such a short time. I suspect that's the reason people didn't like "Crusade" - they were hoping it would be great from the first episode, but if it was anything like B5 then the whole first season was just laying groundwork for the good stuff later (or which would have come later, had there been no interference from the network and no cancellation).
Really, what JMS seems to need is the "4200 minute format". Anything less is like reading one chapter of a novel then stopping.
Because they've made recounting the votes impossible (the "vote" is whatever the voter got to look at, which for most electronic voting machines is an ephemeral pattern of lights on a screen), they're recounting electronic copies of the votes instead - the honest people are just hoping the copies match the originals and the dishonest ones are hoping nobody calls them on the distinction.
Sure, you would have been correct in May 2002, when Microsoft exec Jim Allchin testified that releasing their source code would endanger national security. I mean, surely there's no way a Microsoft executive would perjure himself to try and keep his company from being penalized for its crimes!
However, Microsoft fixed all these security problems by January 2003, when they had their source code cleaned up enough to show to 60 countries including China. So you shouldn't spread any more of these scurrilous rumors; why, that would imply that Microsoft would commit treason just to try and increase foreign revenues!
1. Support software patents, and Microsoft will gladly lay it all out in the open.
Microsoft has loads of software patents, and the court system is willing to enforce the valid ones (and some of the invalid ones) whether Slashdot readers support them or not. So... Microsoft will start making all their code visible to the public (not open source, which requires more freedom than that) when exactly?
On the other hand, the "lifting body" design is interesting, if it'll work enough of the time (I'm gathering the parachute reentry option is for when the runways aren't available or weather doesn't cooporate).
The parachute reentry option is for a version that doesn't have wings. The body shape alone won't give enough lift to put you gently onto a runway at low speeds; it'll just give enough lift to let the craft spend more more time in higher, thinner atmosphere, so it can decelerate more slowly and shed heat more easily.
If you try proposing the extraction of fusion fuel from lunar rock, despite the fact that the idea sounds "far out" you'll still find open minded people who will take you seriously and consider the proposal on its merits.
If you propose extracting Helium 3 from the outer planets, on the other hand, any scientific and economic benefits worthy of discussion will be shouted down by jerks like me who are way too amused by "extracting powerful gasses from the methane of Uranus" jokes.
A pig heart has pig DNA but doesn't make its recipient a pig; a human liver has human DNA but doesn't make a chimera human. The body part that counts is what you think with: a hypothetical sheep with a human brain would probably be better described as a human with a sheep body.
Of course, there could be ethical problems other than whether we should create or how we should treat "humanimals" - perhaps it's just my ignorance of biology, but human organs growing up in animal bodies sounds like the perfect "boot camp" for potential species-crossing germs. How would you like to be the doctor responsible for the next SIV->HIV jump?
I'm feel guilty for wearing glasses now, but I'm not sure what to do next. Should I proactively slit my wrists, or just stop wearing lenses while driving and let nature take its course?
Technically, it isn't Microsoft Corp. isn't claiming to have invented fire, it's Paul A. Vick Jr., Costica Corneliu Barsan, and Amanda K. Silver.
In most situations where Microsoft employees act like rat bastards people place the blame on this nebulous entity "Microsoft", but for a patent application the names of real people to blame are published for the whole world to see! What kind of circle of friends must you have if you're not too ashamed to put your name on such a blatant attempt at defrauding the legal system as a means of stifling your competitors?
"So, what did you do at work today?"
"I filed a patent for pointer comparisons in BASIC, pretending to have invented a programming technique older than I am in order to help my criminal employer keep competiting compilers incompatible and thus entrap our customers. And you?"
"Oh, same old, same old. Those puppies don't just drown themselves, you know!"
More specifically, spammers infecting new zombie PCs included an anti-SCO DDoS in their worms' payload.
Don't thank them too soon, though. It's impossible to hurt SCO through the internet, since they haven't needed a net presence since they transformed from a software company into a lawsuit company. It is possible to hurt Linux's PR when crap like this happens, though, by helping SCO's efforts to associate us with "evil hackers" stereotypes.
Slashdot Mirror
When will Microsoft Office ship with read/write support for the StarOffice/OpenOffice.Org/KOffice file format?
If enough people really want to see $100 million plus movies, they'll pay to see them. They'll realise pretty quickly that if they don't pay to see spider man, there's not gonna be a spider man 2. And if they refuse to pay, then they didn't want to see it so badly in the first place.
Either that or they understand the Prisoner's Dilemma with two people and they realize how more hopeless it is with two hundred million.
Does anyone *really* need a book telling them how to use a browser? Doesn't that suggest that the browser UI design is inadequate?
