Once upon a time, people had visions that TV could be used to educate people, make them engaged in politics and to provide unbiased direct footage from news events.
Just like today's TV. Except that education has become entertainment, political debates are instead talk shows and the news service is a high-speed, surface-scraping populistic single-sided projection of the moral of the owners.
So what you're syaing is, they succeded in thier plan. The TV educates people, in a way acceptable to the powers that be. It engages people in politics, by presenting the two parties (No, there aren't any others, trust your TV, Wilson). And it provides unbiased newsfootage (you're just adding your own bias to it, trust your TV).
*Removes tin-foil hat*
All in all, the TV can, and does complete the goals you mentioned, its just that most people would rather watch The Sapranos than an education film on the real Mafia. There are a number of channels that specialize in educational TV, but only us geeks tend to watch them. As for politics, usually close to election times we get deluged with political information, though that often gives way to personal attacks, but people seem to like those more anyway. Now, unbiased news is a bit harder, about the only thing you can do on that is watch several news sources and try to figure out what's going on for yourself. Or, better yet, watch CBS and FOX and get the two extremes.
Would the same thing not apply to hardware DVD players?
Yup, my Apex DVD player will let me skip anything I want to. It also lets me play the copy of Futurama Season 1 that I bought through an importer from the UK (was before they announced the US release).
Though part of the reason I got the DVD player I did, was because I could upgrade the firmware to fix all of the bugs left in it by the manufacturer.
Amen.
The two things that scared me as I read through the interview, and the previous preview:
1. There is going to be a console version, and from the previous games that Ion has released, it sounds like the don't localize each version. e.g. have functional differences betweem the Xbox and PC versions. And, at the risk of insulting console zelots, console FPS just don't come close to an FPS on the PC, not enough buttons, and looking with an analog stick is a PITA compared to mouse look.
2. in the original Thief games, Garrett was more or less incapable of combat; so much so that it became frustrating to many players, including Spector. While he's no match for a squadron of heavily armed guards, he has some teeth to him this time around. Increasing the player's offensive capabilities not only adds a new gameplay element, it keeps you from having to throw your progress away just because you can't sneak your way through every second of the game flawlessly.
Maybe I am alone in this belief, but part of the character of Garrett was the fact that he did suck in combat. Basically, if you tried to attack a Thief level in the same way you attack a Doom level, you were going to be dead, fast. To me, the whole point of the game was to out-think the guards, not outfight them. Heck, I only played the first two games on the Expert setting, no killing allowed, not even guards; boy, did my blackjack see a lot of use.
Sadly, it sounds like Thief 3 may lean too much towards the arcade-twitch style of play that is in most first person games.
As it is, the change in equipment (no rope arrows) is going to decrese the thinking in the game. We now have Climbing Gloves, which means that we won't really need to think three demsionally anymore, just 2D with the floor occasionally changing places with one of the walls. No more creative ways to get around, just follow along the walls where the developers want you to go.
Oh well, here's hoping that Thief 3 is at least half as good as the first two were.
Spend some time looking at the benchmarks. The older GForce4 Ti4600 and Ti4800 tend to outperform the FX5200 by a huge margin. Heck, they even tend to outperform the FX5600. This isn't to say that your card it absolute shite, but you would have done better to by a higher end GF4 card, as opposed to a low end GFFX card. You'd get better performance for about the same price. Sure, you don't get the pretty DX9 features, but then you probably won't need those for a while, and by the time you do, the lackluster performance of the FX5200 will start to be a problem.
Also, consider level length. The older games tended to have short levels, a few screens, a handful of monsters, and then on to the next. Newer games have expansive levels, if they are level based at all and not a contigious world. Playing through a level again on older games didn't take very long; with games now, a level can consist of an hour or more to get back to the point where you died.
Wow, I feel like an outsider. I played, and beat ET for the Atari 2600 many times. In fact, I sort of liked the game. Once you got used to the infuriating controls, it was sort of fun.
It was actually quite simple, really. Keep jumping in pits until you find all the radio parts, if you get low on health run around and collect the Reese's Pieces. Once you have all the parts, run around until you find the landing spot, then run around until you find the "transmit" spot, I forget the icon, push the button and run to the pick-up spot. Wait for the ship to pick you up, and then see a little animation of the kid running around his house looking for you.
Oh ya, don't forget to look for the flower in the pits. Push the button next to it to revive it, IIRC this gives you an extra life if you die.
Does that fact that I know this, and have done it repeatedly, make me unclean?
The thing that strikes me about the older puzzle games (ala Zork, Kings Quest, etc.) was the fact thet you generally had to type in the answer. This meant that you had to be pretty precise in guessing what the game designers wanted you to type. In fact, most of the puzzles were less challenging than trying to phrase it just right.
