Theft is taking something for your own that legally belongs to someone else.
Receiving stolen property is selling or attempting to sell property that you know or believe to be stolen. If you're in the business of buying/selling used goods, you must take due diligence to ensure that either the item isn't stolen, or that the person that sold it to you can be found if need be.
Humans typically like to explore and spread out. To the point where we'll brave extreme environments to find the oasis or to set up a colony on the other side of said environment. Animals would have very little motivation to cross a desert.
Its possible that this particular species found their way onto an island and 'settled down'
You know, Dwarf Fortress is so complex that if they gave it some decent graphics and decent controls, it would make for a most-awesome game. It wouldn't be that hard to do, really.
It needs to have two modes. An easy mode, and a real mode. The easy mode would be for casual gamers. People that want to build their fort and have a happy little home, maybe explore a little. The real mode would be for people that like to trap thousands of creatures underground and then flood it with lava.
I bet they have some kind of actual code from Blizzard, be it server software, client software, whatever. And they likely have the source to compile on their machines. So whatever game they use will probably be a direct clone of WoW.
I bet their first expansion will be Flaming Crusades, and their second will be Wrath of the Zombie king.
Actually, companies that cheat a country out of taxes should be able to have their assets and property seized to pay off said taxes. Just like individuals would if they cheated on their taxes.
1. Little to no accountability. 2. Little or corrupt supervision. 3. No incentive to protect your goods. 4. Low pay, shitty hours, and bad working environment.
Its actually a miracle that electronics actually make it through the whole process of being in a checked bag. Insurance is a very good idea if you have to put anything expensive into your checked bag. Just make sure to document what you have and know how much it will cost to replace when it gets stolen or broken. The whole problem could be fixed pretty easily, but flights would get more expensive as a result.
1. All bags are locked. If a bag needs to be searched, the bag is unlocked by a supervisor, a note is placed in the bag, then the bag is locked again. Then the search is logged. If too many things turn up missing by the same supervisor, its obvious who's in on it.
2. Stop charging more for everything while laying people off and cutting the pay of the remaining workers. It absolutely kills morale.
I don't think many virus writers would like to see their virus killing people.
I'd say the blame is 50% on the part of the virus writer for not considering the consequences, and 50% on the part of the medical equipment maker that decided to use Windows to save a few bucks and didn't consider the fact that Windows is one of the most insecure operating systems ever.
For a car analogy, someone throws an empty soda can out the window. Said soda can is then crushed by a Chinese-knockoff motorcycle. Since the tires are much thinner than they should be, as they're cheaper that way, the can penetrates the tire and causes a blowout. The rider of the motorcycle dies. Should the liter-bug be charged with murder/manslaughter?
When the fleet of taxicabs die and you can't get a friend or neighbor to give you a ride to work, do you think your boss is going to care? Remember the question on the application that asks you if you have reliable transportation? You lied.
What about your thesis? If your thesis is stuck on (online program) which just went down for the weekend for upgrades..will your school stand around and wait for you to get it off the server?
The point is that by handing your control over, you retain the responsibility. Its your responsibility to make it to work whether or not the taxi service is running. Its also your responsibility to have your thesis done on time and turned in.
Software as a service might not be so bad for some things. Like gaming. Where downtime wouldn't seriously affect your life, barring some mental disorders. But don't tell the game companies. I really don't want to have to subscribe to every fucking game I want to play for $20 a month.
The only point that will absolutely KILL it is their high asking price. I can understand why the price is so high, but as a consumer I don't CARE why your price is so high if I can get 10x better for only a little more money.
As someone posted somewhere above, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act covers this kind of thing.
If you brick your system due to failed modification, you're damn right Nintendo can charge you a repair fee. The fee, however, cannot be anymore than they'd normally charge to repair a firmware-dead system.
The MMWA was created because car companies once got together and decided that if you so much as stick a decal on your car that they didn't specifically approve, your warranty was 100% null and void. It does allow for exceptions, however, like if you shot some nitrous through your engine and blew it up. That's not their problem. Refusing to cover bad workmanship that destroyed your engine because you tinted your windows isn't allowed.
The actual moral of the story is that USPS is fine for sending letters. But it was not set up to handle goods. No one wants your spam mail. But they sure as hell want your GameFly packages.
From the start I never found that GameFly was a good idea. What happens when your neighbor sees you carrying in a GameFly package, and you don't have a locked mailbox? Or what happens when some mail employee wants some free games? The USPS just doesn't have the tracking capabilities to figure out what the hell happened to that copy of Resistance 2 they sent you a month ago.
UPS does. So does FedEx. If you signed for it then claimed you didn't get it, tough shit. Proof-of-delivery is the industry standard for goods. 90% of shipping and delivery companies use some kind of proof of delivery for billing/logistical purposes.
