Vietnam kicked our ass because we were being polite. If we had leveled the forests and wiped out any village that harbored resistance it would have been a different story...
Fortunately, as the grandparent implies, we're too nice for that:).
Something like Pioneer's Tenchi OVA box set, which runs just over $100. That DVD set is, by the way, one of the highest quality image transfer's I've ever seen. The colors are bright and vivid, there are no annoying menu quirks, and even the mandatory FBI warning is only 3 seconds long.
But see, the RIAA actually has the motive of trying to protect their property. What else are they supposed to do? Be forced into selling songs to Napster? That's gangster marketing. I agree that the lawsuits go a bit overboard, but can you come up with a better idea?
Oh really? Did your tax dollars go to paying for that song you just downloaded? Were any of the people responsible for that recording anywhere along the production chain compensated?
A COMMUNITY gives money to a library to BUY books to share among that COMMUNITY. The community in this case is the United States, which gives federal funding to libaries.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I didn't mean to say that innovation wouldn't continue, but rather the kind of innovation extolled in the highly rated comments will come to an end.
See, I don't think "victory" involves being able to use someone's stuff however you like no matter what they say. Despite the fact that digital music is an easily reproducible "object", I had hoped that people would take a more rational approach than "d00d! free music!". I would like to see a business model in which everyone gets compensated for the work that they do. That includes the artist as well as the poor guy running a mixer in a recording studio.
> First off, if Resident Evil 2 could fit on a
> cart, so can Final Fantasy
Resident Evil 2 consisted of two CDs, both of which utilized the same prerendered backdrops, as well as videos of equivalent length. For all practical purposes, you have a 1-CD game. Compress images, drop movie quality, etc, and you can cram it onto an N64 cart.
Final Fantasy 7, the smallest of the three PSX games, consisted of three CDs, each of which contained prerendered backdrops. However, while many of these backdrops were common between the disk, many were not, thus increasing the size of the game dramatically. In addition, there were far more movies interspersed throughout the game, and the background images for the battles varied depending on the location of the fight. There were many more characters to model and texture than Resident Evil 2. And this is for the smallest of the three games! Things such as the Garden battle scene in FF8 could conceivably take up most of a cart in and of themselves.
In other words, it would take an Act of God to put anything approaching a full FF game onto an N64 cart.
It won't be long until a national government is formed. Some bastarized hybrid of the Articles of Confederation, British common law, and other organizations will eventually take over for the purpose of "clarifying" matters of national jurisdiction, among other things. If you've been paying attention over the past few years, you've probably seen it coming.
The America of the future will have national laws that override local ones, national courts to interpret the law, national economic unions to do "what is best for the nation" (instead of for a person's native state), national military forces (the Federalists are working on this), a national police force (i.e., the Canadian Mounties), and a council of probably-unelected national leaders who are concerned about "the greater good."
What gets lost? Individual rights and community rights. Virginians will no longer be able to act as Virginians, because of how it might affect a Rhode Islander, a New Jerseyite, a Pennsylvanian or a Marylander.
I don't know about you, but I'm not looking forward to it.
I don't see the problem with what you're saying. Basically, the RIAA/MPAA goes after the actual users trading their copyrighted content, and leaves law-abiding people alone. I fail to see how this is anything other than a good solution to the problem at hand.
You make an interesting point about outlets for agression. It does seem that, aside from sports, the most popular activity is watching TV(but that could just be me being jaded):).
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the real problem, but please remember that puberty is a rough time for everyone(having recently finished myself, I know this very well). It's hard to have a handle on your emotions when you're caught in between child and adult, with hormones raging throughout.
You say that guns are far more "difficult" to get today, but I have to wonder if that's entirely true. Yes, there are more laws regulating possesion of guns, but guns are also cheaper and in wider availability than, say, 50 years ago. In fact, in a small town it would be extremely difficult to acquire a gun without half the town knowing before long, as the person selling the gun is likely to know everybody within a few square miles.
I think anonymity is more of a problem in this matter than anything else. It's easy to acquire a weapon without anyone noticing today, whether via legal means or the black market. As far as I understand, matters such as those Katz refers to would have been dealt with during a fistfight after school, or whatever they did back then:). I think perhaps today people who would have otherwise slit their wrists or just thrown a punch have picked up the school shooting fad. If I'm right, I think things will probably die down in a couple of years if we don't overreact and clamp down even further on the kids.
If you're unhappy with the RIAA's pricing scheme, then you have the option of not buying their CDs. As long as you continue piracy of your music, you are contributing to the problem(RIAA paranoia about piracy) rather than the solution(cheaper CDs). You have no more intrinsic right to the music you wish to acquire than you do to read my health records
While I am by no means an engineering student, I do have a passing knowledge of projects and the like(CS majors rule!:). However, it would seem to me that if a major part of the project is to figure out how to do X, and you look at code that tells you how to do X, then you are indeed guilty of cheating. Without more information about what the goals of the project were, it's hard to say.
This seems like the perfect system to actually free up many of the domain names used now. Limit.com to actual commerical entities,.net to actual ISPs and the like,.org to actual organizations...and then create another TLD for everything else, free of trademarking disputes and the like. I'm surprised that trademark considerations haven't been mentioned with the new TLDs, considering the fact that Dr. Joe Ford can now acquire ford.pro...
