Is it just me or does this ideology seem to lead to titles dying from over engineering. I don't think it'll come as a shock to anyone that when you let the engineers decide when a product is ready to ship, that it will never ship. On the other side of the rope are the marketers who want to realease it now, now, now. What you need is someone in the middle who is willing to give a cut-off date, a deadline. This means that the engineers are not allowed to keep adding features, creating bugs, and fixing those bugs after a certain point, and that the marketers have to wait for a product to actually exist before booking orders. Ya, deadlines suck, most of us probably deal with them in our jobs, but they are necessary to making a company run, as long as they are realistic. Too short, and the product sucks, too long and the product dies in engineering or misses the market. When its done, seems to be a deadline that is just way to long for bringing a product to market, and slowly builds dissatisfaction in the customers who would buy your product.
Does this mean that the RIAA were sharing songs on KaZaa??
If this is the case, are they also not liable under the DMCA?
I doubt it, they didn't break any encryption to do this. As for copyright infringement, they didn't do that either as they do have the right to copy those files. The thing I would question is, if they have the right to distribute those files, and were willingly making them available online for free, without any sort of disclaimer, is the person downloading them still in violation of copyright? Cosider for a moment, the person downloading the songs downloaded them from a group who has the right to distribute, and who did not make any attempt to state that downloading those songs, in that fashion, was not allowed. In normal law enforcement, I think this is called entrapment, e.g. the police can't offer to sell you cocaine and then arrest you for trying to buy cocain, unless you initiate the sale. Just something to ponder.
I was thinking the same thing. I hadn't really heard about Napster until the RIAA started trying to shut it down. In the same aticle, I also learned about AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, and Kazza. In a way, what they are doing is backfiring. They are not stopping copyright infringement, but they are educating people as to how to do it, and the benefits of doing it. Is the wholesale infringement right? That is a question each of us must answer ourselves, but from the number of people doing it right now, it would seem that a sizable portion of the population doesn't think so, and it might just be enough people that it will break the backs of the RIAA and MPAA.
Imagine if you were locked in a room proportional to your size in the same ratio as these mice are. You, initially, might try to escape by searching the floors, the walls, and the ceiling for openings, panels, locks, or doors. You might do this three or four times to make sure you didn't miss anything on the previous passes. However, the analogy to the behaviors of these mice would be compulsively searching the surfaces of your prison for about eight hours a day (~50% of your waking time) every day for twenty years. That is not normal behavior.
Assuming that you nothing better to do, why not keep trying? This may not really be a psychotic behavior, but instead a single mindedness, and unwillingness/inability to give up. As a human, one might become frustrated with the situation and give up, but that is only because we are able to use logic. We would assume that if the bars were steel yesterday, and we couldn't chew through them, and they are still steel today and we still can't chew through them, then they will probably be steel tomorrow, and we won't be able to chew through them. I would question whether mice have the ability to analyze the situation and come to the same conclusion? Sure, they do have some capacity for memory and reasoning, they can be conditioned and trained after all, but is it as advanced as our own? Will a mouse realize that the bars can never be chewed through, no matter how much time he spends at it, or will he simply keep trying? I just wonder if we aren't anthropomophisizing these mice, just a bit, and applying our own attributes to them.
And as for the backflipper, ya, he was probably off his rocker.
Its not just the wireless ones either. I run a DLink 704P at home, and every once in a while it inexplicably stops giving out IP addresses, and the admin page is unreachable. The only fix is to cycle power on it. This whole time I thought it might just be my unit, but I guess this is more of a general problem with DLink's router software.
I just hope they fix the multiplayer features a bit. To start with, the multiplyer campaign in the first one really seemed like an afterthought. Basically no story, you just fight your way from place to place. To make matters worse the game scaled horribly for multiplayer. All it did was give the eneimies more hit points, and a rather lot of them at that. My group had a couple of LAN parties where DS was the game we played, but we quickly lost interest in it. Why? Well, it got kinda boring just running around, and then spending 20 minutes hacking down 2 or 3 creatures, and with the non-interactive combat system it was like watching someone chop down a tree, not exactly fun. It got so bad a one point that one of the players, playing a fighter type character, got up in the middle of a battle, got sodas for everyone, and then watched over my sholder as I blasted off spells in a vain attempt to kill something. Which brings up the other problem I had with it, since the monsters HP went up dramatically, but the mage's ability to do damage stayed the same, the mage was pretty worthless, you would have to expend all of your mana to bring down one creature, the whole time running around like a bitch hopping it didn't squish you. At least it was interactive, but it sucked never getting to actually be of much use in the battles.
For me, if a game is going to have multiplyer in it, it had better be good. I hate forking out the money for a game, to use at a LAN party, only to have the multiplayer suck. And these days, that's about the only way I like to play RPG/Adventure games.
If someone hacks into your bank account (let us assume this is in a country with no depositor insurance) and empties your account you haven't been deprived of anything tangible. Is it theft?
Actually, I think this would fall more under the term wire fraud. Though, again, this type of thing involves taking something from me and, in doing so, denies me the use of that thing, in the case of your analogy, money. Copyright infringment, on the other hand, does not deny someone the use of the thing which is copied. Is it still illegal, yes. Should it be treated as being worse than theft? I don't think so, but that is what this proposed law is going to do. Consider for a moment, what would happen to me if I went into a local Walmart and stole a CD, assuming I was caught? I'd get the legal equvilent of a slap in the wrist, probably a fine and a couple of hours of community service. Now, if this law is enacted and I get caught sharing 1 music file, I get a sizable fine and sent to jail for a couple of years. So, considering that, in your view, each crime is equiveilent, why should the punishments be so disproportionate?
