Don't forget trying before you buy. This is pretty much the only reason I pirate games now. For two reasons, to see of it will actually function at any acceptable level (since 99.99% of retailers won't accept a return, and exchanging a game that doesn't work for the same non-functional game is stupid) on my hardware. Second, to make sure it is actually worth the purchase price, I do this since I don't trust reviews on anything anymore, especially games with AAA publishers, though some indie companies have also displayed a proficiency for gaming rating and reviews.
In the former case I end up actually purchasing the game around 90% of the time (less so before my primary computer was all beefy and modern like). In the later I generally only buy the game around 50% of the time, especially AAA titles. And, obviously, if I'm not interested enough to spend a rather meager (though still overpriced) $50-60 for it, I'm not playing through the pirated copy either, its being uninstalled since its crap.
There are a number of models which are fairly well understood - contrary to pro-piracy propaganda
So... A bean counter looks on a table, and says "this game should make $x!"
Come release date, the game makes $x, then the DRM must work.
I don't buy your explanation without further citation and elaboration. How can you know, with any degree of certainty, how much profit your game will yeild? What happens if you made a shit game? What happens if another release poached your potential customers? What happens if you completely failed to comprehend your demographics?
Obviously you expected your game to be the greatest thing ever, with broad appeal, and worth a shit-ton of money (or else it wouldn't have been accepted or published), and lots of time these expectations are just wrong. A lot of games are are just crap. Perhaps customers realize this? Oh no, never, your game is awesome, it must be the damn pirates. They do make a nice scapegoat, but I've yet to see an impartial study backing you up, nor does the real work really show that piracy is strangling the industry (any IP-based industry for that matter).
, companies would not spend tens or even hundreds of thousands (including an increased support burden and lost sales) of dollars to prevent piracy if there wasn't ultimately a return on the other side
You do realize that anti-piracy firms spend tons of time advertising, and playing up the threat? You do realize that many of these firms fund flawed studies and statistics to back them up? You do realize that DRM serves a bigger purpose than thwarting pirates; to block resale and kill the used market? You do realize that killing resale would amount to far more gained income than any potential loss by any potential pirate, or customer burned by DRM?
Also, companies are not fully rational organizations. If you hit up the right executive, with the right fudged data, you can sway the full company to make a decision that does't make strict, logical, business sense.
I'm not condemning or condoning piracy. I don't personally care, and find some types/motivations of piracy to be unethical, even if they aren't harmful. I haven't pirated a game (outside of trying it before purchase) in a very long time, so I don't have "a pro-pirate" slant. Questioning your beliefs isn't "propaganda" either, as far as I can tell there isn't any decent, scientifically valid, information out there, or at least enough to tell what effects (if any) piracy actually has on the various IP-driven industries. What studies there are hint at piracy having a slight positive effect, I don't take these as gospel, but I trust them far more than less independent, more vested, sources.
I meant that more in the "Geohot", or "rooting" sense than in the music piracy sense.
I pretty much agree with you though.
IMost of the studies have been made on music piracy, and so far, it looks like piracy has a zero or positive net effect on music sales.
I'm not sure about this, this would be a very hard thing to prove. How do you isolate the direct effects of piracy from normal market trends? I kind of doubt that there is a full-on positive impact. I would say that the impact is vastly less than mainstream publishers claim, and could possible verge towards zero impact. Or not enough impact to be a serious problem.
Some large percentage of pirates use piracy as a "try before you buy" mechanism. If they like the content they will purchase it, and probably more. These pirates don't result in any loss to anyone.
Some pirates use piracy to seek out rare, old, out-of-print, or otherwise non-profitable content. These pirates don't result in a loss to anyone.
Some smaller, yet significant, amount of pirates pirate for piracies sake, and probably would never have actually bought the content in the first place. These pirates don't result in a loss to anyone.
Another group pirates because they doesn't have the money to actually legally aquire content. This group, also, causes no loss to anyone (though I find them also ethically dubious)
A much smaller amount of pirates, though, would have bought the content if it wasn't for a free alternative being around. These ones do result in at least a theoretical loss for creators. This group hurts smaller artists more than large publishers, since small sums of money matter much more starving musicians than those covered by the big, rich, greasy, wings of old publishers. They might be offset by the benefits of other groups, but they still cause a small, modicum, of (generally arguable) harm.
The latter group grows in significance as the cost of the content pirated goes up. Most people can spend 9.99 on entertainment on impulse with no second thoughts. 14.00-30.00 for a DVD/BluRay gets a bit more dicey. But with the extremely bloated prices for software and games free but dubious gets much more competitive, and the potential for hypothetical harm goes up.
Notice, and heed, the hedge words. There are many ways of looking at this, and empirically, none have been judge the right way yet. I'm not even sure where I stand, and I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about this (I've gone so far as making an "ethical piracy/unethical piracy" list for myself)
Did you miss the part where he found an excuse to pirate Arkham Asylum and not pay for it? He got his kicks from the game, a game which I'm sure took millions to develop.
I did actually miss that part, sorry. I should probably drink more coffee before trying the whole "reading comprehension" thing.
Maybe the game companies feel the same way about consumers? It's easy to find an excuse that ends up self-serving.
It is. I personally think that the hardcore pirates and the giant consumer-hostile publishers don't have any claim to moral high ground. Of them I'd say that the pirates are the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't make either of them shining moral avengers. A quick bit of flawed moral calculus; not all pirates would by the product, meaning that not every instance of piracy is actually harm. Hostile DRM harms everyone who buys the product, whether they intend to illegally distribute it or not. 99% of paying customers will not make an illegal copy and upload it to a torrent site. DRM has no effect on the people who go and pirate the game. So DRM basically harms everyone, while completely ignoring the actual target.
That said, I don't condone either party. Further, I'm almost completely apathetic towards both.
Just like how many consumers will screw over companies for their own self-interests. They get taken advantage of all the time, with the justification that's it's a faceless corporation. Yet these corporations employ people and are run by people. They're not all totally evil, either, though there will always be something you don't approve of.
What percentage of consumers screw over the companies? Last I check the games industry was making more money than ever, and seems to be growing very well. People are buying a record amount of games, and I've read basically no reports claiming that any major publisher was about to go out of business do to piracy. The people complaining about DRM are generally paying customers, since most pirated versions have cracks within hours of release, if not before.
Also, I can't think of anything that is, or was, totally evil. Not even Microsoft. But this still doesn't make you okay.
In the end I suppose I have more sympathy for the pirates since they are human being, and not amoral legal fictions. I do sympathize for the employees, if we ever actually got to the point where they are threatened (we're a long way from that point now), but not too bad, since they did throw their lot in with someone who is out to harm actual, flesh and blood, people.
Hell, I'm not even a zealot who is completely against DRM. Consoles are good, and basically they currently exist as DRM (whats the difference between a console and a similarly speced computer? Exclusivity). Value-added DRM like some Steam games and Stardock games (no DRM, but if you want the patch you need a valid key/platform) is good. Serial numbers annoy me, since they kill resale, but I can live with them. Intrinsic DRM, like WoW and other predominantly online games is also fine. But DRM has to add value for both me, the customer, and for the companies/creators. If DRM does nothing for my I will either completely ignore your product, or circumvent your DRM (and bitch about it vocally to potential customers), or, in the worst case, buy a competitors product while pirating yours.
Welcome to Slashdot, in the 21st century, where being a nerd isn't about using computers to do cool things from our own knowledge, skill,intelligence and desire - it's about using computers (and Linux) as a platform by which others' creations entertain us, we get grumpy when such is denied, pirate it, and then rationalize such here.
And what are you adding? Is whining about other people not living up to your arbitrary standards adding much to Slashdot?
If it helps, view the Piracy/DRM/Copyright topics here to the old "oh god, yet another damn case-mod" topics of yore.
I personally find the piracy/DRM/copyright discussions interesting. Its an example of technology effecting a previously cut-and-dried ethical system, and the struggle for society (individuals and business') to cope with it. We're watching social mores and culture being made. How much more interesting can we get? Really this is about as interesting as the cultural chaos that the printing press unleased, more so since we don't know how everything is going to shake out.