Inadequate compared to what?
$rpm -q --provides httpd | grep web
webserver
I understand skepticism, but you're a bit over the top. There's no Red Hat junta out to trick Slashdot into thinking that RPM has more features than it does.
Specifically, it represents the "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" aspect of communism.
Microsoft, on the other hand, represents the "Central planning enforced via coercion from an unaccountable monopoly" aspect of communism.
If Gates & co. are going to try and keep the communism analogy alive, this more precise view ought to be brought up to reporters at every opportunity. I can't speak for everyone, but I know all my negative associations with Communism come from its relation to totalitarianism, not its relation to sharing.
Why not just use something like cmod to handle all your PATH (MANPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, et. al.) related problems?
;-)
For one thing, it's a lesser known software package, which means that after you get your Ph.D. the slackers left administering your old research lab may be forced to learn new tools.
Keeping files in FHS locations has a few other benefits: most of your files can be static and shared between computers, and if your applications are FHS compliant then it's not too complex to make most of the filesystem read-only and/or network mounted. Doing so forces you to use something like RPM or DPKG, but their other features like dependency checking and checksumming are nice to have anyway.
The Mormon position on marriage has changed repeatedly - 150 years ago their prophets preached that monogamy was an institution the devil created to subvert God's polygamists and that God's Law for marriage with a black person would always be "death on the spot". It's still been less than 30 years since they started marrying blacks and part-black couples after a period of intense public pressure, and now even some faithful Mormons believe that their past racism wasn't because God was against interracial marriage or ordaining blacks, it was because He was working with a culture that just wasn't ready to tolerate it.
In that context, it's quite understandable that gay or gay-friendly Mormons might expect their religion to become even more tolerant of different marriages and relationships in the future, and that they might hope applying public and social pressure in that direction would speed the process. You're right that it isn't homophobic of Card to disagree, but it is myopic.
The remaining 74 percent is spent in the United States to generate profits and jobs.
Do these jobs generate goods and services that are given to Israel? If so, then is it really such a big difference? If not, then why are they accounted as financing for Israel?
It's cops and robbers, and cowboys and Indians.
You start mixing those up and no telling what might happen.
Add a construction worker and a sailor and you might end up ruining every school dance in the country.
In fact, the opposite seems to be occuring: after I pointed out that you were insisting on a false dichotomy, why are you continuing to repeat the same false dichotomy? Releasing Halo for the PC (or for the Mac, or the PS2, or whatever) does not imply not releasing Halo for the XBox. The decision here is not "selling Halo-XBox copies" vs. "selling fewer Halo-PC copies", it's "selling Halo-XBox copies" vs. "selling more Halo-XBox and Halo-PC copies".
I'm not suggesting that Halo shouldn't have been released for the XBox, as you appear to be assuming - I'm suggesting that any non-Microsoft company would have wanted to release Halo for the XBox (making millions of sales) as well as for the PC (making even more sales with very little additional work) and probably PS2, Mac, and Gamecube.
It's not very complicated: Being compatible with more game platforms makes your market larger, which means more people buy your game. Being compatible with fewer game platforms means fewer people buy your game, but the most diehard fans buy the whole platform as well. If you sell games but not game platforms, then unless a platform manufacturer is giving you kickbacks you want to make the former decision. If you sell game platforms, and in particular if you sell a game platform that's so new it's still being criticized for "not having enough good games", then you want to make the latter decision.
You call me a troll while simultaneously basing your whole post on a false dilemma?
As you may have noticed, the eventual release of Halo for the PC did not cause anyone's XBox to explode - the XBox copies of Halo kept working, just the same as ever. Making Halo a "PC game" didn't prevent it from being an "XBox game" as well - games are just software.
If such things as "XBox and PC games" are possible to write, then, one is left to wonder why making Halo (a game which was originally written to be cross platform and include PC support!) one of them took two years. It could be because of the vast architectural differences between the XBox and PC, of course, or it could be because of Microsoft's inexperience writing Windows programs - but I don't think I'm being a conspiracy nut by identifying one other contributing factor: each of those Halo-PC copies was just a $50 sale, whereas many of those Halo-XBox sales were $250 sales, to people who would have bought a PS2 (or for those "PC people", no game console at all) if they hadn't found their hardware choices restricted by software compatibility.
It's easy to imagine Halo 2 at high resolution: you just have to imagine a world in which Microsoft didn't buy Bungie, and so the Halo games were published to sell games rather than to sell game consoles.
When two patterns combine,
In a way serpentine...
That's a moire!
