C. Montgomery Burns: "I've always felt that there's far too much hysteria these days about so-called cheating. If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it's your duty as an American to do it. Why should the race always be to the swift or the jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the gifts God gave them? Well, I say cheating is the gift man gives himself!"
Actually we own some highly valuable intellectual property that allows us to make gobs of money without needing to be efficient. I think. In any event, you are correct that I don't have a huge clue about how we run, just my little neck of the woods. But I don't think that labor saving devices do so much for us.
At my company, almost everything is done by email. Most messages are responded to nearly immediately, and so everybody's expectation is that email is more of a conversation than something that will be looked at in 24 hours (may as well be 24 years).
Of course, little actually gets done since interruptions are contstant. Seriously, probably 2/3 of my time is allocated to just sending and receiving emails. And I work in a major, highly profitable company. I just don't understand how we do it.
Burns: "I've always felt that there's far too much hysteria these days about so-called cheating. If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it's your duty as an American to do it. Why should the race always be to the swift or the jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the gifts God gave them? Well, I say cheating is the gift man gives himself!"
In a five-page document filed Friday, SCO attorneys say they have identified 217 areas.... A secret five page filing supposedly detailing 217 contract violations? Guess they didn't get into too much detail, eh?
This is an interesting take. I suppose it's possible that I didn't give the game enough of a chance to appreciate that the frustrations that came from the corruption problem might actually lead to interesting strategic situations. Maybe I should give it a try again.
But before I do, do you by any chance have any thoughts on the military aspects of the game. I became horribly bored doing what seeming like a million bombing runs, most of which failed. But without the bombing runs, I couldn't prevail militarily. Is there a way around this?
I should have also mentioned that I recently discovered the expansion pack for this game, called Alien Crossfire. It's a pretty good expansion, with a new storyline, seven new factions and a bunch of other stuff that you might expect to see an an expansion. Not revoluationary, but recommended if you are an AC addict.
Totally serious. Given the different characters you can play and the different units you can create, it's got great replayability.
But I like Colonization too. It gets a little tedious dealing with the micromanagement of all of the wagon trains and warehouses, but somehow it's fun. I have played it within the last year myself.
If you love Civ 2 but have never played Alpha Centauri, be sure to give it a shot. I still play it occasionally even today, but I don't play anything in the Civ series any longer. The modifiable military units are great.
Never did like Civ 3 myself. Too many boring bombing runs...
I predict we'll see Episodes VII, VIII, and IX someday, no matter what George Lucas says now. And we'll probably see other movies as well. (I'd like to see some "Jedi Academy" movies.)
Totally. If not sooner, then the day after Lucas dies his heirs will sell the rights to the Star Wars universe for $1 billion (or so) to Fox and they'll start making the movies again. They won't stop until Episode XVII (or so).
And then after they've gotten every last dollar out of the movie seriies, they'll turn it into a 3d TV show for our grandkids. Or our grandkids' pets. Or something.
A copy is going to be lossy, except if you burn to CD (which is easy).
It's supposed to be easy, anyway. Unfortunately, many Windows users (including me) are unable to burn CDs using iTunes. See here for more info about the problem. Until Apple comes out with a real fix for this problem, I simply cannot buy songs from the iTunes Music Store. Unfortunately I didn't figure this out until after I'd already spent $20 in the store. Oh well, at least I can play the songs through my computer.
I don't know. It sure seems to me like every high-rated comment about this story is saying something to the effect that in this case, RFID isn't actually so bad. Might even be good. Perhaps it is your assumption about the SlashThink phenomenon that is incorrect.
Stop five people on the street and ask them where or what Europa is. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I know what you mean. I was recently on a second date with a woman, and I happened to mention something about Europa. I immediately realized I had better either shut up or explain what I was talking about. Since it was too late to shut up, I started to explain that Europa is a moon of Jupiter and...
She interrupted me and said she knew about Europa and its icy surface.
I think that was the moment I started to fall in love.
I believe anti-copy CD technologies will prove unfruitful, and will therefore eventually be abandoned by record companies. There firms may take a cue from the movie industry and increase the value of CDs by bundling interesting bonus features rather than restrictive copy-control software.
An interesting New York Times article today about exactly this can be found here. The article even mentions a band that includes a PlayStation 2 game on a DVD with their CD. Which just goes to show that CD prices have absolutely no relationship with marginal costs.
