> Also, hero density is going to be an issue. The DC 'verse has, what, > a few dozen heroes on the entire bloody planet? Few enough that > crossovers are a special event... "uh", indeed. Not to be picky, but have you actually READ any DC titles?
There are a few dozen heroes who just tried out for the JLA's last recruitment drive. AND they spun off a reserve. The Titans have a record of "a few dozen" in their own historical ranks. According to the DC1Million, there'll be a dozen Supermans alone in the next few centuries. How many Supergirls are there now, three or four?
"Special Event"? Annual crossover arcs are - well, annual. Almost every month there's at least one title with a guest character on the cover.
When they DO have their annual crossovers they usually have some hero gathering on the (now apparently wrecked JLA moonbase) where the biggest halls are completely filled and some people need to sit on the high galleries above.
Remember that the "Kingdom Come" Else/whateverthehellWorlds was set only one or two generations later where there were so many superhero-powered children there were DAILY turf-wars over most of the planet.
"Secret Files" used to run "pages" from a celebrity magazine - devoted to superhero celebrities. If there are so many superheroes in the DCU they can run a celebrity magazine...... and that's all just in DC-bloody-America. Forget the fact that there's the rest of the world as well.
I only read three regular DC titles now (Green Lantern, Flash, JLA). All this, I can see just by reading the three regulars.
"Hero density" is already an issue. And in more ways than one.
I take your point. Especially the bit about the anger. Indeed, I'm taking that reality check to the teller at the bank. Consider me chilling.
But then why's the redirection happening?
Jengajam and NetAuthority are registered in two different places and two different IP addresses, running on (thank you, nmap) two different operating systems.
Why is it that, to see the content of the linked article, you have to hit a historical cache? Why, and for that matter, how is the redirection happening?... and what kinda kicks do you (no, not you Kyle, I know) get out of pulling crap like this? ESPECIALLY WHEN we've something GENUINELY like this in the Discovery Institute's Wedge Strategy? The sort of crap that actually got an airing in court?
Last few days, Slashdot's been putting out the articles on the diminishment of Science and the rise of Fundamentalism in America. And by the way America, the fallout of this crap hits other countries too, y'know.
It's enough our idiot politicians suck up to yours and saddle us with the FTA that's causing NO end of troubles... but now the Christian Right's trying to slime its way across the world until all the atlas is blood-red.
So Rudis's NetAuthority page is really, let's be honest, NOT a good idea. That's at least heading in the direction of making airplane crash jokes. On 9/11. In earshot of grieving victims.
"You too can be a part of the Net Authority and help us eliminate offensive material from the Internet. By reading and understanding the Internet Acceptable Use Policy, and our guide on how to spot offending material, you can arm yourself with all you need to do God's work on the Internet."... "let them know that the Internet, while being an extremely important and useful tool in today's society, also contains many dark places that may lead their souls astray from the path of God. Do not be afraid to scare them! The Internet is a scary place!"
That fucking Wedge Strategy. AGAIN.
And check their "Acceptable Use Policy". They've got FIVE COMMANDMENTS!
Jengajam's supposed to be registered to a guy in Israel. This NetAuthority's registered to someone in FLORIDA.
Fine, call me a troll, I don't give a rat's ass. But explain to me again HTF letting the U.S., an increasingly Christian-oriented nation have control of the roots supposed to be a GOOD thing again?
I just wanted to follow a hyperlink which was probably gonna be a funny after reading a Slashdot article about the Trek DVD release.
NOW I'm being told, and I quote: <blockquote> "Since this policy applies to the entire Internet, we felt that it should be spelled out as simply and as universally understandable as possible.
As a result of this, we decided that the best way to write this document would be to model it after something that everyone knows and follows (or at least should!) in their daily lives already. We chose God's own law--The Ten Commandments." </blockquote>
That is so fucking it. I have had enough.
And I REALLY fucking wish the "confirm I'm not a script" keyword wasn't "almighty" for me to even post this.
The whole point of Debian stable is that it's a locked down STABLE release with only tried-and-true software.