What stops your correspondent from sending your messages to something like Stamper before you publish the temporary key? After the temporary key is published it will be possible to forge messages signed by that key, but it won't be possible without the collaboration of the timestamping service to forge messages signed by that key and dated before it's publication.
Take a look at the non-arc episodes of B5. There are a couple outstanding ones ("Passing Through Gethsemane" comes to mind) but IMHO the reason why Season 1 was so mediocre was that it was mostly these self-contained, 42 minute episodes, and JMS usually couldn't both create and conclude an engaging story in such a short time. I suspect that's the reason people didn't like "Crusade" - they were hoping it would be great from the first episode, but if it was anything like B5 then the whole first season was just laying groundwork for the good stuff later (or which would have come later, had there been no interference from the network and no cancellation).
Really, what JMS seems to need is the "4200 minute format". Anything less is like reading one chapter of a novel then stopping.
Because they've made recounting the votes impossible (the "vote" is whatever the voter got to look at, which for most electronic voting machines is an ephemeral pattern of lights on a screen), they're recounting electronic copies of the votes instead - the honest people are just hoping the copies match the originals and the dishonest ones are hoping nobody calls them on the distinction.
Sure, you would have been correct in May 2002, when Microsoft exec Jim Allchin testified that releasing their source code would endanger national security. I mean, surely there's no way a Microsoft executive would perjure himself to try and keep his company from being penalized for its crimes!
However, Microsoft fixed all these security problems by January 2003, when they had their source code cleaned up enough to show to 60 countries including China. So you shouldn't spread any more of these scurrilous rumors; why, that would imply that Microsoft would commit treason just to try and increase foreign revenues!
1. Support software patents, and Microsoft will gladly lay it all out in the open.
Microsoft has loads of software patents, and the court system is willing to enforce the valid ones (and some of the invalid ones) whether Slashdot readers support them or not. So... Microsoft will start making all their code visible to the public (not open source, which requires more freedom than that) when exactly?
On the other hand, the "lifting body" design is interesting, if it'll work enough of the time (I'm gathering the parachute reentry option is for when the runways aren't available or weather doesn't cooporate).
The parachute reentry option is for a version that doesn't have wings. The body shape alone won't give enough lift to put you gently onto a runway at low speeds; it'll just give enough lift to let the craft spend more more time in higher, thinner atmosphere, so it can decelerate more slowly and shed heat more easily.
If you try proposing the extraction of fusion fuel from lunar rock, despite the fact that the idea sounds "far out" you'll still find open minded people who will take you seriously and consider the proposal on its merits.
If you propose extracting Helium 3 from the outer planets, on the other hand, any scientific and economic benefits worthy of discussion will be shouted down by jerks like me who are way too amused by "extracting powerful gasses from the methane of Uranus" jokes.
A pig heart has pig DNA but doesn't make its recipient a pig; a human liver has human DNA but doesn't make a chimera human. The body part that counts is what you think with: a hypothetical sheep with a human brain would probably be better described as a human with a sheep body.
Of course, there could be ethical problems other than whether we should create or how we should treat "humanimals" - perhaps it's just my ignorance of biology, but human organs growing up in animal bodies sounds like the perfect "boot camp" for potential species-crossing germs. How would you like to be the doctor responsible for the next SIV->HIV jump?
Like it or not, the weak are supposed to die out.
I'm feel guilty for wearing glasses now, but I'm not sure what to do next. Should I proactively slit my wrists, or just stop wearing lenses while driving and let nature take its course?
Technically, it isn't Microsoft Corp. isn't claiming to have invented fire, it's Paul A. Vick Jr., Costica Corneliu Barsan, and Amanda K. Silver.
In most situations where Microsoft employees act like rat bastards people place the blame on this nebulous entity "Microsoft", but for a patent application the names of real people to blame are published for the whole world to see! What kind of circle of friends must you have if you're not too ashamed to put your name on such a blatant attempt at defrauding the legal system as a means of stifling your competitors?
"So, what did you do at work today?"
"I filed a patent for pointer comparisons in BASIC, pretending to have invented a programming technique older than I am in order to help my criminal employer keep competiting compilers incompatible and thus entrap our customers. And you?"
"Oh, same old, same old. Those puppies don't just drown themselves, you know!"
More specifically, spammers infecting new zombie PCs included an anti-SCO DDoS in their worms' payload.
Don't thank them too soon, though. It's impossible to hurt SCO through the internet, since they haven't needed a net presence since they transformed from a software company into a lawsuit company. It is possible to hurt Linux's PR when crap like this happens, though, by helping SCO's efforts to associate us with "evil hackers" stereotypes.
But only if they're behind the shockwave.