Further, if you look at this from another standpoint, mine for example, this law looks even worse. If I steal a CD I am directly depriving the store of the use of that CD, they can't sell it. Where as, if I download an mp3, I in no way prevent the person I copied it from continuing to use it. Admitadly, I have, in some way, dimished the value of the copyright on that song, but probably by a far lesser amount than the cost of a CD. So, why the huge disparity in the punishment? Why is there to be a greater punishment for the crime which does lesser harm?
I disagree with you that free speech requires anonymity. If you have something worth saying, you should be willing to stand behind what you say.
Right, tell this to the people in China who disagree with the current govenment. Sure, they belive what they say, and they would love to be able to state that publicly. However, this type of statement tends to get people killed in China currently, so instead, they find ways to spread their ideas, and information, without being identified, which keeps them alive longer, and allows them to do more to help get rid of the current govenment.
Since no one is legally allowed to persecute you for your speech, you should not have any fear of speaking your mind, and thus should have no need for anonymity.
Tell this to the Communists in the US during the 50's and 60's. At the time they were persecuted, in the US, for holding a somewhat unpopular belief about economics. Also, look back at how people of Japaneese ancestry were treated in the US during WWII. Sometimes, it isn't a matter of what people/the govenment should do, instead its about what people/the govenment actually do. The ability for people to share and spread ideas/information without fear of persecution only truly ever comes through total anonymity.
Sure, Freenet can, and probably does, host kiddie porn and other such undesirables. And, those files may, in fact, be stored on my machine running Freenet. But, I see this as being part of the trade off for liberty, sometimes tools get misused and abused, but I refuse to give up my right to privacy in order to gain a false pretense of security. If, in order to retain my anonyminity, I must accept the possibility that some of the information on my computer would violate my ethical code, I am willing to accept that trade off. If you are not, that is your decision, but please don't whine when the DoD renames and fires up TIA, afterall, you don't need to remain anonymous, the government will protect you and never persecute you for your beliefs. Afterall, its only going to be used to catch terrorists, and you aren't one of those are you?
My only real problem with them is thet their TOS specifically states that I am not allowed to host a server on my DSL line. Plus, I would have to pay extra to get a static IP.
Don't get me wrong Verizon DSL has been ok as far as service goes (they need better customer support training, but that's not a big problem to me), I just don't like govenment enforced monopolies. Also, cosidering that I will get a static IP, and about double the download speed for the same price, I don't see any reason to not switch. Mind you, I don't need much in the way of upload speed, my website is small, and doesn't see much traffic, I don't spam, and don't send a lot of email, so my upstream requirements are modest.
You're right that, as far as getting the line itself goes, we're pretty much screwed here. But at the very least there is still a very modest level of competition. Myself, I am getting ready to jump to DSLExtreme for my ISP. Sure, the money for the line still ends up in Verizon's pocket (that is unavoidable), but at least not all of it does. And, I can get a 1.5Mbps/128Kbps line for $50/month, with static IP, and a TOS which allows me to host my own mail/web server, and have multipul computers behind a router. Yup, its not quite competition, but what do you expect when the phone lines are owned by Verizon?
Now that it has been with us for a few years, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere, how has the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) affected your job? I would assume that you now see cases of this nature, are such frequent, and how do such cases often go? Is this law really providing for the common good of the people, or is it simply creating more problems than it is solving?
And, of course, what are your views on this law, has it actually helped to slow the tide of copyright infringement, or not? And considering the boundryless nature of the internet, do you expect that a law, such as this, or any IP law for that matter, will be effective for much longer?
No, its just hand waving. We've had something similar here in California for some time, and I still have yet to hear about any spammer being nailed under the law. I still receive just as much spam now as I did before, and almost none of it has the ADV: or ADVADLT: tag on it. This is simply another feel-good law manufactured for you, by your politicians to justify their existance.
Until something like this gets passed at the federal level, has some real teeth in it, and gets enforced, none of this is going to do anything to stop the flood of spam.
This is just more hand waving, I don't care how long you give it, its not going to have an appreciable affect.
I agree with what you are saying, but it is hardly a western phenomenon. In fact, I would say it is decidedly an EASTERN phenomenon as controlling social class in an organized fashion really began with the Hindu Caste system in India.
I think we would have to say that both Eastern and Western societies have had a go at this type of idea. What exactly do you thing Feudalism was? it was simply a class based society, in which you were born into a class and pretty much stayed there your whole life, and your kids were doomed to be stuck in it as well. Sure, there was some class mobility in the later stages of feudalism, but it didn't start that way.
Tell them to not call you anymore and they should listen.
I've done that a couple times now, but every once in a while, I still get a call from them with the latest free offer from one of their partners. Every time I get one, I ask to be put on the do not call list, and it works for a few months, but sure enough they eventually start calling again.
but i don't think the government needs to play playground supervisor whenever a business does something the consumers don't like.
Ignoring the degrading metaphor, this is exactly what the govenment is supposed to so. A govenment is formed to protect the common good of the people, its not just for external threats, it is for internal ones as well. If a business is doing something that the society sees as a problem, it is the place of govenment to step in and stop that practice. In this case, the people let their government know that the practice of telemarketing was causing a problem, and the govenment responded, in a rather good way. This law is not stopping telemarketing, its just stopping them from using my phone.
i also don't think the fed. gov't needs go go around making feel good laws all the time.
