9700 Pro running...decently
on
Living In Oblivion
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I would certainly echo the sentiments made by several users here. If you're planning to run this on your PC, you might want to take some inventory as to what you've got. I personally am running on a AMD Athlon 3500+ with an ATI 9700 at 1024 x 768 resolution. Yes, it needs to be that low. The game still looks phenominal, but I would sure love to be able to crank it a little higher. I used to run at 1152 x 864, but close combat yielded around 4 FPS - not the greatest time for slowdowns.
However, there are a number of little tweaks you can do to get the game running a bit better. The following is a link to 5 pages of optimization techniques specifically for Oblivion, and largely revolve around editing an.ini file the game uses for its settings. They're quite simple, and yield good results.
Realistically, this article is entirely bunk, even on the elementary level the arguments presented that WoW could somehow present itself as a medium for business meetings or and meeting beyond that of a social gathering of people already established in game is ludicrus. WoW, at its most basic level, is a game. It would be equivilant to say that the game Monopoloy or Scrabble could have become a "medium" for communication. The only communication offered by WoW that exceeds chat, which, by the way, is achieveable through anything like MSN or IRC without the 4gb install process, is something like Teamspeak or Ventrino (sp?). *These* programs are actually forming the bed on which WoW "relies" to handle communication beyond chat and emotes.
What does WoW itself provide? A character? Items? Equipment? Quests? These things are all entirely irrelevant to communication. WoW does, on the other hand, provide a backdrop for meeting new people, but it certainly wouldn't be considered a means of communication - just as a bar is a place to meet people, or a movie theatre, or a park, parking lot, subway, fast food restaurant, but you don't consider those a "means of communication". There are other things to facilitate that.
The issue that I see with this is the fact that starting a new character nearly becomes impossible, and nearly all the end-game content for reaching 60 is limited to 40 people during a guild's raid schedule. I, at one point, had two level 60's and enjoyed the game, but I realized it actually was taking over my life.
Initially I would only space time in for WoW, but eventually I found myself moving around my own timetable *for* WoW. Once you're in the hardcore guids, there is no end to the raiding (at night...during the day there is absolutely nothing to do at level 60 beyond PvP, and the PvP items suck compared to anything from BWL). The game became an obsession, perfectly viable business opportunities and opportunities to make a significant inroad into my career were forsakeen for...well...taking down Golemagg for the 55th time.
Now, this new raid instance merely continues the chain. Once again, there's nothing outside of raiding to do once you're 60. PvP items are becoming increasingly inferior to the epics won out of BWL or even AQ40.
Now the issue with new characters is suddenly, lets say you make a new one. You get him to 60, great. Decked out in blue items if you're good and spent your time leveling the last levels in Dire Maul. With this new Nex thing, you're incredibly behind. There are the epics from Molten Core you would want to get, which then you'll need to get the items from Blackwing Lair, then hit up AQ40 for all the latest Legendary or god knows what, then you'd be on your way to Nex. This process would take nearly 2 years to complete, and there's no way in hell you're going to AQ40 or this new zone without being decked out in Epics. There's even very little use for you in BWL if you're in Blues...especially against Vael when everyone just needs to be putting out huge numbers.
Thus, it becomes alts are...well...more of a burden than an enjoyable part of the game. You're stuck on one character and you damn well better enjoy it. You're hooped if not.
If i was at Blizzard, I would be looking for more ways to extend the story at level 60 beyond "Get a group of 40 people and kick ass". ZG was slowly making it that way...but perhaps even take it further. Most people who are casual could perhaps get 5 people together. Make a dungeon where you go and kill something that will yeild an epic item with a 200% drop rate (in other words, two epics...not 3 or 4 like from the 40 man raid bosses). Make the dungeon take around 2 hours to complete for the group of 5, and give it a reset timer akin to ZG's, or perhaps even the weekly timer. The casual players will love it because they can only ever go so often, and the hardcores probably won't want to invest all that time...unless they're more interested in just killing time.
It would be a slow process, but a good one. Perhaps the dungeon (at a level of difficulty equivilant to MC) yeild items straight from MC itself. Of course, with only 5 people the game would need to ensure an item isn't going to be destroyed, thus is sensitive to the classes in the group. At this rate, the group of 5 people should have 8 epics (the number of armor slots) by the end of 5 months. Comparatively, if you have 40 people go into MC, MC yeilds around 30 epics a month, 8 slots each, you're looking at 3 months of getting entirely equipped.