For example, one of the earlier games I played was King's Quest 3, in it you had to give some gold over to a pirate to get passage on his ship. I had this figured out and tried every possible combination of english words that I could think of. In the end, I had to buy a hint book, just to get the exact right phrase to type in; once I got past that obsticle, the rest of the game was easy enough.
I don't think games are getting any eaiser, the interface is. Everything is now point-and-click, instead of read the programmer's mind and type the anwser. Also, with the move away from sprites, movment seems less choppy. For example, in the original Prince of Persia games, you eventually got a feel for how far the character continued to run after you pressed the jump button, before he jumped. In the new Prince of Persia the character is a bit more responsive, and won't wait intil the end of the run animation to start the jump animation. Also, most games now have automapping, which is a bit of a change (and a nice one IMHO), how many of us remember taking up page after page of graph paper mapping the cities/dungeons/etc in the Bard's Tale series? Better yet, if you played the Gold Box D&D games, try mapping the outside in Secret of the Silver Blades, it was a nightmare, and a rather silly contrivance to make the game more difficult.
As for the difficulty of FPS games, most of them simply involved making the monsters/enemies more accurrate or durable, or just added more of them, and this is still true today. Again, its just a quick hack to make the game harder, and is still done in some games, other have just decided to forego it.
Also keep in mind that those that tend to think that games are getting eaiser have probably been playing them for some time now, they tend to be better at getting through games, as they have learned to adapt quickly to a changing interface/enemies/siituation. So, in a way, the games are getting easier, because the players are getting better at games in general.
Actually, the idea is a great one, which will never work. Stick all of the spammers in a known IP range, great. Now everyone simply rejects all mail from that IP range, and the world is happy. Problem is, eventually, some ISP is going to get it in thier head that they can squeeze a few more dollars out of the system by offering a "premium" spamming package. This gives the spammer an IP outside the listed spammer range, and allows them to spam to thier black heart's content.
As good as it sounds to put all of the spammers in a box, which we can each shut the lid on, it won't hold. The ISP's will see too much money to be made from allowing spammers outside the box, and then we end up back where we are now.
Nope, the only solution to this problem is going to be a technological one. Fortunatlly, the technology we need has been around since the first days of man, the club. Applied liberally about the head and sholders of every confirmed spammer in the world, we should see a drop in the amount of spam we see.
Read more physics. Centrifigal force is a ficticious force, used to make the math eaiser. What you are really dealing with is a combination of angular momentum and centerfugal force (notice the spelling difference). Basically, there is no "force" pulling the cable outwards. Instead, as the satellite on the end of the cable wants to continue in a straight line (newtonian laws of motion), but the cable pulls it back. This is happening continuiously ending up in a nice circular motion.
One way to look at it is, if you are spinning a ball on a string in a circle, and you let go, what happens? The ball whizzes off in a straight line, beacause there is no centerfugal force holding it in anymore, so the ball's momentum carries it away in a straight line.
Basically, what the person who asked, "what centrifigal force" was doing, was making a joke out of the fact that this "force" does not exist.
What's wrong with selling/giving the server software to the people who buy and play your games, like Epic does for Unreal Tournament?
That method doesn't make for a consistent revenue stream. Sure, you get a bunch of sales up front, and then a few sales here and there from people picking up the game, but that's it.
What the author of the article wants, is to get you to pay him every time you fire up your copy of UT. You log onto a server, you pay him a quarter. You finish up a round, and start a new one, you pay him another quarter. Any idiot can see that this is going to add up to a lot of money fast, that's why he wants it, he's just putting a consumer friendly spin on it, to try and sell it.
I think there is a good in-between solution. Which, incedetally, is the one my ISP did. Send out a letter to your users, stating that you are going to cut off outbound port 25, but, if the customer wants, they may go through a quick web registration and re-open said port. For most people, this letter will be thrown away and ignored; for those, like myself, who run a mail server at home, we will do a quick run through of the appropriate web page, and keep on emailing.
This way, most users can't be spam zombies, and the ones who can, hopefully, have enough of a clue to not become one.
Then, its simply a matter of determining where the spam is comming from, finding the offending users, and beating them severly with thier keyboards.
Example: The Communists during the 50's and 60's. Being a communist was enough to get you investigated and harrased.
Example: WWII being of japanesse ancestry was enough to get you thrown in a concentration camp, because you might just be a spy or sabatour.
And that's just recent history.
And no, I don't think that Freedom of Speech means freedom from consequence. However, I do realize that, in order for speech to be truly free, there must be a way for that speech to be anonymous. Tell me, do you really think that the US revolution would have gone off half as well if the British government had known about it in advance, and had been able to imprison the leaders of it, before it got off the ground?