Agreed, but this is hardly a feel good law. From everything I have seen about this law it actually has a good point (no more marketing calls at 9am on Saturday), and the teeth to back it up. Sure, in the long run it may kill off some of the telemarketing businesses, which sucks for them, but this law is really a reaction to a practice that a large portion of the people see as creating a problem.
we alread have harassment laws. if these telemarketrs are harassing, then use those laws. new laws aren't needed.
That is not the issue, we are not talking about harrasment, per se. We are talking about who controls my phone. And from the view of the people like myself, I control my phone, and I should get to have a say in how it is used, and I say that I don't want people advertising to me over it. That's what this law does, is it gives that control to me, it allows me to say that I don't want to be advertised at over my phone. The telemarketers are still free to go advertise at someone else who has not made this decision, but leave me the hell alone.
If this were a perfect world this sort of thing would not be needed, I would be able to put my name on a list somewhere, that basically stated that I did not wish to receive telemarketing calles, and everone would respect that. But as we all know, this world is hardly perfect, so instead, we now have a list that says I do not wish to be called, and if you aren't willing to be considerate about it you will be fined into oblivion.
Also, I would say that, if you don't agree with this law, don't sign up for the list, no one is forcing you to. By doing nothing you are still free to receive all of the telemarketing calls you want, so you've not lost anything (and with fewer numbers for the telemarketers to call, you might actually get more calls). As for me, I am happy to finally have a way to tell every company in one quick way, and in no uncertain terms to quit calling me. Its nice for once, as a private citizen, for the govenemnt to finally do something that actually expands my rights. (Rights, which are really mine to begin with, but have been suppressed until now, but that's a whole different argument.)
Really. I have a Discover card and I get maybe one call a month
Ya, but have you ever tried to get those guys to stop calling you with the free offers from Discover? I have requested several times that they stop calling me with those offers, but they still do. Though on the other hand Discover does give me a pretty good rate, so I'm willing to accept it as a trade-off. I guess that's the problem with most telemarketing calls, I don't get any value out of them pestering me, just annoying calls on Saturday mornings when I am trying to sleep.
those had to deal with the types of things the companies actually spoke about. not weather they were able to speak at all.
You seem to be bluring a very important distinction. The Constitution garantees the right to free speech, it does not, however, garantee that one will have an audiance. There is nothing in this law that is prohibiting telemarketers from advertising, and/or speaking as they wish, they can still do this. All this law does is give me a way to not listen, if I don't want to, without having to go the the agregious level of removing my phone service altogether.
this is effectively the same as a law banning television commercials. sure it would be nice. but is it right?
Nice try at an analogy, but horribly flawed. First and formeost, the cost of TV is subsidized by the commercials. Second, TV's don't tend to just turn themselves on and present me with a commercial whenever an advertiser wishes to advertise at me. Neither of these things is an option when dealing with a telemarketer. If the telemarketers want to cover a persons phone costs, in return for that person being willing to accept telemarketing calls, that would be fine, myself I would pay the extra to avoid that, and from the look of things, so would many other people. Further, I should not be required to disable a major source of communication (my phone) in order to avoid be advertised at.
Give it up, you're about to be out of a job, because you pissed of too many people in the US. And, when you get down to it the US is a Representative-Democracy, in this case the people have made it abundantly clear that they believe that this type of law is benificial to our society, and given that it does not, in any way, abridge the rights of anyone unfairly (sorry, this does not violate the first amendment, telemarketers can still speak their mind, they just can't trick me into listening anymore) this is a perfectly valid use of law and govenment by the people (you know, the ones whom the govenment exists by and for the will of).
Think about it. As soon as "bank y" can start running newspaper ads saying "bank x was hacked last month, detailed account information for over 300,000 people was stolen, our servers have never been hacked, and we'll give you free checking for the first year", where do you think the money is going to go?
So you mean that banks may have another point to compete on, security? And that I as the consumer will have the ability to determine if a bank has been having problems getting its act together from a security stand-point?
Maybe I am misreading you, but how is this a bad thing? I get more knowledge about the company holding my money and info, banks get another point on which to compete, and I get to find out if my CC info has been stolen before I start seeing charges on my statement for trips to the Bahamas. As far as I am concerned this law is a Good Thing. Sure, it may cause an increse in banking/CC fees, but those will probably be minimal, and will get eaten up in the next price war.
Got the same thing here too. I can be tired, having spent a hard day at work or whatever, but it still takes me a hour or two before I can finally drift off. I know that part of the problem is that my mind wanders when I am lying there trying to sleep. I just get bored with the whole trying to sleep thing and off my mind goes.
And, of course, the next morning getting out of bed is a pain in the arse. Worse yet since I have been trying to remove caffine from my diet. Sure a cup of non-caffinated tea tastes good in the morning, but it doesn't give me the same kick that coffee did.
And then when I get to the work day, its downhill from there, I spend most of my day tired, and focusing on anything that is part of the repeditive drudgery is neigh impossible. As it is, I spend way too much time on slahsdot and checking the news. I know its hurting my productivity, but I just can't seem to get myself to care.
It even extends to my home life, I have to force myself to do basic chores (dishes, laundry, etc.).
