Point 1... how is it "real" to get health BACK by having sex with a prostitute?
Point 2... If your friend's three-year-old understands what the prostitute is doing, they have obviously seen it before (and thus have more important issues).
Try being a "real" parent and taking responsibility for your children instead of whining at congress to do it for you.
If you don't like spending $70 for a set of black and color ink cartridges, just go spend $80 for a brand new printer that comes with a black and color ink cartridge set.
Chances are, it'll be faster and have better output... and just imageine all the dead printers you can use to make decorative borders for your garden!
Sooooo, what happens if the printer falls off the stand? Assuming it survives the impact with the floor, this means the ink level would "rise" as far as the sensor could tell. Guess that eliminates those printing sessions while skydiving with a laptop and portable printer, huh?
...that when Turner and co decides to start offering PVR services *AT* their cable companies so you can schedule shows at your own times, THEY won't be called thieves.
I think the only prerequisite for being the CEO of a really BIG company these days is a sufficiently jerky knee and an anus wide enough for your head, but retentive enough to hold it.
Just like Micro$oft... I'll care what you think when you produce the *signed* contract I got to *negotiate* with you. Until then, cry me a river...
Yes, but that's part of why motion sucks on LCD displays.
If I send out an analog signal with a refresh of 120Hz, my glass monitor will catch both frames and attempt to display them. If my new LCD panel only does conversion at 60Hz, I "lose" one of the frames of motion, meaning the transitions are less smooth.
It won't flick, but it will jerk. Sure, for most people 70Hz is fine... but it's also a matter of random chance as to which duplicate data your brain notices.
Of course, that can all be done away with IF the manufacturers of video cards AND LCD panels both agree to start using digital signals... in which case your pixels could (potentially) update in real-time.
Amusingly enough... I usually find myself buying a nice new game, and then it sits on the shelf for a week or two until some "hax0r" out there makes a no-cd crack for it. THEN I go install and play it!
Am I being an evil pirate? No, I'm being a paying customer who is sick to death of stupid copy-protection schemes that require me to fill my hard drive with the full content of the game, but STILL swap the damn cd's around like we were back in the Commodore 64 floppy disk days.
Get a clue software people! CD's are not software, they are distribution media, and I should be able to microwave them once it's installed if I want to.
The ordinance, passed in 2000, would require children under 17 to have parental consent before they can buy violent or sexually explicit video games or play similar arcade games. The council has suspended implementation of the ordinance until July 1.
Hmmm... doesn't say anything about limiting what you can depict, nor about limiting sales, nor about what you can do with it... It just says minors can't purchase it without concent. Now where have we seen that before?
Cigarettes? Alcohol? Firearms? Porn videos?
Ok, so Little Johnny has to get his big brother to buy a copy of GTA4 (now with force-feedback hookers!)... annoying, but not any kind of threat to freedom that hasn't already been accepted for years.
Make up your minds people. Either children are NOT treated differently, in which case they can do all the bad things adults can do, but also have to pay all the penalties we do... or they ARE, in which case they get "protected" from things "we" think are "bad".
It reminds me of the reason my handwriting is so horrid. In my small-town school (Allegan, MI, USA -- nobody will recognize that), we were apparently scheduled to learn cursive handwriting in 3rd grade. Well, when I was in 2nd grade, there was a cursive alphabet banner up along the top edge of the blackboard. Being too clever for my own good, I was bored during a spelling test and decided to write all the answers in cursive -- which I'd learned from staring at that banner every day.
As you might guess, I wasn't rewarded for my curiosity and intuition... when asked who taught me to write like that, I replied that I'd taught myself from that sign up there. The response to that was an encouraging "You're not supposed to know that yet."
I have to wonder if my handwriting might be better if I'd had some supervision in learning how to join the letters... but then again, maybe not. In any case, that seems one of the main problems today. The school systems are so rigid in terms of when you learn what, any innovation on the part of the students is discouraged -- as it throws their schedules off. I can't possibly learn cursive (a level 3 spell), unless I'm also ready for all the other 3rd grade activities.
"This is exploitation... These networks are raping Africa of half a billion dollars a year."
So, the international community gives the African continent a break by agreeing to split the cost of voice communication, and this is the thanks they get?