Thanks to Hollywood, I now know that the end result of "nature getting pissed" will be 3 gigantic ice hurricanes which move entirely independent of the earths rotation, freezing anything underneath instantly, and the only way to avoid these are to flee down south.
Of course, movies fail to show what actually ever happens in Canada (where I'm from), thus it is my belief in this scenario we would only notice but a small drop in temperature and continue going about our merry ways in our much more winter-adapted persona's.
Tritium? Isn't that what Doc Ock was after in Spider-Man 2? Was he actually on to something here? Am I going to see a dood with 4 mechanical arms welded to his body running down the road looking for the stuff?
I like Microsoft as much as most people here, but this move doesn't really make me think "oooOOoo...so evil". Look at the Linux world! So much out there is plainly Beta, but we all still use it. How many of us were using Firefox when it was still in Beta? How about any other program? There are tons out there, I would assume half my linux box is all beta =)
So why is it so terrible when Microsoft mimics Linux? They realize that some people are willing to take the risks, so why not let them? It increases the testing base, people are happy, if something blew up they knew the consequences. Really there's not too much of a downside to this, as any linux developer will attest.
What's with the department that submitted this being called the "not-that-any-chinese-people-will-see-this" dept? I'm chinese in insensitive clod! I just happen to live in Canada.
I believe there is a trend setting in here with the linux market, and it can be viewed as either something positive or negative, depending on your perspective. To me it is the answer why Debian isn't necessarily as popular as it once was.
Linux has been maturing steadily over the years, and it is beginning to take the shape of something viable for a casual user. It certainly isn't there yet, but there have been notable strides. As linux continues forth, it will only get closer and closer to being a very intuitive system.
That being said, I compare Linux to the likes of computer graphics. There was a stage where it just wasn't "there yet", and graphics clearly looked pasted on. This was fine because our mind said "hey, that's a graphic!", and we could easily tell what it was. Today, for the most part, we can only tell if something is a graphic because we know what is possible and what is not possible. Nothing is exceptionally glarring. Take a look at LotR, the graphics were incredibly seamless and only someone looking at them from a "possible" standpoint could truely make out the difference.
However, there was a stage in between these two levels, I liken to the example of the Final Fantasy movie, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. The graphics were good, but not perfect. Our minds went from "Hey, its a graphic!" to "I guess that's kinda real", and we got confused. It winds up being confusing and awkward for us to watch, because we cannot get out minds to sort out what the heck we are seeing.
Linux is on that stage right now. It was previously something for the elite, it was difficult to use, it was extremely console based and you had to manually enter everything. I recall for the longest time needing to enter in my monitors horizontal and vertical refresh rates, plus then manually specify what resolutions my monitor could do, additionally state the size of my video card's ram. It was as elitest as operating systems really got, and we understood that.
Today, we find ourselves in the middle. Its not quite as plug and play as Windows or Macintosh, but its got some. Our minds are left thinking "Is this mainsteam or not?", and we don't know where to settle. Fedora installs the video drivers well for me the first time, but it was a nightmare getting Limewire to work.
So how does this relate? Well, because Linux isn't exclusively seen as an elitest operating system as much anymore and transitioning into something a little on the brain to use, we're seeing the depature of people from "Middle of the Road" distributions. Gentoo has its niche for the hardcore, but most distributions will attempt to make life as easy as possible for the user, a la Fedora or SUSE. They are trying to remove that middle ground and place themselves firmly into the "easy to use" category, while still retaining the power and flexibility Linux inherantly offers.
Those that did use Debian and the sort are moving on, they don't see the need for the elitest economy as much anymore, as Linux itself isn't as unique and hardcore as it once needed to be. We begin to see users use Linux not just to experiement on, but to actually use in a working environment, something to be taken a little more seriously.
In the end, the flourishment of distributions will begin to phase out, and personally I believe its for the better. We will be left with a handful, but those handful will have the attention of a much larger user and developer base, rather than having them spread thinly out. In the end, I believe this is a good thing. It looks like Debian may perhaps be one of the first examples.