You want updates sooner? Edit/etc/apt/sources.list and include a couple of TESTING sources, you'll get updates every week or three. Sometimes it's as simple as:%s/stable/testing/.
The novel covers this a lot better than the movie does; near the end of the movie, Yoda says "into exile, I must go". In the novel, there's a lot more critical self-analysis on Yoda's part; specifically, that he's trained the Jedi to be just like HIS Masters were... and that the Sith had changed and adapted in the last thousand years; and the Jedi had been left behind and were ineffectual against the Sith. Basically, he realises that a whole new approach has to be taken in training Jedi. So the Jedi seeming narrow and dogmatic is precisely the flaw which led to their end. Oh, and everyone knowing the damn kid was too dangerous to be a Padawan and Qui-Gon was an idiot.:-)
For what it's worth, here's the feedback I wrote...
[LETTER] In a recent article, Stephen Evans, the BBC North America business correspondent wrote:
"So, it seems likely that the perpetrators of the MyDoom virus and its variants are internet vandals with a specific grudge. SCO is the big, bad company that violates one of their sacred principles, as they would see it. There's no proof, of course, but it must be one of the theories at the top of any investigator's list."
Some points:
1) This article displays an ignorance on the part of the *business* (not I.T., I notice) correspondent - Linux software and Microsoft Windows software are generally incompatible - a program written for one generally won't run on another; a virus, which uses system-specific features of the computer on which it runs will not run on a different operating system. Whoever wrote this must have been competent and conversant with the inner details of programming for Microsoft Windows (something Evans either does not understand or neglects to communicate to the less knowledgeable reader). Furthermore I suggest Mr Evans do some research on the number of Linux viruses versus Windows viruses; if this "evil" damage was wrought by people skilled enough to program for BOTH platforms, there would be a significantly higher number of Linux viruses.
2) Evans has also done apparently no clear research into the actual event/issue itself (where one visit and one search of any anti-virus company's website - say, Symantec - would've yielded informative and clear results); the virus SPREADS through e-mail, but then attacks the SCO site through intensive, but otherwise *normal* Web requests / mechanisms. BBC directors, managers and editors, please direct your journalists to research stories more carefully. Please do not dignify inaccurate, lacking or plainly incorrect stories - or their authors - with publication.
3) "So it seems likely"; "there's no proof of course". I am 32, born and live in Australia and work/study in IT (with both Microsoft Windows AND Linux work); since my pre-teen years, I've had a respect for the BBC as being the pinnacle of both journalism and television (journalistic and entertainment) history. This Evans article was unacceptable; not journalism, it hardly even deserves the terms "scaremongering" or "mudslinging". Either Evans is either entirely ignorant of the situation, or he deserves naught but scorn and shame. Many readers of technical fora within the Internet have been calling Evans's journalistic integrity (and indeed capability) into question; deservedly so, it seems.
I am sure that many people would ask, if at all possible, that a clarification be posted (if not a retraction and a clarification in its place); and that better still, the BBC holds to its once-unassailable reputation as the premiere reliable and respectable disseminator.
Help what? Are you arguing that we should all continue downloading mp3s of albums we should be purchasing?
Slashdot's general stance on this is unclear. They seem to admit that it's illegal, yet post articles that try to claim it's okay. It's just a justification of the convenience that people have gotten used to.
Well, let's start with Copyright law. Lucky for you guys in the U.S., you have Fair Use provisions. AUSTRALIANS DON'T. I go out, buy a CD, take it home. Say (and don't bother to slag me off for my taste), I buy the soundtrack to "Daredevil". It's going to be part of my Marvel Comics collection next to the DVD and so on. So I choose to put it in the computer, rip it, put the original back in its case and back on the shelf. As a matter of fact, because I bought the "Daredevil" soundtrack and liked some of its songs so much, I also went out and bought the "Evanescence" album. I paid to listen to the damn music - TWO ALBUMS, THANKS - and I have no broadband so I'm not going to be filesharing it.
But according to Australian law, that's illegal.
