I didn't say it made for a winning argument, I said I understood where he's coming from.
"b:"Well, what about all the fossil evidence?"
Obviously something about that isn't selling them on it. Are they being ignorant? Maybe. Frankly, though, if God is capable of making this planet in 6 days, he's also perfectly capable of dropping dinosaur remains here that also quite happily double as a source of fuel for us. It may seem futile to win with them (and yes, it probably is), but the truth is that you won't ever really know for sure what the truth is. You'll either have to have a chat with God or build a time machine. People believe what they believe.
"Lets not forget the license fee for Windows XP -- that's significantly more than $70, I'm sure."
That's one of the reasons I keep my Win2k cd around. No calling home to ask for permission to run.
For the record, Win2k makes for a great OS on a PVR machine. The one I built worked for months without a problem. (months as in up-time.) The only reason I shut it down was because I didn't have room for it when I moved.
"It's easy to 'win' an argument if you refuse to acknowledge the opposing facts."
Though I agree with you that he's full of shit, I do understand that little disclaimer. Often people will rehash the same old argument, presumably to gain a karma point. It's tiring. I imagine his motivation was "Nobody's sold on the theft argument, gimme something new."
"B: The artists are indeed receiving a portion of that money as that money is part of the RIAA's income and higher income will ultimately allow them to pay higher salaries to artists."
No it doesn't. They're paying for how much is sold, not how much money they have. That's also one of the reasons they're not on the hook to pay the artists when they settle a lawsuit.
"No. It's where Zeframe Cochrane WILL launch his first warp ship from. Get your facts straight."
Well, if we're going to argue 'facts', the Titan referred to in First Contact has not been built yet. They very specifically referred to a model that has not been built yet. The main reason for this is that the Titan they used could not get into orbit. So they incremented the number a few times and made implications that there was a nuclear war. The idea there was that one day there would be a Titan developed that could, in theory, get a warp ship into orbit to test drive. (Basically, it was a pre-emptive move to shut up the nitpickers.)
"I hope they'll keep one or two handy. You never know when you can use Warp technology, and I'd hate disapointing Captain Picard."
Oh boy, my nerd side's coming out. Just a week ago I watched First Contact with Okuda's text commentary. He talked about the fictional Titan used in the movie. It was, if memory serves, a type VII. (Note: If it wasn't a 7, then it was a model that hasn't been built yet, at least by the time the movie was made.)
The actual rocket they used was one that was disarmed due to the treaty with Russia. (I want to say type III, but I was never particularly educated on rockets.) It didn't have the engine, so they had to modify it a bit for the movie. They also filmed it in an underground launching facility the gov't was nice enough to let them use for the movie. (Note: I don't think it was active...)
Well, okay, I don't have a lot of useful information here. But if anybody's curious, the STVII director's cut has a neat text commentary that provides some insights into Titans and what went into filming that movie.
"So I'd say if Titan rockets worked, why change them?"
Speaking naievely here, consider some of the cool Shuttle designs we've seen in Popular Science. I think a lot of us would like to see what a new modern rocket would be like.
Don't get me wrong, I think you're right. Nobody wants to gamble with payloads. But I do think there's a sense of stagnation in the development of orbital technology. I mean, 96 was almost 10 years ago and we still haven't had the Eugenics wars!
"I don't know what California doesn't have a high speed train. It would make sense, they have the population to support it. (though perhaps not enough people are going in one direction? I don't know)"
I would assume it has to do with traffic, or lack of it. I don't know what driving from Boston to NYC is like, but I know that driving from Santa Barbara to LA isn't bad. Granted, when you get to LA you end up parking on the highway for a while, but it more or less works out. I suppose it'd be nice to have one between LA and San Fran... but I have difficulty imagining it'd be that active. Those cities are fairly independent of each other.
"For more than 50 years, the average american has been brainwashed by car and petroleum companies into believing that their car-centric "life" is the best thing since industrial bakeries have invented sliced bread."
Brainwashed? Do you have any frickin idea how big this country is? Have you ever lived out in the boonies? What you call brainwashed I call common sense. Yeesh, this from the site that always talks about the USA's difficulty in getting broadband to rural areas.
"Otherwise, I wonder that as games become more physically realistic, will more accidents result as more people try to pull crazy stunts they've done in video games?"
There's a flip-side to think about. In GTA, dumb-ass pedestrians sometimes walk right out in front of you. Hit them, and the cops chase you. After some time with that game, I became more aware of pedestrians at crosswalks. I now watch what they're doing more intently before going around a corner, for example.