Personally, I think part of it might be my day/night cycle. I often find that, during vacations, I will slip to something more like a 30 hour day, I will spend 20 awake and doing stuff, and then 10 asleep. After a couple of days, I tend to feel better overall with this sort of pattern, though I doubt I could get my work to change me over to a floating shift to accomitade it, and test my theory.
Do it after dark with black balloons and your neighbors will have a really hard time figuring out what those booming flashes.
I was considering trying something like this, problem is: since the reaction is rather exothermic we always got "dirty" hydrogen, in that it had water vapor in it as well, which seemed to keep the ballons from floating. Though I have drawn up plans to build a sort of still, to extract the water vapor from the hydrogen to try and rectify this, I haven't actually gotten around to building it yet, nor have I bothered to pull out my lye and ballons recently, but hey, the 4th of July is comming soon....:-)
Now for trivia: why do perform this reaction in a wine bottle and not a beer bottle?
Actually, I have done it in both, and tend to stick to the wine bottle, because the beer bottle gets too hot, too fast and starts melting the ballons before they get filled up. As mentioned above, the reaction is rather exothermic, and the bottle is usually too hot to touch if you let the reaction run for more than a few seconds.
I should probably say here that I do not advocate anyone doing the lye/water/aluminium reaction to harvest hydrogen, filling ballons and lighting them up. Its a really stupid thing to do and may harm or kill you. Don't do it.
Also, another thing not to do(while we are talking about pyro activities), is to take standard powdered coffee creamer, and sprinkle it on a flame. If you get a nice fine spray of it you can get some really good flames out of it. (I had one about 7 feet tall, singed the lower branches of a tree in my yard) Again, this is a bad idea, and I take no responsibility if you do this, so please don't.
Well, this is probably enough information to trip the TIA database on me, so I had better stop before the military kicks in my door. Cheers!
Of course, this is ignoring the fact that gasoline is actually worse than hydrogen about this. Also, the H2 will probably disapate into the atmosphere too fast to get to any sort of useful concentration. Remember, that while (2H2 + O2 -> 2H20 + energy) if there isn't much of the H2 in one place, there isn't going to be much energy. This is why H2 is usually held in ballons before it is used, its just not useful while its spaying out of the wine bottle. It just disapates way too fast.
Sadly, yes I am. At my current employer we send a "recovery" floppy with every system. Basically, the floppy contains a copy of the Power Quest Drive Image DOS program, the files required to boot into DOS, and enough drivers to get the CD-ROM drive running. Also, we include a CD with a image of the system prior to shipment.
Now, one would think that restoring that image to the right partition, with the nice GUI interface would be simple, but, our customers manage to screw it up constantly. So, I put together a little menu program to make all of the hard decisions for them, they simply select which drive letter they want to restore, and presto it gets automagically restored. Its amazing, they can figure out which drive letter they need restored, but relating that to a partition mystifiyes them. Oh well, back to the point.
At the time, the only language I knew was BASIC (from years of playing with GWBasic, QBasic, and old BasicA.) So, rather than try and learn something new that would work in a DOS environment, I fired up QBasic and wrote the menu app. Its nice, clean and small, which is great when you are limited to 1.44M, and have to fit a separate program, the OS, and drivers on one disk. Thank God for RAMDisks and PKZIP with max compression.
So yes, Qbasic still has its uses for people like me who need something small, quick, and don't have the time to invest in learning a new language.
the FTC wants to investigate "spammers" the corporations, not "spammers" the individuals.
Maybe its just me, but I don't think that many of the spammers are actually coporations. They usually seem to be a single person who is out to abuse the rest of the internet users. Moreover, depending upon how the wording of the proposed law is written, how does one differentiate between an individual spammer and a spammer corporation? If its just by the documents of incorporation, then the spammers will stop incorporating. Anything else can lead to a slippery slope far to quickly.
I do hate spam as much as the next/.'er and wouldn't be too broken up if people like Ralsky got run over by a train; however, in order to ensure that we keep freedom and liberty for ourselves, we have to make sure that everyone has freedom and liberty, no matter how much we disagree with them. Keep in mind that this whole freedom thing is a two way street, its easy to say that I am free to think and do as I wish, the real bitch about true freedom is saying, "ya, and this asshole is too." Freedom for all or freedom for none, nothing in the middle is sustainable. And as long as they are not using fraudulent means to do it, I don't think we can really stop spam without painting ourselves into a corner.
This whole Video Games are the devil thing reminds me way too much of the past iterations of this same cycle. It amazes me to no end that we, as a society, still haven't caught on to it. Consider recent US history for a moment:
In the 50's young people were out getting into trouble, what did people blame? Rock and Roll, why, well because it was new and it was soemthing that the older generation, the ones in control, didn't like/understand so, instead of blaming themselves for failing to raise their children correctly, they blamed the music.
In the 60's and 70's, it was those damn hippies with their long hair and drugs, it was the whole hippie idea that was creating the problems with the youth of America, again, not the parents who had failed to spend the time raising their children.
In the 80's it was D&D causeing all of the problems.
In the 90's and up to now its video games.
Its the same thing over and over, the older generation blames the recreation activities of the younger generation for the problems of the younger generation, instead of realizing that they, the older genereation, are the thing that is most responsible for how the younger generation is turning out. It keeps happening, and I would guess, will continue to happen as long as there is some new form of recreation for the parents to blame all of the sins of their child on, and not, the failure of the parents.