So, as you mention, let's get to the justification. Why is it illegal? Because ARIA or RIAA or FLA or POQ say that we're robbing the artists of their profit. Shall we get into the tired argument of how the artists aren't seeing the profit? Shall we get into the valid point of how I ALREADY PAID FOR THIS? Shall we talk about the fact that the Music Machine has claimed that CD burners and cassette tapes will ruin the music industry? Shall we talk about all the illegal things that the Industry has proposed be done to counter filesharing?
Slashdot's general stance on this is unclear. They seem to admit that it's illegal, yet post articles that try to claim it's okay. It's just a justification of the convenience that people have gotten used to.
You're making the automatic assumption that if it's illegal, then it's not okay. Where is the guarantee or the Law of Physics that says (legal is_equivalent_to okay)?
That's why you're having a confusion with "Slashdot's general stance". Not to mention, as you said and I already explained, "I actually buy the shit I want" too; thanks to the crap exchange rate, I spend more than $10 too.
And as far as Don't tell me all those kids and college students downloading everything under the sun doesn't affect their tendency to buy the CDs instead. It's illogical and a sign of deluding yourselves into thinking otherwise goes, it DOES affect their tendency. But note all the studies, and all the people who DON'T have broadband, download a SAMPLE, and THEN go out and BUY the album. It's illogical of you to have leapt to the wrong assumption.
... will it really help? We face a thousand-and-one lawyers and school or workplace administrators running in fear from those lawyers and they still refuse to hear this new, or disregard it completely. I AM Australian. My workplace IS a school (well, a university) where I also study; last semester, that included a semester of Law for IT students; we had to put up with the Copyright Law 1968 and its 21st Century amendments; in our workplace, they've cracked down on MP3s and the central IT section have instituted semi-regular searches of our Windows XP administrative shares (suits me; 1: I use Ogg and 2: I keep my personal music - yes, from CDs I bought - on my Linux desktop anyway).
As has already been said, 'nuff said, heard it all already. Knew it.
But how does this news get to the lawmakers, to the people whose ears are already stuffed with campaign donations by some other "interested" party?
... a viable field to get into and if so will it last?
Why would we not expect IT to be a valuable field to get into until:
- the Meteor hits
- the second coming of Jesus and (Arnie-unrelated) Judgment Day (although any "heaven" [HIE'CIA] without computers is IMO misnamed)?
- the current Administration starts ramping up the DMCA (at which point we all go underground anyway?)
- Rob Enderle becomes a government advisor for Information Technology?
- Slashdot itself falls victim to the Slashdot effect?
- dammit to hell they blew it all up and the damn dirty stinking apes don't use computers?
I'd like to see the moderator of the previous comment JUSTIFY the down-moderation, thanks. As a non-US resident/citizen (and, by the way, actually a native Australian of Russian parentage), I keep hearing stories (some of them from HERE on Slashdot, by the way) of how miserable the privacy situation/environment is getting in the US.
Hey, look - if you jam your head up your ass, we go back in time 19 years.
Keep your pathetic moderation rights. I'll keep what's left of my personal freedoms... which are better than yours. Hey, I still have relatives who live in Russia, and RUSSIA'S personal freedoms are starting to look better than yours.
The price of eternal vigilance... IS your freedom.
Go ahead, downmod me; once I get this rant out of my system I won't care anymore. Doesn't stop the point being valid and that's what matters.
... "sneakernet" back in our uni/college days. Of course, then we did it with floppies; now we do it with DVDs. Latency indeed doth suck, but the bandwidth is pretty fantastic...
I understand the point you're making, in that even though there's definitely legislation in place ordering a stand against this thing. Hear you loud and clear and I'm not debating that.
There is a problem in a much grander scope though, that the children ARE getting these things, that it's still astonishingly easy for anyone (of a legal, but still ridiculously young) age to get them... and leave them lying around. The actual sale of the weapon may be (mildly) regulated, but after it leaves the POS standards get a LOT more lax. Making it "more illegal" as in "more restricted" or better still, "more regulated" is DEFINITELY going to help.
