OK, first off, I applaud you for considering what is meant as "good". Now, this is hardly scientific, but here's what you have to do. You'll have to do it alone, because it seems you're much more well read than I.
Think of every single interpretation where good doesn't rule out evolution at all, and every single interpretation that absolutely denies it. Write all of them, even write down the possibilities that don't clean fall into either category. Then eliminate the ridiculous ones. If you come up with less than 10 total interpretations, you aren't trying hard enough. I'm willing to bet there will be several left, and at least one for each category.
I agree, it's not simple. And if it somehow shows you that evolution might possibly fit... what then? Will you be sent to hell for even considering such, if it turns out you were right all along, and God has to correct the mistaken notion? At the worst, it will give you some insight how creation might have worked, if only a little (much more interesting would be figuring out how the very first life forms would have developed/been created. No one claims to know that, after all).
Now, if you get that far, and realize I'm not some demon sent from hell to destroy your faith, I invite you to go just a bit further. It may take some work, mind you. But try to find some books that deal with geological dating. If you can (there isn't much of it), find the most rabidly atheistic texts on the subject you can. Chuckle to yourself all the time they waste promoting atheism, but look for some of the truths they may have stumbled onto, in their delusions. Then, move on to the religious-neutral texts (which you may have to do anyway). They will be full of history on the mistakes made in the past. Even scientists aren't often satisified with the results. Mind you, most don't have a stake in whether a rock is 13.7 million years old, or if it's really 13.9 million years old (though even then, sometimes if you're the person who first said 13.7, you're reputation is on the line). In many cases, there isn't alot of agreement. Sometimes, the best they manage, is "this one has to be really old, can't be any younger than 1 million". Other times, they are complete anomalies, that they won't even venture guesses.
But this isn't proof that it's crackpot science. It's evidence that the whole thing is undergoing refinement. No grand conspiracies lurk here, to hide the truth. Again, even if you become convinced that the age of the earth is much older than you once thought, does it somehow disprove the existence of God? Hardly. I might even have an explanation, if you care to hear.
You claim that he created the earth in seven days (forgive any minor mistakes). Yet, the earth itself determines just how long a day is. Not the sun, not anything external. Does the term day have any exact meaning, if the earth isn't fully formed, and rotating? The bible doesn't say that it was created in 3.45 x 10^29 vibrations of the cesium atom, or anything like that. Just "day" (or am I wrong?). And then, there is an old tradition of even using the term "day" poetically, when it doesn't mean ~24 hours at all. It is possible, that maybe it means that God created the world in seven stages, each of indeterminate (and not even equal) duration? And finally, it would be interesting to know which word is used in the original Hebrew, and if it was ever used in a context where it doesn't mean approx. 12 hours of daylight + approx. 12 hours of night. And the absolutely best part of all this is, I'm not even coming close to asking you to change a core part of your beliefs. Your morality, which I respect, isn't altered by this at all. And you might even come to appreciate yet another perspective of the bible... one where there is much more poetry in addition to the lessons it teaches you about life. I find it hard to believe that someone could be so inspired to write down the story of creation, without attempting to use metaphor of one form or another. Neither atheist or believer will deny that the entire event was anything but awesome, mind you (and what could be more awesome than a being that would think nothing of performing a creation that spans several billion years?).
And please, don't take this the wrong way. But christians in particular, seem to want to argue what I would think amount to insignificant details, when all it does it make them look like fools to the public. And the greatest irony is, instead you could be using that effort to teach them the real truths that you really do have, which the non-religious seem to lack. Why? A god that teaches his worshippers to run around trying to ban biology textbooks isn't very worthy compared to a God that can't be bothered to worry about that because his followers are busy trying to teach people to be decent to one another (no matter what the details of their origin are).
First off, I did imply that it's usually something less than noble. Didn't I say as much?
Second, I am a US citizen, and I find your tone insulting. This wasn't an invitation to bash my nation, or to rub salt in open wounds. Did you ever bother to consider that some people who read your garbage might have lost loved ones?
Third, I don't believe we've ever done anything to deserve 9/11. It's worse than insulting to suggest that. Criminal doesn't begin to describe it.
So fuck off. Criticism I can take, but your insults border on provocation.
When I used the term "hiding", don't take offense at that. I meant no connotations of cowardice, apathy, etc. By "hiding", I meant something along the lines of "quarks hide well below the level of the atom". Which while we can probably agree they are there for certain (we can agree on that, can't we?), I sure as hell have never seen one. Have you? We found them, in such a way though, that they are mostly undeniable. Perhaps it may be that way for god too, some day (and he is certainly deniable by some).
