Plays may use 3D properly in general, but movies don't - and probably won't/can't until a movie can be shown, as others mentioned, on a full hologram stage like a play.
For a 3D movie in 2012, there is only one thing that is being done with it: creating the effect of something coming out at the audience. For the majority of movies, which weren't SHOT in 3D, this is only done for a few scenes, artificially generated digitally, and most of them were contrived to force any justification of the effect at all. Hitting an enemy toward the viewer in a fight scene, throwing an item away or at someone, etc. Having 3D adds absolutely nothing to the film except to the ticket price.
IMO, Avatar was the last movie to actually do it right. All scenes were filmed with 2 cameras to create a real stereo view, all digital effects used the same techniques. A proper 3D movie, like a play, uses the 3D to show depth in the environment, not to show depth coming out at the audience, although a Gallagher concert movie might argue with that statement. We don't need artificial justification to use 3D, and it should not be encouraged unless it adds to the movie.
Pretty sad, really, that the only thing that was learned from Avatar was that 3D makes money. It's become a buzzword in today's movie industry that producers THINK they will make more money with little effort, because the public are sheep, and practically every movie now MUST have a 3D version (in their minds) to be released at all. It doesn't matter to them that the glasses make the movie unwatchable for many, that the movie is too dark to see for most, or that the public complains when they find out that only 20 seconds of a 2 hour film even qualifies as needing the glasses at all. Pay more money and get a worse experience, guaranteed. Personally, I refuse to support this crap with my dollars, and I know I'm not the only one.
Why not? What makes you think the overwhelming majority of PC users would be adverse to that? It works fine for their smartphones, so why wouldn't they like it for their PCs too?
To be perfectly blunt - the ONLY reason why I am willing to put up with my (smartphone/gameconsole)'s walled garden, is precisely because my pc ISN'T a walled garden. Having some devices import controlled is one thing - having every device import controlled is quite another, and nobody I know would stand for it.
How many free programs will be allowed? Apple has (or had) a very strict policy that any program that provides the same function as one that came with their OS would be denied with prejudice. Microsoft might view this as a perfectly legal solution to their Mozilla/Chrome 'problem'. If Apple set this policy, and they got away with it - even though it is anti-competitive - how can Microsoft get in trouble for using the same policy?
Note: I don't have anything against an app store, just a walled garden. This doesn't just hurt developers and power users, this hurts everybody that has ever tried to not use a Microsoft program that came on their Windows machine, like Internet Explorer. It is completely anti-competitive, and if it's ruled justly, then they won't be able to legally deny any free apps after such a precedent. They'd be better off allowing the app store as an alternative to the 'get-your-own' lifestyle, but not any more restrictive than that.
Well, this fellow geek just dropped the streaming option and lowered my fee by 4 bucks. The streaming option was added to my account for free when it came out, but I never used it. Why? DRM. I'm not going to infect my PCs with any flavor DRM, and I'm surprised anybody on Slashdot chooses to do so willingly.
Not to mention the crap selection available for streaming. And, oh yeah, I almost forgot, our upcoming bandwidth cap overlords will be squeezing you all a bit harder to let you keep streaming your DRM-laden videos. The tiered plans they anticipate will make the $7.99 Netflix hike look paltry. Me, I'm dropping a free service I never used anyway and saving money on this price hike, and Netflix has to continue mailing me those red envelopes, something they're trying to get us to stop having them do by - um - well, instituting this price hike...
Joyful memories indeed. A Racing game for chemically imbalanced. Picked it up on a lark from that phrase alone. Favorite game ever or since.
Installed a Glide 3D driver emulator on an XP box specifically for the purpose of whipping this game out every once in a while for the gratuitous Ped smearing. Nothing quite like the feeling of a 100% Ped victory - finding Ped 976 of 976 without accidentally finishing the race or wiping out the 5th opponent - now that's frickin' awesome. And people say us old-timers don't know how to enjoy video games... those kids on my lawn would get bored before their Ped count got to 3 digits.
