Script Kiddie: "Watch this, dude! I'm writing a virus!".
Dude: "Cool man! What does it do?"
Script Kiddie: "I'm hacking the blaster virus to make it leaner and meaner"
Dude: "Whooooa!"
There you have it.
This is just some moron who picked up a copy of the existing blaster and modded it a bit.
I thought it was voluntary to use the services of a blacklist. If an ISP doesn't want to use one - they don't. If your ISP uses a blacklist that "blocks all of Brazil", you might be a bit put out, but I don't see how it would harm the ISP.
I was involved in commercial game dev in the mid to late 80's on PC's. A good friend created a rather good Ultima type game for the Apple ][ (81 or 82). This was a 'A' product it was created by one programmer (100% 6502 asm) who also created all the sound effects. One producer who did all the level design, art, and admin. 4 friends did playtesting.
The next project was a PC game, D&D in space called "Spelljammer". This game had one fulltime programmer (me), 2 part time programmers (they wrote exactly 2 routines for data compression in asm), 3 contract artists, one full time producer who also did ALL the game design. Music was done by 3 friends with a midi keyboard. I also did a fair bit of art. SSI provided a sound lib (with effects), box art, advertising, etc... The game engine, gui, movie player, etc... was all done from scratch. The whole thing took about 14 months and we ended up with a good "B" game.
The bar has been raised very high for "A" and "B" titles. The amount of music and art, not to mention a good game engine, is so much higher now than it was in the early days that you simply need a lot more money just to pay the salaries of everyone invovled for the two or three years it takes to make a half decent game. And this assumes you know what you are doing.
Small game developers pretty much have to aim at the types of PC games that do NOT require massive amounts of art. The barrier to entry is even higher for console games due to dev kits and licensing. The console manufactures do this to keep the "riff raff" out and quality (prices) high.
It is a whole different world now.
See Stars! SuperNova for an example of a good project getting stalled due to money, and they had a very good track record.
Game prices are not going up because they are already at the ceiling. Higher game prices would likely mean much lower sales. The big game publishers are pretty much counting on big sales to recoup their big costs.
Patents are useful for certain "inventions" that take a large investment to create, and are actually "new" inventions. Most new drugs are very deserving of patent protection.
Software, on the otherhand, should not be patentable, any more than a math algorithm is patentable.
As for copyright, I support limited copyright. I personally think 20 years is a good term for ALL copyrighted works.
All home electronics have gone down in price. The cost of manufacturing CD's HAS dropped. The price you pay for CD's greatly depends on where you live. I can pay as little as $13.00 CDN (about $9 USA) for new CD's here in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. Average cost for new CD's is $17.00 CDN. I hear they cost more in Australia and the UK.
The "Christians" as you mean it (I am assuming right wing fundies) did not "make this nation". Your founding fathers were VERY concerned about SEPERATING state and religion. Many of the people coming to the "New World" were fleeing state sponsored religious persecution in Europe. The founders of the USA were intelligent, forward thinkers, who firmly believed in religious freedom for ALL people - not just one sect of Christians. To make sure that the state did not drift into an official state religion (which invariably leads to problems) they put many safeguards into the USA constitution to keep the state and church seperate. The judge in Alabama is breaching this seperation.
I'm a secular humanist, and I was not offended by the depiction of religious faith in Signs. I find intolerance offensive no matter if the intolerant person shares my beliefs or not.
Manned space flight is expensive and dangerous, but it is the only way to get MAN INTO SPACE. The long term goal of any space program should be long term habitation of space. We should be making a colony on the moon or Mars, or better yet, terraforming Mars.
Space science can curently be done cheaper and safer with robotics, but space exploration requires men (and women) in space.
There is very little chance of being able to pick from multiple power suppliers AND keep costs down. This might be possible if you paid a seperate transmission and generation bill for your electricty, and kept the transmission part as a monopoly that provides transmission services to all generators at the same cost (this is the direction that many utilities are being forced by USA deregulation).