Clearly the fact that Microsoft had a monopoly on the browser market reared its ugly head; we haven't seen any improvements to IE for around 5 years. However, as soon as the hint of competition comes, MS is back on their feet.
Now that MS has put people back on their IE development team, it seems inevitable that IE will soon have the same features that Firefox does: tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, 24-bit PNG support, etc. What is the Mozilla Foundation's move to keep people excited about installing Firefox over being content with IE? Many of my friends who are less than computer savvy are more than content staying with what Windows already has unless there are some compelling reasons to switch. Firefox at the moment has those reasons in spades, but a quick tune-up to IE would undermine Firefox's natural advances.
In short: how are you planning to keep Firefox ahead of the curve?
What information are you basing this on? From what I can see, this little tidbit of yours came straight from your ass.
Lets take a look at the RIAA. They have opened the gates (albeit slowly) to online downloads. One word: iTunes. They provide music at $0.99 a song, a far cry from $14-$20 a CD.
The MPAA recognizes there is demand for downloadable movies. People are seeking more and more often to find distribution channels that are easier, cheaper, and require less real world venturing. Renting movies with all their late charges has been undermined by things like netflix.com, etc.
That being said, I think the MPAA recongnizes that as the user isn't getting the same physical hardware, there is a requirement for a lower cost. Basic marketing 101, there's gotta be value to your product. If the user can't see the value, they won't buy. The value of online distribution means "cheaper" to any and all users, you can bet your pretty little face the MPAA understands this.
The tracker's location is hard-coded into torrent files. That's about as centralized as you can get. Bram Cohen himself said that BitTorrent is going to be a mistake for pirates to use because of this very reason.
Obviously this man has a lot of opportunity in his life. He has obtained enough wealth to do whatever he so chooses, and rather than living a shallow quiet life of no regard, he has chosen to live life to its fullest.
He has decided to break records, to participate in the production of a machine which would allow a human to do something no other human has done before. He has chosen to make history not just as a man with money, but a man with money who decided to live the adventure.
Contrast this with the opposite: gather money, buy, sell, rinse and repeat until you die. Is that what you would have rather seen? Would you have congratulated this man on living a life worth living having done that? I doubt it. This man hasn't do that - he has decided to do something more.
The Richard Bransons in this world are men who have opportunity and take it. They live their lives to a degree that we cannot because of our financial situation. They could easily, EASILY decide to lay back and do nothing at all. These men do not do that, rather they willingly decide to pioneer, to carve a path for the rest of humanity. Whether it is creating extremely efficient aircraft, going into space or more, they are living their lives to its fullest potential.
What the hell? Are you just jumping on the "Oh look at me, I use Firefox and Linux" bandwagon, when realistically you're probably not? This has absolutely nothing to do with any operating system or browser on your system, rather spam, which is something that occurs at the server level.
If you actually were smart enough to go through the steps of installing Gentoo, I would assume you are smart enough to know that spam isn't platform dependent.
True, however one must also consider that these sites do not act as a "common carrier", but a conspiritor.
AT&T provides a service. It cannot control the very actions done within that service, but the service is mainly used for good purposes. It could be proven that a majority of calls are not of illegal nature or plotting.
However these sites do not provide an uncontrollable service. They can clearly see and control what exists or doesn't exist within their web site. The public, in the majority of these cases, doesn't have the control to directly effect content like it does a phone conversation. Unfortunately, the majority of content on these sites are links which will provide information to users as to obtain illegal data. This in itself is considered conspiracy.
"Conspiracy. A combination or confederacy between two or more persons formed for the purpose of committing, by their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act, or some act which is lawful in itself, but becomes unlawful when done by the concerted action of the conspirators, or for the purpose of using criminal or unlawful means to the commission of an act not in itself unlawful."
Lets say you walked up to a bartender and explained you really hated your wife,. He provided you a phone number of a person whould could "take care of the situation", you took up his offer and had the dirty deed done. Is the bartender innocent of any wrongdoing? Far from it. He assisted you in your attempts to having your wife knocked off by providing information to allow you to commit the crime. This is conspiracy.
These web sites unfortunately don't have much of a leg to stand on. We know the information they provide will lead to illegal content, they know it as well. That's a hard case to defend in itself.
