That was pretty generous of them! Instead of taking a few million lifetimes to pay off the billions of dollars of damage little Brianna might have done by being such a notorious filesharer, now it should only take, what, 5 - 10 years for her welfare recipient mother pay off her daughter's 'crimes'?
For the life of me, I googled for it and I still can't find where I read this originally, but IIRC, the warning "May Contain Nuts" was on bags of peanuts because peanuts and nuts are two entirely different types of nuts, and some people have violent allergic reactions to nuts but NOT peanuts.
The explanation I remember went like this: Peanuts and nuts are harvested in the same fields and often use the same bags to dump them in when they're collected, and those bags sometimes get stray nuts stuck inside of them among all the peanuts. Hence, there is a possibility that nuts MAY be contained within the peanut package since there's really no feasible way to sort through every single individual peanut and try to find the nut, and that anyone that's allergic to nuts needs to be wary.
If anyone knows what I'm talking about and has a clearer recollection, or, even better, a link explaining this, speak up!
Out of curiosity, what do you do for entertainment then? Not trolling or joking, genuinely curious to hear how someone that truly DOES abstain from the mainstream media keep themselves amused. I imagine independent artists and independent films are involved, as well as books, but I want to hear what it is exactly from you.:)
If you're jaded about most of the shallow games over the past decade, you might be interested in Planescape Torment to provide something deeper. It's a role-playing game from Black Isle that came out a few years ago. It's not up to par graphically anymore, but the storyline more than makes up for it. There's a typical isometric top-down perspective of your characters and the world they're in, but nearly all of the game is conveyed to you through richly worded written descriptions of people, places and objects. Most of the game is dialogue, and there are scores of interesting branching dialogue options that develop your character in whatever way you choose, even so far as to be purely evil, which, surprisingly, doesn't impede your progress in the game at all! There are MANY, many different ways to play it that almost playing experience is different. All the dialogue in the game is enhanced by an extremely talented cast of voice actors that lend credibility to their characters. All of the main characters you'll meet in the game are very unique and well-written and there are scores of interaction options that you have with them.
It's incredibly difficult to adequately summarize this game, but I have to say, the real thing is better than I've described.:P It's the closest I've ever come to actually reading a good book while still playing a game. It's currently my favorite game out of all that I've played. If you're frustrated with all the shallowness then I'd highly recommend giving this game a try. It's $10 and up on Amazon, and you can find this in practically any given Wal-Mart or Target for $9.99 in one of those little two-game bundles. For a game that good, that well-written and that interesting for so low a price, it's hard to go wrong.
As much as I love technology, I still hold my own discretion in higher regard. I can see how something like this COULD be useful in some situations, but typically there's so much going on around me on the road at any given time that I'd rather rely on my own judgment than place faith in a machine.
Also, if this type of thing eventually becomes common in cars, I could see how something like this could motivate some people to pay LESS attention to the road and be more likely to cause accidents than that would have without it. I wouldn't mind if the device was designed in such a way so that it merely redirected attention to another aspect of driving while providing a safety buffer, but something that could encourage people to pay even less attention to their own driving concerns me.
Unless I hear some damned glowing reviews of how good the service is in my area, I know that there is NO way I'll touch this with a 20-foot pole. I worked at Wal-Mart for eight months and based on the human detritus and mediocrities they hire, and how pathetically little they train and oversee them, I wouldn't trust ANYONE on their end to EVER get anything I ordered right. And if there any problems, what then? Customer service? A fucking joke.
I hope this fails miserably, or at least makes Netflix a more popular choice. I don't care if I'd be paying more, I KNOW that the chances of me getting any kind of quality service from Wal-Mart is slim at best. What kind of selection do you think they'll have anyway? They won't sell anything uncensored.
Didn't notice this post before. Doh. Yes, I know that, but Mark Rein and (I believe it was) Tim Sweeney both went out to Best Buy while we were at the offices watching the presentations and came back with STACKS of all these cards. Definitely un-free.:)
Yeah man, I can't believe the nerve 3DR has for putting on that massive six-year media campaign hyping how great DNF will be. I get so sick of seeing it constantly advertised on TV, on the radio, in print and online publications hailing itself as the second coming of video games. You'd think the tens of millions of dollars they spend every year on that unbelieably massive advertising \ hype campaign would be better suited funding the development of the game itself! It's so silly! Everyone knows that they're not really working on it... after all, you know that everyone has, at one point or another, driven down to Garland, Texas, walked into the 3DR offices and camped out there, talking to everyone on the dev team, watching what they're working on for the game and, as a result of this exhaustive investigation and inquiry, have such an vast, intimate insider's knowledge of what goes on in that loudmouthed little Texas company!