Now THAT should be a trophy on PSN - 100% Ped victory!. Gimme a real remake on PS3 in full HD of the first one... new maps, old maps, don't care. Just so long as you screw the missions and that fake time-limit cap - if I wanna spend 2 hours getting Ped guts in my tires, there should be nothin' stoppin' me...:)
Whoever owns the rights, take note, I'd pay more than full price for it.
Sure there is. It'll help you get on tv, where you can become a household name, an internet meme, infamous for your bad example to future generations everywhere, and then eventually end up on "Dancing With The Has-Beens" once your 15 minutes are over.
I think what is happening is just simple time. What we have here is an audio compression that has been the "standard" (and I use the term very loosely) for over a decade, iTunes and aac notwithstanding. During that time period, just about everyone has used it, and since most people don't have the ears to tell the difference consciously, they've been listening to it for so long that they unconsciously think it's normal, even compared to the original lossless cd.
If this were true, then it might explain how a random sampling would be skewed towards mp3 even when most people guess. They unconsciously pick the one that registers with what their ears are attuned to.
Me, I can't listen to mp3 anymore. Even at 320k, the hiss in the upper registers sets my teeth aching. This gets really annoying when listening to an mp3 disc on long trips in the car. Oddly, I can listen to AAC at 320k without a problem, which is good - I'd hate to have to use lossless on the iPod. Severely limits the selection, even on the 80g.:)
Could be, in your native language "making available" and "support" are synonymous
Well, in the countries governed by pawns of the RIAA/MPAA, the phrase "making available" is synonymous with "intent to distribute others' work as your own".
Under these conditions, I can understand perfectly well why some might be under the (mistaken) impression that Microsoft will be forced to distribute and support other browsers...
It all depends on where you are and what your commute is like.
I live near Philadelphia - near being described as "between Philly and Lancaster/Harrisburg". Went job hunting this winter (not by choice) and landed a good job in downtown Philly. I drove to work my first three days. I've taken the train ever since.
Why? Because I did my math. 50-some miles each way is a typical "local" commute for people in my area. Nobody thinks twice about it. 100+ miles a day, plus traffic, had me filling my tank after 2.5 days, or twice a week, to the tune of about $50/week - or $10/day - just for the gas. 21.5 working days average a month makes the gas to $215/month. Best price I could find for reliable parking is also $10/day, so my total per month given that my car is paid for is roughly $430/month.
That doesn't count wear and tear on my car, wear and tear on my sanity or blood pressure. Nor does it count the fact that the average drive time was 2 hours each way, and (as someone else also mentioned) those 2 hours were spent doing nothing BUT driving and screaming obscenities at the other cars.
SEPTA's costs? $181 for the monthly anytime pass, a buck a day to park, and a single tank of gas = ~$227.50/month. The trip is less than an hour each way, and I've been catching up on old tv shows, reading books, and playing games on an ipod. Certainly less wasted than driving, and my sanity has never been better - if it could've been called that in the first place, that is...:)
Other people might not be so clear cut, so maybe it's not for them, but for me this was a no-brainer. Aside from the occasional delay once in a while, there's no reason for me to think otherwise.
In the end, we'll have advertisements embedded into the hit singles, as part of the music and lyrics.
If the goal here is to advertise the artists themselves, then this shameless bit of self-promotion has been around for a while.
I don't know exactly when it started, but I first started noticing it in the late 90's - particularly in hip-hop / rap / dance tracks - the artist would speak their own name during the song. If there was a "Featuring..." guest artist, that person would also name themselves. Pretty annoying, imho, but in most cases it at least gave me an easy way to know who NOT to buy...
As opposed to merely staying within applicable law?
Actually, yes. I do hope you're joking with this question, but just in case...
Most implementations of DRM only allow a certain limited list of "legal" use types. "Legal" being defined as "what is allowed by the RIAA/MPAA". However, what is allowed by fair-use laws (at least in the US) is usually much broader in comparison.