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Is it just me or does this ideology seem to lead to titles dying from over engineering. I don't think it'll come as a shock to anyone that when you let the engineers decide when a product is ready to ship, that it will never ship. On the other side of the rope are the marketers who want to realease it now, now, now. What you need is someone in the middle who is willing to give a cut-off date, a deadline. This means that the engineers are not allowed to keep adding features, creating bugs, and fixing those bugs after a certain point, and that the marketers have to wait for a product to actually exist before booking orders. Ya, deadlines suck, most of us probably deal with them in our jobs, but they are necessary to making a company run, as long as they are realistic. Too short, and the product sucks, too long and the product dies in engineering or misses the market. When its done, seems to be a deadline that is just way to long for bringing a product to market, and slowly builds dissatisfaction in the customers who would buy your product.
Does this mean that the RIAA were sharing songs on KaZaa??
If this is the case, are they also not liable under the DMCA?
I doubt it, they didn't break any encryption to do this. As for copyright infringement, they didn't do that either as they do have the right to copy those files. The thing I would question is, if they have the right to distribute those files, and were willingly making them available online for free, without any sort of disclaimer, is the person downloading them still in violation of copyright? Cosider for a moment, the person downloading the songs downloaded them from a group who has the right to distribute, and who did not make any attempt to state that downloading those songs, in that fashion, was not allowed. In normal law enforcement, I think this is called entrapment, e.g. the police can't offer to sell you cocaine and then arrest you for trying to buy cocain, unless you initiate the sale. Just something to ponder.
I was thinking the same thing. I hadn't really heard about Napster until the RIAA started trying to shut it down. In the same aticle, I also learned about AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, and Kazza. In a way, what they are doing is backfiring. They are not stopping copyright infringement, but they are educating people as to how to do it, and the benefits of doing it. Is the wholesale infringement right? That is a question each of us must answer ourselves, but from the number of people doing it right now, it would seem that a sizable portion of the population doesn't think so, and it might just be enough people that it will break the backs of the RIAA and MPAA.
Imagine if you were locked in a room proportional to your size in the same ratio as these mice are. You, initially, might try to escape by searching the floors, the walls, and the ceiling for openings, panels, locks, or doors. You might do this three or four times to make sure you didn't miss anything on the previous passes. However, the analogy to the behaviors of these mice would be compulsively searching the surfaces of your prison for about eight hours a day (~50% of your waking time) every day for twenty years. That is not normal behavior.
Assuming that you nothing better to do, why not keep trying? This may not really be a psychotic behavior, but instead a single mindedness, and unwillingness/inability to give up. As a human, one might become frustrated with the situation and give up, but that is only because we are able to use logic. We would assume that if the bars were steel yesterday, and we couldn't chew through them, and they are still steel today and we still can't chew through them, then they will probably be steel tomorrow, and we won't be able to chew through them. I would question whether mice have the ability to analyze the situation and come to the same conclusion? Sure, they do have some capacity for memory and reasoning, they can be conditioned and trained after all, but is it as advanced as our own? Will a mouse realize that the bars can never be chewed through, no matter how much time he spends at it, or will he simply keep trying? I just wonder if we aren't anthropomophisizing these mice, just a bit, and applying our own attributes to them.
And as for the backflipper, ya, he was probably off his rocker.
Its not just the wireless ones either. I run a DLink 704P at home, and every once in a while it inexplicably stops giving out IP addresses, and the admin page is unreachable. The only fix is to cycle power on it. This whole time I thought it might just be my unit, but I guess this is more of a general problem with DLink's router software.
I just hope they fix the multiplayer features a bit. To start with, the multiplyer campaign in the first one really seemed like an afterthought. Basically no story, you just fight your way from place to place. To make matters worse the game scaled horribly for multiplayer. All it did was give the eneimies more hit points, and a rather lot of them at that. My group had a couple of LAN parties where DS was the game we played, but we quickly lost interest in it. Why? Well, it got kinda boring just running around, and then spending 20 minutes hacking down 2 or 3 creatures, and with the non-interactive combat system it was like watching someone chop down a tree, not exactly fun. It got so bad a one point that one of the players, playing a fighter type character, got up in the middle of a battle, got sodas for everyone, and then watched over my sholder as I blasted off spells in a vain attempt to kill something. Which brings up the other problem I had with it, since the monsters HP went up dramatically, but the mage's ability to do damage stayed the same, the mage was pretty worthless, you would have to expend all of your mana to bring down one creature, the whole time running around like a bitch hopping it didn't squish you. At least it was interactive, but it sucked never getting to actually be of much use in the battles.
For me, if a game is going to have multiplyer in it, it had better be good. I hate forking out the money for a game, to use at a LAN party, only to have the multiplayer suck. And these days, that's about the only way I like to play RPG/Adventure games.
If someone hacks into your bank account (let us assume this is in a country with no depositor insurance) and empties your account you haven't been deprived of anything tangible. Is it theft?
Actually, I think this would fall more under the term wire fraud. Though, again, this type of thing involves taking something from me and, in doing so, denies me the use of that thing, in the case of your analogy, money. Copyright infringment, on the other hand, does not deny someone the use of the thing which is copied. Is it still illegal, yes. Should it be treated as being worse than theft? I don't think so, but that is what this proposed law is going to do. Consider for a moment, what would happen to me if I went into a local Walmart and stole a CD, assuming I was caught? I'd get the legal equvilent of a slap in the wrist, probably a fine and a couple of hours of community service. Now, if this law is enacted and I get caught sharing 1 music file, I get a sizable fine and sent to jail for a couple of years. So, considering that, in your view, each crime is equiveilent, why should the punishments be so disproportionate?