Yes, they exist. But they're mostly sold to perverts to spy on people in bathrooms/bedrooms.
You could set some up in your car to stream to a storage system hidden somewhere in your car. Just be prepared to be beaten to a pulp and possibly never see your car again if they find out you're recording them without their knowledge.
You probably do lose rights to it, but you can't have your right to report crime taken away from you.
It would be like signing a contract that says, "All illegal activities you may witness on site can not be reported, under penalty of death" with a private company.
Tiger Direct does what it can to reduce its prices.
If this includes not packing their goods for shipping, lying about what you're getting, or rebate and switching, so be it.
Their prices are only about 5% lower than most websites. Its not worth it to get a CPU that was dropped into an antistatic bag and put into a box 10x its size unsecured.
The convoy idea won't work until someone charges reasonable rates for protection.
A better idea might be for every big boat to have some people with guns that board a smaller ship while the big ship docks. Or maybe the ports could change around their no-weapons-except-for-criminals rule and make it to where guns are allowed in port, as long as they are locked up by the commanding officer of the ship prior to docking, and that their gun-lock-setup can be inspected by port authority.
Companies exist only because we the consumers support them.
You are not threatening someone's business model if you do not buy from them. The onus is on the company to come up with a business model that will compel you to buy from them. If they fail to do that, then that's their own fault. As long as you aren't breaking any laws.
In the end, its all about money. Buggy-whip manufactures never did have millions of dollars to waste trying to lobby to congress to outlaw cars. Nintendo doesn't have that kind of money to waste, either. Hell, even Ford didn't back in his day.
However, media companies do. Oil companies do. Banks do.
Guess who law will favor in the future?
You could very well be looking at criminal charges for not paying off your credit card bill, or at having your door kicked in by the SWAT team because you downloaded some music online.
The companies with the most power are exactly the ones that shouldn't have any.
Like the post I'm replying to said, those specs are int he realm of 'nice desktop PC' rather than 'server-grade PC' but don't let that fool you. A nice desktop PC can double as an effective Linux server quite easily.
There are many case mods made for dusty/dirty/gritty places. You can build your own (or buy) a long-term battery power system..but it might have to involve fuel cells and/or gas/diesel motors. It will take a LOT of solar panels with decent efficiency and immaculate setup to ensure that you have enough power to run the machine and charge the batteries.
If you had a nuclear license, I'd suggest a decently-sized RTG and chunk of something radioactive. Russia used those pretty extensively for their remote weather stations that had no other access to power. Granted most of them got broken into and looted, you might have some luck if you have a few hundred thousand and good references.
Because people suck at figuring out what's best for the value (service per cost).
Example: Video cards and CPUs often follow a price/performance bell curve. At the top is going to be your $100 CPU that has great performance. One step above will be the $200 CPU that has slightly better performance, and above that will be the $400 CPU requiring a special motherboard that has slightly better performance than the $200 CPU.
They're attempting to place their service somewhere to the right of the top of the bell curve, around where it hits zero.
String theory actually makes plenty of sense, if you read into it.
As we delve into the smaller and smaller, we're going to find out that things that we observe start out in three dimensions. Then they go down to two dimensions. Then one dimension. Who know's what's beyond that.
If you read "Flatland" by Edwin Abbot Abbot, you might understand.
Imagine your drive to the nearest Walmart, in 3d. Now imagine it in 2d. Can you imagine it in 1d? I thought not.
They could seriously reduce the amount of hack attempts from their country if they wanted to, but they have no incentive to do so. Worst case scenario currently is a Chinese hacker hacks something big and causes a lot of upset/damage, and China makes an official apology while laughing their asses off. It certainly would be an act of war for a small band of Chinese special forces to take out some substations, why is not an act of war for a small band of Chinese hackers to take them out from the comfort of their own homes?
The Chinese would have no problems at all deporting the hackers to the US to face trial, after all, this is a country where the government allows companies to dump tons of toxic waste on beaches and pay children to pick out all the expensive bits.
Slashdot Mirror
Theft is taking something for your own that legally belongs to someone else.
Receiving stolen property is selling or attempting to sell property that you know or believe to be stolen. If you're in the business of buying/selling used goods, you must take due diligence to ensure that either the item isn't stolen, or that the person that sold it to you can be found if need be.
Humans typically like to explore and spread out. To the point where we'll brave extreme environments to find the oasis or to set up a colony on the other side of said environment. Animals would have very little motivation to cross a desert.
Its possible that this particular species found their way onto an island and 'settled down'
Sounds like someone has been selling government information. Send them to jail for doing so.