No, it's not like I was running around mowing down peds before. I just mean that I drive more cautiously.
"This is far from an "unhackable code". In fact, it's not even a code."
Eh... sorta. The article talks about interception of the data not being terribly useful. I imagine they had to come up with some sort of code to make that work.
Okay, it's a stretch, but technically they would need a form of code to make this work.
" The truth is that in "third world" countries, bare bones PCs that run your choice of Windows or Linux simply don't cost a hell of a lot more than $100, and often less."
Can you cite an example of that? It seems to me that shipping alone would cost most of that.
Note: I'm ignorant on this topic. I'm not challenging your point.
" I also haven't heard it *anywhere* other than on Slashdot. I wouldn't even know it existed otherwise."
Not sure about where you live, but here on the Central Coast of California, we're getting commercials for Netflix on TV. Also, BestBuy has given me fliers for it before.
"Yeah, I'd love to have a bunch of my friends get together to remember me after I'm gone...just in time to hype a major new Hollywood Blockbuster."
So... are you expecting that Hollywood NON-Vultures shouldn't talk about the last highly anticipated movie you had a hand in both inspiring and in making?
"So are you saying that Apple's pettiness makes Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly less wrong,"
Close. The way I see it, either Apple shouldn't be allowed to get away with what Microsoft does, or Microsoft's practices should raise fewer pitchforks. Slashdot users have a double standard here that is really quite childish.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't say it made for a winning argument, I said I understood where he's coming from.
"b:"Well, what about all the fossil evidence?"
Obviously something about that isn't selling them on it. Are they being ignorant? Maybe. Frankly, though, if God is capable of making this planet in 6 days, he's also perfectly capable of dropping dinosaur remains here that also quite happily double as a source of fuel for us. It may seem futile to win with them (and yes, it probably is), but the truth is that you won't ever really know for sure what the truth is. You'll either have to have a chat with God or build a time machine. People believe what they believe.
"They've open sourced me! Does this mean I have to call myself GNU/Steve?"
Gnu's
Not
Urkel.
"Shouldn't that be "data want to be free?" :)"
Here in the USA, no. Yet another reason why it doesn't pay to be a grammar nazi.
"Lets not forget the license fee for Windows XP -- that's significantly more than $70, I'm sure."
That's one of the reasons I keep my Win2k cd around. No calling home to ask for permission to run.
For the record, Win2k makes for a great OS on a PVR machine. The one I built worked for months without a problem. (months as in up-time.) The only reason I shut it down was because I didn't have room for it when I moved.
"I honestly hope that before you played GTA you didn't yank the Jesus Handle when you took tight turns on crowded streets."
No. I did, however, drive under the assumption that peds were smart enough to not walk out in front of me.
"It's easy to 'win' an argument if you refuse to acknowledge the opposing facts."
Though I agree with you that he's full of shit, I do understand that little disclaimer. Often people will rehash the same old argument, presumably to gain a karma point. It's tiring. I imagine his motivation was "Nobody's sold on the theft argument, gimme something new."
"Do I encourage downloading my bands songs? YES! then more people would PAY to get into venues where my band is playing"
There's also something to be said for honesty.
I used to have a sig that read: "If it's theft to listen to a song before buying, then it's theft to refuse returns on albums that suck."
"B: The artists are indeed receiving a portion of that money as that money is part of the RIAA's income and higher income will ultimately allow them to pay higher salaries to artists."
No it doesn't. They're paying for how much is sold, not how much money they have. That's also one of the reasons they're not on the hook to pay the artists when they settle a lawsuit.
"At $5k a pop, 10k of these settlements is worth $50,000,000 dollars."
How much do the lawyers get?
"No. It's where Zeframe Cochrane WILL launch his first warp ship from. Get your facts straight."
Well, if we're going to argue 'facts', the Titan referred to in First Contact has not been built yet. They very specifically referred to a model that has not been built yet. The main reason for this is that the Titan they used could not get into orbit. So they incremented the number a few times and made implications that there was a nuclear war. The idea there was that one day there would be a Titan developed that could, in theory, get a warp ship into orbit to test drive. (Basically, it was a pre-emptive move to shut up the nitpickers.)
"I hope they'll keep one or two handy. You never know when you can use Warp technology, and I'd hate disapointing Captain Picard."
Oh boy, my nerd side's coming out. Just a week ago I watched First Contact with Okuda's text commentary. He talked about the fictional Titan used in the movie. It was, if memory serves, a type VII. (Note: If it wasn't a 7, then it was a model that hasn't been built yet, at least by the time the movie was made.)