Again, the bible says that it was "very good". (I don't know this, taking your word for it). In the KJV, it's greek/aramaic, translated to latin, translated to english. Do you know how many subtlies can be lost? Let's say you go back and read it in the original language though. Even there, can you be sure just which subtlies you're still missing? Perhaps it was meant, that the fact that there was a humanity finally was a good thing. The order out of chaos, the light of new souls burning in the universe. Good does sometimes come out of evil acts, you know, and does so without validating the cause.
If a women is raped, and raises the child, loving it, does that imply the rape was a good thing? No.
So the process of evolution isn't necessarily a morally good thing. Besides, most christians see nothing wrong with eating meat, or a predator hunting. Among animals, this is neither evil or good, in the sense that those words apply to mankind. Am I wrong? So the death/disease/famine doesn't even apply at all, up until you get to the hominids. I certainly don't sympathize with those first little amoebas that died in the first billion years of this planet. Should I? Even if a few starved? Now, I agree that once things got close, that is nothing to make light of. Then again, it's possible that a few of the gaps you see in the evolution of proto-human group, are actually gaps. Maybe "he" skipped over those parts. Would be a practical solution.
Plus, he would have had a chance to fix the placement of some arteries (on the back of the head, iirc) that just wouldn't work for modern humans. It's still a mystery, how they managed to switch locations in a short amount of time... and without the switch, your brain would fry before you were 4 yrs old.
I don't have time to explain the various geological dating methods, or why and when they will fail. And I'm far from an expert, in any event. But you have to ask yourself if you'd even accept the results at all. If you're just nitpicky about bad results, science likes that. Let's us weed out all the bullshit. And remember, there are a few ultra-othodox rabi's that still believe the world is flat... simply because the Torah describes the "4 corners of the world".
Heck, unlike some, I don't even have a problem with you having sneaking suspcions what the results will be, before the experiment begins. Just as long as you accept them even if you don't like what you see. And just so you know I'm not picking on you, there are a few atheists with that same problem.
My understanding is this. Practically everything with a transistor will have to be DRM compliant. Also, it will be open, so if some new gadget is invented we can't live without, it will be included too. They won't need to rewrite the law.
Not just the DVD drive either, but the hard drive, CPU, etc. PDA's, VCR's, home theatre hardware, maybe speakers. Certainly walkmen, mp3 players. Monitors too. I imagine networking gear, at least at the consumer end of things, will fall under this also. So that cool 802.11 access point, it will be hobbled also.
Now, here come the politics. The US has a history of bullying other countries. Worse, it's usually not something that I could justify (like bullying dictators out of power, or forcing foreign goverments to clean up corruption). Usually, it's more along the lines of forcing the Ukraine to comply with US cd-r policy. So I'm not sure just how safe you are in another country, or for how long. Remember, the US itself stayed out of WWII for the longest time, by lying to itself that it was only happening elsewhere. Injustice, however, is infectious.
Wow, nice privacy laws. Hell, even nice anti-trust legislation too.
Too bad it's a copyright issue.
Don't take this as an insult, please. As far as I'm concerned, we're on the same team playing against the politicians and corporocrats. We don't need to be fighting among ourselves.
I'm not lying. I'm not trolling. And, if I had any control over the bullshit, I'd spare your country, even if I couldn't spare my own (who knows, I might emigrate).
If being rude and obnoxious drives home the point that this is something serious, then it's effort well spent.
Haha. So much ignorance packed into such a small paragraph. Where do I even start?
The USA may not be the whole world, but it is a decent sized chunk of open source development. Sure you won't miss us?
The law won't keep a geek from running linux. The tiny little DRM chip soldered to the motherboard will do that job.
And, most importantly, the EU is full of copynazi's too. Generally, they adopt laws about 5 years after we do. So you'll get about half a decade more freedom than we do, use it well.
Not necessarily any of those things, though. It only means an end to the current strategy.
For instance, it may be what's needed to really push SMP and parallel systems toward the lower end. The chips might max out, so they'll have to sell more of them to make a profit... what better way than to make sure each user is buying 4 or 8 chips at a time? Same with code, programmers won't be so wasteful.
Efficient code on 8way CPUs just might buy us another 10 years, enough for a new technology to arise.
10. To decrypt those files Mulder stole from the Pentagon. 9. John Connor has smashed your defense grid, and you need an edge, pronto. 8. Nothing can cheat like a quantum aimbot in Quake 4... 7. Negative ping times. 6. The shifty eyed salesmen at CompUSA talked you into it. 5. Opens up the exciting new possibility of quantum porn. 4. Windows.NET 2010 runs like a dog on your 2048-cpu, 900 Teraflops cluster with 8 petabits of ram. 3. The ability to render away the clothes, in real time, of your favorite TV show. 2. Your scheme to perform nuclear yield simulations with imported Playstation 2's ended in a trade embargo.