Its also interesting since its a fun clash between two "goods"; the ability for people to access and tinker with their property, and the ability for makers to profit. Right now these two things are completely conflicted. That and of course the fact that if we cede to creators we allow giant corporations to annex vast swaths of our lives. If we cede to individuals, then we risk hurting the genuine creators. This also is a time where our decisions can lead to completely over-throwing the previous system of content creation (to creator->user, from creator->publisher-> distributor->user), which would on one had limit the ability to generate money, while allowing a far greater field of creators with more control over their own work.
But then again... I also went to school for philosophy, and thus find endless discussion and debate to be interesting and entertaining.
Ack, sorry. Replied to the wrong post. Slashdot 3.0 really didn't want to post anything, and kept on giving me a submit timer that would just reset after a 3-count.
I love Slashdot 3.0. Slashdot is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the internet. It is so much more enriching and useful than Slashdot 2.0 (or god forbid the perfectly functional Slashdot 1.0!).
In other words, you rationalized your decision to get something for free.
That doesn't look like what he said at all. Noticed him saying he didn't pirate games, and him saying he has shelves full of paid for games?
I, on the other hand, don't really care anymore. Game companies are trying to harm me as a customer, and often times have no problems with screwing me over. Why the hell should I care about them? Should I really have moral qualms about pirating their content? Why?
Also, since when should I empathize with a giant corporation who doesn't give two shits about me, and will screw me over for an extra $0.02 in the bank? Did they do anything to earn my empathy or respect? Are they acting in a human enough way to grant them a modicum of human treatment? I won't loose a single second of sleep if piracy causes EA to crumble (same for any of the RIAA labels, or MPAA members, or any other consumer hostile group). Yes, I would feel bad for their employees, but they chose to associate with that company, and that's fine.
I'm not saying I actually do pirate. I don't. I generally get games from Steam, and generally live without when a company is feeling particularly abusive. I don't NEED to play their game, there are hundreds of games out there who don't want to abuse me. The older I get, the less I really want to put up with the hassle. Sure Shiny EA Sequal XII is probably awesome, but I could play some Minecraft, or an old console game instead. Or read a book. Or go for a walk. Or try to learn a new skill (currently up is photography). Or even get something important done.
In the end whats the difference from me just not buying/playing and pirating the content?
I suppose I have been boycotting. If a company is going to release a game with abusive DRM, and six thousand stupid DLC packs, I probably already not interested long before the thought of boycott or piracy comes to mind. Most of the times these games just aren't good to begin with, and exist only as a cash grab by some giant game conglomerate, meaning quality and originality was probably sacrificed in interest of the largest possible market. Its generally like using a padlock (and guard dog) to protect oatmeal (albeit sexily branded oatmeal with a multi-million dollar advertising budget).
I have also been boycotting Sony and RIAA labels in the same unintentional way. I don't even reach the point of piracy, because I'm actually not interesting in a single one of their products. Wake me when they make something even worth the effort of pirating.
Sorry for the tangent ridden rant. I'm sick of the whole topic. I see no point in caring whether people pirate or not anymore. If someone treats me like shit, I'm not going to bend over backwards to give them money and make them happy. Fsck 'em.
It's only against the rules to modify it beyond established parameters which changes it from a game console to a device that supports piracy.
Doesn't basically every modern toy support piracy in some sense? Should Microsoft be allowed to kill my computer since I have a torrent client installed, what about Apple, can they go brick my home built PC because I have iTunes and said torrent client? Should my car manufacture take my car away because the fuzzy dice I just put on my mirror makes it a speeding machine? My iPod doesn't have a single song from the iTunes Music Store, can Apple delete it all at whim?
Who cares if Sony doesn't like what I do to my hardware. I bought the damn thing, I didn't sign an agreement saying "this hardware, and everything you ever do to it is property of Sony.". If I want to take it apart, then that is my business. If I want to hack it to run Linux, then that also is my business. If I want to take it out to the desert and shoot at it, my business. If I want to take a picture and publish it only, my business. If I want watching porn on it, my business. Get the picture? Its mine. I bought it. Sony's abilities stop there, or at least should.
If I figure out how something works, I should have the right to tell others. This is how things worked for a very, VERY, long time until Americans decided that corporations are more important than anything else in the universe, including their own, individual, selves. No one is actually being harmed. And no, violating some giant faceless Japanese corporation's wishes doesn't count as harm.
Pulling support that was advertised is a bad precedent. I was allowed to use OtherOS, then Sony decided that I wasn't. It said I could, it was in writing, but nope, it stopped being useful to them so I get screwed. Sony should have thought about it first, and just not included the feature. Nope, they get to lie, and rescind an advertised feature, and the users are obviously the bad guys for thinking this wrong. I kind of wish this was more common, so the ignorant masses on the Sony board would have stuff they liked arbitrarily pulled, and then be forced before court, with thousands of ignorant teenage wankers threatening to come to their house and kill them.
Sorry, you can only, now, use you Television for cable. Allowing other inputs was a mistake, and we'll issue a firmware patch to fix this situation. Circumvention of this patch is a violation of our corporate rights, and you'll be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (that we bought).
BUt they have 95% of the $1000 and over PC market.
How do you even make a meaningful metric for that? If I was going to spend $1k for a PC, I'd probably build it part by part, or get it custom, and not buy it as-is from a company. If your willing to spend that much, you probably want some control over the actual components too. Hell, if I spend over $700 for a PC, I'll hand build it, since at that cost, I obviously care about quality.
And if I hand build my PC, how the hell will anyone know it cost over $1k? My main PC, right now, is probably around $800-900, and not a single body knows about it, unless somehow a bunch of component manufactures got together and compared receipts. I got parts from around 5 different vendors, reused some older parts from the PC I was replacing... Etc...
Right down the road from me there is a shop that will custom built PCs (in large batches if necessary), some of their options go over $2k easily. I doubt that any of their sales (or the thousands of shops like it) are figured into those statistics.
Also, we're comparing a monolithic manufacturer of one product line, to tens of less monolithic manufactures of similar products. Which, in itself, is meaningless. If we factored all the large non-Apple PC manufacturers together, then I'm sure they'd clobber Apple in the over $1k market.
The only difference between Apple and the competition is the case and the OS. Its the same stuff inside, from the same places. So what is the real difference between Apple and any other OEM?
The Apple label doesn't automatically translate to quality components, either. They use many of the same generic bits as Dell, and other large assemblers.
Idealistic nonsense. We vote for which crook to put into place, not for which action he'll take. It doesn't matter which party he's in, that won't fix it.
The real problem is that we continue to vote for that crook even AFTER the actions take place. And we'll continue to vote for him until he's well into his 90s, senile, and still as corrupt as hell.
The fundamentals are fine, we just strayed a bit off course. And our (if its the US we're talking about) system is very flexible, there really isn't a mess that can be made that we can't back out of. In a generation things will move past whatever trend we're on now, and we'll have something new for our grandchildren to complain about.
In the end there isn't, and will never be, an ideal government. Most people wearing the "revolution" hat, are blathering ideologues whose imagined utopia would be far-far worse than what we have today.
Yes, things are pretty bad on some fronts. No, they aren't irreparable by legitimate means. And we're (in the U.S. and West in general) much, much, better off than a lot of other places. Yeah, we could be better, but who couldn't? There will never be a form of government that makes everyone happy, the happier a group becomes the more miserable everyone else is. It would be hell if Tea Partiers, Libertarians, or Liberals, took control.
Also, what makes you think we're mature enough for the post-revolution bit, the bit that actually matters? Have you seen the quality of discourse these days? Are we capable of the level of conversation that the Founding Fathers had? Nope. We'd pick up guns, over-throw the government, and then various factions would decide to purge other factions as being the enemy (and eating babies, or being "socialists", or being anti-whatever-your-pet-myopic-ideology is). I might listen to the "revolution" talk, if we were actually capable of forming something better. My faith in the people is lower than my faith in the government (which is quite a feat, since it is almost zero), though.