And the point I was making was that the problem goes a lot deeper than the band-aid(tm) of banning (alright, restricting the sale to minors) of a video game is going to help.
Not to mention the additional point - that restricting the sale because it depicts violence against LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS... as opposed to all the other games which show the perfectly acceptable violence to other human beings.
What is the difference between a Law Enforcement official and a "civilian"? One is trained with a few extra skills, and is charged with a duty to ensure that certain activities - harmful to others - don't take place.
Grabbing a pumpaction and blowing away a cop is just as bad as twelve-gauging any other human being.
So if you're going to ban a game simply because it shows violence towards Law Enforcement Officials, you'd better ban every other game with any violence in the world.
And, as mentioned in a previous post, I'm sure that bottling up of one outlet of violence will certainly cure all the ills of a world populated by humans who get an endorphin high in the circumstances surrounding a (typically violent) crime.
You (generic-you) REALLY want to correct the anti-cop problem? Correct the human biology and/or the human psychology and society. Pulling a videogame off the shelf because it depicts violence SPECIFICALLY AGAINST Law Enforcers is NOT going to help the problem. At best, it'll have no effect. More likely, it's going to turn the pressure cooker up a couple of degrees.
I'll accept a ban on violent video games... right after they ban child-accessible weapons and ammunition and not a moment before.
Videogames don't kill people, people wielding weapons kill people.
Who's willing to bet money that banning violent videogames may actually lead to a statistically significant RISE in actual violence?
---
(I realise this is my second original post on the topic. I work tech support and my first post was written before I had to just deal with a client. I've just had to deal with a network problem and client complaining about said problem, hence the vehemence in this post...)
... is the first game I can remember playing in ages that gives you no penalty for blowing away (or chokeholding, as I prefer) civilians (as in, in the mailrooms).
Having said that, I just want to make clear I ONLY started chokeholding the civilians because I was afraid they'd turn into Agents if I left them behind me (now I realise your first introduction to an Agent is made blatantly obvious... I'll be toning down the more anti-social behaviour in my ETM playing now...).
In high-school physics/electronics class, I used to get the lead out of a Pacer (propelling pencil, not a car), put it between two alligator clips and run 12 volts DC through them. Just like a light bulb, it burns rather brightly. Just unlike a light bulb, I didn't have it encased in a glass-sealed vacuum. Not to be funny, but I got a LOT of molecules to emit light just by applying electricity to them.
Having RTF(under-detail-laden)A, a couple of questions spring to mind:
1) What's done to prevent the rapid over-oxidation, especially in something that astonishingly thin?
2) How long until LECNTs replaced those old-fashioned LEDs that are already providing so many of the household and street-traffic lights around today?:-)
(and just because I have positive karma and realised it don't make no difference anymore...)
Slashdot Mirror
> Also, hero density is going to be an issue. The DC 'verse has, what, ... "uh", indeed. Not to be picky, but have you actually READ any DC titles?
... and that's all just in DC-bloody-America. Forget the fact that there's the rest of the world as well.
> a few dozen heroes on the entire bloody planet? Few enough that
> crossovers are a special event
There are a few dozen heroes who just tried out for the JLA's last recruitment drive. AND they spun off a reserve. The Titans have a record of "a few dozen" in their own historical ranks. According to the DC1Million, there'll be a dozen Supermans alone in the next few centuries. How many Supergirls are there now, three or four?
"Special Event"? Annual crossover arcs are - well, annual. Almost every month there's at least one title with a guest character on the cover.
When they DO have their annual crossovers they usually have some hero gathering on the (now apparently wrecked JLA moonbase) where the biggest halls are completely filled and some people need to sit on the high galleries above.
Remember that the "Kingdom Come" Else/whateverthehellWorlds was set only one or two generations later where there were so many superhero-powered children there were DAILY turf-wars over most of the planet.
"Secret Files" used to run "pages" from a celebrity magazine - devoted to superhero celebrities. If there are so many superheroes in the DCU they can run a celebrity magazine...