Someone pulled out Macross Plus, so I'd better throw in some Gundam Wing:
Mobile Dolls, anyone?
Seriously, though, if people aren't willing to risk their lives for their causes then those causes probably aren't worth fighting for anyway. Endless robot war only dilutes the purpose of fighting in the first place.
Many people have expressed concerns that changes to the GPL could affect the distribution of current software. This is incorrect.
From the GPL, version 2:
"9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation."
and from the example copyright notice:
"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."
According to the License, only software that explicitly states that later licenses may apply are vulnerable to changes in the GPL. So if you don't want your software to change with each new release, specify a version number!
I think you're a bit mistaken here. High schools aren't all that great in the education department. The purpose of a high school is to help prepare a student for *life*, not just a job. Social activities are part of that learning, just like academics are. Unfortunately, many schools fail miserably at both goals, but that's another matter...
> Citizens of the US are not even required to
> have a SSN
Unless, of course, you want to...
Obtain benefits if your parents die
Qualify as a dependent for tax purposes
File for tax returns
Get a job(so the IRS can know how much you make)
Get a bank account that pays interest
The whole point of the DNS is to create a hierarchial naming system. If the roots of the hierarchy are going to be this numerous, it defeats the point of having a TLD at all.
What is needed is for the people buying domain names *cough*corporations*cough* to stick to the suitable hierarchy. Owning ford.org is perfectly legitimate if I happen to run the Betty Ford center. Try to fix the system before you destroy it altogether.
If you read the article more carefully, you'll see that this guy has been "ex"-NSA for a long time. He probably has no idea of what the current position on software is inside the agency itself. If he did, he certainly wouldn't be allowed to release it.
If anyone has any actual hard evidence for or against NSA backdoors in commercial software, I'd be very interested in seeing it. Meanwhile, it looks like we'll have to put up with the usual conspiracy stuff.
Who's bright idea was this? "Network Neighborhood" was bad enough, but at least it got the idea across. What's wrong with "Local Network" or something similar? I know they're trying to make an OS that's usuable by idiots, but do we have to throw five year olds in too?
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Vietnam kicked our ass because we were being polite. If we had leveled the forests and wiped out any village that harbored resistance it would have been a different story...
:).
Fortunately, as the grandparent implies, we're too nice for that
Something like Pioneer's Tenchi OVA box set, which runs just over $100. That DVD set is, by the way, one of the highest quality image transfer's I've ever seen. The colors are bright and vivid, there are no annoying menu quirks, and even the mandatory FBI warning is only 3 seconds long.
But see, the RIAA actually has the motive of trying to protect their property. What else are they supposed to do? Be forced into selling songs to Napster? That's gangster marketing. I agree that the lawsuits go a bit overboard, but can you come up with a better idea?
Oh really? Did your tax dollars go to paying for that song you just downloaded? Were any of the people responsible for that recording anywhere along the production chain compensated?
A COMMUNITY gives money to a library to BUY books to share among that COMMUNITY. The community in this case is the United States, which gives federal funding to libaries.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I didn't mean to say that innovation wouldn't continue, but rather the kind of innovation extolled in the highly rated comments will come to an end.
See, I don't think "victory" involves being able to use someone's stuff however you like no matter what they say. Despite the fact that digital music is an easily reproducible "object", I had hoped that people would take a more rational approach than "d00d! free music!". I would like to see a business model in which everyone gets compensated for the work that they do. That includes the artist as well as the poor guy running a mixer in a recording studio.
If "innovative" involves "using other people's stuff without their permission", then yeah, I'd say it's been crushed.
> First off, if Resident Evil 2 could fit on a
> cart, so can Final Fantasy
Resident Evil 2 consisted of two CDs, both of which utilized the same prerendered backdrops, as well as videos of equivalent length. For all practical purposes, you have a 1-CD game. Compress images, drop movie quality, etc, and you can cram it onto an N64 cart.
Final Fantasy 7, the smallest of the three PSX games, consisted of three CDs, each of which contained prerendered backdrops. However, while many of these backdrops were common between the disk, many were not, thus increasing the size of the game dramatically. In addition, there were far more movies interspersed throughout the game, and the background images for the battles varied depending on the location of the fight. There were many more characters to model and texture than Resident Evil 2. And this is for the smallest of the three games! Things such as the Garden battle scene in FF8 could conceivably take up most of a cart in and of themselves.
In other words, it would take an Act of God to put anything approaching a full FF game onto an N64 cart.
It won't be long until a national government is formed. Some bastarized hybrid of the Articles of Confederation, British common law, and other organizations will eventually take over for the purpose of "clarifying" matters of national jurisdiction, among other things. If you've been paying attention over the past few years, you've probably seen it coming.
The America of the future will have national laws that override local ones, national courts to interpret the law, national economic unions to do "what is best for the nation" (instead of for a person's native state), national military forces (the Federalists are working on this), a national police force (i.e., the Canadian Mounties), and a council of probably-unelected national leaders who are concerned about "the greater good."