I don't mind that the authorities might investigate a person for what they said in a public forum; however, a person should be able to express unpopular views, and do so in a way that prevents those views from being linked back to them. I'll grant that anonymous free speech isn't very important when the government is not doing anything to oppress its people, but when the government becomes corrupt and starts to do so, anonymous speech is absolutly vital. Like many of our freedoms, its is not important right now, but we can't let it go, or we won't have it when we need it the most. The price of freedom is eternal vigialance, this is part of that, making sure that we have the freedoms and tools we will need, if and when our government ever becomes oppressive.
And if you espouse communist views, you should be investigated and harrased, because you might be a spy or sabetour for the USSR. Ok, so this no longer applies, but during the 50's and 60's this is exactly what the government did. The whole point behind needing anonymous speech, is that the government may decide to declare a certain type of speech illegal or suspicious, when it should be protected. Yes, the terrorist thing is a bit far fetched, I was just trying to pick something from current events, to make the example more understandable for those that seem to have forgotten that the US government locked up everyone of Japaneese ancestry on the West Coast during WWII, and that communists were hounded during the era of McCarthyism.
Yes, we are rather lucky, in that, our government currently won't pursue people for having unpopular opinions, but it has in the past, and there isn't much to stop it now. For this reason, we should never give up the right to anonymous speech. Yes, it makes it harder for the police to do thier legitimate job, and that is sad, but going the opposite direction is worse. Take some time to look into the methods of the Stazi in Soviet East Germany, then compare them to the methods of the Department of Homeland Security, there are some frightening similarities. Also, when making the comparison, consider the laws that Ashcroft and company have tried to get passed.
I'm not trying to say that the government is repressing anyone now, fact is, our society is humming along OK right now. However, I see no reason for this to never change. The point behind protecting anonymous speech is that, eventually, we may end up in a situation where we need to be able to say things to one another, without fear of the government finding out who said it, in order to protect the freedom we hold dear. If everything we say or do is recorder and attached to us, at all times, is it really that hard to see that the government basically run an effective thought police?
Yes, anonymous speech will be abused, but what freedoms haven't been? But, its necessary to remain a free society, to lose it, is to allow the creation of thought police.
Fortunatly, I don't think it is hard to pick up the fact that I was speaking hypothetically. And again, I stated that I was probably exagerating the facts a touch. Though, I wouldn't be too suprised if a background check is run on me at some point, though, I would never know if it was.
Its not just about what we are allowed to say, its also about what we will be harrased for saying.
For example, right now, if I was to take my web server, and put up a site claiming that Osama Bin Laden was the new messiah, and that I agree with the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the acts of terror; I would be lucky to see a lawyer, before I landed in Guantanimo; even if I stated on the site that I am not advocating violence.
Granted, this might be a bit of an exageration, but do you really think I would be left alone? Especially if my site got popular.
Now, techinically, I should be able to publicly espouse the belief that Al Queda is right, and that the US is the Great Satan, etc. But with the current climate, I'd be nuts to do so. Its not a case of what I can and cannot say, its a matter of me having to censor myself out of fear of begin punished for my views. But, if I can put forth those views, and do so anonymously, I am less likely to censor myself out of fear; and, as such, truly have free speech.
I was really pulling for this judgement to be held up. My reasoning, if the law had been shot down, due to the loopholes the polticians left themselves, then maybe they would have drafted a law which included themselves in it. On the other hand, they may have just tried to sweep the whole issue under the rug and forget about it, so I guess I'll just be happy with the half win we got.
The first two were probably right, the last you should appy to yourself. Remember, stocks do not move on facts; stocks move based on what a bunch of people think is true. Also remember, that most of the people invested in SCOX are probably investors who have only heard of Linux because of the SCOX FUD, and so will believe that this "evidence" has bearing. People are probably buying this stock up at the moment, expecting to see a rise as the company wins its case against IBM, and those commie Linux people.
Eventually, the whole thing will probably unravel around SCOX, and the investors will believe different facts, and then drop the stock like a dead rat. But then, SCOX might just be able to hold this together and come out with its stock price intact, its all a matter of how it perceived by the investors.
Similar, but not quite the same: I have heard of an opossum trap that used a similar theroy. You drill a hole in a log, put three nails in it, with the tips protruding into the hole, then drop in a piece of tinfoil, balled up. Leave enough space between the nails so that the opossum can get his paw in there, grab the foil, but he can't get it out again. Then walk up and whack him over the head.
This came out of a fictional book I read in school (somwhere, don't remember when) and if my memory is correct, it was in "Tuck Everlasting" (don't rememebr the author, the book sucked). Not sure if the trap would work, but it might.
I don't need a "M" rating on the box to tell me games like Max Payne and Halo are not for kids - the cover art tells me that. Same with "NC-17" movies. When an "E" rating means it may not be suitable for kids, so I have to preview it anyway, it's worthless to me as a parent.