Wait a second... oh, hey, that's right. All perceived hype of DNF has been 100% community-generated, and anyone that claims that the game doesn't exist or isn't being worked on has absolutely zero factual basis to support their claims.:)
Yes, it has been in development for a VERY long time. However, it should be noted that up until last month, no one had any idea Valve was doing anything on Half-Life 2. Doom 3, also, was in development for 2 - 3 years before ANY media was released from it. If I apply the same logic justifying DNF's non-existence, then up until the initial screenshots of HL2 and Doom 3, no one at those companies ever worked on their games, and in fact, neither of those games even existed at all until they released those screenshots. They simply sprang into spontaneous existence one day, fully formed.
I think that it's obvious that just because a developer \ publisher doesn't release new screenshots and press releases every week doesn't mean that they're idle or the game isn't being worked on. What stretch of the imagination makes that seem logical basis of "knowledge?" It's a shame that, despite that, it's still more popular to be irrational and talk about it like you know something.
Actually, small note, not all of those ARE security cameras. In the SuperCenter I used to work in, I found out that only a THIRD of the little black domes were actually cameras. The rest were decoys.
The anti-union crap Wal-Mart puts out is hilarious. Almost half of my training (two weeks) involved watching videos and taking computerized tests agreeing with Wal-Mart on how unions are bad and Wal-Mart is good and that I should never join a union because they'll never help me and Wal-Mart is such a dandy place to work that I'll never want to work anywhere else ever again, or join one of those sleazy unions!
Between that mindwash and the near-deification of Sam Walton (I'm not joking), the whole training session made me feel like I was joining a cult.
Back on the subject, the RFIDs and such better have a really simple implementation and there had better be some damned good training for removal, because NONE of the 40+ cashiers at the store I worked at knew how to fully deactivate the existing tags!!
I attended one of the cashier team meetings and, when asked, NO one had any idea how to do it right. The proper way is to KEEP SWIPING across the little demangetizer until the 'bing' sound stops. How hard is that? With the extreme emphasis on training the people there, you'd think that more people would know that, but they don't. I hope the RFID deactivation methods they employ are FAR simpler than this, because I honestly don't think that that lowest common denominator could handle it if not.
What're you talking about? Canada's over by Asia, isn't it?:) R
Just kidding. I know my geography. They flew in two of my friends that live in Canada just north of Washington. They had to take two or three connecting flights skipping all across the country and were in transit for 20 hours. The route they took was admittedly rather roundabout, but such is air travel.
Well yeah, of course. It was probably one big tax writeoff. That being said, I've discussed it with some of the other people that went there and based on all the costs we tallied up between us and guesstimation of the rest, we're pretty sure that they spent a figure somewhere in the low six digits into that ONE day for all of us. The total cost of airfare is staggering by itself, but 35+ top of the line video and sound cards as well... nothing to sneeze at.
I do get your point though, and I totally understand the reasons behind it... but man, it's great to be on the receiving end. heheh:)
Epic is really a great company. This is just another one of the great things that Epic does for the community. They've done a contest like this before for their last game, for example.
Another great example of how much the support the mod community occurred a year ago this month. Last June, they flew in 35 modders and amateur game developers (including myself) from all over the world to visit their offices in Raleigh, North Carolina, to see the new game engine. They paid for everyone's airfare from places as far as Germany and Canada, paid all of our travel expenses, put us in a hotel, drove us to and fro, paid us back for the cab ride from the airport, etc etc etc. The only money of my own that I spent the entire time was for food at the connecting flight's airport.:)
They brought us all in to look at the then-unreleased Unreal Warfare engine. They gave us a huge lunch, catered from a local deli with all fresh deli meats and cheeses and everything, and TONS of soft drinks in a refrigerator, and let us eat and chill out in their break room where they have every console known to man on a giant wide-screen TV. We played that for a while, and then we all got to wander around the office and meet everyone that worked there and see where the games we modified were made, and the people that made them. For someone that's been playing their games ever since Jill of the Jungle and Brix, it was a really amazing experience.