There's only so much more graphics you can add until you start enabling things like 16x anti-aliasing to use up that spare CPU power.
You know, Dwarf Fortress is so complex that if they gave it some decent graphics and decent controls, it would make for a most-awesome game. It wouldn't be that hard to do, really.
It needs to have two modes. An easy mode, and a real mode. The easy mode would be for casual gamers. People that want to build their fort and have a happy little home, maybe explore a little. The real mode would be for people that like to trap thousands of creatures underground and then flood it with lava.
I bet they have some kind of actual code from Blizzard, be it server software, client software, whatever. And they likely have the source to compile on their machines. So whatever game they use will probably be a direct clone of WoW.
I bet their first expansion will be Flaming Crusades, and their second will be Wrath of the Zombie king.
Actually, companies that cheat a country out of taxes should be able to have their assets and property seized to pay off said taxes. Just like individuals would if they cheated on their taxes.
1. Little to no accountability.
2. Little or corrupt supervision.
3. No incentive to protect your goods.
4. Low pay, shitty hours, and bad working environment.
Its actually a miracle that electronics actually make it through the whole process of being in a checked bag. Insurance is a very good idea if you have to put anything expensive into your checked bag. Just make sure to document what you have and know how much it will cost to replace when it gets stolen or broken. The whole problem could be fixed pretty easily, but flights would get more expensive as a result.
1. All bags are locked. If a bag needs to be searched, the bag is unlocked by a supervisor, a note is placed in the bag, then the bag is locked again. Then the search is logged. If too many things turn up missing by the same supervisor, its obvious who's in on it.
2. Stop charging more for everything while laying people off and cutting the pay of the remaining workers. It absolutely kills morale.
I don't think many virus writers would like to see their virus killing people.
I'd say the blame is 50% on the part of the virus writer for not considering the consequences, and 50% on the part of the medical equipment maker that decided to use Windows to save a few bucks and didn't consider the fact that Windows is one of the most insecure operating systems ever.
For a car analogy, someone throws an empty soda can out the window. Said soda can is then crushed by a Chinese-knockoff motorcycle. Since the tires are much thinner than they should be, as they're cheaper that way, the can penetrates the tire and causes a blowout. The rider of the motorcycle dies. Should the liter-bug be charged with murder/manslaughter?
When the fleet of taxicabs die and you can't get a friend or neighbor to give you a ride to work, do you think your boss is going to care? Remember the question on the application that asks you if you have reliable transportation? You lied.
What about your thesis? If your thesis is stuck on (online program) which just went down for the weekend for upgrades..will your school stand around and wait for you to get it off the server?
The point is that by handing your control over, you retain the responsibility. Its your responsibility to make it to work whether or not the taxi service is running. Its also your responsibility to have your thesis done on time and turned in.
Software as a service might not be so bad for some things. Like gaming. Where downtime wouldn't seriously affect your life, barring some mental disorders. But don't tell the game companies. I really don't want to have to subscribe to every fucking game I want to play for $20 a month.
Its not a horrible idea.
I think its a pretty good one.
The only point that will absolutely KILL it is their high asking price. I can understand why the price is so high, but as a consumer I don't CARE why your price is so high if I can get 10x better for only a little more money.
This needs to be dirt cheap. Like $50 or less.
As someone posted somewhere above, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act covers this kind of thing.
If you brick your system due to failed modification, you're damn right Nintendo can charge you a repair fee. The fee, however, cannot be anymore than they'd normally charge to repair a firmware-dead system.
The MMWA was created because car companies once got together and decided that if you so much as stick a decal on your car that they didn't specifically approve, your warranty was 100% null and void. It does allow for exceptions, however, like if you shot some nitrous through your engine and blew it up. That's not their problem. Refusing to cover bad workmanship that destroyed your engine because you tinted your windows isn't allowed.
The actual moral of the story is that USPS is fine for sending letters. But it was not set up to handle goods. No one wants your spam mail. But they sure as hell want your GameFly packages.
From the start I never found that GameFly was a good idea. What happens when your neighbor sees you carrying in a GameFly package, and you don't have a locked mailbox? Or what happens when some mail employee wants some free games? The USPS just doesn't have the tracking capabilities to figure out what the hell happened to that copy of Resistance 2 they sent you a month ago.
UPS does. So does FedEx. If you signed for it then claimed you didn't get it, tough shit. Proof-of-delivery is the industry standard for goods. 90% of shipping and delivery companies use some kind of proof of delivery for billing/logistical purposes.
Yes, they exist. But they're mostly sold to perverts to spy on people in bathrooms/bedrooms.
You could set some up in your car to stream to a storage system hidden somewhere in your car. Just be prepared to be beaten to a pulp and possibly never see your car again if they find out you're recording them without their knowledge.