The **AA would much rather people didn't know that they were allowed within the law to only pay for one copy of a given piece of media and (space/time/format) shift to multiple uses in their own household. Copying media you own for personal use is perfectly legal - copying for/from others is not - but DRM is often used as a hammer to press customers into buying media more than once for themselves when the DRM prevents such lawful use.
The best, most invisible, least restrictive, DRM I've ever encountered is to have none at all - including this new one, I'm willing to bet. As long as DRM is infesting a piece of media, someone, somewhere will eventually encounter a fair use that will be prevented by it.
there are plenty of people out there who believe in the sanctity and purity of the human body. so they'd protest on those grounds.
So those people will eventually die off because they're unwilling to receive the help they'll need, while those of us that would be happy to use a lab-grown replacement heart/kidney/left-leg with no possible chance of tissue rejection would continue the human race...
Until we can accurately understand how life even began HERE
I agree there, but until we can cure ourselves (human society, as a whole) of the reasonably ridiculous notion that life began here when some mythical magical man in the sky waved his hands on a whim, we (as that society) are never going to actively and definitively search for that understanding.
Because we are a generally religious planet, we are no better at figuring out how we got here than illiterate barbarians looking to their shaman 10,000 years ago.
Truly, I wouldn't consider the human race to be intelligent until we decide to look around us for answers based on available evidence. I know we do some of this already, but way too many of us are willing to just simply "believe" what we're told by others who don't really know either.
Going with your fridge analogy, why should it be a bad thing for a grocery store to connect to all the fridges it knows about in order to tell them about new products?
Dear Fridge, You're out of SPAM! - the grocery store
PayPal is free for the buyer, they take their slice of the pie from the seller.
When did this change? I had the misfortune of trying to set up a Paypal account a few years ago - as a buyer on eBay - and when they tried to charge me to use my account to buy something, I canceled and haven't looked back. I do hear that it is worse for sellers, but I have refused to buy from any seller that uses Paypal exclusively and have told many of them why. Amway looks trustworthy in comparison.
Based on the horror stories that keep popping up concerning problems people have had using this so-called 'protected' service, cash by mail actually seems safer. Until they get regulated like a bank, my money will never pass through their hands. By moving down the path towards requiring only Paypal - and nobody can argue that's not where they're leading - they're just trying to take a bigger cut of each sale while eliminating competition at the same time. I guess eBay doesn't want me as a customer anymore.
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
on
Batman Discussion
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· Score: 1
Also agreed. Having been a fan of Jack's Joker, and now Heath's Joker, I've also spent a lot of time over the years reading the comics.
Jack's Joker was actually trying to be funny; sick, twisted, and murderous, but still trying to be funny. The Joker actually played like the killing was supposed to elicit a laugh from his intended audience.
While that part is still in the Joker to some degree in the comics, many stories of this type play more like his audience is in his own mind; that he is the only one that truly gets the joke, and he can't understand why others don't.
There's also (more than occasionally) the Joker who is truly murderously crazy; he's in it more for the mayhem he's causing on the survivors than to entertain them or himself. Collateral damage is sometimes more fun than taking out the target, and the victims are posthumously expected to be the audience; ie: those who "got the joke".
Heath's Joker plays (to me) like the last one. Only a little bit sicker. There are moments of lucidity in this Joker where you wonder if he does have plan, and how far this plan has been thought out. It appears in one moment that he's off the plan, but then you find out he's just started a new one in another direction - or even just the next step, which didn't care if the last step worked or not.
The internet in the US, now that it has been taken over as a telecom commodity, is only available to the vast majority of people as "choose one of the following options"...