After that, we got down to business, to the real purpose for our being there. They gave us a day-long seminar showing us everything the engine can do and how the tools work to do it, answered questions, gave great examples, and impressed us heavily the entire day. They covered every single aspect of the engine, explained everything in full and showed us everything that the public hadn't yet seen. We were all astounded.
After a while, we all go to try out the latest build of UT2K3 over the LAN. I got to play for probably half an hour and had a blast. I'm pretty sure everyone got a chance.
At the end of it, everyone walked away with a free GeForce 4 Ti 42/44/4600, an ATI Radeon 8500 (the best on the market at the time), or an Audigy. Once they handed all of that out, they took us all to see Minority Report.
The next day, we all flew back home. The day UT2K3 was released, we all had a copy in the mail FedExed (where available) to us at our doorstep, waiting for each of us in the morning.
That whole trip still ranks as one of the coolest and most exciting things that has ever happened to me.:) Everyone I met there was awesome, friendly, helpful, talented and extremely knowledgable. I have the utmost respect for Epic as a company, and they have my undying loyalty and admiration for being such awesome and generous people.
Well hey, that's great then. Props to you for hosting! That's how I manage to get most of the media off of Slashdot, so I'm really glad that people like you are generous enough to do this.:) Thanks!
Sometimes I wonder if moderators mod up posts like this simply because they find it amusing seeing other peoples' servers burst into flames and die.:)
Re:the 1999 Tornado killed because it was so huge
on
Surviving Tornadoes
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· Score: 1
I live in Oklahoma City, and my brother's house was 300 feet from where that particular tornado set down in 1999. I got to see the damage firsthand and even got to walk over the area where it set down and got to see the enormous trail it bored into the earth, leading into a neighborhood full of ravaged homes. Breathtaking and terrifying. The swath of destruction the entire storm left over Oklahoma City wasn't cleaned up for months... seeing half the road signs knocked over as far north as Lake Hefner Parkway & 122nd was pretty normal.
What the standard jail time in AU is for things like murder \ manslaughter, rape, child molestation, distribution of illegal narcotics, etc? Just wondering where this law fits in the grand scheme of things over there.
For an example of ridiculous overpunishment, in the USA, in Texas, possession of drug paraphernelia (a pipe with only the most minimal traces of pot, and nothing else) carries a fine only slightly less ($5-10 I think?) than assault and battery, or some similar crime. Wish I could remember, but someone I know had it happen to him. Pretty warped how justice systems work.
I said that based on what I read on the Amazon page and on the back of the box. I don't know how he did it specifically, I was simply going by what the information on the audio book said. Here's a quote from the page I linked in my original post:
Actually, funny you should bring that up at all. Yesterday, I was in Barnes and Noble and came across one of Stephen Hawking's audio books on CD, and it's HIM reading it using his voice synthesizer, for the whole damned book.
If anyone here had seen Office Space they'd get the joke. It's a reference to the main characters in the movie expressing their fears over being sent to jail "to a pound-me-in-the-ass federal prison" (I believe the quote went) for creating a virus that gets them a LOT of money, and then infecting the computers of the company they work for.
"Any legitimate use of them is purely incidental to their main purpose which is to infringe copyright," he said.
Using his logic as a basis, it would be reasonable to assume that all cars should be banned since they can be used to commit crimes. So should all airplanes, boats, bicycles, skateboards, rollerskates\blades, computers, firearms, cel phones, telephones, knives, most farming implements, fertilizer, cigarette lighters, baseball bats, hockey sticks, golf clubs, nails, hammers, duct tape, rope, and plungers. Hell, anything particularly sharp or blunt really. Or anything very heavy, or easily wielded in a threatening manner. Sticks, rocks, things like that. Probably most metals, too, and hard plastics. Best to just glue everything down then, just to be safe.:)
Sweet! Now the 'tick-tock-tick' my grandma hears every day of her life ominously counting down to her impending death can be atomically accurate! Thanks Slashdot!
Let them. The more they restrict it, the less I'm going to buy, the more I'm going to pirate my music or listen to local unsigned live music. And I have *plenty* of MP3 music right now to keep me happy for years to come. If copy protection on a CD restricts the simple playing of music in any way whatsoever, I find a way to rip it and then distribute that to others. Then I take it back to the store, tell them that they're selling defective merchandise, and get a full refund.