How selfish can you be? By what divine right are they entitled to special treatment? Sorry, bleating about how you're lacking something when you're already being given incentives doesn't generate any sympathy with me. I'd love to see Africa get up to speed and be a competitive force in the world, but not by handouts.
The banishment of the venerable reboot means that Windows XX (insert stupid letter code here) will be running 24/7. For argument's sake, I'll assume they somehow make it stable enough to accomplish that. What does this mean? Simple, with the rate of memory leaks in Windows apps, you will need to have hot-swap RAM slots, and you'll need to feed your computer more ram each month.
So, perhaps M$ will start bundling persistant (PRAM?) ram sticks along with your new license agreement of the month?
Let's see... top PS2 Games: Grand Theft Auth 3, Virtual Fighter 4, Final Fantasy X and XI (and all the older ones via PS1 compatibility), Grand Turismo 3, Kessen Deus Ex Everquest (the addiction comes to the sofa)
top X-Box games? Halo. A bunch of other games I can also get on the PS2. A few games I've never heard of, but whose commercials convince me I never will.
I guess Microsoft isn't used to being in the traditional Macintosh position (it's only available for Other Hardware)...
IANAL, but since a radio station is already broadcasting the material, how can having a tuner recieve it be illegal?
Even in countries that require a license for receivers, it's the receiver you are licensing, not the listener.
The RIAA/MPAA (and the software industry too, for that matter) need to get the idea that CD's are just delivery media. They shouldn't be protecting the media, they should (and do) protect the content (via copyright).
I'm not saying that stealing music is "right", but you should know something about how the recording industry actually works WRT the small musician.
A friend of mine had a CD produced for his band not long ago. The deal he got was basically $1 per disc sold (at the rate of $15). Not great, but fine... they sold 1000 copies, which should have been $1000 to him.
He never saw a dime. Upon further investigation, the company (which seemed legit) was legally based in Europe. That meant that any law suit he tried to bring would end up costing more than he'd get out of it.
Sooo, the end of the story is, some recording company made a cool $15,000 off my friend at practically no cost or effort to themselves.
Guess what? The RIAA does this every day. The only people who can make money are those who already have money to hammer out good contracts AND be able to threaten legal action to back them. What else is new?
The moral here is, if you think the artist is getting any of the money you're spending, you're probably deluding yourself too.
Large software package uses good old perl module App::Config, clever programmers invoke psudo-black-magic by picking at some of the innards to do things.
Maintainer of App::Config does a bunch of upgrades, ends up moving it to AppConfig. Old version of App::Config no longer available from CPAN.
Under the current system, Large software package can continue to function while programmers figure out how to undo their dirty tricks and make it work with new AppConfig. Under proposed system, software BREAKS and is DOWN until programmers can do these changes.
Hmmm, sounds like it would cost the company a good deal of MONEY. Better avoid that flaky open source stuff as unreliable.
Expiring free software just because it's dated is idiotic. Not only can't you guarentee that the new version will work better (or at all!) than the old one, but you can't say what a good timeframe is. If that isn't bad enough, it discourages people from making their own local modifications to the code -- one of the main touted advantages of open source.
The only real effect this will have is to force consumers to stop purchasing computer hardware in the US and buy foreign units that lack the draconian restrictive controls. If these become difficult to import, it will encourage the smugglers to bring more goods in through grey and black market routes.
Case in point, PGP. How many people out there used the "legal" crippled version, and how many just downloaded the international version that worked as it was intended?
I'm thinking any forced DRM attempt is quite simply going to fail, and will take a good bite out of what little consumer confidence is left in the high-tech sector.
Well, there are an infinite number of parallel universes, and so presumably there would be one where the 3viL haX0Rz have already written a client that will spawn multiple connections to universes with different quantum levels until it gathers all the song data back together (and boy, that conversion from anti-matter to matter before the recombining was a pain!).
So, given that it isn't written in the United States (where export of encryption is illegal overseas, and punishable by death across universe boundries), we should be able to just download it from an IRC server in one of the parallel Finlands.
Of course, having to wear a metal bowl on your head to pick up the signals as they're rebroadcast might make you looke kindof silly...
Yup, and I'd rather have my employees spending my time fixing configuration issues and updating packages to patch newly discovered security holes.... as opposed to sitting on hold to Redmond, wondering how many times they'll be asked to check the power cord and repeat their license key.
Either way, we're down.. but at least my people would LEARN something with linux and hopefully have less downtime in the future because of it.