1 - local cable monopoly (usually the fastest affordable option) 2 - local DSL monopoly (about the same price, but much slower) 3 - local dialup barely eking survival (cost about half 1 or 2, but too slow to matter) 4 - national dialup (about the same as 3, unless you also purchase a line from 1 or 2 as a carrier, increase speed at increased cost) 5 - local telco T# line (very fast, but bend over and grab your ankles for the pricetag)
Very few other alternatives exist anymore, as most were driven out of business. Lately we've been seeing FIOS as a new option, but the valid market segments in the US for people who can see fields and trees outside their home's windows can be counted on the fingers of one hand. For instance, I probably won't have FIOS available in my area until about 2019.
Do I like having Comcast as my provider? Hell no. Do I trust them with my connection? Hell no. Do I have any other options? Hell no.
This complaint has come up several times recently on Slashdot and other sites, and it always burns my ass when people reply with statements like: "Well, why don't you move?"
For an easy thing to say, it's one of the hardest things to do. Maybe those of you that are thinking this can pay for me to buy a new home and move to it. If it's outside of Comcast's influence, since moving that far would make my commute somewhere on the order of 3-4 hours each way, maybe you'd also like to get me hired to a job near my new home so that I can continue doing things I've gotten into habit to do - such as, you know, "eat".
A Damn Good tool isn't going to cut it. When I recently moved, Comcast set up the cable modem and turned it on. Before I even had a single computer or router hooked up to it, the transaction lights - both inbound and outbound - began flashing like crazy.
For hours...
This wasn't a network test, this was script-kiddies pinging me for open ports. And if I have every computer in my house off and the cable modem disconnected from the router, these transactions still come in non-stop. They have been for months and are probably going to continue until the end of time.
How much are they using? I have no idea. Am I going to trust Comcast if they tell me I've overused my connection for the month? Hell no.
Maybe this traffic shaping thing should be used for good instead of evil. If they want to use it to lower my bandwidth usage, stop the script-kiddies from accessing my tubes!
Might have been an OEM copy, now that I think of it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be stupid enough to call MS to validate a pirated one.:)
As for the 'being tied to a motherboard' part, the stores back then (about 4 years ago) were selling the OEM versions as being tied to any piece of hardware. Any. A hard drive. A stick of memory. Even an empty case. The contract they had with MS was that a single component was all that was needed to sell the OEM to a customer. At least that's what they told me. I didn't find out different until MS themselves named the motherboard as the only official tied component and refused to revalidate.
And it still doesn't fix the problem that I paid for a valid license and MS decided to refuse my use and keep my money anyway. Explaining to them about the hardware failure/replacement doesn't make them care, but as someone said above: this is what a monopoly does.
Nope. I can vouch - had the exact same thing happen to me.
Lost my motherboard shortly after a fresh install of a store-bought copy of XP. On reinstall, alarm bells went off during the online validation, and Micro$oft refused to validate it over the phone (multiple attempts at calling them) - their words: "Each copy of XP is tied to a 'computer', a new motherboard changes that computer so that copy of XP is no longer valid. Refund? Sorry, you can't have a refund since the product key was used and is now invalid."
Oh - and I had to speak to a person, the automated system would take my key and then forward me to a live person instead of simply giving back the validation code. If only my electric company would get me to a live person that efficiently...
They cannot possibly make an argument that a microprocessor encourages piracy.
Why not? Some of their previous "causes of piracy" are pretty outrageous.
Based on their behaviour, you'd think buying the CD encourages piracy. They can't understand why we don't just hand over our cash and walk away empty handed & happy.
It did not update if you have automatic updates turned off.
Really? Last I read, the claim that it does update when the feature is turned off was supported by several reputable computer trades, each of which (supposedly) verified this independently on PC's they own and test with. Has anybody besides Microsoft claimed otherwise? Remember, having a computer that didn't update on its own is not proof that it won't, only that it might not have been in the list to receive the patch. The lack of evidence does not prove a contrary opinion in this case.
The biggest problem I have with this update, is that it proves beyond any doubt that Microsoft deliberately placed a "hole" in the security of their OS for their own purposes. It is nothing less than something on the internet contacting the OS, opening a hole, then running software with root/admin permissions to change something in the OS itself. Something many people have suspected because of the so-called security patches that move holes around instead of actually closing them, has now been proven to be true.