Consider for a moment, games like Conker's Bad Fur Day. The game box was rather innocuous, as far as I remember. But the game's content deserved the 'M' rating. The rating of games isn't always going to be apparent from the front of the box, hence a rating system is useful for cutting down on the games you need to review. After that, it comes down to your values, is a nipple something a child shouldn't see, or do you not care? Trying to build a rating system that is going to cover everyone's viewes, or is configurable enough to, is not going to happen. take the rating system for what it is, a guideline, nothing more. You still have to do your job as a parent, and pay attention to what your kids are viewing/playing.
OK, while we're going down this path, I have a further rant: What's the point of the TV ratings system and the so-called "V chip" if news and ads are not rated? I've seen ads for TV shows I don't want my kids to watch (shows that are on after 9:00 because they are not for kids) running during the so-called "family" hour -- ads complete with violence and sex. But they're ads, so they're not blocked.
Frankly, I'm not interested in any rating system that isn't so finely grained that I can tell the TV to block Jerry Falwell and allow Dr. Ruth. Hell, I'd pay $1000 for a device that insured I'd never have to see Jerry Falwell again!
Yes, that does seem to be a pretty bad loophole. Perhaps complaining to the people who maintan the V-Chip would be a good start. As for filtering on the people in the broadcast, I don't think we are going to see anything like that for a long time. Best bet is to just avoid channels where they might show up. And avoid TV News, its not about news anymore anyways, its all about ratings.
Minors can't buy pornography or watch violent films on their own, why should games be treated any differently?
I don't think you realize it, but by making a law which prohibits the sale of 'M' rated video games to minors, you would be treating video games differently. There is no law which prohibits the sale of R rated movies (NC-17, movies, and Playboy for that matter) to minors. The only reason no one does is because, if the MPAA found out about it, that store would never be allowed to carry movies again. (Funny, for all the bad stuff they do the MPAA did good on that one; I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.)
I think the thing most of us, who are against this type of law, fear, is that this will be the nose of the camael in the tent for the Government restricting free speech. Sure, this piece is innocuous enough, but it sets a very bad precident. What is next? Giving this type of game to a child becomes "contributing to the deliquency of a minor" much as alcohol and tabacco are now? So this would effectivly allow the government to block children from access to anything that it deems is "inapproriate".
Ok, so the above might be a bit of a slippery slope fallacy, but I don't want to take that chance. If the above does happen, its very bad. If this type of law doesn't get passed, then the worst we get is little Jimmy seeing some violent images before he is deemed ready, which hasn't been proven to cause violent behavior. Not exactly the same scale of problem.
The rating system should be considered a starting point. If a game is rated 'AO' then you probably shouldn't even consider it for a 5 year old. So, it narrows down the posibilities. Afterall, would you watch an NC-17 movie, because you think you might actually want to allow your child to watch it? Maybe its OK if its just straight sex in the missionairy position, but cumshots are right out? Give me a break.
Keep in mind that, what you find offensive another parent might not, and vice-versa. So, no rating system will ever be viewed as perfect by everybody. You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
This was only added in IE6, as far as I remember. Some of us have been using Mozilla for a long time now.
I was reminded of this the other day when I had to use IE to browse the internet for a while, I ran across a pop-up and was simply dumb-founded. I hadn't seen one of those in at least a year, maybe two. To top it off, I wasn't able to open adblock and kill some of the more annoying images (think flashing banner ads), or items (think almost all flash) in a page. IE is a really terrible browser, thank (insert diety here) that I'm back to running Firebird.
Fell like I'm getting trolled here, but I have to...
You do realize that clothes are a man-made invention as well? Fact is, being clothed is unnatural, look at every other mammal out there, how many of them wear clothes (not counting the abused cats and dogs that are dressed up by thier owners)?
We have adapted to colder climates by wearing clothes, but somewhere along the way, someone got the bright idea that men shouldn't let thier penis show, and that women shouldn't let either thier vagina or mammaries show. What's the friggin' point? People aren't going to become raving lunatics because they see other people naked, if anything suppressing those sexual urges, the way we do in our society, is going to lead to deviant behavior (catholic priests, anyone?). The worst that is going to happen is that some guys are going to get hard-ons, and some women are going to start to lubricate, and even that will not occur as often, when everyone becomes used to the idea of seeing other naked people.
The only reason people are so obsessed with being clothed is that they are afraid of being judged. Guys are worried that they are too small, and women are worried that they are too fat. So, they hide, and force everyone else to hide, lest they have thier inadaquicies infered by being covered. Add to that the religious idiots who want to portray sex as evil, and you get what we had Monday, people over-reacting to Janet Jackson showing off her breast.
Lastly, assuming that your reference to God is from the Christian mythology, have you even read Genesis? Adam and Eve didn't start out clothed, or even care about it!
Slashdot Mirror
Once upon a time, people had visions that TV could be used to educate people, make them engaged in politics and to provide unbiased direct footage from news events.