I only read three regular DC titles now (Green Lantern, Flash, JLA). All this, I can see just by reading the three regulars.
"Hero density" is already an issue. And in more ways than one.
I take your point. Especially the bit about the anger. Indeed, I'm taking that reality check to the teller at the bank. Consider me chilling.
... and what kinda kicks do you (no, not you Kyle, I know) get out of pulling crap like this? ESPECIALLY WHEN we've something GENUINELY like this in the Discovery Institute's Wedge Strategy? The sort of crap that actually got an airing in court?
But then why's the redirection happening?
Jengajam and NetAuthority are registered in two different places and two different IP addresses, running on (thank you, nmap) two different operating systems.
Why is it that, to see the content of the linked article, you have to hit a historical cache? Why, and for that matter, how is the redirection happening?
Last few days, Slashdot's been putting out the articles on the diminishment of Science and the rise of Fundamentalism in America. And by the way America, the fallout of this crap hits other countries too, y'know.
It's enough our idiot politicians suck up to yours and saddle us with the FTA that's causing NO end of troubles... but now the Christian Right's trying to slime its way across the world until all the atlas is blood-red.
So Rudis's NetAuthority page is really, let's be honest, NOT a good idea. That's at least heading in the direction of making airplane crash jokes. On 9/11. In earshot of grieving victims.
Ew.
... wtf?
... "let them know that the Internet, while being an extremely important and useful tool in today's society, also contains many dark places that may lead their souls astray from the path of God. Do not be afraid to scare them! The Internet is a scary place!"
"You too can be a part of the Net Authority and help us eliminate offensive material from the Internet. By reading and understanding the Internet Acceptable Use Policy, and our guide on how to spot offending material, you can arm yourself with all you need to do God's work on the Internet."
That fucking Wedge Strategy. AGAIN.
And check their "Acceptable Use Policy". They've got FIVE COMMANDMENTS!
Jengajam's supposed to be registered to a guy in Israel. This NetAuthority's registered to someone in FLORIDA.
Fine, call me a troll, I don't give a rat's ass. But explain to me again HTF letting the U.S., an increasingly Christian-oriented nation have control of the roots supposed to be a GOOD thing again?
I just wanted to follow a hyperlink which was probably gonna be a funny after reading a Slashdot article about the Trek DVD release.
NOW I'm being told, and I quote:
<blockquote>
"Since this policy applies to the entire Internet, we felt that it should be spelled out as simply and as universally understandable as possible.
As a result of this, we decided that the best way to write this document would be to model it after something that everyone knows and follows (or at least should!) in their daily lives already. We chose God's own law--The Ten Commandments."
</blockquote>
That is so fucking it. I have had enough.
And I REALLY fucking wish the "confirm I'm not a script" keyword wasn't "almighty" for me to even post this.
... "hell has frozen over jokes"?
/etc/apt/sources.list and include a couple of TESTING sources, you'll get updates every week or three. Sometimes it's as simple as :%s/stable/testing/ .
The whole point of Debian stable is that it's a locked down STABLE release with only tried-and-true software.
You want updates sooner? Edit
Can we let the Deb bashing end now?
The novel covers this a lot better than the movie does; near the end of the movie, Yoda says "into exile, I must go". In the novel, there's a lot more critical self-analysis on Yoda's part; specifically, that he's trained the Jedi to be just like HIS Masters were... and that the Sith had changed and adapted in the last thousand years; and the Jedi had been left behind and were ineffectual against the Sith. :-)
Basically, he realises that a whole new approach has to be taken in training Jedi. So the Jedi seeming narrow and dogmatic is precisely the flaw which led to their end.
Oh, and everyone knowing the damn kid was too dangerous to be a Padawan and Qui-Gon was an idiot.
For what it's worth, here's the feedback I wrote...
[LETTER]
In a recent article, Stephen Evans, the BBC North America business correspondent wrote:
"So, it seems likely that the perpetrators of the MyDoom virus and its variants are internet vandals with a specific grudge.