Also, Hulu is producing a show, The Confession [hulu.com] , starring Kiefer Sutherland and John Hurt, both big names in the business.
Hulu is big media. Hulu is pretty much a partnership between NBC, Fox, and Disney. Hulu very much represents the old guard trying to burst into "new media", then screwing up as per expectations. It was a very awesome service at one time, and now I avoid them like the plague. They managed to make me stop "pirating" (or "time-switching") television, and put up with a small amount of short ads. Then they decided that a small amount of short ads wasn't enough, they need the same amount of long ads as broadcast TV. Then they decided that wasn't good enough, they need to block access to their service, and charge money for the privilege of watching something thats completely free on other formats.
The Boxee thing was really the last straw. I was running Boxee on a Linux box. The official Hulu client wouldn't actually stream full-screen video without choking, the various Boxee streams of the same content worked fine. They decided I must be using the proprietary "Boxee Box", so stopped all access though any avenue but their craptastic client. It makes no sense, they get money from ads, I still watched the ads in Boxee, so... Whats the problem?
He wasn't right on the details, but he is right on the general gist. There are tons of books that never made it into the Bible, even though various sects took them as Biblical. The Bible, especially the New Testament, didn't really exist until nearly 400 years after the death of Jesus. And even then, until will into the 16th century many sects used different sets of texts, while being oppressed by the Church. There were many many other books that were considered canonical before this point, many of which exist in the form of the Apocrypha, some of which were also found in Nag Hammadi, and other such caches of scrolls and codices.
Even reading theories on the origin and history of the New Testament is very interesting, and casts a bit of doubt on them. It is currently thought that not a single book of the Bible was written during Jesus' life time, and many were written almost a century after his death. My favorite theory is the Quelle, or Q, theory, that all the Gospels owe existence to one single source, and that source was just the basic teaching of Jesus himself, a list of quotations. All of the magic stuff was added in later as literary convention. Probably the oldest found Biblical materiel isn't even in the Bible, the Gospel of Thomas.
I digress a bit. The Septuagint (stuff that was the basis of the Old Testament) is an even bigger muddled mess. Christians don't even have 1:1 parity with Jews, and the Jews also have a very, VERY, large amount of apocrypha. The Dead Sea scrolls show that the Hebrew "Bible" had a HUGE amount of variation before Jesus.
In a sense, the Bible's we ended up with are largely accidental, and mostly political. I don't see much evidence for God's hand, in the voting and politicking of a large amount of old crusty men looking out for their own power and interests (damn those Gnostics and Manicheans, and other threatening heresies...). If God authored the Bible, its been so butchered that his voice would be all but completely destroyed.
Hell, even different translations say different things, being that translation is an art form, and not a science. I have two Bibles on my shelf next to me*, my old King James and the NIV. In King James the Commandment is "Thou Shall not Kill", where my NIV has "Murder" instead. These provide two very different readings. There are several other places where translations are a bit wonky, since much of the Old Testament comes via Hebrew by way of Greek, and finally into crusty old English. The New Testament is also a crazy quilt of translations and languages. All of which were done by human hands.
I find the Bible, and how it evolved, and how our relationship to it changes to be absolutely fascinating. The influence of Neo-Platonism on some of the writers is very interesting, as is the possible influence of Greek Cynicism on Jesus (I doubt it exists, but it is a fascinating hypothesis).
* - And a Torah, and a Koran, and a Book of Mormon, and a Principia Discordia, and The Book of Subgenious, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, not bad for an old atheist, no? And, yes, I've read them all, several times.
Funny - there isn't a lot of that "live and let live" for those of us who think there might be a god, or a God.
I don't see anyone attacking God here, or people who believe in Him. I would be as against people who attack Christians (or any other religious group) as I am against those who attack homosexuals. The only Christians I have any beef against are those who try to force their religion, and its morality, down the throats of others. I hold this standard to everyone, though. You can do, or believe, anything you want until it harms someone else, or infringes on their rights to do likewise.
There is no "live and let live" today. Activists march in the streets, they have parades in half the major cities, whining and crying, demanding rights that are ridiculous - but when someone posts their disapproval of that behaviour - he's intolerant.
Actually the "pride" thing annoys me a bit too. Acting like a spectacle while demanding to be treated equally strikes me as a bit odd. But then again most straight males also annoy me by constantly wandering around proclaiming how straight they are. Sex should be private, no matter who you do it with. I don't care if you like women or men, it isn't my business, don't make it so.
What ridiculous rights? To be treated like everyone else? Why shouldn't they be? They aren't hurting anyone. If two men are having hot gay sex next door to me, it will never effect my life. I used to live in a predominately lesbian and gay apartment complex with my girlfriend, and my life never came crumbling to a halt, my relationship never suffered for it. My life ticked on about like normal.
Let them get married, at least in civil ceremonies, and in whatever religion will allow it. Let them have the same benefits that straight couples have. Let them adopt children... who cares. The more adoptions the better. I haven't seen any non-religious arguments that convince me otherwise.
How very narrow minded. Basically, if you don't beat the liberal drum and agree that gay is an "alternative lifestyle" they you must be white and republican. And, you call people who disapprove of homosexuality narrow minded? Phhht.
I didn't know having a live and let live attitude (lets call it "turning the other cheek" or "not judging lest I be judged") was liberal. Doesn't really reflect well for the opposite view does it? I have no problem with people who disapprove of homsexuality, as a personal choice. I count myself among them, long ago I decided I didn't like it and stuck with not being gay. The second you start to enforce your subjective preferences on others though, I disapprove. Thats not narrowminded, I also disapprove of people who hate blacks, Muslims, Christians, Americans, or anyone else who isn't like them. Especially if they take an active stance on their bigotry and try to suppress that group. If Christians were ever persecuted, I would feel the same way about their persecutors as I do towards the Christian fringe who hates homosexuals.
I personally dislike American Idol. So I choose not to watch American Idol. This is fine. Many people among the religious would start from the same point and decide that NO ONE should be allowed to watch it.
I guess - there are plenty of liberal minded (and other) people who are rewriting the Bible these days. You can read any version of events that you wish. Since you've stated YOUR personal preferences, then I'd much rather that you didn't mention the Bible at all, than to quote or misquote adulterated versions of the Bible, thank you very much.
Any idea what is actually says in the original Hebrew? Does the original text stack up to the Chinese whispers English version? The version whose main translation was pretty much made just to consolidate power for one English king? And how does this translated oral tradition version of events actually relate to the events which is speaks? Most of the stuff in the old testament is thought to have occurred long before it was codified in the text.
Also which bible, and which translation do we go by? What makes your text better than others based on the same source material? Translating is an art, akin to actual writing, especially from ancient languages. Hell, the full text of the modern Bible was voted on long after it was written, and the current form is hugely subjective.
Actually one of the "gay areas" of my town has some of the best restaurants, and one of the few family owned comic book/gaming stores. There also is a couple art galleries, some boutiques, and an upscale antique store. Its a pretty good area to spend the afternoon.
Me and my girlfriend used to live right on the border to this area (right between the richest zip code in the city and one of the poorest), and it was a blast. Have of our neighbors were gay, and awesome. Most of them were professionals, and around half of them worked in IT and other "hip" emerging industries. Some guy would always go to work dressed to the nines, full suit, nice shoes, etc... And on fridays stumble home at 3:30am in a dress and high heels. Our heavily tattooed, gun toting, lesbian neighbor is among the coolest people I've ever met.
Now we live in the suburbs, in the only house without a large HOA-friendly cross attached to the front, driving the only car without a mega-church bumper sticker. Everyone is white, everyone is Christian, everyone is very boring. We just had a house party, and our neighbors were scared because only around 10% of our guests were white. This neighborhood is very, very sterile and boring, even if people do have kids. The kids never venture outside from their protective houses, with their nourishing television and video games.