Just like today's TV. Except that education has become entertainment, political debates are instead talk shows and the news service is a high-speed, surface-scraping populistic single-sided projection of the moral of the owners.
So what you're syaing is, they succeded in thier plan. The TV educates people, in a way acceptable to the powers that be. It engages people in politics, by presenting the two parties (No, there aren't any others, trust your TV, Wilson). And it provides unbiased newsfootage (you're just adding your own bias to it, trust your TV).
*Removes tin-foil hat*
All in all, the TV can, and does complete the goals you mentioned, its just that most people would rather watch The Sapranos than an education film on the real Mafia. There are a number of channels that specialize in educational TV, but only us geeks tend to watch them. As for politics, usually close to election times we get deluged with political information, though that often gives way to personal attacks, but people seem to like those more anyway. Now, unbiased news is a bit harder, about the only thing you can do on that is watch several news sources and try to figure out what's going on for yourself. Or, better yet, watch CBS and FOX and get the two extremes.
Would the same thing not apply to hardware DVD players?
Yup, my Apex DVD player will let me skip anything I want to. It also lets me play the copy of Futurama Season 1 that I bought through an importer from the UK (was before they announced the US release).
Though part of the reason I got the DVD player I did, was because I could upgrade the firmware to fix all of the bugs left in it by the manufacturer.
Amen.
The two things that scared me as I read through the interview, and the previous preview:
1. There is going to be a console version, and from the previous games that Ion has released, it sounds like the don't localize each version. e.g. have functional differences betweem the Xbox and PC versions. And, at the risk of insulting console zelots, console FPS just don't come close to an FPS on the PC, not enough buttons, and looking with an analog stick is a PITA compared to mouse look.
2. in the original Thief games, Garrett was more or less incapable of combat; so much so that it became frustrating to many players, including Spector. While he's no match for a squadron of heavily armed guards, he has some teeth to him this time around. Increasing the player's offensive capabilities not only adds a new gameplay element, it keeps you from having to throw your progress away just because you can't sneak your way through every second of the game flawlessly.
Maybe I am alone in this belief, but part of the character of Garrett was the fact that he did suck in combat. Basically, if you tried to attack a Thief level in the same way you attack a Doom level, you were going to be dead, fast. To me, the whole point of the game was to out-think the guards, not outfight them. Heck, I only played the first two games on the Expert setting, no killing allowed, not even guards; boy, did my blackjack see a lot of use.
Sadly, it sounds like Thief 3 may lean too much towards the arcade-twitch style of play that is in most first person games.
As it is, the change in equipment (no rope arrows) is going to decrese the thinking in the game. We now have Climbing Gloves, which means that we won't really need to think three demsionally anymore, just 2D with the floor occasionally changing places with one of the walls. No more creative ways to get around, just follow along the walls where the developers want you to go.
Oh well, here's hoping that Thief 3 is at least half as good as the first two were.
Spend some time looking at the benchmarks. The older GForce4 Ti4600 and Ti4800 tend to outperform the FX5200 by a huge margin. Heck, they even tend to outperform the FX5600. This isn't to say that your card it absolute shite, but you would have done better to by a higher end GF4 card, as opposed to a low end GFFX card. You'd get better performance for about the same price. Sure, you don't get the pretty DX9 features, but then you probably won't need those for a while, and by the time you do, the lackluster performance of the FX5200 will start to be a problem.
Also, consider level length. The older games tended to have short levels, a few screens, a handful of monsters, and then on to the next. Newer games have expansive levels, if they are level based at all and not a contigious world. Playing through a level again on older games didn't take very long; with games now, a level can consist of an hour or more to get back to the point where you died.
Wow, I feel like an outsider. I played, and beat ET for the Atari 2600 many times. In fact, I sort of liked the game. Once you got used to the infuriating controls, it was sort of fun.
It was actually quite simple, really. Keep jumping in pits until you find all the radio parts, if you get low on health run around and collect the Reese's Pieces. Once you have all the parts, run around until you find the landing spot, then run around until you find the "transmit" spot, I forget the icon, push the button and run to the pick-up spot. Wait for the ship to pick you up, and then see a little animation of the kid running around his house looking for you.
Oh ya, don't forget to look for the flower in the pits. Push the button next to it to revive it, IIRC this gives you an extra life if you die.
Does that fact that I know this, and have done it repeatedly, make me unclean?
The thing that strikes me about the older puzzle games (ala Zork, Kings Quest, etc.) was the fact thet you generally had to type in the answer. This meant that you had to be pretty precise in guessing what the game designers wanted you to type. In fact, most of the puzzles were less challenging than trying to phrase it just right.
For example, one of the earlier games I played was King's Quest 3, in it you had to give some gold over to a pirate to get passage on his ship. I had this figured out and tried every possible combination of english words that I could think of. In the end, I had to buy a hint book, just to get the exact right phrase to type in; once I got past that obsticle, the rest of the game was easy enough.