I don't know about anyone else, but the dirtier they play with me, the happier and more willing I'm going to be to break the law so I can listen to my fucking music. My habits do not change for them. If they think they can dictate the exact terms of where and how I can listen to what I rightly own, they've got another thing coming. They're doing this to themselves.
Fortunately, the bands they mentioned in the blurb all suck, so it won't affect me yet.:)
That's the kind of thing I like and Epic. Epic is a really awesome company, and extremely supportive of their fanbase. In fact, last June, they flew myself and 34 other mod-development types to their North Carolina offices to check out the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine (three or four months before release) and gave us a day-long series of workshops \ lectures on every single facet of the engine and what it's capable of, and how. It lasted from 12pm to something crazy like 10pm (I don't remember, LONG day). They answered all our questions, taught us how everything was going to be done so we could have a head start on the other modders, and even sent us all a free copy of UT2K3 on the release date, delivered to our door the morning of release.
While we were there at Epic, they had a MASSIVE fully catered lunch and dinner, enormous refrigerators full of soft drinks, and let us into their play room that has all of the latest consoles and a massive wide-screen TV and let us all hang out and play on it. At the end of the day, they gave all of us Radeon 8500s and GeForce 4 Ti4200s, Ti4400s, and TI4600s, and several also got brand new a Sound Blaster Audigy. After that, they took us to see Minority Report (the day after it opened). They also let us all play the latest build of UT2K3 over their LAN.
The amazing part was that all of this was ALL expenses paid. Airfare, hotel, cab, top-of-the-line video cards, movie tickets, everything, for 35 people, some of which were flown in from as far as Canada and Germany! All of us were put up in a nice hotel for two nights as well, and were driven to and fro by the members of the company. I rode to Minority Report with Mark Rein, but some lucky SOB got to ride in Tim Sweeney's Ferrari!!:)
I heard recently that they're putting on another mod contest in the spirit of "Make Something Unreal" where the grand prize is a free license to their engine!!!!
They're an awesome, spectacular bunch of guys and I have the utmost respect for them. They're truly a company that cares about their fanbase. Amazing group of guys, immensely talented and totally friendly. They have my lifelong loyalty and admiration.:)
Slashdot Mirror
That was pretty generous of them! Instead of taking a few million lifetimes to pay off the billions of dollars of damage little Brianna might have done by being such a notorious filesharer, now it should only take, what, 5 - 10 years for her welfare recipient mother pay off her daughter's 'crimes'?
For the life of me, I googled for it and I still can't find where I read this originally, but IIRC, the warning "May Contain Nuts" was on bags of peanuts because peanuts and nuts are two entirely different types of nuts, and some people have violent allergic reactions to nuts but NOT peanuts.
The explanation I remember went like this: Peanuts and nuts are harvested in the same fields and often use the same bags to dump them in when they're collected, and those bags sometimes get stray nuts stuck inside of them among all the peanuts. Hence, there is a possibility that nuts MAY be contained within the peanut package since there's really no feasible way to sort through every single individual peanut and try to find the nut, and that anyone that's allergic to nuts needs to be wary.
If anyone knows what I'm talking about and has a clearer recollection, or, even better, a link explaining this, speak up!
What a terrible leap to be in, Sam! Bet you took some shit from Al for that one. :)
Out of curiosity, what do you do for entertainment then? Not trolling or joking, genuinely curious to hear how someone that truly DOES abstain from the mainstream media keep themselves amused. I imagine independent artists and independent films are involved, as well as books, but I want to hear what it is exactly from you. :)
If you're jaded about most of the shallow games over the past decade, you might be interested in Planescape Torment to provide something deeper. It's a role-playing game from Black Isle that came out a few years ago. It's not up to par graphically anymore, but the storyline more than makes up for it. There's a typical isometric top-down perspective of your characters and the world they're in, but nearly all of the game is conveyed to you through richly worded written descriptions of people, places and objects. Most of the game is dialogue, and there are scores of interesting branching dialogue options that develop your character in whatever way you choose, even so far as to be purely evil, which, surprisingly, doesn't impede your progress in the game at all! There are MANY, many different ways to play it that almost playing experience is different. All the dialogue in the game is enhanced by an extremely talented cast of voice actors that lend credibility to their characters. All of the main characters you'll meet in the game are very unique and well-written and there are scores of interaction options that you have with them.