Further, if you look at this from another standpoint, mine for example, this law looks even worse. If I steal a CD I am directly depriving the store of the use of that CD, they can't sell it. Where as, if I download an mp3, I in no way prevent the person I copied it from continuing to use it. Admitadly, I have, in some way, dimished the value of the copyright on that song, but probably by a far lesser amount than the cost of a CD. So, why the huge disparity in the punishment? Why is there to be a greater punishment for the crime which does lesser harm?
I disagree with you that free speech requires anonymity. If you have something worth saying, you should be willing to stand behind what you say.
Right, tell this to the people in China who disagree with the current govenment. Sure, they belive what they say, and they would love to be able to state that publicly. However, this type of statement tends to get people killed in China currently, so instead, they find ways to spread their ideas, and information, without being identified, which keeps them alive longer, and allows them to do more to help get rid of the current govenment.
Since no one is legally allowed to persecute you for your speech, you should not have any fear of speaking your mind, and thus should have no need for anonymity.
Tell this to the Communists in the US during the 50's and 60's. At the time they were persecuted, in the US, for holding a somewhat unpopular belief about economics. Also, look back at how people of Japaneese ancestry were treated in the US during WWII. Sometimes, it isn't a matter of what people/the govenment should do, instead its about what people/the govenment actually do. The ability for people to share and spread ideas/information without fear of persecution only truly ever comes through total anonymity.
Sure, Freenet can, and probably does, host kiddie porn and other such undesirables. And, those files may, in fact, be stored on my machine running Freenet. But, I see this as being part of the trade off for liberty, sometimes tools get misused and abused, but I refuse to give up my right to privacy in order to gain a false pretense of security. If, in order to retain my anonyminity, I must accept the possibility that some of the information on my computer would violate my ethical code, I am willing to accept that trade off. If you are not, that is your decision, but please don't whine when the DoD renames and fires up TIA, afterall, you don't need to remain anonymous, the government will protect you and never persecute you for your beliefs. Afterall, its only going to be used to catch terrorists, and you aren't one of those are you?
My only real problem with them is thet their TOS specifically states that I am not allowed to host a server on my DSL line. Plus, I would have to pay extra to get a static IP.
Don't get me wrong Verizon DSL has been ok as far as service goes (they need better customer support training, but that's not a big problem to me), I just don't like govenment enforced monopolies. Also, cosidering that I will get a static IP, and about double the download speed for the same price, I don't see any reason to not switch. Mind you, I don't need much in the way of upload speed, my website is small, and doesn't see much traffic, I don't spam, and don't send a lot of email, so my upstream requirements are modest.
You're right that, as far as getting the line itself goes, we're pretty much screwed here. But at the very least there is still a very modest level of competition. Myself, I am getting ready to jump to DSLExtreme for my ISP. Sure, the money for the line still ends up in Verizon's pocket (that is unavoidable), but at least not all of it does. And, I can get a 1.5Mbps/128Kbps line for $50/month, with static IP, and a TOS which allows me to host my own mail/web server, and have multipul computers behind a router. Yup, its not quite competition, but what do you expect when the phone lines are owned by Verizon?
Now that it has been with us for a few years, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere, how has the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) affected your job? I would assume that you now see cases of this nature, are such frequent, and how do such cases often go? Is this law really providing for the common good of the people, or is it simply creating more problems than it is solving?
And, of course, what are your views on this law, has it actually helped to slow the tide of copyright infringement, or not? And considering the boundryless nature of the internet, do you expect that a law, such as this, or any IP law for that matter, will be effective for much longer?
No, its just hand waving. We've had something similar here in California for some time, and I still have yet to hear about any spammer being nailed under the law. I still receive just as much spam now as I did before, and almost none of it has the ADV: or ADVADLT: tag on it. This is simply another feel-good law manufactured for you, by your politicians to justify their existance.
Until something like this gets passed at the federal level, has some real teeth in it, and gets enforced, none of this is going to do anything to stop the flood of spam.
This is just more hand waving, I don't care how long you give it, its not going to have an appreciable affect.
I agree with what you are saying, but it is hardly a western phenomenon. In fact, I would say it is decidedly an EASTERN phenomenon as controlling social class in an organized fashion really began with the Hindu Caste system in India.
I think we would have to say that both Eastern and Western societies have had a go at this type of idea. What exactly do you thing Feudalism was? it was simply a class based society, in which you were born into a class and pretty much stayed there your whole life, and your kids were doomed to be stuck in it as well. Sure, there was some class mobility in the later stages of feudalism, but it didn't start that way.
Tell them to not call you anymore and they should listen.
I've done that a couple times now, but every once in a while, I still get a call from them with the latest free offer from one of their partners. Every time I get one, I ask to be put on the do not call list, and it works for a few months, but sure enough they eventually start calling again.
but i don't think the government needs to play playground supervisor whenever a business does something the consumers don't like.
Ignoring the degrading metaphor, this is exactly what the govenment is supposed to so. A govenment is formed to protect the common good of the people, its not just for external threats, it is for internal ones as well. If a business is doing something that the society sees as a problem, it is the place of govenment to step in and stop that practice. In this case, the people let their government know that the practice of telemarketing was causing a problem, and the govenment responded, in a rather good way. This law is not stopping telemarketing, its just stopping them from using my phone.
i also don't think the fed. gov't needs go go around making feel good laws all the time.