Ok, if it was an alien vehicle, but we're aliens on that planet, is it alien? Or do we just call it a vehicle because we're actually the aliens? Then are we being called the aliens by the people in the vehicle? Do we call our vehicle up there the alien vehicle?
Anyone else here feel that getting those words not yet spoken would be an absolute breakthrough in relationships with their girlfriends? Man that would have saved my butt countless times...
Alright, I believe in a couple years we're going to start seeing some serious version hell. For example, in the future how will we know what is "newer" than the other when we have:
Windows XP Windows XP Reloaded Windows XP Revolutions Windows Xtreme Windows Xtreme Unleashed Windows Opposing Force Windows Blue Shift
Does that stuff mean anything? No. With letter versioning and now this word versioning, to know what is newer than the next the user is just required to know. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, it all makes logical sense. Words, unless they come up with alphabetical names (which would be kinda cool, but still limiting) mean nothing other than "this one is kinda different".
Complie that with other pieces of software which will follow suit (Look at all the software using 2 letter naming convensions for their versioning already) and we'll have very little knowledge what version is actually what.
Additionally, a benefit to number versioning was it allowed us to say "ok, this is 1.0, this software is really new and hasn't undergone any revisons," or "alright, this is version 3.2, they've taken a couple cracks at it and added some fixes." What if I told you I just made Gigawhop Reloaded. What the heck is that? Unless you knew the name of the software already, is it called Gigawhop or Gigawhop Reloaded as a whole? Is Reloaded actually the version? What does that even mean to me? Is it my first release? Second? Third? Tenth?
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, [1] they found a plain in Shinar [2] and settled there. 3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." 5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." 8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [3] -because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth. "
Between all the cell phones, wireless networks, remote controls, microwaves, Ghz phones, wireless mice and keyboards and now rader on cars, my sperm doesn't even stand a chance. Poor guys =(
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I would certainly echo the sentiments made by several users here. If you're planning to run this on your PC, you might want to take some inventory as to what you've got. I personally am running on a AMD Athlon 3500+ with an ATI 9700 at 1024 x 768 resolution. Yes, it needs to be that low. The game still looks phenominal, but I would sure love to be able to crank it a little higher. I used to run at 1152 x 864, but close combat yielded around 4 FPS - not the greatest time for slowdowns.
.ini file the game uses for its settings. They're quite simple, and yield good results.
2
However, there are a number of little tweaks you can do to get the game running a bit better. The following is a link to 5 pages of optimization techniques specifically for Oblivion, and largely revolve around editing an
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?CIID=3622
Realistically, this article is entirely bunk, even on the elementary level the arguments presented that WoW could somehow present itself as a medium for business meetings or and meeting beyond that of a social gathering of people already established in game is ludicrus. WoW, at its most basic level, is a game. It would be equivilant to say that the game Monopoloy or Scrabble could have become a "medium" for communication. The only communication offered by WoW that exceeds chat, which, by the way, is achieveable through anything like MSN or IRC without the 4gb install process, is something like Teamspeak or Ventrino (sp?). *These* programs are actually forming the bed on which WoW "relies" to handle communication beyond chat and emotes.
What does WoW itself provide? A character? Items? Equipment? Quests? These things are all entirely irrelevant to communication. WoW does, on the other hand, provide a backdrop for meeting new people, but it certainly wouldn't be considered a means of communication - just as a bar is a place to meet people, or a movie theatre, or a park, parking lot, subway, fast food restaurant, but you don't consider those a "means of communication". There are other things to facilitate that.
The issue that I see with this is the fact that starting a new character nearly becomes impossible, and nearly all the end-game content for reaching 60 is limited to 40 people during a guild's raid schedule. I, at one point, had two level 60's and enjoyed the game, but I realized it actually was taking over my life.
Initially I would only space time in for WoW, but eventually I found myself moving around my own timetable *for* WoW. Once you're in the hardcore guids, there is no end to the raiding (at night...during the day there is absolutely nothing to do at level 60 beyond PvP, and the PvP items suck compared to anything from BWL). The game became an obsession, perfectly viable business opportunities and opportunities to make a significant inroad into my career were forsakeen for...well...taking down Golemagg for the 55th time.