The electric grid cannot in any way be compared to the internet. Within an integrated grid a problem hundreds of miles away can have a direct effect on the operation and stability of the system. An integrated power grid is a tightly connected, monolithic thing. All the generators on a single grid are carefully syncronized.
In my opinion, a better way to compete is ditributed generation which requires much less investment in a large transmission infrastructure. Micro-hydro, fuels cells, small wind, etc...
"The children of the Mind" was a bit weak (one of the Ender sequels), but I have enjoyed all his other books that I read. I particularly enjoyed the "Alvin Maker" series.
I wasn't aware of OSC's views on gay people. If that quote is actually his there are two problems:
Government should not be regulating any behavior between consenting adults.
Singling out gay people is no more defensible than singling out people by race or religion.
You are still more likely to have your credit carc numbers stolen at the local gas station than on the internet. Never let your credit card or debit card out of sight. Locally a common scam is to "double swipe" cards out of sight of the customer and use stolen info to make new fake cards.
Possesion of child pornography is illegal in many places. If you live in these places you should not be surprised if you end in jail if you possess child pornography. If you think this is not just, then you should work at getting the law changed.
I think most people agree that creating child porn is an evil act that abuses children. But things can get more complicted when dealing with hand-drawn or computer generated child porn. No children are involved, so no children were harmed. This is when the argument that possessing child porn will lead to child abuse comes in. The places banning child porn often also presume innocence, and simply possessing art work depicting child porn does not automatically mean the person will progress to actual child abuse.
But what if the same money used to build the bombs was used to build hospitals (or a factory, or a dam), and train nurses and doctors, in far away lands? Money still gets spent, materials are used, engineers and builders get paid. The hospital is given away and cannot be used by the builders (much like the bomb cannot be "used" after its initial deployment) so we have a similiar flow of capital and labour. BUT at the end of the day the hospital (or other durable useful goods) can actually be used to help people, or create more goods. This is a better long term investment than a bomb if you are looking at "overall good".
Of course, given the world we live in a certain amount of military spending is required, and as a Canadian I am very grateful that the Americans are so keen on defense spending that we can spend most of our taxes on education and health care. The other nice spin off from military spending is the huge amount of R&D the military does which eventually trickles down to civilian uses.
Collecting has made comics too expensive for kids. When I was growing up everyone always had at least a few newish comic books scattered about, and you could buy comics everywhere. Now comics are too expensive to buy regularly for kids, and you can only find them at "comics shops" that pretty much only cater to collectors.
I really like the idea of anarachy - on paper. In real life some form of government seems to be required to keep the thugs from abusing the weak. Most anarchists are peaceful, but it is the violent ones that get into the papers. In my opinion if you resort to force you stop calling yourself an anarchist as one of the key attributes of government is its use of force (government has a monopoly on using force actually).
The parent deserves to be modded up, as he is making a good point.
Only governments can create IP laws. Without a government to enforce IP laws there can't be any. How property and contracts would be handled is a very important issue for anarchists, but it is not an issue for libertarians as they do want a minimal goverment to handle those things. There is a huge difference between anarchists and libertarians, and in general it is a mistake to lump them together. It is a huge jump from a small government to no government.
I'm not sure that we are genetically hard wired to organise, but there sure are a lot of power seekers.
Depends were you work. Some places format and re-image ALL desktop PC's each night. All valuable data is kept on network drives which have proper backups (tape rotations, offsite tapes, mirrored drives, etc...), and security.
It is very common for well run companies to have tight control over the software installed on the desktop. This keeps support costs down which are MUCH higher than the cost of the license for a desktop OS over three years. This control also helps prevent software piracy. You have to keep in mind that 90% of computer users only use email, calendaring, word processing, and spreadsheets. Most users never install anything other than a screensaver. The few users with the knowledge to actually mess with the OS are generally a real pain to support as they have ten times more problems.