Agreed, but this is hardly a feel good law. From everything I have seen about this law it actually has a good point (no more marketing calls at 9am on Saturday), and the teeth to back it up. Sure, in the long run it may kill off some of the telemarketing businesses, which sucks for them, but this law is really a reaction to a practice that a large portion of the people see as creating a problem.
we alread have harassment laws. if these telemarketrs are harassing, then use those laws. new laws aren't needed.
That is not the issue, we are not talking about harrasment, per se. We are talking about who controls my phone. And from the view of the people like myself, I control my phone, and I should get to have a say in how it is used, and I say that I don't want people advertising to me over it. That's what this law does, is it gives that control to me, it allows me to say that I don't want to be advertised at over my phone. The telemarketers are still free to go advertise at someone else who has not made this decision, but leave me the hell alone.
If this were a perfect world this sort of thing would not be needed, I would be able to put my name on a list somewhere, that basically stated that I did not wish to receive telemarketing calles, and everone would respect that. But as we all know, this world is hardly perfect, so instead, we now have a list that says I do not wish to be called, and if you aren't willing to be considerate about it you will be fined into oblivion.
Also, I would say that, if you don't agree with this law, don't sign up for the list, no one is forcing you to. By doing nothing you are still free to receive all of the telemarketing calls you want, so you've not lost anything (and with fewer numbers for the telemarketers to call, you might actually get more calls). As for me, I am happy to finally have a way to tell every company in one quick way, and in no uncertain terms to quit calling me. Its nice for once, as a private citizen, for the govenemnt to finally do something that actually expands my rights. (Rights, which are really mine to begin with, but have been suppressed until now, but that's a whole different argument.)
Really. I have a Discover card and I get maybe one call a month
Ya, but have you ever tried to get those guys to stop calling you with the free offers from Discover? I have requested several times that they stop calling me with those offers, but they still do. Though on the other hand Discover does give me a pretty good rate, so I'm willing to accept it as a trade-off. I guess that's the problem with most telemarketing calls, I don't get any value out of them pestering me, just annoying calls on Saturday mornings when I am trying to sleep.
those had to deal with the types of things the companies actually spoke about. not weather they were able to speak at all.
You seem to be bluring a very important distinction. The Constitution garantees the right to free speech, it does not, however, garantee that one will have an audiance. There is nothing in this law that is prohibiting telemarketers from advertising, and/or speaking as they wish, they can still do this. All this law does is give me a way to not listen, if I don't want to, without having to go the the agregious level of removing my phone service altogether.
this is effectively the same as a law banning television commercials. sure it would be nice. but is it right?
Nice try at an analogy, but horribly flawed. First and formeost, the cost of TV is subsidized by the commercials. Second, TV's don't tend to just turn themselves on and present me with a commercial whenever an advertiser wishes to advertise at me. Neither of these things is an option when dealing with a telemarketer. If the telemarketers want to cover a persons phone costs, in return for that person being willing to accept telemarketing calls, that would be fine, myself I would pay the extra to avoid that, and from the look of things, so would many other people. Further, I should not be required to disable a major source of communication (my phone) in order to avoid be advertised at.
Give it up, you're about to be out of a job, because you pissed of too many people in the US. And, when you get down to it the US is a Representative-Democracy, in this case the people have made it abundantly clear that they believe that this type of law is benificial to our society, and given that it does not, in any way, abridge the rights of anyone unfairly (sorry, this does not violate the first amendment, telemarketers can still speak their mind, they just can't trick me into listening anymore) this is a perfectly valid use of law and govenment by the people (you know, the ones whom the govenment exists by and for the will of).
Think about it. As soon as "bank y" can start running newspaper ads saying "bank x was hacked last month, detailed account information for over 300,000 people was stolen, our servers have never been hacked, and we'll give you free checking for the first year", where do you think the money is going to go?
So you mean that banks may have another point to compete on, security? And that I as the consumer will have the ability to determine if a bank has been having problems getting its act together from a security stand-point?
Maybe I am misreading you, but how is this a bad thing? I get more knowledge about the company holding my money and info, banks get another point on which to compete, and I get to find out if my CC info has been stolen before I start seeing charges on my statement for trips to the Bahamas. As far as I am concerned this law is a Good Thing. Sure, it may cause an increse in banking/CC fees, but those will probably be minimal, and will get eaten up in the next price war.
Got the same thing here too. I can be tired, having spent a hard day at work or whatever, but it still takes me a hour or two before I can finally drift off. I know that part of the problem is that my mind wanders when I am lying there trying to sleep. I just get bored with the whole trying to sleep thing and off my mind goes.
And, of course, the next morning getting out of bed is a pain in the arse. Worse yet since I have been trying to remove caffine from my diet. Sure a cup of non-caffinated tea tastes good in the morning, but it doesn't give me the same kick that coffee did.
And then when I get to the work day, its downhill from there, I spend most of my day tired, and focusing on anything that is part of the repeditive drudgery is neigh impossible. As it is, I spend way too much time on slahsdot and checking the news. I know its hurting my productivity, but I just can't seem to get myself to care.
It even extends to my home life, I have to force myself to do basic chores (dishes, laundry, etc.).