SCO is the big, bad company that violates one of their sacred principles, as they would see it.
There's no proof, of course, but it must be one of the theories at the top of any investigator's list."
Some points:
1) This article displays an ignorance on the part of the *business* (not I.T., I notice) correspondent - Linux software and Microsoft Windows software are generally incompatible - a program written for one generally won't run on another; a virus, which uses system-specific features of the computer on which it runs will not run on a different operating system. Whoever wrote this must have been competent and conversant with the inner details of programming for Microsoft Windows (something Evans either does not understand or neglects to communicate to the less knowledgeable reader). Furthermore I suggest Mr Evans do some research on the number of Linux viruses versus Windows viruses; if this "evil" damage was wrought by people skilled enough to program for BOTH platforms, there would be a significantly higher number of Linux viruses.
2) Evans has also done apparently no clear research into the actual event/issue itself (where one visit and one search of any anti-virus company's website - say, Symantec - would've yielded informative and clear results); the virus SPREADS through e-mail, but then attacks the SCO site through intensive, but otherwise *normal* Web requests / mechanisms. BBC directors, managers and editors, please direct your journalists to research stories more carefully. Please do not dignify inaccurate, lacking or plainly incorrect stories - or their authors - with publication.
3) "So it seems likely"; "there's no proof of course". I am 32, born and live in Australia and work/study in IT (with both Microsoft Windows AND Linux work); since my pre-teen years, I've had a respect for the BBC as being the pinnacle of both journalism and television (journalistic and entertainment) history. This Evans article was unacceptable; not journalism, it hardly even deserves the terms "scaremongering" or "mudslinging". Either Evans is either entirely ignorant of the situation, or he deserves naught but scorn and shame. Many readers of technical fora within the Internet have been calling Evans's journalistic integrity (and indeed capability) into question; deservedly so, it seems.
I am sure that many people would ask, if at all possible, that a clarification be posted (if not a retraction and a clarification in its place); and that better still, the BBC holds to its once-unassailable reputation as the premiere reliable and respectable disseminator.
Thank you for your attention.
[/LETTER]
Help what? Are you arguing that we should all continue downloading mp3s of albums we should be purchasing?
Slashdot's general stance on this is unclear. They seem to admit that it's illegal, yet post articles that try to claim it's okay. It's just a justification of the convenience that people have gotten used to.
Well, let's start with Copyright law. Lucky for you guys in the U.S., you have Fair Use provisions.
AUSTRALIANS DON'T.
I go out, buy a CD, take it home. Say (and don't bother to slag me off for my taste), I buy the soundtrack to "Daredevil". It's going to be part of my Marvel Comics collection next to the DVD and so on. So I choose to put it in the computer, rip it, put the original back in its case and back on the shelf. As a matter of fact, because I bought the "Daredevil" soundtrack and liked some of its songs so much, I also went out and bought the "Evanescence" album. I paid to listen to the damn music - TWO ALBUMS, THANKS - and I have no broadband so I'm not going to be filesharing it.
But according to Australian law, that's illegal.
So, as you mention, let's get to the justification. Why is it illegal? Because ARIA or RIAA or FLA or POQ say that we're robbing the artists of their profit.
Shall we get into the tired argument of how the artists aren't seeing the profit? Shall we get into the valid point of how I ALREADY PAID FOR THIS? Shall we talk about the fact that the Music Machine has claimed that CD burners and cassette tapes will ruin the music industry? Shall we talk about all the illegal things that the Industry has proposed be done to counter filesharing?
Slashdot's general stance on this is unclear. They seem to admit that it's illegal, yet post articles that try to claim it's okay. It's just a justification of the convenience that people have gotten used to.
You're making the automatic assumption that if it's illegal, then it's not okay. Where is the guarantee or the Law of Physics that says (legal is_equivalent_to okay)?
That's why you're having a confusion with "Slashdot's general stance". Not to mention, as you said and I already explained, "I actually buy the shit I want" too; thanks to the crap exchange rate, I spend more than $10 too.