You probably do lose rights to it, but you can't have your right to report crime taken away from you.
It would be like signing a contract that says, "All illegal activities you may witness on site can not be reported, under penalty of death" with a private company.
Tiger Direct does what it can to reduce its prices.
If this includes not packing their goods for shipping, lying about what you're getting, or rebate and switching, so be it.
Their prices are only about 5% lower than most websites. Its not worth it to get a CPU that was dropped into an antistatic bag and put into a box 10x its size unsecured.
The convoy idea won't work until someone charges reasonable rates for protection.
A better idea might be for every big boat to have some people with guns that board a smaller ship while the big ship docks. Or maybe the ports could change around their no-weapons-except-for-criminals rule and make it to where guns are allowed in port, as long as they are locked up by the commanding officer of the ship prior to docking, and that their gun-lock-setup can be inspected by port authority.
Companies exist only because we the consumers support them.
You are not threatening someone's business model if you do not buy from them. The onus is on the company to come up with a business model that will compel you to buy from them. If they fail to do that, then that's their own fault. As long as you aren't breaking any laws.
In the end, its all about money. Buggy-whip manufactures never did have millions of dollars to waste trying to lobby to congress to outlaw cars. Nintendo doesn't have that kind of money to waste, either. Hell, even Ford didn't back in his day.
However, media companies do. Oil companies do. Banks do.
Guess who law will favor in the future?
You could very well be looking at criminal charges for not paying off your credit card bill, or at having your door kicked in by the SWAT team because you downloaded some music online.
The companies with the most power are exactly the ones that shouldn't have any.
Build your own.
Like the post I'm replying to said, those specs are int he realm of 'nice desktop PC' rather than 'server-grade PC' but don't let that fool you. A nice desktop PC can double as an effective Linux server quite easily.
There are many case mods made for dusty/dirty/gritty places. You can build your own (or buy) a long-term battery power system..but it might have to involve fuel cells and/or gas/diesel motors. It will take a LOT of solar panels with decent efficiency and immaculate setup to ensure that you have enough power to run the machine and charge the batteries.
If you had a nuclear license, I'd suggest a decently-sized RTG and chunk of something radioactive. Russia used those pretty extensively for their remote weather stations that had no other access to power. Granted most of them got broken into and looted, you might have some luck if you have a few hundred thousand and good references.
Most companies don't provide decent access to USENET anymore. Since most people don't use it (currently), why should ISPs support it?
I find them to be very useful but understand the decision to remove them.
Because people suck at figuring out what's best for the value (service per cost).
Example: Video cards and CPUs often follow a price/performance bell curve. At the top is going to be your $100 CPU that has great performance. One step above will be the $200 CPU that has slightly better performance, and above that will be the $400 CPU requiring a special motherboard that has slightly better performance than the $200 CPU.
They're attempting to place their service somewhere to the right of the top of the bell curve, around where it hits zero.
Most of my friends are 360 owners. 10, maybe 15 people, in person.
I'm pretty sure that every single one of them, with the exception of one of of them, have had to send their 360's back for repairs.
Multiple times.
The people I know that have PS3s (about 7) have never had to send their system in for repair. Nor have the people that own Wii's (about 5).
Microsoft may have the most market penetration, but I have to wonder how much its costing them to replace 80% of the original 360's with new hardware.
String theory actually makes plenty of sense, if you read into it.
As we delve into the smaller and smaller, we're going to find out that things that we observe start out in three dimensions. Then they go down to two dimensions. Then one dimension. Who know's what's beyond that.
If you read "Flatland" by Edwin Abbot Abbot, you might understand.
Imagine your drive to the nearest Walmart, in 3d. Now imagine it in 2d. Can you imagine it in 1d? I thought not.
Let's get tough on (non-violent) crime!
We don't have enough pot-smokers or copyright breakers in federal prison, stored with the rapists, murderers, and kidnappers.
Let's crowd them in there with some proxy-users, too.
Note you'll never see a scamming CEO or embezzling CFO in jail with murderers, rapists, and kidnappers. They have a separate prison for them.
They could seriously reduce the amount of hack attempts from their country if they wanted to, but they have no incentive to do so. Worst case scenario currently is a Chinese hacker hacks something big and causes a lot of upset/damage, and China makes an official apology while laughing their asses off. It certainly would be an act of war for a small band of Chinese special forces to take out some substations, why is not an act of war for a small band of Chinese hackers to take them out from the comfort of their own homes?
The Chinese would have no problems at all deporting the hackers to the US to face trial, after all, this is a country where the government allows companies to dump tons of toxic waste on beaches and pay children to pick out all the expensive bits.