Everyone seems to be distracted by all the details, so let me ask this question. For Blizzard, what is the difference between me playing a single-player game of Diablo II (legitimate or not), playing a LAN game of Diablo II with two copies (legitimate or not), playing an internet game using a third-party bnetd server (again, legitimate or not), and playing on the official Battle.Net?
Only in the last case am I using resources owned by Blizzard. In every other case, it make absolutely no difference to them... if they are concerned about CD-Key checks, then why doesn't it validate the CD-Key when I play single-player without being connected to the internet?
No, you can't have it both ways Blizzard. Either you write an actual REAL security system that doesn't rely on stupid hardware tricks (cd-based copy protection), or people will copy it.
The best copy protection in the world is a good product with a manual. Anyone remember Infocom??? They didn't need copy protection. People bought their games because they were fun and had packaging that added to the game (rather than throw-away boxes with pretty pictures). If you make a good product and DON'T PUNISH THE PEOPLE WHO PAY YOUR BILLS, I'll keep buying your games just like I have all your previous releases.
PS: As long as EULA's exist, a really simple way to protect a network game is to require a credit card number. Don't charge it, but if multiple logins are detected whose key matches the key which registered the card, start charging the card for violation fees...
The more "advanced" PC's get, the more stupid and insanely complicated they get.
So, who here really thinks that it's EASIER to setup and use a motherboard with the current crop of plug-n-play, vs. using your brain for a few minutes and setting jumpers? At the very least, with jumpers I never had conflicts... with a not-too-old Asus A7V board, I could never get everything working right, because the built-in controllers all shared IRQ's with PCI slots, and could not be changed.
I don't know how the mac deals with it (I used to have an Amiga, so I can only hope), but I'm going to find out if more hardware starts becoming broken for anything but WinXP.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh.
Point 1... how is it "real" to get health BACK by having sex with a prostitute?
Point 2... If your friend's three-year-old understands what the prostitute is doing, they have obviously seen it before (and thus have more important issues).
Try being a "real" parent and taking responsibility for your children instead of whining at congress to do it for you.
If you don't like spending $70 for a set of black and color ink cartridges, just go spend $80 for a brand new printer that comes with a black and color ink cartridge set.
Chances are, it'll be faster and have better output... and just imageine all the dead printers you can use to make decorative borders for your garden!
Sooooo, what happens if the printer falls off the stand? Assuming it survives the impact with the floor, this means the ink level would "rise" as far as the sensor could tell. Guess that eliminates those printing sessions while skydiving with a laptop and portable printer, huh?
That's simple.
They get you using their remote programming service, and then you realize you ONLY get the commercials shown during the show, not the show itself!
Muahahahahaa!
...that when Turner and co decides to start offering PVR services *AT* their cable companies so you can schedule shows at your own times, THEY won't be called thieves.
I think the only prerequisite for being the CEO of a really BIG company these days is a sufficiently jerky knee and an anus wide enough for your head, but retentive enough to hold it.
Just like Micro$oft... I'll care what you think when you produce the *signed* contract I got to *negotiate* with you. Until then, cry me a river...
Yes, but that's part of why motion sucks on LCD displays.
If I send out an analog signal with a refresh of 120Hz, my glass monitor will catch both frames and attempt to display them. If my new LCD panel only does conversion at 60Hz, I "lose" one of the frames of motion, meaning the transitions are less smooth.
It won't flick, but it will jerk. Sure, for most people 70Hz is fine... but it's also a matter of random chance as to which duplicate data your brain notices.
Of course, that can all be done away with IF the manufacturers of video cards AND LCD panels both agree to start using digital signals... in which case your pixels could (potentially) update in real-time.
Amusingly enough... I usually find myself buying a nice new game, and then it sits on the shelf for a week or two until some "hax0r" out there makes a no-cd crack for it. THEN I go install and play it!
Am I being an evil pirate? No, I'm being a paying customer who is sick to death of stupid copy-protection schemes that require me to fill my hard drive with the full content of the game, but STILL swap the damn cd's around like we were back in the Commodore 64 floppy disk days.
Get a clue software people! CD's are not software, they are distribution media, and I should be able to microwave them once it's installed if I want to.
The ordinance, passed in 2000, would require children under 17 to have parental consent before they can buy violent or sexually explicit video games or play similar arcade games. The council has suspended implementation of the ordinance until July 1.