Dating techniques are sometimes inaccurate, and some methodologies in the past have turned out to be flawed. No one denies this, only the bible thumpers claim to be infallible.
But, rather than give up after a first try, a scientist attempts to figure out what the problem was, and design a new test that may be more accurate. That is what science is about.
The earth is, by all accounts, not millions of years old. It is billions of years old. Order of magnitude. Or at least, that's the best guess we can make, knowing what we know. If someone came up with something approaching evidence that it was only 600 million years old, I would listen. It would have to be pretty damn convincing, but I like oddball theories, and everyone gets a chance with me... somtimes two of them. But even 600m, which is a slighter difference than you are suggesting, is rather big. 3.7 billion yrs difference. And it would have to offer alternate explanations for all sorts of different things. Frankly, I can't imagine anything that might allow for it to be that young.
So this is where you get to tell me, that it's even younger yet, something on the order of 10,000 yrs old. Good luck trying to explain that.
I don't think that death, famine, disease or killing are ever good things. You see, that's a leap of logic there. I said that it simply was a process that can explain alot of the things in the world that we see around us, I made no statement that I preferred these things, that they were some kind of goal to be pursued, or anything like that. But they happened. They're still happening. If they tend to induce a phenomena known as evolution, and it's obvious they've been happening a very long time (though we might debate home long), is it so unbelievable that evolution might have been happening a very long time?
I'm sorry that I called creationists idiots. It is very frustrating for me. They are simply emotionally vulnerable people (and at one time or another, we are all vulnerable) that turned to the only people who claimed to want to help them. This is sad. Even their own bible warns against such, I believe. Something about the shepherd leading the sheep astray.
The universe is strange, without a doubt. And it's unimaginably large... there's plenty of room left for a supreme being to being hiding somewhere. But if such does exist, what will he have to say about you acting so silly and letting your emotions blind you to what you see around you?
Oh, and BTW, much of what we call suffering is the result of sin. People hurting one another, for malice's sake, hurting themselves. The bible thumpers don't have a monopoly on morality.
I can't believe I followed that link. In any event, are all creation scientists this hopelessly clueless?
I'm no bible scholar, but I seem to remember that the earliest parts of genesis don't say when the universe was created, only that it was. Perhaps the universe can be 14 billion yrs old, without screwing up their retarded little mythology? Oh wait, that's right, astrophysics also dates the earth as being 4 billion years old. Maybe they oughtta work on that problem first, before taking on the universe?
Evolution is a process. It did, and does happen. If God walks up to me, someday, just for the irony factor or something, it will not, in any way, disprove evolution. Duh. This is why religion is without doubt, full of retards. Do you argue about whether Detroit engineers created the new SUV, or whether it evolved from the pickup and station wagons of the 50's? No, because both are true.
Science isn't out to disprove God, it just wants to know how things work. As such, it can only ever disprove or confirm the process, not some supernatural intent.
Wasn't it a Greg Bear novel, where they had a sensor that checked for variations in the mathematical constants? Something about an artificial superstring, where as the heroine walked closer to it, the value of Pi dropped as low as 2.8. Dammit, can't think of the title, but the superstring was called the "Way".
Not so dumb a question, and not even as half-assed as what you generally see on Star Trek. However, you wouldn't find that such a material would have very many practical applications. Certainly interstellar travel wouldn't benefit. Mostly just datacom over fiber optic type media.
Now, on to the specifics. This medium would be what falls loosely under the category "exotic matter". Creating such material poses serious problems itself. Also, most of the things that physicists lump into that category would be dangerous and/or short lived. You'd probably never be able to manufacture macroscopic quantities of the substance, and you'd only ever see it on the readouts of million dollar sensors because it would evaporate almost instantly.
Which brings us to the real question, if they do manage to produce tripole magnets in the new big accelerator, will the new polarization be "East" or "West"? *grin* Gotcha.
I don't have to show you the statistics that they are using it legitimately. I would like to, I wish I could, but this just only goes to show...
Innocent until proven guilty.
You see, by law, in the Constitution itself, you are indeed innocent until proven guilty. The burden is on you, not me. The only people that ever suggest that it should be different, are usuaally crazy, fascist, or some combination of the two.
I refuse to see the fact that you suspect it may primarily become a tool for piracy sometime in the future, because a game will become more available to the public rather than less. Yes. I would ask you why you refuse to see how ridiculous is, but by definition, the insane are incapable of seeing through the delusion.
If you don't find it useful, then quite possibly it is MS Office for Mac somehow.
Seriously, I agree with the other poster, that this is probably line noise on the cat5 cable. Some rearranging plugs, etc should be able to figure out what will cause it, what won't. May not get the explanation you want, but seems like you'd at least know "if the lamp is over there, it doesn't happen".
It is great in a practical world, the one I live in.