Actually, doing a non-standard install can get you fired at many large firms. Banks, and most major finacial institutions have very strict rules about what is installed. A non-standard screen saver can cost you your job at some places.
Any large business will have desktop standards. Having only one OS to support keeps costs down. Exceptions are made when required, but in general, only smaller companies tolerate users installing their own OS's or software. It's not your computer - its the companies computer.
There is a big difference between "requiring people to be good" and "preventing people from being evil".
The government should never require anyone to do, or believe anything. The government should work to prevent its citizens from commiting evil acts (murder, theft, rape, kidnapping, etc...). This is criminal justice. Civil justice is mainly concerned with making sure people keep their promises (contracts).
While I agree it is a good thing to vote, I would never support forcing people to vote.
The USA does NOT believe in free trade. The USA has slapped huge tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber (in BC alone, thousands have lost their jobs due to the US tariffs - the same tariffs that were found to be illegal by the WTO the last time the USA did this), huge tariffs on steel, gives huge subsidies to their farmers, a multitude of other tariffs aimed at blocking poor countries food and textile imports to the USA. The USA only believes in freetrade when they are winning. The second anyone undercuts them, or becomes more efficient the USA strikes back. Corporate welfare is alive and well in the USA.
For a real eye opener look look up "United Fruit company bananas tariff" on google.
Slashdot Mirror
There you have it.
This is just some moron who picked up a copy of the existing blaster and modded it a bit.
I thought it was voluntary to use the services of a blacklist. If an ISP doesn't want to use one - they don't. If your ISP uses a blacklist that "blocks all of Brazil", you might be a bit put out, but I don't see how it would harm the ISP.
I was involved in commercial game dev in the mid to late 80's on PC's. A good friend created a rather good Ultima type game for the Apple ][ (81 or 82). This was a 'A' product it was created by one programmer (100% 6502 asm) who also created all the sound effects. One producer who did all the level design, art, and admin. 4 friends did playtesting.
The next project was a PC game, D&D in space called "Spelljammer". This game had one fulltime programmer (me), 2 part time programmers (they wrote exactly 2 routines for data compression in asm), 3 contract artists, one full time producer who also did ALL the game design. Music was done by 3 friends with a midi keyboard. I also did a fair bit of art. SSI provided a sound lib (with effects), box art, advertising, etc... The game engine, gui, movie player, etc... was all done from scratch. The whole thing took about 14 months and we ended up with a good "B" game.
The bar has been raised very high for "A" and "B" titles. The amount of music and art, not to mention a good game engine, is so much higher now than it was in the early days that you simply need a lot more money just to pay the salaries of everyone invovled for the two or three years it takes to make a half decent game. And this assumes you know what you are doing.
Small game developers pretty much have to aim at the types of PC games that do NOT require massive amounts of art. The barrier to entry is even higher for console games due to dev kits and licensing. The console manufactures do this to keep the "riff raff" out and quality (prices) high.
It is a whole different world now.
See Stars! SuperNova for an example of a good project getting stalled due to money, and they had a very good track record.
Game prices are not going up because they are already at the ceiling. Higher game prices would likely mean much lower sales. The big game publishers are pretty much counting on big sales to recoup their big costs.
Software, on the otherhand, should not be patentable, any more than a math algorithm is patentable.
As for copyright, I support limited copyright. I personally think 20 years is a good term for ALL copyrighted works.
All home electronics have gone down in price. The cost of manufacturing CD's HAS dropped. The price you pay for CD's greatly depends on where you live. I can pay as little as $13.00 CDN (about $9 USA) for new CD's here in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. Average cost for new CD's is $17.00 CDN. I hear they cost more in Australia and the UK.
The "Christians" as you mean it (I am assuming right wing fundies) did not "make this nation". Your founding fathers were VERY concerned about SEPERATING state and religion. Many of the people coming to the "New World" were fleeing state sponsored religious persecution in Europe. The founders of the USA were intelligent, forward thinkers, who firmly believed in religious freedom for ALL people - not just one sect of Christians. To make sure that the state did not drift into an official state religion (which invariably leads to problems) they put many safeguards into the USA constitution to keep the state and church seperate. The judge in Alabama is breaching this seperation.