And as far as Don't tell me all those kids and college students downloading everything under the sun doesn't affect their tendency to buy the CDs instead. It's illogical and a sign of deluding yourselves into thinking otherwise goes, it DOES affect their tendency. But note all the studies, and all the people who DON'T have broadband, download a SAMPLE, and THEN go out and BUY the album. It's illogical of you to have leapt to the wrong assumption.
Neither's watching anything you've taped from TV to VHS more than once.
... will it really help? We face a thousand-and-one lawyers and school or workplace administrators running in fear from those lawyers and they still refuse to hear this new, or disregard it completely. I AM Australian. My workplace IS a school (well, a university) where I also study; last semester, that included a semester of Law for IT students; we had to put up with the Copyright Law 1968 and its 21st Century amendments; in our workplace, they've cracked down on MP3s and the central IT section have instituted semi-regular searches of our Windows XP administrative shares (suits me; 1: I use Ogg and 2: I keep my personal music - yes, from CDs I bought - on my Linux desktop anyway).
As has already been said, 'nuff said, heard it all already. Knew it.
But how does this news get to the lawmakers, to the people whose ears are already stuffed with campaign donations by some other "interested" party?
[...] bullshit! 'Cause I (Ben Affleck) wasn't WITH a hooker today! Ha haaa! ... or... was I...? Maybe if I check my blog...
I'm still holding to the hope they'll do it all with cave-made Scrabble letters pulled out of a folded towel...
... a viable field to get into and if so will it last?
Why would we not expect IT to be a valuable field to get into until:
- the Meteor hits
- the second coming of Jesus and (Arnie-unrelated) Judgment Day (although any "heaven" [HIE'CIA] without computers is IMO misnamed)?
- the current Administration starts ramping up the DMCA (at which point we all go underground anyway?)
- Rob Enderle becomes a government advisor for Information Technology?
- Slashdot itself falls victim to the Slashdot effect?
- dammit to hell they blew it all up and the damn dirty stinking apes don't use computers?
I'd like to see the moderator of the previous comment JUSTIFY the down-moderation, thanks. As a non-US resident/citizen (and, by the way, actually a native Australian of Russian parentage), I keep hearing stories (some of them from HERE on Slashdot, by the way) of how miserable the privacy situation/environment is getting in the US.
g h*n atorGregg'sEncryptionRegime*cough*m entEncryptionBackdoors*cough*r ialism*cough*e ofpresident*cou gh*
*cough*TIA*cough*
*cough*Patriot Act*cough*
*cough*DMCA-suppressing-academics*cou
*cough*encryption=munitions*cough*
*cough*Se
*cough*Govern
*cough*Department of Homeland Security*cough*
*cough*BrandnewchargesofU.S.impe
*cough*SupremeCourtoverrodemychoic
Hey, look - if you jam your head up your ass, we go back in time 19 years.
Keep your pathetic moderation rights. I'll keep what's left of my personal freedoms... which are better than yours. Hey, I still have relatives who live in Russia, and RUSSIA'S personal freedoms are starting to look better than yours.
The price of eternal vigilance... IS your freedom.
Go ahead, downmod me; once I get this rant out of my system I won't care anymore. Doesn't stop the point being valid and that's what matters.
... "sneakernet" back in our uni/college days.
Of course, then we did it with floppies; now we do it with DVDs. Latency indeed doth suck, but the bandwidth is pretty fantastic...
At the risk of sounding trite, the price of eternal vigilance is freedom.
... they turned down 90% rebates!? How could they!? ... 'cause this way they pay 0%...?
(oh yeah, and all those other pesky things like stability, configurability, modifiability...).
I understand the point you're making, in that even though there's definitely legislation in place ordering a stand against this thing. Hear you loud and clear and I'm not debating that.
There is a problem in a much grander scope though, that the children ARE getting these things, that it's still astonishingly easy for anyone (of a legal, but still ridiculously young) age to get them... and leave them lying around. The actual sale of the weapon may be (mildly) regulated, but after it leaves the POS standards get a LOT more lax. Making it "more illegal" as in "more restricted" or better still, "more regulated" is DEFINITELY going to help.