Most people don't use it for piracy. The only thing suggesting that, is your inane ramblings. Show me the statistics. Barring those, show me some kind of evidence, anything.
The truth of the matter is, the games it is useful for, are long gone in the "0 day warez" world. Those people don't care. Besides, if the piracy is sucha big problem, they'd have so much more sympathy AND ease in fighting the piracy, not honest legitimate software developers.
Then, there is the entire discrimination angle... Vivendi isn't going after the other software that is used in a like manner. Probably because even a bought and paid for judge would have a hard time outlawing ipxtunnel.
That you even mention the cd check, is laughable. They aren't circumventing it at all. They didn't write one, they don't have to. If I write windows shareware, I'm not obligated to have my shareware check if the WinXP serial is valid. Neither is bnetd. Circumvention, implies that cd checking was already there (which it wasn't because it's their own software) and they NOPed it out. They elected not to write something, which in reality they couldn't write anyway. Without the cd key database, there is no way to check, and Blizzard refuses to let them check. In effect, Blizzard is guilty of preventing bnetd from checking. Try that on for size.
Most bnetd servers were semi-private, 5 maybe 10 players. Preventing cheating was easy, invite only those you trust to begin with, and if they make things intolerable, ban the fuckers. Let them run their own.
But then again, if you weren't just another troll that never bothered to actually know something before attempting to mouth off about it, you'd know all this already, right?
5 cops should be more than enough for backup. Police issue shotguns and revolvers should be more than enough, barring something really extreme like a high level manager. That's why we need the incendiary grenades...
We form vigilante groups of 10 or so, for every major city in the country. We arm them with flechette round shotguns, incendiary grenades and train them for a few weeks. We have the various legislatures authorize law enforcement to investigate spamming, and inform the vigilantes of any known telemarketer lair.
We send in the troops.
Either that, or we pull a Sigourney Weaver... "We go back to the mothership, and nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
So? If I were to write windows software, I'm not legally required to do the whole WinXP serial checking, to make sure that the copy of windows isn't pirated. For good reason, that isn't the duty of my software, or me.
If bnetd interacts with a game, it isn't bnetd's duty to check the game for validity. Legally or morally.
That's right, you hit the nail on the head... keygens are good enough for the installer, in other words, piracy happens long before they go near bnetd. Bnetd has nothing to do with it.
So, exactly why is it that bnetd should be illegal?
It's used, so that I don't have to play on battle.net with cheating assholes like yourself.
They wanted to implement cd checking, but Vivendi is too busy fucking people over like these guys. Failure to implement copy controls in bnetd isn't bnetd's problem. It's Vivendi's problem, and Vivendi isn't even willing to let bnetd fix it... which was actually rather thoughtful of them.
And Vivendi's own legal arguments tell the fucking lie... they have no case, especially the one you're trumpeting. They are using some legally obtuse theory actually meant for dramatic stage plays.
No, fuck you, you stupid syphillitic asswad. Fuck your lousy pointless trolling, and your seething hatred of logic and constitutional rights.
Outlawing bnetd, is like finding a coffee shop that warez dudes hang out at, and shutting it down for that reason. The piracy happens someplace else, has nothing to do with the *legal* coffee shop, and the vast majority of the coffee shop customers are doing nothing wrong. It is a legal tactic employed by ruthless corporations accountable to no one, and performed by lawyers that should be disbarred and tossed in a federal prison cell for a few years.
This isn't napster, napster actually performed, as its primary function, transferring the files around. This isn't a game cracking tool, which performs as its primary function the copy control breaking. This is primarily used by legal copies of Blizzard games, by people who want a little more control over the experience.
Honest to god, is the entire world populated by retards like the parent posters? This hurts him too, and he's cheering it on. Humanity didn't evolve from proto-monkeys... it never evolved at all.
Evil or misguided? Let's see. They are doing this intentionally. Their lawyers, who likely instigated this, know much more about constitutional law than I certainly do. They already have a boatload of money, and will certainly have more. They refused offers of making bnetd pirate-unfriendly. They decided on a course of action, and then alter their legal arguments to fit. (BTW: What is the flavor of the week? Still unauthorized public performances?) They have heard much protest, and refuse to back down, or even reconsider.
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OK, first off, I applaud you for considering what is meant as "good". Now, this is hardly scientific, but here's what you have to do. You'll have to do it alone, because it seems you're much more well read than I.
Think of every single interpretation where good doesn't rule out evolution at all, and every single interpretation that absolutely denies it. Write all of them, even write down the possibilities that don't clean fall into either category. Then eliminate the ridiculous ones. If you come up with less than 10 total interpretations, you aren't trying hard enough. I'm willing to bet there will be several left, and at least one for each category.