This must be a holy grail for a Windows hacker. This hole was put in the OS specifically to take over a computer, and Microsoft's reaction to its discovery shows they obviously have no intention of closing it - just continuing to use it when desired. You can bet that finding this hole and ways to exploit it are now the top priority of hackers around the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Plays may use 3D properly in general, but movies don't - and probably won't/can't until a movie can be shown, as others mentioned, on a full hologram stage like a play.
For a 3D movie in 2012, there is only one thing that is being done with it: creating the effect of something coming out at the audience. For the majority of movies, which weren't SHOT in 3D, this is only done for a few scenes, artificially generated digitally, and most of them were contrived to force any justification of the effect at all. Hitting an enemy toward the viewer in a fight scene, throwing an item away or at someone, etc. Having 3D adds absolutely nothing to the film except to the ticket price.
IMO, Avatar was the last movie to actually do it right. All scenes were filmed with 2 cameras to create a real stereo view, all digital effects used the same techniques. A proper 3D movie, like a play, uses the 3D to show depth in the environment, not to show depth coming out at the audience, although a Gallagher concert movie might argue with that statement. We don't need artificial justification to use 3D, and it should not be encouraged unless it adds to the movie.
Pretty sad, really, that the only thing that was learned from Avatar was that 3D makes money. It's become a buzzword in today's movie industry that producers THINK they will make more money with little effort, because the public are sheep, and practically every movie now MUST have a 3D version (in their minds) to be released at all. It doesn't matter to them that the glasses make the movie unwatchable for many, that the movie is too dark to see for most, or that the public complains when they find out that only 20 seconds of a 2 hour film even qualifies as needing the glasses at all. Pay more money and get a worse experience, guaranteed. Personally, I refuse to support this crap with my dollars, and I know I'm not the only one.
To be perfectly blunt - the ONLY reason why I am willing to put up with my (smartphone/gameconsole)'s walled garden, is precisely because my pc ISN'T a walled garden. Having some devices import controlled is one thing - having every device import controlled is quite another, and nobody I know would stand for it.
How many free programs will be allowed? Apple has (or had) a very strict policy that any program that provides the same function as one that came with their OS would be denied with prejudice. Microsoft might view this as a perfectly legal solution to their Mozilla/Chrome 'problem'. If Apple set this policy, and they got away with it - even though it is anti-competitive - how can Microsoft get in trouble for using the same policy?
Note: I don't have anything against an app store, just a walled garden. This doesn't just hurt developers and power users, this hurts everybody that has ever tried to not use a Microsoft program that came on their Windows machine, like Internet Explorer. It is completely anti-competitive, and if it's ruled justly, then they won't be able to legally deny any free apps after such a precedent. They'd be better off allowing the app store as an alternative to the 'get-your-own' lifestyle, but not any more restrictive than that.
Well, this fellow geek just dropped the streaming option and lowered my fee by 4 bucks. The streaming option was added to my account for free when it came out, but I never used it. Why? DRM. I'm not going to infect my PCs with any flavor DRM, and I'm surprised anybody on Slashdot chooses to do so willingly.
Not to mention the crap selection available for streaming. And, oh yeah, I almost forgot, our upcoming bandwidth cap overlords will be squeezing you all a bit harder to let you keep streaming your DRM-laden videos. The tiered plans they anticipate will make the $7.99 Netflix hike look paltry. Me, I'm dropping a free service I never used anyway and saving money on this price hike, and Netflix has to continue mailing me those red envelopes, something they're trying to get us to stop having them do by - um - well, instituting this price hike...
Joyful memories indeed. A Racing game for chemically imbalanced. Picked it up on a lark from that phrase alone. Favorite game ever or since.