I've been using Win7 since release and according to the log have had zero crashes. Which is a record, since I've managed to get OS X to crash several times, and have even managed to bring my Linux boxes to their knees in the same period. So far Win7 is the most stable OS I've run, followed closely by various Linux distros. But then again I've also never encountered serious problems with Vista, and even grew a bit fond of it towards the end of its life. My biggest complaint was how hardware hungry it was, and how slow some things were (like sharing over a network), and its nasty wifi on wake behavior (which Win7 also has, to a lesser degree, and only with USB adapters). The only thing I'd like Win7 to have is a modern file system, NTSF is long in the tooth, and pretty much inferior to every other system out there now.
My girlfriend got Win7 the same day I did, and so far has had around 40 blue screens. The first culprit was bad RAM, the second was a video driver that had a bad install.
But if Windows 7 is a success then it's mainly because Microsoft has foist it on people by making it the default OS on many new machines and ensuring XP's retirement by not porting DirectX 10 or Internet Explorer 9 to it. People are not migrating from XP to Windows 7 in their droves, over 50% of the world's desktop PCs still run XP - that's because for most people it's good enough.
Actually Win7 was the first MS OS that I've ever been excited about, or at least since Win3.11 when I was young and silly and using some the the worst GUIs ever developed. I actually ditched one of my Linux boxes for it (mostly because Linux makes for the worst HTPCs I've ever seen, though). I LIKE Win7. Imagine that.
But then again I think the OS-wars is stupid, and anyone who actually is a "fan boy" of a corporate product is a drooling moron. All of the major OSs are mature now, and pretty much do the same stuff, and do it all just as well. Notice how the main debate going on right now is about niche features, like Powershell, which 90% if end users don't care one iota about?
Also... I have had a virus, worm, or other malware, on any OS or Windows Platform in more than 8 years (and that was one case, and almost completely my fault not securing myself better before hopping on a college network). None of the computers I maintain in my household (7 at the moment, with one more on the way) have had a virus in the last five. Granted this isn't a work environment with hundreds of users, but 99.9% of modern infections are user caused, and not due to massive flaws in OS architecture. If malware producers focused on other OSs as much as they do Windows, then I'm sure they would have the same problems. Users are idiots.
Oddly enough, I just went through a random selection of my old C64 disks, and all of the 20 of them from the shoe box of 150-200 worked. Pretty impressive being that they were stored in attics, went through around 5 moves, and survived Phoenix summers in a garages... I'm sure a fair amount of them died, but as long as M.U.L.E., Qix, and Loderunner survived I don't care.
The tapes are all dead though. I was really curious if I could still use my old 300baud modem to connect to a local BBS... But realized that I don't even know if any actually dial-in BBSs still exist around here, and I doubt the C64 could really actually still communicate with them.
You're too young to fully appreciate what it was like working on an all-in-one box in the early 80s. I'm still waiting for someone to put together a PC in an Atari 800 or 1200 body.
You don't say? I'm under 35 (by 3 years) and still have my original C64 plugged into my TV (next to my Atari 2600, 5600, NES, Dreamcast, and PSX). Every school had Apple IIs. My best friend's parents had a Vic-20, before finally uprgading to a 286 (I was very impressed). A ton of people younger than me have experience with crusty Macs.
You're too poor to have enough disposable income to buy something like this new Commodore. Have fun paying off the loans you took out for your Mazda car and Sager laptop.
Very doubtful. Yes, if your under 21 you might have some trouble with $500, but past that you might pull it off. Again, I'm younger than 35, and probably have twice that worth of computers sitting around my house. Most of them wouldn't cost that much now, but at the original price they would probably total pretty high. I paid for every single one of them. Well, my girlfriend paid for her computer, and we both paid for our HTPC (she's under 30 to boot... gasp).
You're too busy trying to install yet another ROM in your rooted Android phone.
Why would I? I don't see the point, honestly.
You're too stupid. That's right. Everyone under 35 is stupid. I went there. Now get off my lawn.
As is everyone above it. Which means... I'm having difficulty solving this problem, would his crusty old lordship lend a hand, my poor immature brain is a bit too... spry.. for such problems.
I've had rather severe Dissociative episodes with DMT, DXM and mescaline. So severe I put them into the same class as Salvia: "potentially fscking terrifying, use rarely and sparingly". But then again LSD and psylocybes got extremely boring by the time I hit my mid-20s.
Salvia isn't as strong as good acid pure mescaline used to be. It is intense, but very short lived, but less intense than proper DMT either. My first, and last, experience with high doses of DXM put salvia to shame too.
And then I got older, realized that pumping chemicals into my brain merely alters perception, and not necessarily improves it and moved on to a proper education and listening to people older and wiser than me. I'll take a well brewed Trapist, or good bourbon over hallucinogens, any day now. Not that I'm judging people who enjoy it, I just am a bit suspicious of people claiming that it enables them to see some deep ontic truth. Just like I'm a bit suspicious of anyone who claims the ascendancy of something that is invisible, unobservable, and intangible.
Calling 4chan "hackers" is like calling the kids in special ed "rocket scientists".
From what I've read; Anonymous isn't 4chan anymore, its gotten much, much, bigger. Claiming that Anon is just 4chan, is like saying it is just the ACs here. Anonymous is just that, and also amorphous, leaderless, and completely random. Think of these seemingly coordinated attacks as more standing waves than fine structure. A network of IRC channels, forums, and a couple *Chans randomly coalesce into noticeable action against mostly random targets for very random reasons. Once an attack starts, and somehow has enough momentum, it snowballs into a full on assault as the more meek and trepidatious members get emboldened.
Anon is more of an angry mob (ala the protests in the middle east currently) than representatives of any single body.
Also, the nerd part of me agrees with you about the misuse of the term "hacker", but sadly that bus left town a very long time ago. Hacker means something much much different these days than what it did 10-20 years ago. I hate it, you hate it, but the fight has been long lost.
I'll have to find something else to keep me from being productive for a couple days? It might be a mild annoyance, but I'm sure I'll cope.
Though if they took down Slashdot, it would make me ponder what Slashdot did to deserve it. So far my interests have been pretty much aligned with Anonymous, so I'd probably have ditched Slashdot for greener pastures. I'm not saying I agree with their actions, but so far I agree with their opinion of their targets.
One part of me agrees with the anti-Anon talk here, the other part finds it refreshing that someone is taking Sony to task for being a nasty, abusive, and unethical behemoth.
Actually, come to think of it, Sony might be the only target I actually can agree with the actions too. How is this different than Sony playing law man and hosing people's machines illegally with root kits? At least in this case no one innocent is being hurt. Or going out of their way to ruin the life of a mere hobbiest who thought (wrongly) that his hardware was his hardware?
Yes, two wrongs and all that jazz... But still, you have to admit it is something Sony would have done to you if they thought they could make $0.03 off of it, and Sony has done worse to tons of people.
I pretty much agree with your stance on guns. I'd say taking a gun away from you (and people like you) is pretty damn silly, unless, of course, you do something stupid to prove otherwise. Thats one of the big ones for me, while you might have the right to bare arms (or free speech, or the various other rights we enjoy), you don't have the right to be stupid. By stupid I mean infringe on other peoples rights. The second you use a right to violate that (be it intensionally or no) your right is in question. If you run over a bunch of people while drunk in your car, you may lose that ability until you prove your responsible. If you misuse a firearm, the same.
I'd say that's a pretty easy set of rules to remember.
They are. And pretty much everyone's father has given them that speech when they first got a BB gun or got to shoot a.22. Sadly most people I know either ignored that speech, or forgot about it. And this isn't just the inner-city youths I've known, but grizzly vets who carry guns all day, and even a couple active police officers I know. It annoys the hell out of me.
Slashdot Mirror
Three major reasons for pirating:
Don't forget trying before you buy. This is pretty much the only reason I pirate games now. For two reasons, to see of it will actually function at any acceptable level (since 99.99% of retailers won't accept a return, and exchanging a game that doesn't work for the same non-functional game is stupid) on my hardware. Second, to make sure it is actually worth the purchase price, I do this since I don't trust reviews on anything anymore, especially games with AAA publishers, though some indie companies have also displayed a proficiency for gaming rating and reviews.