:P It's the closest I've ever come to actually reading a good book while still playing a game. It's currently my favorite game out of all that I've played. If you're frustrated with all the shallowness then I'd highly recommend giving this game a try. It's $10 and up on Amazon, and you can find this in practically any given Wal-Mart or Target for $9.99 in one of those little two-game bundles. For a game that good, that well-written and that interesting for so low a price, it's hard to go wrong.
:)
It's incredibly difficult to adequately summarize this game, but I have to say, the real thing is better than I've described.
I'm going to go install it again.
As much as I love technology, I still hold my own discretion in higher regard. I can see how something like this COULD be useful in some situations, but typically there's so much going on around me on the road at any given time that I'd rather rely on my own judgment than place faith in a machine.
Also, if this type of thing eventually becomes common in cars, I could see how something like this could motivate some people to pay LESS attention to the road and be more likely to cause accidents than that would have without it. I wouldn't mind if the device was designed in such a way so that it merely redirected attention to another aspect of driving while providing a safety buffer, but something that could encourage people to pay even less attention to their own driving concerns me.
Unless I hear some damned glowing reviews of how good the service is in my area, I know that there is NO way I'll touch this with a 20-foot pole. I worked at Wal-Mart for eight months and based on the human detritus and mediocrities they hire, and how pathetically little they train and oversee them, I wouldn't trust ANYONE on their end to EVER get anything I ordered right. And if there any problems, what then? Customer service? A fucking joke.
I hope this fails miserably, or at least makes Netflix a more popular choice. I don't care if I'd be paying more, I KNOW that the chances of me getting any kind of quality service from Wal-Mart is slim at best. What kind of selection do you think they'll have anyway? They won't sell anything uncensored.
Didn't notice this post before. Doh. Yes, I know that, but Mark Rein and (I believe it was) Tim Sweeney both went out to Best Buy while we were at the offices watching the presentations and came back with STACKS of all these cards. Definitely un-free. :)
Yeah man, I can't believe the nerve 3DR has for putting on that massive six-year media campaign hyping how great DNF will be. I get so sick of seeing it constantly advertised on TV, on the radio, in print and online publications hailing itself as the second coming of video games. You'd think the tens of millions of dollars they spend every year on that unbelieably massive advertising \ hype campaign would be better suited funding the development of the game itself! It's so silly! Everyone knows that they're not really working on it... after all, you know that everyone has, at one point or another, driven down to Garland, Texas, walked into the 3DR offices and camped out there, talking to everyone on the dev team, watching what they're working on for the game and, as a result of this exhaustive investigation and inquiry, have such an vast, intimate insider's knowledge of what goes on in that loudmouthed little Texas company!
:)
Wait a second... oh, hey, that's right. All perceived hype of DNF has been 100% community-generated, and anyone that claims that the game doesn't exist or isn't being worked on has absolutely zero factual basis to support their claims.
Yes, it has been in development for a VERY long time. However, it should be noted that up until last month, no one had any idea Valve was doing anything on Half-Life 2. Doom 3, also, was in development for 2 - 3 years before ANY media was released from it. If I apply the same logic justifying DNF's non-existence, then up until the initial screenshots of HL2 and Doom 3, no one at those companies ever worked on their games, and in fact, neither of those games even existed at all until they released those screenshots. They simply sprang into spontaneous existence one day, fully formed.
I think that it's obvious that just because a developer \ publisher doesn't release new screenshots and press releases every week doesn't mean that they're idle or the game isn't being worked on. What stretch of the imagination makes that seem logical basis of "knowledge?" It's a shame that, despite that, it's still more popular to be irrational and talk about it like you know something.
Actually, small note, not all of those ARE security cameras. In the SuperCenter I used to work in, I found out that only a THIRD of the little black domes were actually cameras. The rest were decoys.
The anti-union crap Wal-Mart puts out is hilarious. Almost half of my training (two weeks) involved watching videos and taking computerized tests agreeing with Wal-Mart on how unions are bad and Wal-Mart is good and that I should never join a union because they'll never help me and Wal-Mart is such a dandy place to work that I'll never want to work anywhere else ever again, or join one of those sleazy unions!
Between that mindwash and the near-deification of Sam Walton (I'm not joking), the whole training session made me feel like I was joining a cult.
Back on the subject, the RFIDs and such better have a really simple implementation and there had better be some damned good training for removal, because NONE of the 40+ cashiers at the store I worked at knew how to fully deactivate the existing tags!!