Installed a Glide 3D driver emulator on an XP box specifically for the purpose of whipping this game out every once in a while for the gratuitous Ped smearing. Nothing quite like the feeling of a 100% Ped victory - finding Ped 976 of 976 without accidentally finishing the race or wiping out the 5th opponent - now that's frickin' awesome. And people say us old-timers don't know how to enjoy video games... those kids on my lawn would get bored before their Ped count got to 3 digits.
Now THAT should be a trophy on PSN - 100% Ped victory!. Gimme a real remake on PS3 in full HD of the first one... new maps, old maps, don't care. Just so long as you screw the missions and that fake time-limit cap - if I wanna spend 2 hours getting Ped guts in my tires, there should be nothin' stoppin' me... :)
Whoever owns the rights, take note, I'd pay more than full price for it.
Sure there is. It'll help you get on tv, where you can become a household name, an internet meme, infamous for your bad example to future generations everywhere, and then eventually end up on "Dancing With The Has-Beens" once your 15 minutes are over.
I think what is happening is just simple time. What we have here is an audio compression that has been the "standard" (and I use the term very loosely) for over a decade, iTunes and aac notwithstanding. During that time period, just about everyone has used it, and since most people don't have the ears to tell the difference consciously, they've been listening to it for so long that they unconsciously think it's normal, even compared to the original lossless cd.
If this were true, then it might explain how a random sampling would be skewed towards mp3 even when most people guess. They unconsciously pick the one that registers with what their ears are attuned to.
Me, I can't listen to mp3 anymore. Even at 320k, the hiss in the upper registers sets my teeth aching. This gets really annoying when listening to an mp3 disc on long trips in the car. Oddly, I can listen to AAC at 320k without a problem, which is good - I'd hate to have to use lossless on the iPod. Severely limits the selection, even on the 80g. :)
Well, in the countries governed by pawns of the RIAA/MPAA, the phrase "making available" is synonymous with "intent to distribute others' work as your own".
Under these conditions, I can understand perfectly well why some might be under the (mistaken) impression that Microsoft will be forced to distribute and support other browsers...
It all depends on where you are and what your commute is like.
I live near Philadelphia - near being described as "between Philly and Lancaster/Harrisburg". Went job hunting this winter (not by choice) and landed a good job in downtown Philly. I drove to work my first three days. I've taken the train ever since.
Why? Because I did my math. 50-some miles each way is a typical "local" commute for people in my area. Nobody thinks twice about it. 100+ miles a day, plus traffic, had me filling my tank after 2.5 days, or twice a week, to the tune of about $50/week - or $10/day - just for the gas. 21.5 working days average a month makes the gas to $215/month. Best price I could find for reliable parking is also $10/day, so my total per month given that my car is paid for is roughly $430/month.
That doesn't count wear and tear on my car, wear and tear on my sanity or blood pressure. Nor does it count the fact that the average drive time was 2 hours each way, and (as someone else also mentioned) those 2 hours were spent doing nothing BUT driving and screaming obscenities at the other cars.
SEPTA's costs? $181 for the monthly anytime pass, a buck a day to park, and a single tank of gas = ~$227.50/month. The trip is less than an hour each way, and I've been catching up on old tv shows, reading books, and playing games on an ipod. Certainly less wasted than driving, and my sanity has never been better - if it could've been called that in the first place, that is... :)
Other people might not be so clear cut, so maybe it's not for them, but for me this was a no-brainer. Aside from the occasional delay once in a while, there's no reason for me to think otherwise.
If the goal here is to advertise the artists themselves, then this shameless bit of self-promotion has been around for a while.
I don't know exactly when it started, but I first started noticing it in the late 90's - particularly in hip-hop / rap / dance tracks - the artist would speak their own name during the song. If there was a "Featuring..." guest artist, that person would also name themselves. Pretty annoying, imho, but in most cases it at least gave me an easy way to know who NOT to buy...
Actually, yes. I do hope you're joking with this question, but just in case...