Hey everybody, before you start calling, remember that a Federal District Judge is not just some idiot spammer. I would expect that there are laws against harrassing judges, and even if not, the judges certainly have the power to throw you in jail for contempt just on their say so.
I wish... but let's do the math. We have 50 senators, let's say 2 kids each, total 100. There are 60 million filesharers. So 100/60000000 =.000017, i.e. not bloody likely.
On the other hand, just imagine what the 60 million of us could do if we all joined together and acted collectively? Who'd need a Senator's son?
Interesting points. On the internet you can talk with a dozen people who may each have 1/12th of a solution.
How often do you actually do this successfully? It seems to me that maybe you can post a question on a Usenet group and get 12/12ths of an answer eventually. But probably you're going to get responses from 100 people on the way to getting there, so you had better be good at filtering out useless information.
What I'm trying to say is that I agree with you that this benefit is there, but it comes at a high cost.
Of course maybe that's why we're having this conversation on Slashdot, because even a primitive filter like moderation mades a big difference in the cost of gathering information.
Jaywalking is far worse than file sharing from a moral perspective. Jaywalking actually has the potential of hurting someone; not only the jaywalker, but cars who are attempting to follow traffic rules. Jaywalking can interfere with traffic flow, and can endanger pedestrians and drivers.
File sharing, on the other hand, hurts nobody. At most you can say that extensive file sharing over the Internet uses up bandwidth and slows down the net for everyone else. Since file sharers are not stealing bandwidth, however, this is not a moral issue. At most, it creates the argument that people should pay for bandwidth based on usage.
Slashdot Mirror
C. Montgomery Burns: "I've always felt that there's far too much hysteria these days about so-called cheating. If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it's your duty as an American to do it. Why should the race always be to the swift or the jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the gifts God gave them? Well, I say cheating is the gift man gives himself!"
Simpsons Episode: Mountain of Madness.
Yes, many.
Actually we own some highly valuable intellectual property that allows us to make gobs of money without needing to be efficient. I think. In any event, you are correct that I don't have a huge clue about how we run, just my little neck of the woods. But I don't think that labor saving devices do so much for us.
At my company, almost everything is done by email. Most messages are responded to nearly immediately, and so everybody's expectation is that email is more of a conversation than something that will be looked at in 24 hours (may as well be 24 years).
Of course, little actually gets done since interruptions are contstant. Seriously, probably 2/3 of my time is allocated to just sending and receiving emails. And I work in a major, highly profitable company. I just don't understand how we do it.
Burns: "I've always felt that there's far too much hysteria these days about so-called cheating. If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it's your duty as an American to do it. Why should the race always be to the swift or the jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the gifts God gave them? Well, I say cheating is the gift man gives himself!"
"One source" [cough]Robbie Bach[/cough]", who has seen a demonstration of the service, said it was an improvement over iTunes."
In a five-page document filed Friday, SCO attorneys say they have identified 217 areas .... A secret five page filing supposedly detailing 217 contract violations? Guess they didn't get into too much detail, eh?
Playboy checks Wayback to look for infringers of its trademark bunny or other images.
So they're basically just sitting around surfing porn too, eh?
Ouch! $239 for their cheapest keyboard. Looks great but I guess I'll stick with my cheapo ergonomic keyboard for now.
Here's the direct link for their contour keyboards at their online store if anyone is interested in jumping straight to price.
This is an interesting take. I suppose it's possible that I didn't give the game enough of a chance to appreciate that the frustrations that came from the corruption problem might actually lead to interesting strategic situations. Maybe I should give it a try again.
But before I do, do you by any chance have any thoughts on the military aspects of the game. I became horribly bored doing what seeming like a million bombing runs, most of which failed. But without the bombing runs, I couldn't prevail militarily. Is there a way around this?
I should have also mentioned that I recently discovered the expansion pack for this game, called Alien Crossfire. It's a pretty good expansion, with a new storyline, seven new factions and a bunch of other stuff that you might expect to see an an expansion. Not revoluationary, but recommended if you are an AC addict.
Totally serious. Given the different characters you can play and the different units you can create, it's got great replayability.