In the former case I end up actually purchasing the game around 90% of the time (less so before my primary computer was all beefy and modern like). In the later I generally only buy the game around 50% of the time, especially AAA titles. And, obviously, if I'm not interested enough to spend a rather meager (though still overpriced) $50-60 for it, I'm not playing through the pirated copy either, its being uninstalled since its crap.
Ack! Slashdot ate stuff!
The top bit should read:
so... A bean counter looks on a table, and says "this game should make $x!"
Come release date, the game makes greater than or equal to $x, then the DRM must work.
If the game makes less than $x, then it must be due to piracy.
There are a number of models which are fairly well understood - contrary to pro-piracy propaganda
So... A bean counter looks on a table, and says "this game should make $x!"
Come release date, the game makes $x, then the DRM must work.
I don't buy your explanation without further citation and elaboration. How can you know, with any degree of certainty, how much profit your game will yeild? What happens if you made a shit game? What happens if another release poached your potential customers? What happens if you completely failed to comprehend your demographics?
Obviously you expected your game to be the greatest thing ever, with broad appeal, and worth a shit-ton of money (or else it wouldn't have been accepted or published), and lots of time these expectations are just wrong. A lot of games are are just crap. Perhaps customers realize this? Oh no, never, your game is awesome, it must be the damn pirates. They do make a nice scapegoat, but I've yet to see an impartial study backing you up, nor does the real work really show that piracy is strangling the industry (any IP-based industry for that matter).
, companies would not spend tens or even hundreds of thousands (including an increased support burden and lost sales) of dollars to prevent piracy if there wasn't ultimately a return on the other side
You do realize that anti-piracy firms spend tons of time advertising, and playing up the threat? You do realize that many of these firms fund flawed studies and statistics to back them up? You do realize that DRM serves a bigger purpose than thwarting pirates; to block resale and kill the used market? You do realize that killing resale would amount to far more gained income than any potential loss by any potential pirate, or customer burned by DRM?
Also, companies are not fully rational organizations. If you hit up the right executive, with the right fudged data, you can sway the full company to make a decision that does't make strict, logical, business sense.
I'm not condemning or condoning piracy. I don't personally care, and find some types/motivations of piracy to be unethical, even if they aren't harmful. I haven't pirated a game (outside of trying it before purchase) in a very long time, so I don't have "a pro-pirate" slant. Questioning your beliefs isn't "propaganda" either, as far as I can tell there isn't any decent, scientifically valid, information out there, or at least enough to tell what effects (if any) piracy actually has on the various IP-driven industries. What studies there are hint at piracy having a slight positive effect, I don't take these as gospel, but I trust them far more than less independent, more vested, sources.
I meant that more in the "Geohot", or "rooting" sense than in the music piracy sense.
I pretty much agree with you though.
IMost of the studies have been made on music piracy, and so far, it looks like piracy has a zero or positive net effect on music sales.
I'm not sure about this, this would be a very hard thing to prove. How do you isolate the direct effects of piracy from normal market trends? I kind of doubt that there is a full-on positive impact. I would say that the impact is vastly less than mainstream publishers claim, and could possible verge towards zero impact. Or not enough impact to be a serious problem.
Some large percentage of pirates use piracy as a "try before you buy" mechanism. If they like the content they will purchase it, and probably more. These pirates don't result in any loss to anyone.
Some pirates use piracy to seek out rare, old, out-of-print, or otherwise non-profitable content. These pirates don't result in a loss to anyone.
Some smaller, yet significant, amount of pirates pirate for piracies sake, and probably would never have actually bought the content in the first place. These pirates don't result in a loss to anyone.
Another group pirates because they doesn't have the money to actually legally aquire content. This group, also, causes no loss to anyone (though I find them also ethically dubious)
A much smaller amount of pirates, though, would have bought the content if it wasn't for a free alternative being around. These ones do result in at least a theoretical loss for creators. This group hurts smaller artists more than large publishers, since small sums of money matter much more starving musicians than those covered by the big, rich, greasy, wings of old publishers. They might be offset by the benefits of other groups, but they still cause a small, modicum, of (generally arguable) harm.
The latter group grows in significance as the cost of the content pirated goes up. Most people can spend 9.99 on entertainment on impulse with no second thoughts. 14.00-30.00 for a DVD/BluRay gets a bit more dicey. But with the extremely bloated prices for software and games free but dubious gets much more competitive, and the potential for hypothetical harm goes up.
Notice, and heed, the hedge words. There are many ways of looking at this, and empirically, none have been judge the right way yet. I'm not even sure where I stand, and I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about this (I've gone so far as making an "ethical piracy/unethical piracy" list for myself)
Did you miss the part where he found an excuse to pirate Arkham Asylum and not pay for it? He got his kicks from the game, a game which I'm sure took millions to develop.
I did actually miss that part, sorry. I should probably drink more coffee before trying the whole "reading comprehension" thing.
Maybe the game companies feel the same way about consumers? It's easy to find an excuse that ends up self-serving.
It is. I personally think that the hardcore pirates and the giant consumer-hostile publishers don't have any claim to moral high ground. Of them I'd say that the pirates are the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't make either of them shining moral avengers. A quick bit of flawed moral calculus; not all pirates would by the product, meaning that not every instance of piracy is actually harm. Hostile DRM harms everyone who buys the product, whether they intend to illegally distribute it or not. 99% of paying customers will not make an illegal copy and upload it to a torrent site. DRM has no effect on the people who go and pirate the game. So DRM basically harms everyone, while completely ignoring the actual target.
That said, I don't condone either party. Further, I'm almost completely apathetic towards both.
Just like how many consumers will screw over companies for their own self-interests. They get taken advantage of all the time, with the justification that's it's a faceless corporation. Yet these corporations employ people and are run by people. They're not all totally evil, either, though there will always be something you don't approve of.
What percentage of consumers screw over the companies? Last I check the games industry was making more money than ever, and seems to be growing very well. People are buying a record amount of games, and I've read basically no reports claiming that any major publisher was about to go out of business do to piracy. The people complaining about DRM are generally paying customers, since most pirated versions have cracks within hours of release, if not before.
Also, I can't think of anything that is, or was, totally evil. Not even Microsoft. But this still doesn't make you okay.
In the end I suppose I have more sympathy for the pirates since they are human being, and not amoral legal fictions. I do sympathize for the employees, if we ever actually got to the point where they are threatened (we're a long way from that point now), but not too bad, since they did throw their lot in with someone who is out to harm actual, flesh and blood, people.
Hell, I'm not even a zealot who is completely against DRM. Consoles are good, and basically they currently exist as DRM (whats the difference between a console and a similarly speced computer? Exclusivity). Value-added DRM like some Steam games and Stardock games (no DRM, but if you want the patch you need a valid key/platform) is good. Serial numbers annoy me, since they kill resale, but I can live with them. Intrinsic DRM, like WoW and other predominantly online games is also fine. But DRM has to add value for both me, the customer, and for the companies/creators. If DRM does nothing for my I will either completely ignore your product, or circumvent your DRM (and bitch about it vocally to potential customers), or, in the worst case, buy a competitors product while pirating yours.
Welcome to Slashdot, in the 21st century, where being a nerd isn't about using computers to do cool things from our own knowledge, skill,intelligence and desire - it's about using computers (and Linux) as a platform by which others' creations entertain us, we get grumpy when such is denied, pirate it, and then rationalize such here.
And what are you adding? Is whining about other people not living up to your arbitrary standards adding much to Slashdot?
If it helps, view the Piracy/DRM/Copyright topics here to the old "oh god, yet another damn case-mod" topics of yore.
