NWN by itself is an average game. What extends it as one of the most amazing games of all time is it's unprecedented "hackability". Nordock.net is an excellent example. It started as a small module written for the friends of the creater, Marc. It's since grown into a three server, persistant world with a user base of several thousand. There are typically 10-20 people in-game at any given time. This makes the game much more friendly, IMHO, than commerical MMORGs; there are much less powergamers and more role-playing. Plus they have about a dozen DMs, most of which are really cool and regulary run spontanious quests.
If you want to give it a shot, here are the server addresses:
Your two aforementioned companies are both publicly owned. They are legally bound to do what is in the best financial interests of their shareholders. The actual owners of the company are not involved in the daily management and have only one, single-minded reason for owning stock: profit.
When Google finally bites the bullet and has a billion dollars in other people's money, a old-school board of directors, along with the need to please the SEC and Wall Street analysts, things will change drastically. You'll suddenly see Google become much more conservative because they have so many interests to look out for and competing voices to listen to.
Then some other upstart, agile company will usurp the crown and be the geek's new flavor-of-the-week. It's just how capitalism works. The moral: Don't get to blindly attacted to Google or you're going to feel deeply betrayed--they *are* only a business after all.
Why is this a warning sign? Looking at it from a purely statistical point of view, the odds were not very good that an American would be among the winners.
Stop being so narrow-minded, there are bright people from all over the world--America and abroad.
I have to believe that anyone who's willing to pay for downloadable music are the type of people who have a credit card.
Those without credit cards, students mainly, are still getting their music from Kazaa and the ilk.
I second that. My PC Power and Cooling PS is the only original part in a system I built for myself 5 years ago. I got so sick of listening to the cooling fan bearing (bushing?) in POS supplies die, so I laid down the cash for a quality unit. I think in the past five years, my system has been turned off for a total of 72 hours or less. My PS still runs like a champ.
A major problem is that this knee-jerk, xenophobic reaction makes sense to a lot of well-intended people. I would really recommend that you educated yourself in the field of macroeconomics before you hold such a strong sentiment
Markets evolve. Slashdotter's are pretty quick to point out that changing times are eventually going to put the RIAA out of business, yet they scream bloody murder when those same forces are changing an industry that's a bit closer to their personal botttom line. Sorry folks... ya ain't stopping technological evolution. Maintain (and improve) your value by constantly adapting and learning new things; please don't ask the government to get involved.
Sorry to nitpick, but if you're trully an attorney, you should know that this is worlds away from the legal definition of extortion, which generally has to predicated by the threat of a felonious act.
I agree with you in princple. Public corporations are legally considered "persons" in many of the same ways as a flesh and blood human. I personally beleive that the invention of the public corporation to be one the most dangerous "advances" this society has ever produced.
Most public corps are owened by thousands upon thousands of different people. The only thing that these owners have in common is the desire to see their investment earn a profit. They are not part of the company culture and do not consider themselves responsible for its actions, yet they are in fact the owners! Mix in a few hundred million dollars and you have the capitalistic equivilent of a bumbling, multiheaded giant who roams the planet in search of things to consume.
As for your circular screwing point... yeah, eventually it'll catch up to some of the corps. But many of these companies have holdings that are equal to the GDP of a small country. That's a hell of a lot of interia to try and stop.
Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to its shareholders, who's only concern is profit. If you think they have any interest in "protecting the rights of consumers", boy do I have deal for you on some Packard-Bell desktops.
The actual assembly of a vehicle employs the least amount of people in the process.
I live in Toledo, Ohio. We have a Jeep plant here that employs a sizable portion of the population. However, *many* more people are indirectly employed by the Automotive Big Three here. These people work for suppliers for the automotive industry.
If you're not from the midwest, you may not ever realize that multi-million dollar factories exist soley to make retainer clips used in GM engines or front bumpers for Ford trucks. We also have even more companies that supply parts and services to these companies. These suppliers-to-the-suppliers include computer people, accountants, cleaners, caterers, etc.
If it wasn't for the American automotive industry, Toledo (and many other blue collar cities) would be a one stoplight town. I'm sorry but Honda, Toyota and the rest of Japanese companies do not have the same amount of investment in my community or my country. I buy American cars because they help keep my family and neighbors employed--and myself employed by extension. And to be perfectly honest, I have zero complaints about my Chevy Silverado.
Get your facts straight before jumping on the bandwagon.