I agree, it's not simple. And if it somehow shows you that evolution might possibly fit... what then? Will you be sent to hell for even considering such, if it turns out you were right all along, and God has to correct the mistaken notion? At the worst, it will give you some insight how creation might have worked, if only a little (much more interesting would be figuring out how the very first life forms would have developed/been created. No one claims to know that, after all).
Now, if you get that far, and realize I'm not some demon sent from hell to destroy your faith, I invite you to go just a bit further. It may take some work, mind you. But try to find some books that deal with geological dating. If you can (there isn't much of it), find the most rabidly atheistic texts on the subject you can. Chuckle to yourself all the time they waste promoting atheism, but look for some of the truths they may have stumbled onto, in their delusions. Then, move on to the religious-neutral texts (which you may have to do anyway). They will be full of history on the mistakes made in the past. Even scientists aren't often satisified with the results. Mind you, most don't have a stake in whether a rock is 13.7 million years old, or if it's really 13.9 million years old (though even then, sometimes if you're the person who first said 13.7, you're reputation is on the line). In many cases, there isn't alot of agreement. Sometimes, the best they manage, is "this one has to be really old, can't be any younger than 1 million". Other times, they are complete anomalies, that they won't even venture guesses.
But this isn't proof that it's crackpot science. It's evidence that the whole thing is undergoing refinement. No grand conspiracies lurk here, to hide the truth. Again, even if you become convinced that the age of the earth is much older than you once thought, does it somehow disprove the existence of God? Hardly. I might even have an explanation, if you care to hear.
You claim that he created the earth in seven days (forgive any minor mistakes). Yet, the earth itself determines just how long a day is. Not the sun, not anything external. Does the term day have any exact meaning, if the earth isn't fully formed, and rotating? The bible doesn't say that it was created in 3.45 x 10^29 vibrations of the cesium atom, or anything like that. Just "day" (or am I wrong?). And then, there is an old tradition of even using the term "day" poetically, when it doesn't mean ~24 hours at all. It is possible, that maybe it means that God created the world in seven stages, each of indeterminate (and not even equal) duration? And finally, it would be interesting to know which word is used in the original Hebrew, and if it was ever used in a context where it doesn't mean approx. 12 hours of daylight + approx. 12 hours of night. And the absolutely best part of all this is, I'm not even coming close to asking you to change a core part of your beliefs. Your morality, which I respect, isn't altered by this at all. And you might even come to appreciate yet another perspective of the bible... one where there is much more poetry in addition to the lessons it teaches you about life. I find it hard to believe that someone could be so inspired to write down the story of creation, without attempting to use metaphor of one form or another. Neither atheist or believer will deny that the entire event was anything but awesome, mind you (and what could be more awesome than a being that would think nothing of performing a creation that spans several billion years?).
And please, don't take this the wrong way. But christians in particular, seem to want to argue what I would think amount to insignificant details, when all it does it make them look like fools to the public. And the greatest irony is, instead you could be using that effort to teach them the real truths that you really do have, which the non-religious seem to lack. Why? A god that teaches his worshippers to run around trying to ban biology textbooks isn't very worthy compared to a God that can't be bothered to worry about that because his followers are busy trying to teach people to be decent to one another (no matter what the details of their origin are).
First off, I did imply that it's usually something less than noble. Didn't I say as much?
Second, I am a US citizen, and I find your tone insulting. This wasn't an invitation to bash my nation, or to rub salt in open wounds. Did you ever bother to consider that some people who read your garbage might have lost loved ones?
Third, I don't believe we've ever done anything to deserve 9/11. It's worse than insulting to suggest that. Criminal doesn't begin to describe it.
So fuck off. Criticism I can take, but your insults border on provocation.
Sorry about the nipicking (millions/billions).
When I used the term "hiding", don't take offense at that. I meant no connotations of cowardice, apathy, etc. By "hiding", I meant something along the lines of "quarks hide well below the level of the atom". Which while we can probably agree they are there for certain (we can agree on that, can't we?), I sure as hell have never seen one. Have you? We found them, in such a way though, that they are mostly undeniable. Perhaps it may be that way for god too, some day (and he is certainly deniable by some).
Again, the bible says that it was "very good". (I don't know this, taking your word for it). In the KJV, it's greek/aramaic, translated to latin, translated to english. Do you know how many subtlies can be lost? Let's say you go back and read it in the original language though. Even there, can you be sure just which subtlies you're still missing? Perhaps it was meant, that the fact that there was a humanity finally was a good thing. The order out of chaos, the light of new souls burning in the universe. Good does sometimes come out of evil acts, you know, and does so without validating the cause.
If a women is raped, and raises the child, loving it, does that imply the rape was a good thing? No.