Most implementations of DRM only allow a certain limited list of "legal" use types. "Legal" being defined as "what is allowed by the RIAA/MPAA". However, what is allowed by fair-use laws (at least in the US) is usually much broader in comparison.
The **AA would much rather people didn't know that they were allowed within the law to only pay for one copy of a given piece of media and (space/time/format) shift to multiple uses in their own household. Copying media you own for personal use is perfectly legal - copying for/from others is not - but DRM is often used as a hammer to press customers into buying media more than once for themselves when the DRM prevents such lawful use.
The best, most invisible, least restrictive, DRM I've ever encountered is to have none at all - including this new one, I'm willing to bet. As long as DRM is infesting a piece of media, someone, somewhere will eventually encounter a fair use that will be prevented by it.
So those people will eventually die off because they're unwilling to receive the help they'll need, while those of us that would be happy to use a lab-grown replacement heart/kidney/left-leg with no possible chance of tissue rejection would continue the human race...
Sounds like a win-win to me...
I agree there, but until we can cure ourselves (human society, as a whole) of the reasonably ridiculous notion that life began here when some mythical magical man in the sky waved his hands on a whim, we (as that society) are never going to actively and definitively search for that understanding.
Because we are a generally religious planet, we are no better at figuring out how we got here than illiterate barbarians looking to their shaman 10,000 years ago.
Truly, I wouldn't consider the human race to be intelligent until we decide to look around us for answers based on available evidence. I know we do some of this already, but way too many of us are willing to just simply "believe" what we're told by others who don't really know either.
Dear Fridge,
You're out of SPAM!
- the grocery store
When did this change? I had the misfortune of trying to set up a Paypal account a few years ago - as a buyer on eBay - and when they tried to charge me to use my account to buy something, I canceled and haven't looked back. I do hear that it is worse for sellers, but I have refused to buy from any seller that uses Paypal exclusively and have told many of them why. Amway looks trustworthy in comparison.
Based on the horror stories that keep popping up concerning problems people have had using this so-called 'protected' service, cash by mail actually seems safer. Until they get regulated like a bank, my money will never pass through their hands. By moving down the path towards requiring only Paypal - and nobody can argue that's not where they're leading - they're just trying to take a bigger cut of each sale while eliminating competition at the same time. I guess eBay doesn't want me as a customer anymore.
Also agreed. Having been a fan of Jack's Joker, and now Heath's Joker, I've also spent a lot of time over the years reading the comics.
Jack's Joker was actually trying to be funny; sick, twisted, and murderous, but still trying to be funny. The Joker actually played like the killing was supposed to elicit a laugh from his intended audience.
While that part is still in the Joker to some degree in the comics, many stories of this type play more like his audience is in his own mind; that he is the only one that truly gets the joke, and he can't understand why others don't.
There's also (more than occasionally) the Joker who is truly murderously crazy; he's in it more for the mayhem he's causing on the survivors than to entertain them or himself. Collateral damage is sometimes more fun than taking out the target, and the victims are posthumously expected to be the audience; ie: those who "got the joke".
Heath's Joker plays (to me) like the last one. Only a little bit sicker. There are moments of lucidity in this Joker where you wonder if he does have plan, and how far this plan has been thought out. It appears in one moment that he's off the plan, but then you find out he's just started a new one in another direction - or even just the next step, which didn't care if the last step worked or not.
Am I the only one who thinks this "map" should be on Google maps instead of Wikipedia?
I for one would love to see a "You Are Here" Google pin in the gene pool...
Why not?
W had toilet paper made out of the original Constitution, I certainly can't do any more harm than that...
If I had mod points they'd be yours.
The internet in the US, now that it has been taken over as a telecom commodity, is only available to the vast majority of people as "choose one of the following options"...