Now, this new raid instance merely continues the chain. Once again, there's nothing outside of raiding to do once you're 60. PvP items are becoming increasingly inferior to the epics won out of BWL or even AQ40.
Now the issue with new characters is suddenly, lets say you make a new one. You get him to 60, great. Decked out in blue items if you're good and spent your time leveling the last levels in Dire Maul. With this new Nex thing, you're incredibly behind. There are the epics from Molten Core you would want to get, which then you'll need to get the items from Blackwing Lair, then hit up AQ40 for all the latest Legendary or god knows what, then you'd be on your way to Nex. This process would take nearly 2 years to complete, and there's no way in hell you're going to AQ40 or this new zone without being decked out in Epics. There's even very little use for you in BWL if you're in Blues...especially against Vael when everyone just needs to be putting out huge numbers.
Thus, it becomes alts are...well...more of a burden than an enjoyable part of the game. You're stuck on one character and you damn well better enjoy it. You're hooped if not.
If i was at Blizzard, I would be looking for more ways to extend the story at level 60 beyond "Get a group of 40 people and kick ass". ZG was slowly making it that way...but perhaps even take it further. Most people who are casual could perhaps get 5 people together. Make a dungeon where you go and kill something that will yeild an epic item with a 200% drop rate (in other words, two epics...not 3 or 4 like from the 40 man raid bosses). Make the dungeon take around 2 hours to complete for the group of 5, and give it a reset timer akin to ZG's, or perhaps even the weekly timer. The casual players will love it because they can only ever go so often, and the hardcores probably won't want to invest all that time...unless they're more interested in just killing time.
It would be a slow process, but a good one. Perhaps the dungeon (at a level of difficulty equivilant to MC) yeild items straight from MC itself. Of course, with only 5 people the game would need to ensure an item isn't going to be destroyed, thus is sensitive to the classes in the group. At this rate, the group of 5 people should have 8 epics (the number of armor slots) by the end of 5 months. Comparatively, if you have 40 people go into MC, MC yeilds around 30 epics a month, 8 slots each, you're looking at 3 months of getting entirely equipped.
Thoughts?
Thanks to Hollywood, I now know that the end result of "nature getting pissed" will be 3 gigantic ice hurricanes which move entirely independent of the earths rotation, freezing anything underneath instantly, and the only way to avoid these are to flee down south.
Of course, movies fail to show what actually ever happens in Canada (where I'm from), thus it is my belief in this scenario we would only notice but a small drop in temperature and continue going about our merry ways in our much more winter-adapted persona's.
Tritium? Isn't that what Doc Ock was after in Spider-Man 2? Was he actually on to something here? Am I going to see a dood with 4 mechanical arms welded to his body running down the road looking for the stuff?
Scary times...
This just in...The new Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 will be Firefox rebranded to IE.
I like Microsoft as much as most people here, but this move doesn't really make me think "oooOOoo...so evil". Look at the Linux world! So much out there is plainly Beta, but we all still use it. How many of us were using Firefox when it was still in Beta? How about any other program? There are tons out there, I would assume half my linux box is all beta =)
So why is it so terrible when Microsoft mimics Linux? They realize that some people are willing to take the risks, so why not let them? It increases the testing base, people are happy, if something blew up they knew the consequences. Really there's not too much of a downside to this, as any linux developer will attest.
I won't be part of any MS bashing on this move.
What's with the department that submitted this being called the "not-that-any-chinese-people-will-see-this" dept? I'm chinese in insensitive clod! I just happen to live in Canada.
I believe there is a trend setting in here with the linux market, and it can be viewed as either something positive or negative, depending on your perspective. To me it is the answer why Debian isn't necessarily as popular as it once was.
Linux has been maturing steadily over the years, and it is beginning to take the shape of something viable for a casual user. It certainly isn't there yet, but there have been notable strides. As linux continues forth, it will only get closer and closer to being a very intuitive system.
That being said, I compare Linux to the likes of computer graphics. There was a stage where it just wasn't "there yet", and graphics clearly looked pasted on. This was fine because our mind said "hey, that's a graphic!", and we could easily tell what it was. Today, for the most part, we can only tell if something is a graphic because we know what is possible and what is not possible. Nothing is exceptionally glarring. Take a look at LotR, the graphics were incredibly seamless and only someone looking at them from a "possible" standpoint could truely make out the difference.