So the process of evolution isn't necessarily a morally good thing. Besides, most christians see nothing wrong with eating meat, or a predator hunting. Among animals, this is neither evil or good, in the sense that those words apply to mankind. Am I wrong? So the death/disease/famine doesn't even apply at all, up until you get to the hominids. I certainly don't sympathize with those first little amoebas that died in the first billion years of this planet. Should I? Even if a few starved? Now, I agree that once things got close, that is nothing to make light of. Then again, it's possible that a few of the gaps you see in the evolution of proto-human group, are actually gaps. Maybe "he" skipped over those parts. Would be a practical solution.
Plus, he would have had a chance to fix the placement of some arteries (on the back of the head, iirc) that just wouldn't work for modern humans. It's still a mystery, how they managed to switch locations in a short amount of time... and without the switch, your brain would fry before you were 4 yrs old.
I don't have time to explain the various geological dating methods, or why and when they will fail. And I'm far from an expert, in any event. But you have to ask yourself if you'd even accept the results at all. If you're just nitpicky about bad results, science likes that. Let's us weed out all the bullshit. And remember, there are a few ultra-othodox rabi's that still believe the world is flat... simply because the Torah describes the "4 corners of the world".
Heck, unlike some, I don't even have a problem with you having sneaking suspcions what the results will be, before the experiment begins. Just as long as you accept them even if you don't like what you see. And just so you know I'm not picking on you, there are a few atheists with that same problem.
My understanding is this. Practically everything with a transistor will have to be DRM compliant. Also, it will be open, so if some new gadget is invented we can't live without, it will be included too. They won't need to rewrite the law.
Not just the DVD drive either, but the hard drive, CPU, etc. PDA's, VCR's, home theatre hardware, maybe speakers. Certainly walkmen, mp3 players. Monitors too. I imagine networking gear, at least at the consumer end of things, will fall under this also. So that cool 802.11 access point, it will be hobbled also.
Now, here come the politics. The US has a history of bullying other countries. Worse, it's usually not something that I could justify (like bullying dictators out of power, or forcing foreign goverments to clean up corruption). Usually, it's more along the lines of forcing the Ukraine to comply with US cd-r policy. So I'm not sure just how safe you are in another country, or for how long. Remember, the US itself stayed out of WWII for the longest time, by lying to itself that it was only happening elsewhere. Injustice, however, is infectious.
Wow, nice privacy laws. Hell, even nice anti-trust legislation too.
Too bad it's a copyright issue.
Don't take this as an insult, please. As far as I'm concerned, we're on the same team playing against the politicians and corporocrats. We don't need to be fighting among ourselves.
I think writing our congressmen has about the same statistical chance of affecting them, as most voodoo rituals do.
I don't believe in voodoo.
However, it is fun to torture dolls dressed up as politicians. I highly recommend it.
Rude, yes. Obnoxious certainly. But...
I'm not lying.
I'm not trolling.
And, if I had any control over the bullshit, I'd spare your country, even if I couldn't spare my own (who knows, I might emigrate).
If being rude and obnoxious drives home the point that this is something serious, then it's effort well spent.
Haha. So much ignorance packed into such a small paragraph. Where do I even start?
The USA may not be the whole world, but it is a decent sized chunk of open source development. Sure you won't miss us?
The law won't keep a geek from running linux. The tiny little DRM chip soldered to the motherboard will do that job.
And, most importantly, the EU is full of copynazi's too. Generally, they adopt laws about 5 years after we do. So you'll get about half a decade more freedom than we do, use it well.
Not necessarily any of those things, though. It only means an end to the current strategy.
For instance, it may be what's needed to really push SMP and parallel systems toward the lower end. The chips might max out, so they'll have to sell more of them to make a profit... what better way than to make sure each user is buying 4 or 8 chips at a time? Same with code, programmers won't be so wasteful.
Efficient code on 8way CPUs just might buy us another 10 years, enough for a new technology to arise.
10. To decrypt those files Mulder stole from the Pentagon.
9. John Connor has smashed your defense grid, and you need an edge, pronto.
8. Nothing can cheat like a quantum aimbot in Quake 4...
7. Negative ping times.
6. The shifty eyed salesmen at CompUSA talked you into it.
5. Opens up the exciting new possibility of quantum porn.
4. Windows.NET 2010 runs like a dog on your 2048-cpu, 900 Teraflops cluster with 8 petabits of ram.
3. The ability to render away the clothes, in real time, of your favorite TV show.
2. Your scheme to perform nuclear yield simulations with imported Playstation 2's ended in a trade embargo.
And the #1 reason to like quantum computing is...
*drum roll*
Dating techniques are sometimes inaccurate, and some methodologies in the past have turned out to be flawed. No one denies this, only the bible thumpers claim to be infallible.