1 - local cable monopoly (usually the fastest affordable option)
2 - local DSL monopoly (about the same price, but much slower)
3 - local dialup barely eking survival (cost about half 1 or 2, but too slow to matter)
4 - national dialup (about the same as 3, unless you also purchase a line from 1 or 2 as a carrier, increase speed at increased cost)
5 - local telco T# line (very fast, but bend over and grab your ankles for the pricetag)
Very few other alternatives exist anymore, as most were driven out of business. Lately we've been seeing FIOS as a new option, but the valid market segments in the US for people who can see fields and trees outside their home's windows can be counted on the fingers of one hand. For instance, I probably won't have FIOS available in my area until about 2019.
Do I like having Comcast as my provider? Hell no. Do I trust them with my connection? Hell no. Do I have any other options? Hell no.
This complaint has come up several times recently on Slashdot and other sites, and it always burns my ass when people reply with statements like: "Well, why don't you move?"
For an easy thing to say, it's one of the hardest things to do. Maybe those of you that are thinking this can pay for me to buy a new home and move to it. If it's outside of Comcast's influence, since moving that far would make my commute somewhere on the order of 3-4 hours each way, maybe you'd also like to get me hired to a job near my new home so that I can continue doing things I've gotten into habit to do - such as, you know, "eat".
A Damn Good tool isn't going to cut it. When I recently moved, Comcast set up the cable modem and turned it on. Before I even had a single computer or router hooked up to it, the transaction lights - both inbound and outbound - began flashing like crazy.
For hours...
This wasn't a network test, this was script-kiddies pinging me for open ports. And if I have every computer in my house off and the cable modem disconnected from the router, these transactions still come in non-stop. They have been for months and are probably going to continue until the end of time.
How much are they using? I have no idea. Am I going to trust Comcast if they tell me I've overused my connection for the month? Hell no.
Maybe this traffic shaping thing should be used for good instead of evil. If they want to use it to lower my bandwidth usage, stop the script-kiddies from accessing my tubes!
Might have been an OEM copy, now that I think of it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be stupid enough to call MS to validate a pirated one. :)
As for the 'being tied to a motherboard' part, the stores back then (about 4 years ago) were selling the OEM versions as being tied to any piece of hardware. Any. A hard drive. A stick of memory. Even an empty case. The contract they had with MS was that a single component was all that was needed to sell the OEM to a customer. At least that's what they told me. I didn't find out different until MS themselves named the motherboard as the only official tied component and refused to revalidate.
And it still doesn't fix the problem that I paid for a valid license and MS decided to refuse my use and keep my money anyway. Explaining to them about the hardware failure/replacement doesn't make them care, but as someone said above: this is what a monopoly does.
Lost my motherboard shortly after a fresh install of a store-bought copy of XP. On reinstall, alarm bells went off during the online validation, and Micro$oft refused to validate it over the phone (multiple attempts at calling them) - their words: "Each copy of XP is tied to a 'computer', a new motherboard changes that computer so that copy of XP is no longer valid. Refund? Sorry, you can't have a refund since the product key was used and is now invalid."
Oh - and I had to speak to a person, the automated system would take my key and then forward me to a live person instead of simply giving back the validation code. If only my electric company would get me to a live person that efficiently...
Based on their behaviour, you'd think buying the CD encourages piracy. They can't understand why we don't just hand over our cash and walk away empty handed & happy.
The biggest problem I have with this update, is that it proves beyond any doubt that Microsoft deliberately placed a "hole" in the security of their OS for their own purposes. It is nothing less than something on the internet contacting the OS, opening a hole, then running software with root/admin permissions to change something in the OS itself. Something many people have suspected because of the so-called security patches that move holes around instead of actually closing them, has now been proven to be true.
This must be a holy grail for a Windows hacker. This hole was put in the OS specifically to take over a computer, and Microsoft's reaction to its discovery shows they obviously have no intention of closing it - just continuing to use it when desired. You can bet that finding this hole and ways to exploit it are now the top priority of hackers around the world.
It auto-patches your system, then claims it isn't genuine and tells you that you need to buy your operating system again. Instant revenue stream.
My first thought was that the MPAA is more likely to sue you for copyright infringement - using a line from one of their movies...