Hmmm... doesn't say anything about limiting what you can depict, nor about limiting sales, nor about what you can do with it... It just says minors can't purchase it without concent. Now where have we seen that before?
Cigarettes?
Alcohol?
Firearms?
Porn videos?
Ok, so Little Johnny has to get his big brother to buy a copy of GTA4 (now with force-feedback hookers!)... annoying, but not any kind of threat to freedom that hasn't already been accepted for years.
Make up your minds people. Either children are NOT treated differently, in which case they can do all the bad things adults can do, but also have to pay all the penalties we do... or they ARE, in which case they get "protected" from things "we" think are "bad".
It reminds me of the reason my handwriting is so horrid. In my small-town school (Allegan, MI, USA -- nobody will recognize that), we were apparently scheduled to learn cursive handwriting in 3rd grade. Well, when I was in 2nd grade, there was a cursive alphabet banner up along the top edge of the blackboard. Being too clever for my own good, I was bored during a spelling test and decided to write all the answers in cursive -- which I'd learned from staring at that banner every day.
As you might guess, I wasn't rewarded for my curiosity and intuition... when asked who taught me to write like that, I replied that I'd taught myself from that sign up there. The response to that was an encouraging "You're not supposed to know that yet."
I have to wonder if my handwriting might be better if I'd had some supervision in learning how to join the letters... but then again, maybe not. In any case, that seems one of the main problems today. The school systems are so rigid in terms of when you learn what, any innovation on the part of the students is discouraged -- as it throws their schedules off. I can't possibly learn cursive (a level 3 spell), unless I'm also ready for all the other 3rd grade activities.
"This is exploitation... These networks are raping Africa of half a billion dollars a year."
So, the international community gives the African continent a break by agreeing to split the cost of voice communication, and this is the thanks they get?
How selfish can you be? By what divine right are they entitled to special treatment? Sorry, bleating about how you're lacking something when you're already being given incentives doesn't generate any sympathy with me. I'd love to see Africa get up to speed and be a competitive force in the world, but not by handouts.
The banishment of the venerable reboot means that Windows XX (insert stupid letter code here) will be running 24/7. For argument's sake, I'll assume they somehow make it stable enough to accomplish that. What does this mean? Simple, with the rate of memory leaks in Windows apps, you will need to have hot-swap RAM slots, and you'll need to feed your computer more ram each month.
So, perhaps M$ will start bundling persistant (PRAM?) ram sticks along with your new license agreement of the month?
You know... I tried to go look at the M$ site, but I couldn't see anything in lynx. They have lots of "pdf" icons, but no links to their documents. :)
Let's see... top PS2 Games:
Grand Theft Auth 3, Virtual Fighter 4,
Final Fantasy X and XI (and all the older ones via PS1 compatibility),
Grand Turismo 3,
Kessen
Deus Ex
Everquest (the addiction comes to the sofa)
top X-Box games?
Halo.
A bunch of other games I can also get on the PS2.
A few games I've never heard of, but whose commercials convince me I never will.
I guess Microsoft isn't used to being in the traditional Macintosh position (it's only available for Other Hardware)...
IANAL, but since a radio station is already broadcasting the material, how can having a tuner recieve it be illegal?
Even in countries that require a license for receivers, it's the receiver you are licensing, not the listener.
The RIAA/MPAA (and the software industry too, for that matter) need to get the idea that CD's are just delivery media. They shouldn't be protecting the media, they should (and do) protect the content (via copyright).
I'm not saying that stealing music is "right", but you should know something about how the recording industry actually works WRT the small musician.
A friend of mine had a CD produced for his band not long ago. The deal he got was basically $1 per disc sold (at the rate of $15). Not great, but fine... they sold 1000 copies, which should have been $1000 to him.
He never saw a dime. Upon further investigation, the company (which seemed legit) was legally based in Europe. That meant that any law suit he tried to bring would end up costing more than he'd get out of it.
Sooo, the end of the story is, some recording company made a cool $15,000 off my friend at practically no cost or effort to themselves.
Guess what? The RIAA does this every day. The only people who can make money are those who already have money to hammer out good contracts AND be able to threaten legal action to back them. What else is new?
The moral here is, if you think the artist is getting any of the money you're spending, you're probably deluding yourself too.