However, there was a stage in between these two levels, I liken to the example of the Final Fantasy movie, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. The graphics were good, but not perfect. Our minds went from "Hey, its a graphic!" to "I guess that's kinda real", and we got confused. It winds up being confusing and awkward for us to watch, because we cannot get out minds to sort out what the heck we are seeing.
Linux is on that stage right now. It was previously something for the elite, it was difficult to use, it was extremely console based and you had to manually enter everything. I recall for the longest time needing to enter in my monitors horizontal and vertical refresh rates, plus then manually specify what resolutions my monitor could do, additionally state the size of my video card's ram. It was as elitest as operating systems really got, and we understood that.
Today, we find ourselves in the middle. Its not quite as plug and play as Windows or Macintosh, but its got some. Our minds are left thinking "Is this mainsteam or not?", and we don't know where to settle. Fedora installs the video drivers well for me the first time, but it was a nightmare getting Limewire to work.
So how does this relate? Well, because Linux isn't exclusively seen as an elitest operating system as much anymore and transitioning into something a little on the brain to use, we're seeing the depature of people from "Middle of the Road" distributions. Gentoo has its niche for the hardcore, but most distributions will attempt to make life as easy as possible for the user, a la Fedora or SUSE. They are trying to remove that middle ground and place themselves firmly into the "easy to use" category, while still retaining the power and flexibility Linux inherantly offers.
Those that did use Debian and the sort are moving on, they don't see the need for the elitest economy as much anymore, as Linux itself isn't as unique and hardcore as it once needed to be. We begin to see users use Linux not just to experiement on, but to actually use in a working environment, something to be taken a little more seriously.
In the end, the flourishment of distributions will begin to phase out, and personally I believe its for the better. We will be left with a handful, but those handful will have the attention of a much larger user and developer base, rather than having them spread thinly out. In the end, I believe this is a good thing. It looks like Debian may perhaps be one of the first examples.
Lol, u r so wrong! IM and net hasnt done nething 2 my english IMHO.
g2g
Everyone loves pretty pictures!
e lease=265&slide=1
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?r
Clearly the fact that Microsoft had a monopoly on the browser market reared its ugly head; we haven't seen any improvements to IE for around 5 years. However, as soon as the hint of competition comes, MS is back on their feet.
Now that MS has put people back on their IE development team, it seems inevitable that IE will soon have the same features that Firefox does: tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, 24-bit PNG support, etc. What is the Mozilla Foundation's move to keep people excited about installing Firefox over being content with IE? Many of my friends who are less than computer savvy are more than content staying with what Windows already has unless there are some compelling reasons to switch. Firefox at the moment has those reasons in spades, but a quick tune-up to IE would undermine Firefox's natural advances.
In short: how are you planning to keep Firefox ahead of the curve?
What information are you basing this on? From what I can see, this little tidbit of yours came straight from your ass.
Lets take a look at the RIAA. They have opened the gates (albeit slowly) to online downloads. One word: iTunes. They provide music at $0.99 a song, a far cry from $14-$20 a CD.
The MPAA recognizes there is demand for downloadable movies. People are seeking more and more often to find distribution channels that are easier, cheaper, and require less real world venturing. Renting movies with all their late charges has been undermined by things like netflix.com, etc.
That being said, I think the MPAA recongnizes that as the user isn't getting the same physical hardware, there is a requirement for a lower cost. Basic marketing 101, there's gotta be value to your product. If the user can't see the value, they won't buy. The value of online distribution means "cheaper" to any and all users, you can bet your pretty little face the MPAA understands this.
"Somewhat decentralized"?
The tracker's location is hard-coded into torrent files. That's about as centralized as you can get. Bram Cohen himself said that BitTorrent is going to be a mistake for pirates to use because of this very reason.
Obviously this man has a lot of opportunity in his life. He has obtained enough wealth to do whatever he so chooses, and rather than living a shallow quiet life of no regard, he has chosen to live life to its fullest.
He has decided to break records, to participate in the production of a machine which would allow a human to do something no other human has done before. He has chosen to make history not just as a man with money, but a man with money who decided to live the adventure.
Contrast this with the opposite: gather money, buy, sell, rinse and repeat until you die. Is that what you would have rather seen? Would you have congratulated this man on living a life worth living having done that? I doubt it. This man hasn't do that - he has decided to do something more.