I attended one of the cashier team meetings and, when asked, NO one had any idea how to do it right. The proper way is to KEEP SWIPING across the little demangetizer until the 'bing' sound stops. How hard is that? With the extreme emphasis on training the people there, you'd think that more people would know that, but they don't. I hope the RFID deactivation methods they employ are FAR simpler than this, because I honestly don't think that that lowest common denominator could handle it if not.
What're you talking about? Canada's over by Asia, isn't it? :) R
Just kidding. I know my geography. They flew in two of my friends that live in Canada just north of Washington. They had to take two or three connecting flights skipping all across the country and were in transit for 20 hours. The route they took was admittedly rather roundabout, but such is air travel.
Well yeah, of course. It was probably one big tax writeoff. That being said, I've discussed it with some of the other people that went there and based on all the costs we tallied up between us and guesstimation of the rest, we're pretty sure that they spent a figure somewhere in the low six digits into that ONE day for all of us. The total cost of airfare is staggering by itself, but 35+ top of the line video and sound cards as well... nothing to sneeze at.
:)
I do get your point though, and I totally understand the reasons behind it... but man, it's great to be on the receiving end. heheh
Epic is really a great company. This is just another one of the great things that Epic does for the community. They've done a contest like this before for their last game, for example.
:)
:) Everyone I met there was awesome, friendly, helpful, talented and extremely knowledgable. I have the utmost respect for Epic as a company, and they have my undying loyalty and admiration for being such awesome and generous people.
Another great example of how much the support the mod community occurred a year ago this month. Last June, they flew in 35 modders and amateur game developers (including myself) from all over the world to visit their offices in Raleigh, North Carolina, to see the new game engine. They paid for everyone's airfare from places as far as Germany and Canada, paid all of our travel expenses, put us in a hotel, drove us to and fro, paid us back for the cab ride from the airport, etc etc etc. The only money of my own that I spent the entire time was for food at the connecting flight's airport.
They brought us all in to look at the then-unreleased Unreal Warfare engine. They gave us a huge lunch, catered from a local deli with all fresh deli meats and cheeses and everything, and TONS of soft drinks in a refrigerator, and let us eat and chill out in their break room where they have every console known to man on a giant wide-screen TV. We played that for a while, and then we all got to wander around the office and meet everyone that worked there and see where the games we modified were made, and the people that made them. For someone that's been playing their games ever since Jill of the Jungle and Brix, it was a really amazing experience.
After that, we got down to business, to the real purpose for our being there. They gave us a day-long seminar showing us everything the engine can do and how the tools work to do it, answered questions, gave great examples, and impressed us heavily the entire day. They covered every single aspect of the engine, explained everything in full and showed us everything that the public hadn't yet seen. We were all astounded.
After a while, we all go to try out the latest build of UT2K3 over the LAN. I got to play for probably half an hour and had a blast. I'm pretty sure everyone got a chance.
At the end of it, everyone walked away with a free GeForce 4 Ti 42/44/4600, an ATI Radeon 8500 (the best on the market at the time), or an Audigy. Once they handed all of that out, they took us all to see Minority Report.
The next day, we all flew back home. The day UT2K3 was released, we all had a copy in the mail FedExed (where available) to us at our doorstep, waiting for each of us in the morning.
That whole trip still ranks as one of the coolest and most exciting things that has ever happened to me.
Well hey, that's great then. Props to you for hosting! That's how I manage to get most of the media off of Slashdot, so I'm really glad that people like you are generous enough to do this. :) Thanks!
Sometimes I wonder if moderators mod up posts like this simply because they find it amusing seeing other peoples' servers burst into flames and die. :)
I live in Oklahoma City, and my brother's house was 300 feet from where that particular tornado set down in 1999. I got to see the damage firsthand and even got to walk over the area where it set down and got to see the enormous trail it bored into the earth, leading into a neighborhood full of ravaged homes. Breathtaking and terrifying. The swath of destruction the entire storm left over Oklahoma City wasn't cleaned up for months... seeing half the road signs knocked over as far north as Lake Hefner Parkway & 122nd was pretty normal.
Insane.
And me with mod points today... soooo tempting...
... DOH!!!
What the standard jail time in AU is for things like murder \ manslaughter, rape, child molestation, distribution of illegal narcotics, etc? Just wondering where this law fits in the grand scheme of things over there.