I personally find the piracy/DRM/copyright discussions interesting. Its an example of technology effecting a previously cut-and-dried ethical system, and the struggle for society (individuals and business') to cope with it. We're watching social mores and culture being made. How much more interesting can we get? Really this is about as interesting as the cultural chaos that the printing press unleased, more so since we don't know how everything is going to shake out.
Its also interesting since its a fun clash between two "goods"; the ability for people to access and tinker with their property, and the ability for makers to profit. Right now these two things are completely conflicted. That and of course the fact that if we cede to creators we allow giant corporations to annex vast swaths of our lives. If we cede to individuals, then we risk hurting the genuine creators. This also is a time where our decisions can lead to completely over-throwing the previous system of content creation (to creator->user, from creator->publisher-> distributor->user), which would on one had limit the ability to generate money, while allowing a far greater field of creators with more control over their own work.
But then again... I also went to school for philosophy, and thus find endless discussion and debate to be interesting and entertaining.
Ack, sorry. Replied to the wrong post. Slashdot 3.0 really didn't want to post anything, and kept on giving me a submit timer that would just reset after a 3-count.
I love Slashdot 3.0. Slashdot is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the internet. It is so much more enriching and useful than Slashdot 2.0 (or god forbid the perfectly functional Slashdot 1.0!).
In other words, you rationalized your decision to get something for free.
That doesn't look like what he said at all. Noticed him saying he didn't pirate games, and him saying he has shelves full of paid for games?
I, on the other hand, don't really care anymore. Game companies are trying to harm me as a customer, and often times have no problems with screwing me over. Why the hell should I care about them? Should I really have moral qualms about pirating their content? Why?
Also, since when should I empathize with a giant corporation who doesn't give two shits about me, and will screw me over for an extra $0.02 in the bank? Did they do anything to earn my empathy or respect? Are they acting in a human enough way to grant them a modicum of human treatment? I won't loose a single second of sleep if piracy causes EA to crumble (same for any of the RIAA labels, or MPAA members, or any other consumer hostile group). Yes, I would feel bad for their employees, but they chose to associate with that company, and that's fine.
I'm not saying I actually do pirate. I don't. I generally get games from Steam, and generally live without when a company is feeling particularly abusive. I don't NEED to play their game, there are hundreds of games out there who don't want to abuse me. The older I get, the less I really want to put up with the hassle. Sure Shiny EA Sequal XII is probably awesome, but I could play some Minecraft, or an old console game instead. Or read a book. Or go for a walk. Or try to learn a new skill (currently up is photography). Or even get something important done.
In the end whats the difference from me just not buying/playing and pirating the content?
I suppose I have been boycotting. If a company is going to release a game with abusive DRM, and six thousand stupid DLC packs, I probably already not interested long before the thought of boycott or piracy comes to mind. Most of the times these games just aren't good to begin with, and exist only as a cash grab by some giant game conglomerate, meaning quality and originality was probably sacrificed in interest of the largest possible market. Its generally like using a padlock (and guard dog) to protect oatmeal (albeit sexily branded oatmeal with a multi-million dollar advertising budget).
I have also been boycotting Sony and RIAA labels in the same unintentional way. I don't even reach the point of piracy, because I'm actually not interesting in a single one of their products. Wake me when they make something even worth the effort of pirating.
Sorry for the tangent ridden rant. I'm sick of the whole topic. I see no point in caring whether people pirate or not anymore. If someone treats me like shit, I'm not going to bend over backwards to give them money and make them happy. Fsck 'em.
It's only against the rules to modify it beyond established parameters which changes it from a game console to a device that supports piracy.
Doesn't basically every modern toy support piracy in some sense? Should Microsoft be allowed to kill my computer since I have a torrent client installed, what about Apple, can they go brick my home built PC because I have iTunes and said torrent client? Should my car manufacture take my car away because the fuzzy dice I just put on my mirror makes it a speeding machine? My iPod doesn't have a single song from the iTunes Music Store, can Apple delete it all at whim?
Who cares if Sony doesn't like what I do to my hardware. I bought the damn thing, I didn't sign an agreement saying "this hardware, and everything you ever do to it is property of Sony.". If I want to take it apart, then that is my business. If I want to hack it to run Linux, then that also is my business. If I want to take it out to the desert and shoot at it, my business. If I want to take a picture and publish it only, my business. If I want watching porn on it, my business. Get the picture? Its mine. I bought it. Sony's abilities stop there, or at least should.
If I figure out how something works, I should have the right to tell others. This is how things worked for a very, VERY, long time until Americans decided that corporations are more important than anything else in the universe, including their own, individual, selves. No one is actually being harmed. And no, violating some giant faceless Japanese corporation's wishes doesn't count as harm.
Pulling support that was advertised is a bad precedent. I was allowed to use OtherOS, then Sony decided that I wasn't. It said I could, it was in writing, but nope, it stopped being useful to them so I get screwed. Sony should have thought about it first, and just not included the feature. Nope, they get to lie, and rescind an advertised feature, and the users are obviously the bad guys for thinking this wrong. I kind of wish this was more common, so the ignorant masses on the Sony board would have stuff they liked arbitrarily pulled, and then be forced before court, with thousands of ignorant teenage wankers threatening to come to their house and kill them.
Sorry, you can only, now, use you Television for cable. Allowing other inputs was a mistake, and we'll issue a firmware patch to fix this situation. Circumvention of this patch is a violation of our corporate rights, and you'll be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (that we bought).
BUt they have 95% of the $1000 and over PC market.
How do you even make a meaningful metric for that? If I was going to spend $1k for a PC, I'd probably build it part by part, or get it custom, and not buy it as-is from a company. If your willing to spend that much, you probably want some control over the actual components too. Hell, if I spend over $700 for a PC, I'll hand build it, since at that cost, I obviously care about quality.
And if I hand build my PC, how the hell will anyone know it cost over $1k? My main PC, right now, is probably around $800-900, and not a single body knows about it, unless somehow a bunch of component manufactures got together and compared receipts. I got parts from around 5 different vendors, reused some older parts from the PC I was replacing... Etc...
Right down the road from me there is a shop that will custom built PCs (in large batches if necessary), some of their options go over $2k easily. I doubt that any of their sales (or the thousands of shops like it) are figured into those statistics.
Also, we're comparing a monolithic manufacturer of one product line, to tens of less monolithic manufactures of similar products. Which, in itself, is meaningless. If we factored all the large non-Apple PC manufacturers together, then I'm sure they'd clobber Apple in the over $1k market.
The only difference between Apple and the competition is the case and the OS. Its the same stuff inside, from the same places. So what is the real difference between Apple and any other OEM?
The Apple label doesn't automatically translate to quality components, either. They use many of the same generic bits as Dell, and other large assemblers.
Idealistic nonsense. We vote for which crook to put into place, not for which action he'll take. It doesn't matter which party he's in, that won't fix it.
The real problem is that we continue to vote for that crook even AFTER the actions take place. And we'll continue to vote for him until he's well into his 90s, senile, and still as corrupt as hell.
But what if we don't need a bona-fide revolution?
The fundamentals are fine, we just strayed a bit off course. And our (if its the US we're talking about) system is very flexible, there really isn't a mess that can be made that we can't back out of. In a generation things will move past whatever trend we're on now, and we'll have something new for our grandchildren to complain about.
In the end there isn't, and will never be, an ideal government. Most people wearing the "revolution" hat, are blathering ideologues whose imagined utopia would be far-far worse than what we have today.
Yes, things are pretty bad on some fronts. No, they aren't irreparable by legitimate means. And we're (in the U.S. and West in general) much, much, better off than a lot of other places. Yeah, we could be better, but who couldn't? There will never be a form of government that makes everyone happy, the happier a group becomes the more miserable everyone else is. It would be hell if Tea Partiers, Libertarians, or Liberals, took control.
Also, what makes you think we're mature enough for the post-revolution bit, the bit that actually matters? Have you seen the quality of discourse these days? Are we capable of the level of conversation that the Founding Fathers had? Nope. We'd pick up guns, over-throw the government, and then various factions would decide to purge other factions as being the enemy (and eating babies, or being "socialists", or being anti-whatever-your-pet-myopic-ideology is). I might listen to the "revolution" talk, if we were actually capable of forming something better. My faith in the people is lower than my faith in the government (which is quite a feat, since it is almost zero), though.