The actual rocket they used was one that was disarmed due to the treaty with Russia. (I want to say type III, but I was never particularly educated on rockets.) It didn't have the engine, so they had to modify it a bit for the movie. They also filmed it in an underground launching facility the gov't was nice enough to let them use for the movie. (Note: I don't think it was active...)
Well, okay, I don't have a lot of useful information here. But if anybody's curious, the STVII director's cut has a neat text commentary that provides some insights into Titans and what went into filming that movie.
"So I'd say if Titan rockets worked, why change them?"
Speaking naievely here, consider some of the cool Shuttle designs we've seen in Popular Science. I think a lot of us would like to see what a new modern rocket would be like.
Don't get me wrong, I think you're right. Nobody wants to gamble with payloads. But I do think there's a sense of stagnation in the development of orbital technology. I mean, 96 was almost 10 years ago and we still haven't had the Eugenics wars!
"I don't know what California doesn't have a high speed train. It would make sense, they have the population to support it. (though perhaps not enough people are going in one direction? I don't know)"
I would assume it has to do with traffic, or lack of it. I don't know what driving from Boston to NYC is like, but I know that driving from Santa Barbara to LA isn't bad. Granted, when you get to LA you end up parking on the highway for a while, but it more or less works out. I suppose it'd be nice to have one between LA and San Fran... but I have difficulty imagining it'd be that active. Those cities are fairly independent of each other.
" I don't think trains will ever catch on in the US as long as we have content soccer moms driving SUV's to get groceries."
Or a land area that takes 4 days to get across, but at least we got our jab at SUV owners in.
"For more than 50 years, the average american has been brainwashed by car and petroleum companies into believing that their car-centric "life" is the best thing since industrial bakeries have invented sliced bread."
Brainwashed? Do you have any frickin idea how big this country is? Have you ever lived out in the boonies? What you call brainwashed I call common sense. Yeesh, this from the site that always talks about the USA's difficulty in getting broadband to rural areas.
"what you are doing is the almost the equivalent like taking at 72 dpi image into photoshop, making it 300 dpi. in neither case is quality improved."
Fair enough. There is a little improvement, though. The artifacts caused by encoding are smaller. (Though the data rate is higher...)
"Otherwise, I wonder that as games become more physically realistic, will more accidents result as more people try to pull crazy stunts they've done in video games?"
There's a flip-side to think about. In GTA, dumb-ass pedestrians sometimes walk right out in front of you. Hit them, and the cops chase you. After some time with that game, I became more aware of pedestrians at crosswalks. I now watch what they're doing more intently before going around a corner, for example.
No, it's not like I was running around mowing down peds before. I just mean that I drive more cautiously.
"This is far from an "unhackable code". In fact, it's not even a code."
Eh... sorta. The article talks about interception of the data not being terribly useful. I imagine they had to come up with some sort of code to make that work.
Okay, it's a stretch, but technically they would need a form of code to make this work.
" The truth is that in "third world" countries, bare bones PCs that run your choice of Windows or Linux simply don't cost a hell of a lot more than $100, and often less."
Can you cite an example of that? It seems to me that shipping alone would cost most of that.
Note: I'm ignorant on this topic. I'm not challenging your point.
"No, the third world needs a source of clean drinking water..."
Yeah, it's such a pity that OSS developers can't write clean water.
"Hmmmm... Astroturf anybody?"
So, what, you want a Scooby Snak?
"so make one."
That's the great thing about Open Source!!! You can write your own features!!!@!! Isn't that so boner-popping terrific!!!
(non-programmers need not apply even though we'll tell you to use OSS anyway.)
" I also haven't heard it *anywhere* other than on Slashdot. I wouldn't even know it existed otherwise."
Not sure about where you live, but here on the Central Coast of California, we're getting commercials for Netflix on TV. Also, BestBuy has given me fliers for it before.
"Yeah, I'd love to have a bunch of my friends get together to remember me after I'm gone...just in time to hype a major new Hollywood Blockbuster."
So... are you expecting that Hollywood NON-Vultures shouldn't talk about the last highly anticipated movie you had a hand in both inspiring and in making?
Not everything's about money, Ass.
"So are you saying that Apple's pettiness makes Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly less wrong,"
Close. The way I see it, either Apple shouldn't be allowed to get away with what Microsoft does, or Microsoft's practices should raise fewer pitchforks. Slashdot users have a double standard here that is really quite childish.