What gets lost? Individual rights and community rights. Virginians will no longer be able to act as Virginians, because of how it might affect a Rhode Islander, a New Jerseyite, a Pennsylvanian or a Marylander.
I don't know about you, but I'm not looking forward to it.
[Apologies for the butchered state adjectives]
I don't see the problem with what you're saying. Basically, the RIAA/MPAA goes after the actual users trading their copyrighted content, and leaves law-abiding people alone. I fail to see how this is anything other than a good solution to the problem at hand.
You make an interesting point about outlets for agression. It does seem that, aside from sports, the most popular activity is watching TV(but that could just be me being jaded) :).
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the real problem, but please remember that puberty is a rough time for everyone(having recently finished myself, I know this very well). It's hard to have a handle on your emotions when you're caught in between child and adult, with hormones raging throughout.
Well, let's see...
:). I think perhaps today people who would have otherwise slit their wrists or just thrown a punch have picked up the school shooting fad. If I'm right, I think things will probably die down in a couple of years if we don't overreact and clamp down even further on the kids.
You say that guns are far more "difficult" to get today, but I have to wonder if that's entirely true. Yes, there are more laws regulating possesion of guns, but guns are also cheaper and in wider availability than, say, 50 years ago. In fact, in a small town it would be extremely difficult to acquire a gun without half the town knowing before long, as the person selling the gun is likely to know everybody within a few square miles.
I think anonymity is more of a problem in this matter than anything else. It's easy to acquire a weapon without anyone noticing today, whether via legal means or the black market. As far as I understand, matters such as those Katz refers to would have been dealt with during a fistfight after school, or whatever they did back then
If you're unhappy with the RIAA's pricing scheme, then you have the option of not buying their CDs. As long as you continue piracy of your music, you are contributing to the problem(RIAA paranoia about piracy) rather than the solution(cheaper CDs). You have no more intrinsic right to the music you wish to acquire than you do to read my health records
How did you feel when you were acquired by Microsoft? Would you prefer to be back using Unix, or are you happy where you are now?
While I am by no means an engineering student, I do have a passing knowledge of projects and the like(CS majors rule! :). However, it would seem to me that if a major part of the project is to figure out how to do X, and you look at code that tells you how to do X, then you are indeed guilty of cheating. Without more information about what the goals of the project were, it's hard to say.
Reminds me of another technology I've seen -- DVDs. Think "Special Edition" books, with multiple languages and author's commentary in the margin...
This seems like the perfect system to actually free up many of the domain names used now. Limit .com to actual commerical entities, .net to actual ISPs and the like, .org to actual organizations...and then create another TLD for everything else, free of trademarking disputes and the like. I'm surprised that trademark considerations haven't been mentioned with the new TLDs, considering the fact that Dr. Joe Ford can now acquire ford.pro...
I think you said what I was trying to better than I could have myself. Thanks!
Someone pulled out Macross Plus, so I'd better throw in some Gundam Wing:
Mobile Dolls, anyone?
Seriously, though, if people aren't willing to risk their lives for their causes then those causes probably aren't worth fighting for anyway. Endless robot war only dilutes the purpose of fighting in the first place.
On behalf of the State of Texas, I'd like to apologize for George W. Bush. We promise we won't do it again.
Many people have expressed concerns that changes to the GPL could affect the distribution of current software. This is incorrect.
From the GPL, version 2:
"9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation."
and from the example copyright notice:
"This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."
According to the License, only software that explicitly states that later licenses may apply are vulnerable to changes in the GPL. So if you don't want your software to change with each new release, specify a version number!
I think you're a bit mistaken here. High schools aren't all that great in the education department. The purpose of a high school is to help prepare a student for *life*, not just a job. Social activities are part of that learning, just like academics are. Unfortunately, many schools fail miserably at both goals, but that's another matter...
> Citizens of the US are not even required to
> have a SSN
Unless, of course, you want to...
Obtain benefits if your parents die
Qualify as a dependent for tax purposes
File for tax returns
Get a job(so the IRS can know how much you make)
Get a bank account that pays interest
Don't confuse "not required" with "don't need".
.aids? .shoes?
The whole point of the DNS is to create a hierarchial naming system. If the roots of the hierarchy are going to be this numerous, it defeats the point of having a TLD at all.
What is needed is for the people buying domain names *cough*corporations*cough* to stick to the suitable hierarchy. Owning ford.org is perfectly legitimate if I happen to run the Betty Ford center. Try to fix the system before you destroy it altogether.
If you read the article more carefully, you'll see that this guy has been "ex"-NSA for a long time. He probably has no idea of what the current position on software is inside the agency itself. If he did, he certainly wouldn't be allowed to release it.
If anyone has any actual hard evidence for or against NSA backdoors in commercial software, I'd be very interested in seeing it. Meanwhile, it looks like we'll have to put up with the usual conspiracy stuff.
"My Network Places"?
Who's bright idea was this? "Network Neighborhood" was bad enough, but at least it got the idea across. What's wrong with "Local Network" or something similar? I know they're trying to make an OS that's usuable by idiots, but do we have to throw five year olds in too?