The Judge in Alabama is ignoring a court order. He took his case to court and lost. This is not at all comparable to simply voicing your opinion.
All of M. Night Shyamalan's films appear to be an attempt to bring the comic books of the fifties to the silver screen as "high art".
I'm a secular humanist, and I was not offended by the depiction of religious faith in Signs. I find intolerance offensive no matter if the intolerant person shares my beliefs or not.
Space science can curently be done cheaper and safer with robotics, but space exploration requires men (and women) in space.
The electric grid cannot in any way be compared to the internet. Within an integrated grid a problem hundreds of miles away can have a direct effect on the operation and stability of the system. An integrated power grid is a tightly connected, monolithic thing. All the generators on a single grid are carefully syncronized.
In my opinion, a better way to compete is ditributed generation which requires much less investment in a large transmission infrastructure. Micro-hydro, fuels cells, small wind, etc...
I wasn't aware of OSC's views on gay people. If that quote is actually his there are two problems:
Government should not be regulating any behavior between consenting adults.
Singling out gay people is no more defensible than singling out people by race or religion.
A women shallow enough to insist on a "real" diamond is a woman too shallow to marry.
You are still more likely to have your credit carc numbers stolen at the local gas station than on the internet. Never let your credit card or debit card out of sight. Locally a common scam is to "double swipe" cards out of sight of the customer and use stolen info to make new fake cards.
I think most people agree that creating child porn is an evil act that abuses children. But things can get more complicted when dealing with hand-drawn or computer generated child porn. No children are involved, so no children were harmed. This is when the argument that possessing child porn will lead to child abuse comes in. The places banning child porn often also presume innocence, and simply possessing art work depicting child porn does not automatically mean the person will progress to actual child abuse.
This is a link to a Canadian case involving both hand-drawn art, written work, and photos. Freedom of speech can lead to some complicated case law, and huge headaches for both judges and government. Google for -canada "child porn" case law art- for more links.
I personally find the whole topic revolting, but this does show a case where freedom of speech collides very spectacularly with common decency.
Of course, given the world we live in a certain amount of military spending is required, and as a Canadian I am very grateful that the Americans are so keen on defense spending that we can spend most of our taxes on education and health care. The other nice spin off from military spending is the huge amount of R&D the military does which eventually trickles down to civilian uses.
Collecting has made comics too expensive for kids. When I was growing up everyone always had at least a few newish comic books scattered about, and you could buy comics everywhere. Now comics are too expensive to buy regularly for kids, and you can only find them at "comics shops" that pretty much only cater to collectors.
The parent deserves to be modded up, as he is making a good point.
I'm not sure that we are genetically hard wired to organise, but there sure are a lot of power seekers.
It is very common for well run companies to have tight control over the software installed on the desktop. This keeps support costs down which are MUCH higher than the cost of the license for a desktop OS over three years. This control also helps prevent software piracy. You have to keep in mind that 90% of computer users only use email, calendaring, word processing, and spreadsheets. Most users never install anything other than a screensaver. The few users with the knowledge to actually mess with the OS are generally a real pain to support as they have ten times more problems.
Any large business will have desktop standards. Having only one OS to support keeps costs down. Exceptions are made when required, but in general, only smaller companies tolerate users installing their own OS's or software. It's not your computer - its the companies computer.
The proper time for death is as far in the future as I can humanly manage.
The government should never require anyone to do, or believe anything. The government should work to prevent its citizens from commiting evil acts (murder, theft, rape, kidnapping, etc...). This is criminal justice. Civil justice is mainly concerned with making sure people keep their promises (contracts).
While I agree it is a good thing to vote, I would never support forcing people to vote.
For a real eye opener look look up "United Fruit company bananas tariff" on google.