But I like Colonization too. It gets a little tedious dealing with the micromanagement of all of the wagon trains and warehouses, but somehow it's fun. I have played it within the last year myself.
If you love Civ 2 but have never played Alpha Centauri, be sure to give it a shot. I still play it occasionally even today, but I don't play anything in the Civ series any longer. The modifiable military units are great.
...
Never did like Civ 3 myself. Too many boring bombing runs
I predict we'll see Episodes VII, VIII, and IX someday, no matter what George Lucas says now. And we'll probably see other movies as well. (I'd like to see some "Jedi Academy" movies.)
Totally. If not sooner, then the day after Lucas dies his heirs will sell the rights to the Star Wars universe for $1 billion (or so) to Fox and they'll start making the movies again. They won't stop until Episode XVII (or so).
And then after they've gotten every last dollar out of the movie seriies, they'll turn it into a 3d TV show for our grandkids. Or our grandkids' pets. Or something.
A copy is going to be lossy, except if you burn to CD (which is easy).
It's supposed to be easy, anyway. Unfortunately, many Windows users (including me) are unable to burn CDs using iTunes. See here for more info about the problem. Until Apple comes out with a real fix for this problem, I simply cannot buy songs from the iTunes Music Store. Unfortunately I didn't figure this out until after I'd already spent $20 in the store. Oh well, at least I can play the songs through my computer.
I don't know. It sure seems to me like every high-rated comment about this story is saying something to the effect that in this case, RFID isn't actually so bad. Might even be good. Perhaps it is your assumption about the SlashThink phenomenon that is incorrect.
Stop five people on the street and ask them where or what Europa is. Go ahead, I'll wait.
...
I know what you mean. I was recently on a second date with a woman, and I happened to mention something about Europa. I immediately realized I had better either shut up or explain what I was talking about. Since it was too late to shut up, I started to explain that Europa is a moon of Jupiter and
She interrupted me and said she knew about Europa and its icy surface.
I think that was the moment I started to fall in love.
I believe anti-copy CD technologies will prove unfruitful, and will therefore eventually be abandoned by record companies. There firms may take a cue from the movie industry and increase the value of CDs by bundling interesting bonus features rather than restrictive copy-control software.
An interesting New York Times article today about exactly this can be found here. The article even mentions a band that includes a PlayStation 2 game on a DVD with their CD. Which just goes to show that CD prices have absolutely no relationship with marginal costs.
When news of the IBM lawsuit broke, I sold the last of my stock.
Sounds like the same game plan as Darl and the other SCO insiders!
I agree. In probably about 10 minutes he'll be hired by a competitor and that's that. Probably for a 50% raise too.
Hey everybody, before you start calling, remember that a Federal District Judge is not just some idiot spammer. I would expect that there are laws against harrassing judges, and even if not, the judges certainly have the power to throw you in jail for contempt just on their say so.
In short, use a pay phone.
I wish ... but let's do the math. We have 50 senators, let's say 2 kids each, total 100. There are 60 million filesharers. So 100/60000000 = .000017, i.e. not bloody likely.
On the other hand, just imagine what the 60 million of us could do if we all joined together and acted collectively? Who'd need a Senator's son?
Interesting points. On the internet you can talk with a dozen people who may each have 1/12th of a solution.
How often do you actually do this successfully? It seems to me that maybe you can post a question on a Usenet group and get 12/12ths of an answer eventually. But probably you're going to get responses from 100 people on the way to getting there, so you had better be good at filtering out useless information.
What I'm trying to say is that I agree with you that this benefit is there, but it comes at a high cost.
Of course maybe that's why we're having this conversation on Slashdot, because even a primitive filter like moderation mades a big difference in the cost of gathering information.
Jaywalking is far worse than file sharing from a moral perspective. Jaywalking actually has the potential of hurting someone; not only the jaywalker, but cars who are attempting to follow traffic rules. Jaywalking can interfere with traffic flow, and can endanger pedestrians and drivers.
File sharing, on the other hand, hurts nobody. At most you can say that extensive file sharing over the Internet uses up bandwidth and slows down the net for everyone else. Since file sharers are not stealing bandwidth, however, this is not a moral issue. At most, it creates the argument that people should pay for bandwidth based on usage.
It's conceivable, sure, but you're a lot more likely to get turned down for a job for a lack of education than too much education.