But, rather than give up after a first try, a scientist attempts to figure out what the problem was, and design a new test that may be more accurate. That is what science is about.
The earth is, by all accounts, not millions of years old. It is billions of years old. Order of magnitude. Or at least, that's the best guess we can make, knowing what we know. If someone came up with something approaching evidence that it was only 600 million years old, I would listen. It would have to be pretty damn convincing, but I like oddball theories, and everyone gets a chance with me... somtimes two of them. But even 600m, which is a slighter difference than you are suggesting, is rather big. 3.7 billion yrs difference. And it would have to offer alternate explanations for all sorts of different things. Frankly, I can't imagine anything that might allow for it to be that young.
So this is where you get to tell me, that it's even younger yet, something on the order of 10,000 yrs old. Good luck trying to explain that.
I don't think that death, famine, disease or killing are ever good things. You see, that's a leap of logic there. I said that it simply was a process that can explain alot of the things in the world that we see around us, I made no statement that I preferred these things, that they were some kind of goal to be pursued, or anything like that. But they happened. They're still happening. If they tend to induce a phenomena known as evolution, and it's obvious they've been happening a very long time (though we might debate home long), is it so unbelievable that evolution might have been happening a very long time?
I'm sorry that I called creationists idiots. It is very frustrating for me. They are simply emotionally vulnerable people (and at one time or another, we are all vulnerable) that turned to the only people who claimed to want to help them. This is sad. Even their own bible warns against such, I believe. Something about the shepherd leading the sheep astray.
The universe is strange, without a doubt. And it's unimaginably large... there's plenty of room left for a supreme being to being hiding somewhere. But if such does exist, what will he have to say about you acting so silly and letting your emotions blind you to what you see around you?
Oh, and BTW, much of what we call suffering is the result of sin. People hurting one another, for malice's sake, hurting themselves. The bible thumpers don't have a monopoly on morality.
I already pre-ordered my Geforce X. Goddamit....
I can't believe I followed that link. In any event, are all creation scientists this hopelessly clueless?
I'm no bible scholar, but I seem to remember that the earliest parts of genesis don't say when the universe was created, only that it was. Perhaps the universe can be 14 billion yrs old, without screwing up their retarded little mythology? Oh wait, that's right, astrophysics also dates the earth as being 4 billion years old. Maybe they oughtta work on that problem first, before taking on the universe?
Evolution is a process. It did, and does happen. If God walks up to me, someday, just for the irony factor or something, it will not, in any way, disprove evolution. Duh. This is why religion is without doubt, full of retards. Do you argue about whether Detroit engineers created the new SUV, or whether it evolved from the pickup and station wagons of the 50's? No, because both are true.
Science isn't out to disprove God, it just wants to know how things work. As such, it can only ever disprove or confirm the process, not some supernatural intent.
Wasn't it a Greg Bear novel, where they had a sensor that checked for variations in the mathematical constants? Something about an artificial superstring, where as the heroine walked closer to it, the value of Pi dropped as low as 2.8. Dammit, can't think of the title, but the superstring was called the "Way".
Not so dumb a question, and not even as half-assed as what you generally see on Star Trek. However, you wouldn't find that such a material would have very many practical applications. Certainly interstellar travel wouldn't benefit. Mostly just datacom over fiber optic type media.
Now, on to the specifics. This medium would be what falls loosely under the category "exotic matter". Creating such material poses serious problems itself. Also, most of the things that physicists lump into that category would be dangerous and/or short lived. You'd probably never be able to manufacture macroscopic quantities of the substance, and you'd only ever see it on the readouts of million dollar sensors because it would evaporate almost instantly.
Which brings us to the real question, if they do manage to produce tripole magnets in the new big accelerator, will the new polarization be "East" or "West"? *grin* Gotcha.
I don't have to show you the statistics that they are using it legitimately. I would like to, I wish I could, but this just only goes to show...
Innocent until proven guilty.
You see, by law, in the Constitution itself, you are indeed innocent until proven guilty. The burden is on you, not me. The only people that ever suggest that it should be different, are usuaally crazy, fascist, or some combination of the two.
I refuse to see the fact that you suspect it may primarily become a tool for piracy sometime in the future, because a game will become more available to the public rather than less. Yes. I would ask you why you refuse to see how ridiculous is, but by definition, the insane are incapable of seeing through the delusion.
If you don't find it useful, then quite possibly it is MS Office for Mac somehow.
Seriously, I agree with the other poster, that this is probably line noise on the cat5 cable. Some rearranging plugs, etc should be able to figure out what will cause it, what won't. May not get the explanation you want, but seems like you'd at least know "if the lamp is over there, it doesn't happen".
Bnetd isn't great in an ideal world.
It is great in a practical world, the one I live in.