I don't think games are getting any eaiser, the interface is. Everything is now point-and-click, instead of read the programmer's mind and type the anwser. Also, with the move away from sprites, movment seems less choppy. For example, in the original Prince of Persia games, you eventually got a feel for how far the character continued to run after you pressed the jump button, before he jumped. In the new Prince of Persia the character is a bit more responsive, and won't wait intil the end of the run animation to start the jump animation. Also, most games now have automapping, which is a bit of a change (and a nice one IMHO), how many of us remember taking up page after page of graph paper mapping the cities/dungeons/etc in the Bard's Tale series? Better yet, if you played the Gold Box D&D games, try mapping the outside in Secret of the Silver Blades, it was a nightmare, and a rather silly contrivance to make the game more difficult.
As for the difficulty of FPS games, most of them simply involved making the monsters/enemies more accurrate or durable, or just added more of them, and this is still true today. Again, its just a quick hack to make the game harder, and is still done in some games, other have just decided to forego it.
Also keep in mind that those that tend to think that games are getting eaiser have probably been playing them for some time now, they tend to be better at getting through games, as they have learned to adapt quickly to a changing interface/enemies/siituation. So, in a way, the games are getting easier, because the players are getting better at games in general.
Actually, the idea is a great one, which will never work. Stick all of the spammers in a known IP range, great. Now everyone simply rejects all mail from that IP range, and the world is happy. Problem is, eventually, some ISP is going to get it in thier head that they can squeeze a few more dollars out of the system by offering a "premium" spamming package. This gives the spammer an IP outside the listed spammer range, and allows them to spam to thier black heart's content.
As good as it sounds to put all of the spammers in a box, which we can each shut the lid on, it won't hold. The ISP's will see too much money to be made from allowing spammers outside the box, and then we end up back where we are now.
Nope, the only solution to this problem is going to be a technological one. Fortunatlly, the technology we need has been around since the first days of man, the club. Applied liberally about the head and sholders of every confirmed spammer in the world, we should see a drop in the amount of spam we see.
Read more physics. Centrifigal force is a ficticious force, used to make the math eaiser. What you are really dealing with is a combination of angular momentum and centerfugal force (notice the spelling difference). Basically, there is no "force" pulling the cable outwards. Instead, as the satellite on the end of the cable wants to continue in a straight line (newtonian laws of motion), but the cable pulls it back. This is happening continuiously ending up in a nice circular motion.
One way to look at it is, if you are spinning a ball on a string in a circle, and you let go, what happens? The ball whizzes off in a straight line, beacause there is no centerfugal force holding it in anymore, so the ball's momentum carries it away in a straight line.
Basically, what the person who asked, "what centrifigal force" was doing, was making a joke out of the fact that this "force" does not exist.
What's wrong with selling/giving the server software to the people who buy and play your games, like Epic does for Unreal Tournament?
That method doesn't make for a consistent revenue stream. Sure, you get a bunch of sales up front, and then a few sales here and there from people picking up the game, but that's it.
What the author of the article wants, is to get you to pay him every time you fire up your copy of UT. You log onto a server, you pay him a quarter. You finish up a round, and start a new one, you pay him another quarter. Any idiot can see that this is going to add up to a lot of money fast, that's why he wants it, he's just putting a consumer friendly spin on it, to try and sell it.
I think there is a good in-between solution. Which, incedetally, is the one my ISP did. Send out a letter to your users, stating that you are going to cut off outbound port 25, but, if the customer wants, they may go through a quick web registration and re-open said port. For most people, this letter will be thrown away and ignored; for those, like myself, who run a mail server at home, we will do a quick run through of the appropriate web page, and keep on emailing.
This way, most users can't be spam zombies, and the ones who can, hopefully, have enough of a clue to not become one.
Then, its simply a matter of determining where the spam is comming from, finding the offending users, and beating them severly with thier keyboards.
Example: The Communists during the 50's and 60's. Being a communist was enough to get you investigated and harrased.
Example: WWII being of japanesse ancestry was enough to get you thrown in a concentration camp, because you might just be a spy or sabatour.
And that's just recent history.
And no, I don't think that Freedom of Speech means freedom from consequence. However, I do realize that, in order for speech to be truly free, there must be a way for that speech to be anonymous. Tell me, do you really think that the US revolution would have gone off half as well if the British government had known about it in advance, and had been able to imprison the leaders of it, before it got off the ground?
I don't mind that the authorities might investigate a person for what they said in a public forum; however, a person should be able to express unpopular views, and do so in a way that prevents those views from being linked back to them. I'll grant that anonymous free speech isn't very important when the government is not doing anything to oppress its people, but when the government becomes corrupt and starts to do so, anonymous speech is absolutly vital. Like many of our freedoms, its is not important right now, but we can't let it go, or we won't have it when we need it the most. The price of freedom is eternal vigialance, this is part of that, making sure that we have the freedoms and tools we will need, if and when our government ever becomes oppressive.