Cross burning is only illegal if it is intended to intimidate someone. You can burn a cross in your own yard all day long, if that's simply your idea of art (assuming no local ordinances against bonfires or you have the proper permit). This is actually a victory for civil liberties; previously states could (and did) rule all cross burning was illegal.
So you are trying to say that there is the same amount of money in the world today, as there was in 1900?
hmmmm... I don't remember typing that. Regardless, money is an abstract term -- it's just green paper. Capitalism dominates the world, quite simply, because it works better than Socialism. In my opinion, it works better because it parallels us as organisms who are bioloigcally programmed to compete for resources and thus, survival. As long as there is this "natural selection", the scale will always be tipped in one direction. 4,000 years ago it was the stongest fighters with the largest muscles. Now it's the smartest capitalists with the largest wallets. Same concept.
Money and power are finite resources. Their values are inversely proportional to the number of people holding them. Economics will never and can never be a win/win game.
I'm not being a troll or pretentiously taking the high-road here, but I think it's a really bad idea to copy and paste entire articles into Slashdot. You're very blatently violating copyright law and opening up the possibility of someone slapping/. with the DMCA in their hand.
Actually, there were seven people in black robes who in 1886 wholly disagreed with you. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, The US Supreme Court ruled that corporations do actually have the same rights as "natural persons". That case was specifically about California taxing corps differently than people, but it set the precedent that corporations are people too. blech...
Read the link. Hard Rock's intranet was migrated, not their public web servers. Besides, read the NetCraft data too. The only webserver that was ever plotted on the graph was IIS5.
This is insane. More email is delivered than first class mail in the US today. The interception of first class mail requires a federal warrant. How did this bill pass, in it's current state, with a 90-0 vote?!
This is exact the reason I gave up being a SQL DBA and went back to school to get a law degree.
Slashdot Mirror
NWN by itself is an average game. What extends it as one of the most amazing games of all time is it's unprecedented "hackability". Nordock.net is an excellent example. It started as a small module written for the friends of the creater, Marc. It's since grown into a three server, persistant world with a user base of several thousand. There are typically 10-20 people in-game at any given time. This makes the game much more friendly, IMHO, than commerical MMORGs; there are much less powergamers and more role-playing. Plus they have about a dozen DMs, most of which are really cool and regulary run spontanious quests.
If you want to give it a shot, here are the server addresses:
nordock1.nordock.net:5121nordock1.nordock.net:5122
nordock1.nordock.net:5124
They all share the same character vault, so you can play on any of them.
Forget backing vocals, here's a sample of "Amazing Grace" mentioned in the article. Not perfect, but quite impressive.
Your two aforementioned companies are both publicly owned. They are legally bound to do what is in the best financial interests of their shareholders. The actual owners of the company are not involved in the daily management and have only one, single-minded reason for owning stock: profit.
When Google finally bites the bullet and has a billion dollars in other people's money, a old-school board of directors, along with the need to please the SEC and Wall Street analysts, things will change drastically. You'll suddenly see Google become much more conservative because they have so many interests to look out for and competing voices to listen to.
Then some other upstart, agile company will usurp the crown and be the geek's new flavor-of-the-week. It's just how capitalism works. The moral: Don't get to blindly attacted to Google or you're going to feel deeply betrayed--they *are* only a business after all.
Why is this a warning sign? Looking at it from a purely statistical point of view, the odds were not very good that an American would be among the winners. Stop being so narrow-minded, there are bright people from all over the world--America and abroad.
I have to believe that anyone who's willing to pay for downloadable music are the type of people who have a credit card. Those without credit cards, students mainly, are still getting their music from Kazaa and the ilk.
I second that. My PC Power and Cooling PS is the only original part in a system I built for myself 5 years ago. I got so sick of listening to the cooling fan bearing (bushing?) in POS supplies die, so I laid down the cash for a quality unit. I think in the past five years, my system has been turned off for a total of 72 hours or less. My PS still runs like a champ.
A major problem is that this knee-jerk, xenophobic reaction makes sense to a lot of well-intended people. I would really recommend that you educated yourself in the field of macroeconomics before you hold such a strong sentiment
Markets evolve. Slashdotter's are pretty quick to point out that changing times are eventually going to put the RIAA out of business, yet they scream bloody murder when those same forces are changing an industry that's a bit closer to their personal botttom line. Sorry folks... ya ain't stopping technological evolution. Maintain (and improve) your value by constantly adapting and learning new things; please don't ask the government to get involved.