Personally, I think part of it might be my day/night cycle. I often find that, during vacations, I will slip to something more like a 30 hour day, I will spend 20 awake and doing stuff, and then 10 asleep. After a couple of days, I tend to feel better overall with this sort of pattern, though I doubt I could get my work to change me over to a floating shift to accomitade it, and test my theory.
Do it after dark with black balloons and your neighbors will have a really hard time figuring out what those booming flashes.
I was considering trying something like this, problem is: since the reaction is rather exothermic we always got "dirty" hydrogen, in that it had water vapor in it as well, which seemed to keep the ballons from floating. Though I have drawn up plans to build a sort of still, to extract the water vapor from the hydrogen to try and rectify this, I haven't actually gotten around to building it yet, nor have I bothered to pull out my lye and ballons recently, but hey, the 4th of July is comming soon....:-)
Now for trivia: why do perform this reaction in a wine bottle and not a beer bottle?
Actually, I have done it in both, and tend to stick to the wine bottle, because the beer bottle gets too hot, too fast and starts melting the ballons before they get filled up. As mentioned above, the reaction is rather exothermic, and the bottle is usually too hot to touch if you let the reaction run for more than a few seconds.
I should probably say here that I do not advocate anyone doing the lye/water/aluminium reaction to harvest hydrogen, filling ballons and lighting them up. Its a really stupid thing to do and may harm or kill you. Don't do it.
Also, another thing not to do(while we are talking about pyro activities), is to take standard powdered coffee creamer, and sprinkle it on a flame. If you get a nice fine spray of it you can get some really good flames out of it. (I had one about 7 feet tall, singed the lower branches of a tree in my yard) Again, this is a bad idea, and I take no responsibility if you do this, so please don't.
Well, this is probably enough information to trip the TIA database on me, so I had better stop before the military kicks in my door. Cheers!
Of course, this is ignoring the fact that gasoline is actually worse than hydrogen about this. Also, the H2 will probably disapate into the atmosphere too fast to get to any sort of useful concentration. Remember, that while (2H2 + O2 -> 2H20 + energy) if there isn't much of the H2 in one place, there isn't going to be much energy. This is why H2 is usually held in ballons before it is used, its just not useful while its spaying out of the wine bottle. It just disapates way too fast.
Seriously, is anyone still using it for anything?
Sadly, yes I am. At my current employer we send a "recovery" floppy with every system. Basically, the floppy contains a copy of the Power Quest Drive Image DOS program, the files required to boot into DOS, and enough drivers to get the CD-ROM drive running. Also, we include a CD with a image of the system prior to shipment.
Now, one would think that restoring that image to the right partition, with the nice GUI interface would be simple, but, our customers manage to screw it up constantly. So, I put together a little menu program to make all of the hard decisions for them, they simply select which drive letter they want to restore, and presto it gets automagically restored. Its amazing, they can figure out which drive letter they need restored, but relating that to a partition mystifiyes them. Oh well, back to the point.
At the time, the only language I knew was BASIC (from years of playing with GWBasic, QBasic, and old BasicA.) So, rather than try and learn something new that would work in a DOS environment, I fired up QBasic and wrote the menu app. Its nice, clean and small, which is great when you are limited to 1.44M, and have to fit a separate program, the OS, and drivers on one disk. Thank God for RAMDisks and PKZIP with max compression.
So yes, Qbasic still has its uses for people like me who need something small, quick, and don't have the time to invest in learning a new language.
the FTC wants to investigate "spammers" the corporations, not "spammers" the individuals.
/.'er and wouldn't be too broken up if people like Ralsky got run over by a train; however, in order to ensure that we keep freedom and liberty for ourselves, we have to make sure that everyone has freedom and liberty, no matter how much we disagree with them. Keep in mind that this whole freedom thing is a two way street, its easy to say that I am free to think and do as I wish, the real bitch about true freedom is saying, "ya, and this asshole is too." Freedom for all or freedom for none, nothing in the middle is sustainable. And as long as they are not using fraudulent means to do it, I don't think we can really stop spam without painting ourselves into a corner.
Maybe its just me, but I don't think that many of the spammers are actually coporations. They usually seem to be a single person who is out to abuse the rest of the internet users. Moreover, depending upon how the wording of the proposed law is written, how does one differentiate between an individual spammer and a spammer corporation? If its just by the documents of incorporation, then the spammers will stop incorporating. Anything else can lead to a slippery slope far to quickly.
I do hate spam as much as the next
I see, so you've had Priest McFeelie's personal Pat and Chat as well.
This whole Video Games are the devil thing reminds me way too much of the past iterations of this same cycle. It amazes me to no end that we, as a society, still haven't caught on to it. Consider recent US history for a moment:
In the 50's young people were out getting into trouble, what did people blame? Rock and Roll, why, well because it was new and it was soemthing that the older generation, the ones in control, didn't like/understand so, instead of blaming themselves for failing to raise their children correctly, they blamed the music.
In the 60's and 70's, it was those damn hippies with their long hair and drugs, it was the whole hippie idea that was creating the problems with the youth of America, again, not the parents who had failed to spend the time raising their children.
In the 80's it was D&D causeing all of the problems.
In the 90's and up to now its video games.
Its the same thing over and over, the older generation blames the recreation activities of the younger generation for the problems of the younger generation, instead of realizing that they, the older genereation, are the thing that is most responsible for how the younger generation is turning out. It keeps happening, and I would guess, will continue to happen as long as there is some new form of recreation for the parents to blame all of the sins of their child on, and not, the failure of the parents.