And the point I was making was that the problem goes a lot deeper than the band-aid(tm) of banning (alright, restricting the sale to minors) of a video game is going to help.
Not to mention the additional point - that restricting the sale because it depicts violence against LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS... as opposed to all the other games which show the perfectly acceptable violence to other human beings.
What is the difference between a Law Enforcement official and a "civilian"? One is trained with a few extra skills, and is charged with a duty to ensure that certain activities - harmful to others - don't take place.
Grabbing a pumpaction and blowing away a cop is just as bad as twelve-gauging any other human being.
So if you're going to ban a game simply because it shows violence towards Law Enforcement Officials, you'd better ban every other game with any violence in the world.
And, as mentioned in a previous post, I'm sure that bottling up of one outlet of violence will certainly cure all the ills of a world populated by humans who get an endorphin high in the circumstances surrounding a (typically violent) crime.
You (generic-you) REALLY want to correct the anti-cop problem? Correct the human biology and/or the human psychology and society. Pulling a videogame off the shelf because it depicts violence SPECIFICALLY AGAINST Law Enforcers is NOT going to help the problem. At best, it'll have no effect. More likely, it's going to turn the pressure cooker up a couple of degrees.
Ignore it, don't bother modding the parent down. It's just a guy I work with sitting behind me having a bit of fun.
:-) )
Besides that, what's the point of downmodding an AC? Save your Karma for when it's efficient.
(Or is there some CHEAT INFINITE_KARMA code I can punch in?
Why the hell didn't I think of this when I posted last night?
b le_ than_dead_Officials)
This law will be the PERFECT opportunity... to adopt Open Source programming of more platform independent or cross-ported games!
Regulate sales all you like, sparky. How do you regulate downloading and voluntary donations? Hey, Washington? Hey, bigfella?
Regulate THIS! (#include your_own_mental_image.h)
(#include all_previous_comments_re_dead_people_more_accepta
Man, what the fuck are you talking about?
Since when are sales of guns to minors allowed? You have to be 21 to legally purchase a handgun, 18 for rifles and shotguns.
a) I didn't say "sales", I said "child-accessible".
b) Oh, does that mean Columbine never happened?
... "From my cold dead hand!"
I'll accept a ban on violent video games... right after they ban child-accessible weapons and ammunition and not a moment before.
Videogames don't kill people, people wielding weapons kill people.
Who's willing to bet money that banning violent videogames may actually lead to a statistically significant RISE in actual violence?
---
(I realise this is my second original post on the topic. I work tech support and my first post was written before I had to just deal with a client. I've just had to deal with a network problem and client complaining about said problem, hence the vehemence in this post...)
... is the first game I can remember playing in ages that gives you no penalty for blowing away (or chokeholding, as I prefer) civilians (as in, in the mailrooms).
Having said that, I just want to make clear I ONLY started chokeholding the civilians because I was afraid they'd turn into Agents if I left them behind me (now I realise your first introduction to an Agent is made blatantly obvious... I'll be toning down the more anti-social behaviour in my ETM playing now...).
No, five previous incarnations. Neo is the sixth One. Or the first sixth...
Whoa. Most cool (pun originally unintended). Informative; thank you.
In high-school physics/electronics class, I used to get the lead out of a Pacer (propelling pencil, not a car), put it between two alligator clips and run 12 volts DC through them. Just like a light bulb, it burns rather brightly. Just unlike a light bulb, I didn't have it encased in a glass-sealed vacuum. Not to be funny, but I got a LOT of molecules to emit light just by applying electricity to them.
:-)
:->
Having RTF(under-detail-laden)A, a couple of questions spring to mind:
1) What's done to prevent the rapid over-oxidation, especially in something that astonishingly thin?
2) How long until LECNTs replaced those old-fashioned LEDs that are already providing so many of the household and street-traffic lights around today?
(and just because I have positive karma and realised it don't make no difference anymore...)
3) Profit!