For an example of ridiculous overpunishment, in the USA, in Texas, possession of drug paraphernelia (a pipe with only the most minimal traces of pot, and nothing else) carries a fine only slightly less ($5-10 I think?) than assault and battery, or some similar crime. Wish I could remember, but someone I know had it happen to him. Pretty warped how justice systems work.
I said that based on what I read on the Amazon page and on the back of the box. I don't know how he did it specifically, I was simply going by what the information on the audio book said. Here's a quote from the page I linked in my original post:
Physicist Stephen Hawking suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The condition has progressed to the point where he can no longer speak for himself. Hawking, therefore, uses a voice synthesizer to deliver this series of popular lectures on black holes, current physics theories, and the nature of time and space. The synthesizer paces sentences oddly and slurs an occasional word; Hawking jokes about being unable to get rid of its American accent. However, listeners will soon adapt to the oddities of delivery, and once they do, will find themselves inspired by the sweep and clarity of Hawking's mind, and by his warmth and bravery. G.T.B. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine--
Actually, funny you should bring that up at all. Yesterday, I was in Barnes and Noble and came across one of Stephen Hawking's audio books on CD, and it's HIM reading it using his voice synthesizer, for the whole damned book.
This is the one I saw, I believe.
If anyone here had seen Office Space they'd get the joke. It's a reference to the main characters in the movie expressing their fears over being sent to jail "to a pound-me-in-the-ass federal prison" (I believe the quote went) for creating a virus that gets them a LOT of money, and then infecting the computers of the company they work for.
It's a good movie.
"Any legitimate use of them is purely incidental to their main purpose which is to infringe copyright," he said.
:)
Using his logic as a basis, it would be reasonable to assume that all cars should be banned since they can be used to commit crimes. So should all airplanes, boats, bicycles, skateboards, rollerskates\blades, computers, firearms, cel phones, telephones, knives, most farming implements, fertilizer, cigarette lighters, baseball bats, hockey sticks, golf clubs, nails, hammers, duct tape, rope, and plungers. Hell, anything particularly sharp or blunt really. Or anything very heavy, or easily wielded in a threatening manner. Sticks, rocks, things like that. Probably most metals, too, and hard plastics. Best to just glue everything down then, just to be safe.
Sweet! Now the 'tick-tock-tick' my grandma hears every day of her life ominously counting down to her impending death can be atomically accurate! Thanks Slashdot!
Let them. The more they restrict it, the less I'm going to buy, the more I'm going to pirate my music or listen to local unsigned live music. And I have *plenty* of MP3 music right now to keep me happy for years to come. If copy protection on a CD restricts the simple playing of music in any way whatsoever, I find a way to rip it and then distribute that to others. Then I take it back to the store, tell them that they're selling defective merchandise, and get a full refund.
:)
I don't know about anyone else, but the dirtier they play with me, the happier and more willing I'm going to be to break the law so I can listen to my fucking music. My habits do not change for them. If they think they can dictate the exact terms of where and how I can listen to what I rightly own, they've got another thing coming. They're doing this to themselves.
Fortunately, the bands they mentioned in the blurb all suck, so it won't affect me yet.
While we were there at Epic, they had a MASSIVE fully catered lunch and dinner, enormous refrigerators full of soft drinks, and let us into their play room that has all of the latest consoles and a massive wide-screen TV and let us all hang out and play on it. At the end of the day, they gave all of us Radeon 8500s and GeForce 4 Ti4200s, Ti4400s, and TI4600s, and several also got brand new a Sound Blaster Audigy. After that, they took us to see Minority Report (the day after it opened). They also let us all play the latest build of UT2K3 over their LAN.
The amazing part was that all of this was ALL expenses paid. Airfare, hotel, cab, top-of-the-line video cards, movie tickets, everything, for 35 people, some of which were flown in from as far as Canada and Germany! All of us were put up in a nice hotel for two nights as well, and were driven to and fro by the members of the company. I rode to Minority Report with Mark Rein, but some lucky SOB got to ride in Tim Sweeney's Ferrari!! :)
I heard recently that they're putting on another mod contest in the spirit of "Make Something Unreal" where the grand prize is a free license to their engine!!!!
They're an awesome, spectacular bunch of guys and I have the utmost respect for them. They're truly a company that cares about their fanbase. Amazing group of guys, immensely talented and totally friendly. They have my lifelong loyalty and admiration. :)