The Richard Bransons in this world are men who have opportunity and take it. They live their lives to a degree that we cannot because of our financial situation. They could easily, EASILY decide to lay back and do nothing at all. These men do not do that, rather they willingly decide to pioneer, to carve a path for the rest of humanity. Whether it is creating extremely efficient aircraft, going into space or more, they are living their lives to its fullest potential.
Remember: All men die, few men really live.
What the hell? Are you just jumping on the "Oh look at me, I use Firefox and Linux" bandwagon, when realistically you're probably not? This has absolutely nothing to do with any operating system or browser on your system, rather spam, which is something that occurs at the server level.
If you actually were smart enough to go through the steps of installing Gentoo, I would assume you are smart enough to know that spam isn't platform dependent.
Mirror located here
True, however one must also consider that these sites do not act as a "common carrier", but a conspiritor.
AT&T provides a service. It cannot control the very actions done within that service, but the service is mainly used for good purposes. It could be proven that a majority of calls are not of illegal nature or plotting.
However these sites do not provide an uncontrollable service. They can clearly see and control what exists or doesn't exist within their web site. The public, in the majority of these cases, doesn't have the control to directly effect content like it does a phone conversation. Unfortunately, the majority of content on these sites are links which will provide information to users as to obtain illegal data. This in itself is considered conspiracy.
"Conspiracy. A combination or confederacy between two or more persons formed for the purpose of committing, by their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act, or some act which is lawful in itself, but becomes unlawful when done by the concerted action of the conspirators, or for the purpose of using criminal or unlawful means to the commission of an act not in itself unlawful."
Lets say you walked up to a bartender and explained you really hated your wife,. He provided you a phone number of a person whould could "take care of the situation", you took up his offer and had the dirty deed done. Is the bartender innocent of any wrongdoing? Far from it. He assisted you in your attempts to having your wife knocked off by providing information to allow you to commit the crime. This is conspiracy.
These web sites unfortunately don't have much of a leg to stand on. We know the information they provide will lead to illegal content, they know it as well. That's a hard case to defend in itself.
Ok, if it was an alien vehicle, but we're aliens on that planet, is it alien? Or do we just call it a vehicle because we're actually the aliens? Then are we being called the aliens by the people in the vehicle? Do we call our vehicle up there the alien vehicle?
I'm so confused!...
Anyone else here feel that getting those words not yet spoken would be an absolute breakthrough in relationships with their girlfriends? Man that would have saved my butt countless times...
Alright, I believe in a couple years we're going to start seeing some serious version hell. For example, in the future how will we know what is "newer" than the other when we have:
Windows XP
Windows XP Reloaded
Windows XP Revolutions
Windows Xtreme
Windows Xtreme Unleashed
Windows Opposing Force
Windows Blue Shift
Does that stuff mean anything? No. With letter versioning and now this word versioning, to know what is newer than the next the user is just required to know. 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, it all makes logical sense. Words, unless they come up with alphabetical names (which would be kinda cool, but still limiting) mean nothing other than "this one is kinda different".
Complie that with other pieces of software which will follow suit (Look at all the software using 2 letter naming convensions for their versioning already) and we'll have very little knowledge what version is actually what.
Additionally, a benefit to number versioning was it allowed us to say "ok, this is 1.0, this software is really new and hasn't undergone any revisons," or "alright, this is version 3.2, they've taken a couple cracks at it and added some fixes." What if I told you I just made Gigawhop Reloaded. What the heck is that? Unless you knew the name of the software already, is it called Gigawhop or Gigawhop Reloaded as a whole? Is Reloaded actually the version? What does that even mean to me? Is it my first release? Second? Third? Tenth?
You have been warned...
Eletric...ra-zors...rot...my....wha....?
Tower of Babel, here we come!
"The Tower of Babel
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, [1] they found a plain in Shinar [2] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [3] -because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth. "
What I look forward to is seeing if Microsoft has taken any components from Linux over to Windows. This is a HUGE day!
Between all the cell phones, wireless networks, remote controls, microwaves, Ghz phones, wireless mice and keyboards and now rader on cars, my sperm doesn't even stand a chance. Poor guys =(