Sorry to nitpick, but if you're trully an attorney, you should know that this is worlds away from the legal definition of extortion, which generally has to predicated by the threat of a felonious act.
My two cents...
lol... I hope you aren't claiming that Noam Chomsky is balanced. I'm a raving liberal but Chomsky makes me look like Ann Coulter.
Damn! (Note to self: improve typing speed)
This is an oft repeated fallacy.
Most public corps are owened by thousands upon thousands of different people. The only thing that these owners have in common is the desire to see their investment earn a profit. They are not part of the company culture and do not consider themselves responsible for its actions, yet they are in fact the owners! Mix in a few hundred million dollars and you have the capitalistic equivilent of a bumbling, multiheaded giant who roams the planet in search of things to consume.
As for your circular screwing point... yeah, eventually it'll catch up to some of the corps. But many of these companies have holdings that are equal to the GDP of a small country. That's a hell of a lot of interia to try and stop.
Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to its shareholders, who's only concern is profit.
If you think they have any interest in "protecting the rights of consumers", boy do I have deal for you on some Packard-Bell desktops.
I live in Toledo, Ohio. We have a Jeep plant here that employs a sizable portion of the population. However, *many* more people are indirectly employed by the Automotive Big Three here. These people work for suppliers for the automotive industry.
If you're not from the midwest, you may not ever realize that multi-million dollar factories exist soley to make retainer clips used in GM engines or front bumpers for Ford trucks. We also have even more companies that supply parts and services to these companies. These suppliers-to-the-suppliers include computer people, accountants, cleaners, caterers, etc.
If it wasn't for the American automotive industry, Toledo (and many other blue collar cities) would be a one stoplight town. I'm sorry but Honda, Toyota and the rest of Japanese companies do not have the same amount of investment in my community or my country. I buy American cars because they help keep my family and neighbors employed--and myself employed by extension. And to be perfectly honest, I have zero complaints about my Chevy Silverado.
Get your facts straight before jumping on the bandwagon.
Cross burning is only illegal if it is intended to intimidate someone. You can burn a cross in your own yard all day long, if that's simply your idea of art (assuming no local ordinances against bonfires or you have the proper permit). This is actually a victory for civil liberties; previously states could (and did) rule all cross burning was illegal.
It's good to see them charged for something, even if they have never had to atone for the thousands of customer dollars they have stolen.
It's good to see that Joe Smith was charged with felonious assault, because I *did* see him jaywalk that one time.
hmmmm... I don't remember typing that. Regardless, money is an abstract term -- it's just green paper. Capitalism dominates the world, quite simply, because it works better than Socialism. In my opinion, it works better because it parallels us as organisms who are bioloigcally programmed to compete for resources and thus, survival. As long as there is this "natural selection", the scale will always be tipped in one direction. 4,000 years ago it was the stongest fighters with the largest muscles. Now it's the smartest capitalists with the largest wallets. Same concept.
Money and power are finite resources. Their values are inversely proportional to the number of people holding them. Economics will never and can never be a win/win game.
I'm not being a troll or pretentiously taking the high-road here, but I think it's a really bad idea to copy and paste entire articles into Slashdot. You're very blatently violating copyright law and opening up the possibility of someone slapping
Actually, there were seven people in black robes who in 1886 wholly disagreed with you. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, The US Supreme Court ruled that corporations do actually have the same rights as "natural persons". That case was specifically about California taxing corps differently than people, but it set the precedent that corporations are people too. blech...
Assuming that AOL invented popups (which is a stretch in of itself), they could not patent it because it's been disclosed to the public for >1 year.
Brief primer on patents.
Thanks!
His new subsciption to Oprah magazine is on it's way. Merry Xmas Alan!
The scourge of the WWW: embedded MIDI files!
Er, actually, I kinda dig this one. In fact, it's the only embedded MIDI I've ever replayed.
Read the link. Hard Rock's intranet was migrated, not their public web servers. Besides, read the NetCraft data too. The only webserver that was ever plotted on the graph was IIS5.
This is insane. More email is delivered than first class mail in the US today. The interception of first class mail requires a federal warrant. How did this bill pass, in it's current state, with a 90-0 vote?!
This is exact the reason I gave up being a SQL DBA and went back to school to get a law degree.