Also, Hulu is producing a show, The Confession [hulu.com] , starring Kiefer Sutherland and John Hurt, both big names in the business.
Hulu is big media. Hulu is pretty much a partnership between NBC, Fox, and Disney. Hulu very much represents the old guard trying to burst into "new media", then screwing up as per expectations. It was a very awesome service at one time, and now I avoid them like the plague. They managed to make me stop "pirating" (or "time-switching") television, and put up with a small amount of short ads. Then they decided that a small amount of short ads wasn't enough, they need the same amount of long ads as broadcast TV. Then they decided that wasn't good enough, they need to block access to their service, and charge money for the privilege of watching something thats completely free on other formats.
The Boxee thing was really the last straw. I was running Boxee on a Linux box. The official Hulu client wouldn't actually stream full-screen video without choking, the various Boxee streams of the same content worked fine. They decided I must be using the proprietary "Boxee Box", so stopped all access though any avenue but their craptastic client. It makes no sense, they get money from ads, I still watched the ads in Boxee, so... Whats the problem?
And now I'm back to using TVrss. Good job Hulu!
He wasn't right on the details, but he is right on the general gist. There are tons of books that never made it into the Bible, even though various sects took them as Biblical. The Bible, especially the New Testament, didn't really exist until nearly 400 years after the death of Jesus. And even then, until will into the 16th century many sects used different sets of texts, while being oppressed by the Church. There were many many other books that were considered canonical before this point, many of which exist in the form of the Apocrypha, some of which were also found in Nag Hammadi, and other such caches of scrolls and codices.
Even reading theories on the origin and history of the New Testament is very interesting, and casts a bit of doubt on them. It is currently thought that not a single book of the Bible was written during Jesus' life time, and many were written almost a century after his death. My favorite theory is the Quelle, or Q, theory, that all the Gospels owe existence to one single source, and that source was just the basic teaching of Jesus himself, a list of quotations. All of the magic stuff was added in later as literary convention. Probably the oldest found Biblical materiel isn't even in the Bible, the Gospel of Thomas.
I digress a bit. The Septuagint (stuff that was the basis of the Old Testament) is an even bigger muddled mess. Christians don't even have 1:1 parity with Jews, and the Jews also have a very, VERY, large amount of apocrypha. The Dead Sea scrolls show that the Hebrew "Bible" had a HUGE amount of variation before Jesus.
In a sense, the Bible's we ended up with are largely accidental, and mostly political. I don't see much evidence for God's hand, in the voting and politicking of a large amount of old crusty men looking out for their own power and interests (damn those Gnostics and Manicheans, and other threatening heresies...). If God authored the Bible, its been so butchered that his voice would be all but completely destroyed.
Hell, even different translations say different things, being that translation is an art form, and not a science. I have two Bibles on my shelf next to me*, my old King James and the NIV. In King James the Commandment is "Thou Shall not Kill", where my NIV has "Murder" instead. These provide two very different readings. There are several other places where translations are a bit wonky, since much of the Old Testament comes via Hebrew by way of Greek, and finally into crusty old English. The New Testament is also a crazy quilt of translations and languages. All of which were done by human hands.
I find the Bible, and how it evolved, and how our relationship to it changes to be absolutely fascinating. The influence of Neo-Platonism on some of the writers is very interesting, as is the possible influence of Greek Cynicism on Jesus (I doubt it exists, but it is a fascinating hypothesis).
* - And a Torah, and a Koran, and a Book of Mormon, and a Principia Discordia, and The Book of Subgenious, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, not bad for an old atheist, no? And, yes, I've read them all, several times.
Funny - there isn't a lot of that "live and let live" for those of us who think there might be a god, or a God.
I don't see anyone attacking God here, or people who believe in Him. I would be as against people who attack Christians (or any other religious group) as I am against those who attack homosexuals. The only Christians I have any beef against are those who try to force their religion, and its morality, down the throats of others. I hold this standard to everyone, though. You can do, or believe, anything you want until it harms someone else, or infringes on their rights to do likewise.
There is no "live and let live" today. Activists march in the streets, they have parades in half the major cities, whining and crying, demanding rights that are ridiculous - but when someone posts their disapproval of that behaviour - he's intolerant.
Actually the "pride" thing annoys me a bit too. Acting like a spectacle while demanding to be treated equally strikes me as a bit odd. But then again most straight males also annoy me by constantly wandering around proclaiming how straight they are. Sex should be private, no matter who you do it with. I don't care if you like women or men, it isn't my business, don't make it so.
What ridiculous rights? To be treated like everyone else? Why shouldn't they be? They aren't hurting anyone. If two men are having hot gay sex next door to me, it will never effect my life. I used to live in a predominately lesbian and gay apartment complex with my girlfriend, and my life never came crumbling to a halt, my relationship never suffered for it. My life ticked on about like normal.
Let them get married, at least in civil ceremonies, and in whatever religion will allow it. Let them have the same benefits that straight couples have. Let them adopt children... who cares. The more adoptions the better. I haven't seen any non-religious arguments that convince me otherwise.
How very narrow minded. Basically, if you don't beat the liberal drum and agree that gay is an "alternative lifestyle" they you must be white and republican. And, you call people who disapprove of homosexuality narrow minded? Phhht.
I didn't know having a live and let live attitude (lets call it "turning the other cheek" or "not judging lest I be judged") was liberal. Doesn't really reflect well for the opposite view does it? I have no problem with people who disapprove of homsexuality, as a personal choice. I count myself among them, long ago I decided I didn't like it and stuck with not being gay. The second you start to enforce your subjective preferences on others though, I disapprove. Thats not narrowminded, I also disapprove of people who hate blacks, Muslims, Christians, Americans, or anyone else who isn't like them. Especially if they take an active stance on their bigotry and try to suppress that group. If Christians were ever persecuted, I would feel the same way about their persecutors as I do towards the Christian fringe who hates homosexuals.
I personally dislike American Idol. So I choose not to watch American Idol. This is fine. Many people among the religious would start from the same point and decide that NO ONE should be allowed to watch it.
I guess - there are plenty of liberal minded (and other) people who are rewriting the Bible these days. You can read any version of events that you wish. Since you've stated YOUR personal preferences, then I'd much rather that you didn't mention the Bible at all, than to quote or misquote adulterated versions of the Bible, thank you very much.
Any idea what is actually says in the original Hebrew? Does the original text stack up to the Chinese whispers English version? The version whose main translation was pretty much made just to consolidate power for one English king? And how does this translated oral tradition version of events actually relate to the events which is speaks? Most of the stuff in the old testament is thought to have occurred long before it was codified in the text.
Also which bible, and which translation do we go by? What makes your text better than others based on the same source material? Translating is an art, akin to actual writing, especially from ancient languages. Hell, the full text of the modern Bible was voted on long after it was written, and the current form is hugely subjective.
Actually one of the "gay areas" of my town has some of the best restaurants, and one of the few family owned comic book/gaming stores. There also is a couple art galleries, some boutiques, and an upscale antique store. Its a pretty good area to spend the afternoon.
Me and my girlfriend used to live right on the border to this area (right between the richest zip code in the city and one of the poorest), and it was a blast. Have of our neighbors were gay, and awesome. Most of them were professionals, and around half of them worked in IT and other "hip" emerging industries. Some guy would always go to work dressed to the nines, full suit, nice shoes, etc... And on fridays stumble home at 3:30am in a dress and high heels. Our heavily tattooed, gun toting, lesbian neighbor is among the coolest people I've ever met.
Now we live in the suburbs, in the only house without a large HOA-friendly cross attached to the front, driving the only car without a mega-church bumper sticker. Everyone is white, everyone is Christian, everyone is very boring. We just had a house party, and our neighbors were scared because only around 10% of our guests were white. This neighborhood is very, very sterile and boring, even if people do have kids. The kids never venture outside from their protective houses, with their nourishing television and video games.