And if you espouse communist views, you should be investigated and harrased, because you might be a spy or sabetour for the USSR. Ok, so this no longer applies, but during the 50's and 60's this is exactly what the government did. The whole point behind needing anonymous speech, is that the government may decide to declare a certain type of speech illegal or suspicious, when it should be protected. Yes, the terrorist thing is a bit far fetched, I was just trying to pick something from current events, to make the example more understandable for those that seem to have forgotten that the US government locked up everyone of Japaneese ancestry on the West Coast during WWII, and that communists were hounded during the era of McCarthyism.
Yes, we are rather lucky, in that, our government currently won't pursue people for having unpopular opinions, but it has in the past, and there isn't much to stop it now. For this reason, we should never give up the right to anonymous speech. Yes, it makes it harder for the police to do thier legitimate job, and that is sad, but going the opposite direction is worse. Take some time to look into the methods of the Stazi in Soviet East Germany, then compare them to the methods of the Department of Homeland Security, there are some frightening similarities. Also, when making the comparison, consider the laws that Ashcroft and company have tried to get passed.
I'm not trying to say that the government is repressing anyone now, fact is, our society is humming along OK right now. However, I see no reason for this to never change. The point behind protecting anonymous speech is that, eventually, we may end up in a situation where we need to be able to say things to one another, without fear of the government finding out who said it, in order to protect the freedom we hold dear. If everything we say or do is recorder and attached to us, at all times, is it really that hard to see that the government basically run an effective thought police?
Yes, anonymous speech will be abused, but what freedoms haven't been? But, its necessary to remain a free society, to lose it, is to allow the creation of thought police.
Sorry, near the end of the work day, my ability to catch humor wandered off sometime around lunch time.
Fortunatly, I don't think it is hard to pick up the fact that I was speaking hypothetically. And again, I stated that I was probably exagerating the facts a touch. Though, I wouldn't be too suprised if a background check is run on me at some point, though, I would never know if it was.
Its not just about what we are allowed to say, its also about what we will be harrased for saying.
For example, right now, if I was to take my web server, and put up a site claiming that Osama Bin Laden was the new messiah, and that I agree with the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the acts of terror; I would be lucky to see a lawyer, before I landed in Guantanimo; even if I stated on the site that I am not advocating violence.
Granted, this might be a bit of an exageration, but do you really think I would be left alone? Especially if my site got popular.
Now, techinically, I should be able to publicly espouse the belief that Al Queda is right, and that the US is the Great Satan, etc. But with the current climate, I'd be nuts to do so. Its not a case of what I can and cannot say, its a matter of me having to censor myself out of fear of begin punished for my views. But, if I can put forth those views, and do so anonymously, I am less likely to censor myself out of fear; and, as such, truly have free speech.
I was really pulling for this judgement to be held up. My reasoning, if the law had been shot down, due to the loopholes the polticians left themselves, then maybe they would have drafted a law which included themselves in it. On the other hand, they may have just tried to sweep the whole issue under the rug and forget about it, so I guess I'll just be happy with the half win we got.
Non-programmer, non-lawyer, non-thinker...
The first two were probably right, the last you should appy to yourself. Remember, stocks do not move on facts; stocks move based on what a bunch of people think is true. Also remember, that most of the people invested in SCOX are probably investors who have only heard of Linux because of the SCOX FUD, and so will believe that this "evidence" has bearing. People are probably buying this stock up at the moment, expecting to see a rise as the company wins its case against IBM, and those commie Linux people.
Eventually, the whole thing will probably unravel around SCOX, and the investors will believe different facts, and then drop the stock like a dead rat. But then, SCOX might just be able to hold this together and come out with its stock price intact, its all a matter of how it perceived by the investors.
Similar, but not quite the same: I have heard of an opossum trap that used a similar theroy. You drill a hole in a log, put three nails in it, with the tips protruding into the hole, then drop in a piece of tinfoil, balled up. Leave enough space between the nails so that the opossum can get his paw in there, grab the foil, but he can't get it out again. Then walk up and whack him over the head.
This came out of a fictional book I read in school (somwhere, don't remember when) and if my memory is correct, it was in "Tuck Everlasting" (don't rememebr the author, the book sucked). Not sure if the trap would work, but it might.
I don't need a "M" rating on the box to tell me games like Max Payne and Halo are not for kids - the cover art tells me that. Same with "NC-17" movies. When an "E" rating means it may not be suitable for kids, so I have to preview it anyway, it's worthless to me as a parent.