Ok, perfect example.
Large software package uses good old perl module App::Config, clever programmers invoke psudo-black-magic by picking at some of the innards to do things.
Maintainer of App::Config does a bunch of upgrades, ends up moving it to AppConfig. Old version of App::Config no longer available from CPAN.
Under the current system, Large software package can continue to function while programmers figure out how to undo their dirty tricks and make it work with new AppConfig. Under proposed system, software BREAKS and is DOWN until programmers can do these changes.
Hmmm, sounds like it would cost the company a good deal of MONEY. Better avoid that flaky open source stuff as unreliable.
Expiring free software just because it's dated is idiotic. Not only can't you guarentee that the new version will work better (or at all!) than the old one, but you can't say what a good timeframe is. If that isn't bad enough, it discourages people from making their own local modifications to the code -- one of the main touted advantages of open source.
The only real effect this will have is to force consumers to stop purchasing computer hardware in the US and buy foreign units that lack the draconian restrictive controls. If these become difficult to import, it will encourage the smugglers to bring more goods in through grey and black market routes.
Case in point, PGP. How many people out there used the "legal" crippled version, and how many just downloaded the international version that worked as it was intended?
I'm thinking any forced DRM attempt is quite simply going to fail, and will take a good bite out of what little consumer confidence is left in the high-tech sector.
NEWS FLASH!
Discovery of Fire will enable thousands of cavemen to commit arson! Our neolithic future is now uncertain! We must STOP THEM!
Let's have a /. POLL about it!
Actually, I think there's a button on the panel that controls how "invasive" you want your toilet to be.
Well, there are an infinite number of parallel universes, and so presumably there would be one where the 3viL haX0Rz have already written a client that will spawn multiple connections to universes with different quantum levels until it gathers all the song data back together (and boy, that conversion from anti-matter to matter before the recombining was a pain!).
So, given that it isn't written in the United States (where export of encryption is illegal overseas, and punishable by death across universe boundries), we should be able to just download it from an IRC server in one of the parallel Finlands.
Of course, having to wear a metal bowl on your head to pick up the signals as they're rebroadcast might make you looke kindof silly...
Yup, and I'd rather have my employees spending my time fixing configuration issues and updating packages to patch newly discovered security holes.... as opposed to sitting on hold to Redmond, wondering how many times they'll be asked to check the power cord and repeat their license key.
Either way, we're down.. but at least my people would LEARN something with linux and hopefully have less downtime in the future because of it.
Errrrr.. does that mean we're going to need to sign a EULA for *this* too???
Man, you thought dating was expensive before...
Everyone seems to be distracted by all the details, so let me ask this question. For Blizzard, what is the difference between me playing a single-player game of Diablo II (legitimate or not), playing a LAN game of Diablo II with two copies (legitimate or not), playing an internet game using a third-party bnetd server (again, legitimate or not), and playing on the official Battle.Net?
Only in the last case am I using resources owned by Blizzard. In every other case, it make absolutely no difference to them... if they are concerned about CD-Key checks, then why doesn't it validate the CD-Key when I play single-player without being connected to the internet?
No, you can't have it both ways Blizzard. Either you write an actual REAL security system that doesn't rely on stupid hardware tricks (cd-based copy protection), or people will copy it.
The best copy protection in the world is a good product with a manual. Anyone remember Infocom??? They didn't need copy protection. People bought their games because they were fun and had packaging that added to the game (rather than throw-away boxes with pretty pictures). If you make a good product and DON'T PUNISH THE PEOPLE WHO PAY YOUR BILLS, I'll keep buying your games just like I have all your previous releases.
PS: As long as EULA's exist, a really simple way to protect a network game is to require a credit card number. Don't charge it, but if multiple logins are detected whose key matches the key which registered the card, start charging the card for violation fees...
The more "advanced" PC's get, the more stupid and insanely complicated they get.
So, who here really thinks that it's EASIER to setup and use a motherboard with the current crop of plug-n-play, vs. using your brain for a few minutes and setting jumpers? At the very least, with jumpers I never had conflicts... with a not-too-old Asus A7V board, I could never get everything working right, because the built-in controllers all shared IRQ's with PCI slots, and could not be changed.
I don't know how the mac deals with it (I used to have an Amiga, so I can only hope), but I'm going to find out if more hardware starts becoming broken for anything but WinXP.