I miss mixed neighborhoods.
I've been using Win7 since release and according to the log have had zero crashes. Which is a record, since I've managed to get OS X to crash several times, and have even managed to bring my Linux boxes to their knees in the same period. So far Win7 is the most stable OS I've run, followed closely by various Linux distros. But then again I've also never encountered serious problems with Vista, and even grew a bit fond of it towards the end of its life. My biggest complaint was how hardware hungry it was, and how slow some things were (like sharing over a network), and its nasty wifi on wake behavior (which Win7 also has, to a lesser degree, and only with USB adapters). The only thing I'd like Win7 to have is a modern file system, NTSF is long in the tooth, and pretty much inferior to every other system out there now.
My girlfriend got Win7 the same day I did, and so far has had around 40 blue screens. The first culprit was bad RAM, the second was a video driver that had a bad install.
But if Windows 7 is a success then it's mainly because Microsoft has foist it on people by making it the default OS on many new machines and ensuring XP's retirement by not porting DirectX 10 or Internet Explorer 9 to it. People are not migrating from XP to Windows 7 in their droves, over 50% of the world's desktop PCs still run XP - that's because for most people it's good enough.
Actually Win7 was the first MS OS that I've ever been excited about, or at least since Win3.11 when I was young and silly and using some the the worst GUIs ever developed. I actually ditched one of my Linux boxes for it (mostly because Linux makes for the worst HTPCs I've ever seen, though). I LIKE Win7. Imagine that.
But then again I think the OS-wars is stupid, and anyone who actually is a "fan boy" of a corporate product is a drooling moron. All of the major OSs are mature now, and pretty much do the same stuff, and do it all just as well. Notice how the main debate going on right now is about niche features, like Powershell, which 90% if end users don't care one iota about?
Also... I have had a virus, worm, or other malware, on any OS or Windows Platform in more than 8 years (and that was one case, and almost completely my fault not securing myself better before hopping on a college network). None of the computers I maintain in my household (7 at the moment, with one more on the way) have had a virus in the last five. Granted this isn't a work environment with hundreds of users, but 99.9% of modern infections are user caused, and not due to massive flaws in OS architecture. If malware producers focused on other OSs as much as they do Windows, then I'm sure they would have the same problems. Users are idiots.
Oddly enough, I just went through a random selection of my old C64 disks, and all of the 20 of them from the shoe box of 150-200 worked. Pretty impressive being that they were stored in attics, went through around 5 moves, and survived Phoenix summers in a garages... I'm sure a fair amount of them died, but as long as M.U.L.E., Qix, and Loderunner survived I don't care.
The tapes are all dead though. I was really curious if I could still use my old 300baud modem to connect to a local BBS... But realized that I don't even know if any actually dial-in BBSs still exist around here, and I doubt the C64 could really actually still communicate with them.
Most of my old backup CDs died along time ago.
I am, on the other hand, too young and hasty to actually preview. Sorry about that.
You're too young to fully appreciate what it was like working on an all-in-one box in the early 80s. I'm still waiting for someone to put together a PC in an Atari 800 or 1200 body.
You don't say? I'm under 35 (by 3 years) and still have my original C64 plugged into my TV (next to my Atari 2600, 5600, NES, Dreamcast, and PSX). Every school had Apple IIs. My best friend's parents had a Vic-20, before finally uprgading to a 286 (I was very impressed). A ton of people younger than me have experience with crusty Macs.
You're too poor to have enough disposable income to buy something like this new Commodore. Have fun paying off the loans you took out for your Mazda car and Sager laptop.
Very doubtful. Yes, if your under 21 you might have some trouble with $500, but past that you might pull it off. Again, I'm younger than 35, and probably have twice that worth of computers sitting around my house. Most of them wouldn't cost that much now, but at the original price they would probably total pretty high. I paid for every single one of them. Well, my girlfriend paid for her computer, and we both paid for our HTPC (she's under 30 to boot... gasp).
You're too busy trying to install yet another ROM in your rooted Android phone.
Why would I? I don't see the point, honestly.
You're too stupid. That's right. Everyone under 35 is stupid. I went there. Now get off my lawn.
As is everyone above it. Which means... I'm having difficulty solving this problem, would his crusty old lordship lend a hand, my poor immature brain is a bit too... spry.. for such problems.
I've had rather severe Dissociative episodes with DMT, DXM and mescaline. So severe I put them into the same class as Salvia: "potentially fscking terrifying, use rarely and sparingly". But then again LSD and psylocybes got extremely boring by the time I hit my mid-20s.
Salvia isn't as strong as good acid pure mescaline used to be. It is intense, but very short lived, but less intense than proper DMT either. My first, and last, experience with high doses of DXM put salvia to shame too.
And then I got older, realized that pumping chemicals into my brain merely alters perception, and not necessarily improves it and moved on to a proper education and listening to people older and wiser than me. I'll take a well brewed Trapist, or good bourbon over hallucinogens, any day now. Not that I'm judging people who enjoy it, I just am a bit suspicious of people claiming that it enables them to see some deep ontic truth. Just like I'm a bit suspicious of anyone who claims the ascendancy of something that is invisible, unobservable, and intangible.
Calling 4chan "hackers" is like calling the kids in special ed "rocket scientists".
From what I've read; Anonymous isn't 4chan anymore, its gotten much, much, bigger. Claiming that Anon is just 4chan, is like saying it is just the ACs here. Anonymous is just that, and also amorphous, leaderless, and completely random. Think of these seemingly coordinated attacks as more standing waves than fine structure. A network of IRC channels, forums, and a couple *Chans randomly coalesce into noticeable action against mostly random targets for very random reasons. Once an attack starts, and somehow has enough momentum, it snowballs into a full on assault as the more meek and trepidatious members get emboldened.
Anon is more of an angry mob (ala the protests in the middle east currently) than representatives of any single body.
Also, the nerd part of me agrees with you about the misuse of the term "hacker", but sadly that bus left town a very long time ago. Hacker means something much much different these days than what it did 10-20 years ago. I hate it, you hate it, but the fight has been long lost.
I'll have to find something else to keep me from being productive for a couple days? It might be a mild annoyance, but I'm sure I'll cope.
Though if they took down Slashdot, it would make me ponder what Slashdot did to deserve it. So far my interests have been pretty much aligned with Anonymous, so I'd probably have ditched Slashdot for greener pastures. I'm not saying I agree with their actions, but so far I agree with their opinion of their targets.
One part of me agrees with the anti-Anon talk here, the other part finds it refreshing that someone is taking Sony to task for being a nasty, abusive, and unethical behemoth.
Actually, come to think of it, Sony might be the only target I actually can agree with the actions too. How is this different than Sony playing law man and hosing people's machines illegally with root kits? At least in this case no one innocent is being hurt. Or going out of their way to ruin the life of a mere hobbiest who thought (wrongly) that his hardware was his hardware?
Yes, two wrongs and all that jazz... But still, you have to admit it is something Sony would have done to you if they thought they could make $0.03 off of it, and Sony has done worse to tons of people.
I pretty much agree with your stance on guns. I'd say taking a gun away from you (and people like you) is pretty damn silly, unless, of course, you do something stupid to prove otherwise. Thats one of the big ones for me, while you might have the right to bare arms (or free speech, or the various other rights we enjoy), you don't have the right to be stupid. By stupid I mean infringe on other peoples rights. The second you use a right to violate that (be it intensionally or no) your right is in question. If you run over a bunch of people while drunk in your car, you may lose that ability until you prove your responsible. If you misuse a firearm, the same.
I'd say that's a pretty easy set of rules to remember.
They are. And pretty much everyone's father has given them that speech when they first got a BB gun or got to shoot a .22. Sadly most people I know either ignored that speech, or forgot about it. And this isn't just the inner-city youths I've known, but grizzly vets who carry guns all day, and even a couple active police officers I know. It annoys the hell out of me.