Consider for a moment, games like Conker's Bad Fur Day. The game box was rather innocuous, as far as I remember. But the game's content deserved the 'M' rating. The rating of games isn't always going to be apparent from the front of the box, hence a rating system is useful for cutting down on the games you need to review. After that, it comes down to your values, is a nipple something a child shouldn't see, or do you not care? Trying to build a rating system that is going to cover everyone's viewes, or is configurable enough to, is not going to happen. take the rating system for what it is, a guideline, nothing more. You still have to do your job as a parent, and pay attention to what your kids are viewing/playing.
OK, while we're going down this path, I have a further rant: What's the point of the TV ratings system and the so-called "V chip" if news and ads are not rated? I've seen ads for TV shows I don't want my kids to watch (shows that are on after 9:00 because they are not for kids) running during the so-called "family" hour -- ads complete with violence and sex. But they're ads, so they're not blocked.
Frankly, I'm not interested in any rating system that isn't so finely grained that I can tell the TV to block Jerry Falwell and allow Dr. Ruth. Hell, I'd pay $1000 for a device that insured I'd never have to see Jerry Falwell again!
Yes, that does seem to be a pretty bad loophole. Perhaps complaining to the people who maintan the V-Chip would be a good start. As for filtering on the people in the broadcast, I don't think we are going to see anything like that for a long time. Best bet is to just avoid channels where they might show up. And avoid TV News, its not about news anymore anyways, its all about ratings.
Minors can't buy pornography or watch violent films on their own, why should games be treated any differently?
I don't think you realize it, but by making a law which prohibits the sale of 'M' rated video games to minors, you would be treating video games differently. There is no law which prohibits the sale of R rated movies (NC-17, movies, and Playboy for that matter) to minors. The only reason no one does is because, if the MPAA found out about it, that store would never be allowed to carry movies again. (Funny, for all the bad stuff they do the MPAA did good on that one; I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.)
I think the thing most of us, who are against this type of law, fear, is that this will be the nose of the camael in the tent for the Government restricting free speech. Sure, this piece is innocuous enough, but it sets a very bad precident. What is next? Giving this type of game to a child becomes "contributing to the deliquency of a minor" much as alcohol and tabacco are now? So this would effectivly allow the government to block children from access to anything that it deems is "inapproriate".
Ok, so the above might be a bit of a slippery slope fallacy, but I don't want to take that chance. If the above does happen, its very bad. If this type of law doesn't get passed, then the worst we get is little Jimmy seeing some violent images before he is deemed ready, which hasn't been proven to cause violent behavior. Not exactly the same scale of problem.
The rating system should be considered a starting point. If a game is rated 'AO' then you probably shouldn't even consider it for a 5 year old. So, it narrows down the posibilities. Afterall, would you watch an NC-17 movie, because you think you might actually want to allow your child to watch it? Maybe its OK if its just straight sex in the missionairy position, but cumshots are right out? Give me a break.
Keep in mind that, what you find offensive another parent might not, and vice-versa. So, no rating system will ever be viewed as perfect by everybody. You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
This was only added in IE6, as far as I remember. Some of us have been using Mozilla for a long time now.
I was reminded of this the other day when I had to use IE to browse the internet for a while, I ran across a pop-up and was simply dumb-founded. I hadn't seen one of those in at least a year, maybe two. To top it off, I wasn't able to open adblock and kill some of the more annoying images (think flashing banner ads), or items (think almost all flash) in a page. IE is a really terrible browser, thank (insert diety here) that I'm back to running Firebird.
Fell like I'm getting trolled here, but I have to...
You do realize that clothes are a man-made invention as well? Fact is, being clothed is unnatural, look at every other mammal out there, how many of them wear clothes (not counting the abused cats and dogs that are dressed up by thier owners)?
We have adapted to colder climates by wearing clothes, but somewhere along the way, someone got the bright idea that men shouldn't let thier penis show, and that women shouldn't let either thier vagina or mammaries show. What's the friggin' point? People aren't going to become raving lunatics because they see other people naked, if anything suppressing those sexual urges, the way we do in our society, is going to lead to deviant behavior (catholic priests, anyone?). The worst that is going to happen is that some guys are going to get hard-ons, and some women are going to start to lubricate, and even that will not occur as often, when everyone becomes used to the idea of seeing other naked people.
The only reason people are so obsessed with being clothed is that they are afraid of being judged. Guys are worried that they are too small, and women are worried that they are too fat. So, they hide, and force everyone else to hide, lest they have thier inadaquicies infered by being covered. Add to that the religious idiots who want to portray sex as evil, and you get what we had Monday, people over-reacting to Janet Jackson showing off her breast.
Lastly, assuming that your reference to God is from the Christian mythology, have you even read Genesis? Adam and Eve didn't start out clothed, or even care about it!
And here all this time I though PETA was:
People for the Eating of Tasty Animals. Who knew?