Most people don't use it for piracy. The only thing suggesting that, is your inane ramblings. Show me the statistics. Barring those, show me some kind of evidence, anything.
The truth of the matter is, the games it is useful for, are long gone in the "0 day warez" world. Those people don't care. Besides, if the piracy is sucha big problem, they'd have so much more sympathy AND ease in fighting the piracy, not honest legitimate software developers.
Then, there is the entire discrimination angle... Vivendi isn't going after the other software that is used in a like manner. Probably because even a bought and paid for judge would have a hard time outlawing ipxtunnel.
That you even mention the cd check, is laughable. They aren't circumventing it at all. They didn't write one, they don't have to. If I write windows shareware, I'm not obligated to have my shareware check if the WinXP serial is valid. Neither is bnetd. Circumvention, implies that cd checking was already there (which it wasn't because it's their own software) and they NOPed it out. They elected not to write something, which in reality they couldn't write anyway. Without the cd key database, there is no way to check, and Blizzard refuses to let them check. In effect, Blizzard is guilty of preventing bnetd from checking. Try that on for size.
Most bnetd servers were semi-private, 5 maybe 10 players. Preventing cheating was easy, invite only those you trust to begin with, and if they make things intolerable, ban the fuckers. Let them run their own.
But then again, if you weren't just another troll that never bothered to actually know something before attempting to mouth off about it, you'd know all this already, right?
5 cops should be more than enough for backup. Police issue shotguns and revolvers should be more than enough, barring something really extreme like a high level manager. That's why we need the incendiary grenades...
We form vigilante groups of 10 or so, for every major city in the country. We arm them with flechette round shotguns, incendiary grenades and train them for a few weeks. We have the various legislatures authorize law enforcement to investigate spamming, and inform the vigilantes of any known telemarketer lair.
We send in the troops.
Either that, or we pull a Sigourney Weaver... "We go back to the mothership, and nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Actually, the author's of bnetd prove we don't even need that. They wrote a superior product, without any of Blizzard's code.
If I were one of the authors, I believe I might be satisfied with
A) A public apology printed on a full page ad in the New York Times (or publication with similar audience).
B) Proof that the lawyers who instigated and pursued this, if on the payroll, were summarily fired and will never be re-hired.
C) Reimbursement of all legal fees.
D) Small financial donation to pay for bnetd's webspace and costs to maintain a product that enhances Blizzard's own games.
Then, I might be able to forigve them.
So? If I were to write windows software, I'm not legally required to do the whole WinXP serial checking, to make sure that the copy of windows isn't pirated. For good reason, that isn't the duty of my software, or me.
If bnetd interacts with a game, it isn't bnetd's duty to check the game for validity. Legally or morally.
That's right, you hit the nail on the head... keygens are good enough for the installer, in other words, piracy happens long before they go near bnetd. Bnetd has nothing to do with it.
So, exactly why is it that bnetd should be illegal?
No, you fucktwit.
It's used, so that I don't have to play on battle.net with cheating assholes like yourself.
They wanted to implement cd checking, but Vivendi is too busy fucking people over like these guys. Failure to implement copy controls in bnetd isn't bnetd's problem. It's Vivendi's problem, and Vivendi isn't even willing to let bnetd fix it... which was actually rather thoughtful of them.
And Vivendi's own legal arguments tell the fucking lie... they have no case, especially the one you're trumpeting. They are using some legally obtuse theory actually meant for dramatic stage plays.
No, fuck you, you stupid syphillitic asswad. Fuck your lousy pointless trolling, and your seething hatred of logic and constitutional rights.
Outlawing bnetd, is like finding a coffee shop that warez dudes hang out at, and shutting it down for that reason. The piracy happens someplace else, has nothing to do with the *legal* coffee shop, and the vast majority of the coffee shop customers are doing nothing wrong. It is a legal tactic employed by ruthless corporations accountable to no one, and performed by lawyers that should be disbarred and tossed in a federal prison cell for a few years.
This isn't napster, napster actually performed, as its primary function, transferring the files around. This isn't a game cracking tool, which performs as its primary function the copy control breaking. This is primarily used by legal copies of Blizzard games, by people who want a little more control over the experience.
Honest to god, is the entire world populated by retards like the parent posters? This hurts him too, and he's cheering it on. Humanity didn't evolve from proto-monkeys... it never evolved at all.
Evil or misguided? Let's see. They are doing this intentionally. Their lawyers, who likely instigated this, know much more about constitutional law than I certainly do. They already have a boatload of money, and will certainly have more. They refused offers of making bnetd pirate-unfriendly. They decided on a course of action, and then alter their legal arguments to fit. (BTW: What is the flavor of the week? Still unauthorized public performances?) They have heard much protest, and refuse to back down, or even reconsider.
I think evil fits more closely than misguided.