> If the television industry stepped outside of the courtroom and into the living room with their concerns, suddenly the general public would be much more aware of these products and their capabilities would be that much more appealing.
Which is what bugs me about this.
The court shouldn't even be fucking involved in this. It's legal to piss while you watch TV. It's legal to tape a show to an analog VCR and fast-forward through the commercials. There's no law that says that VCR's can only fast-forward at a certain rate - just an engineering problem with spinning a shaft and winding a spool of magnetic tape. A VCR with extremely powerful motors (and really strong tape:-) could do this and nobody would bat an eye.
The difference between the VCR and PVR is that a VCR engineered to do that would cost thousands, and the tape, hundreds. The PVR makers have merely built a better ad-skipping mousetrap, by swapping analog stretchy tape for bits on a disk and a CPU to decode them.
So how the fuck are the Content Cartel able to browbeat judges into thinking that 30-second skip is somehow worthy of a lawsuit? (Yes, I know that's not the thrust of this suit, but with that fucknozzle from AOL/TW calling PVR users "thieves", we know it's coming). Why the hell aren't such suits immediately recognized as SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participations) and thrown out?
All the PVR industry needs to do to achieve total world domination(tm) is run one 30-second spot, something like this:
[Guy comes up wearing an ugly suit, looking totally cheezy]
"Hi. This is Ron Popeil (or Earl Scheib, or Ed McMahon, or any other "guy whose career is now over and he's only famous for his obnoxious commercials"). Tivo (or ReplayTV) are paying me a lot of money to say this. If you buy a Tivo or ReplayTV, not only can you pause live TV, but you will never have to see this commercial, or any other commercial again!
Presto! Instant consumer adoption - it gives the consumer what he wants - the ability to watch a 2-hour broadcast of a movie in 90 minutes. (The ability to watch a whole baseball game in 20 minutes;-)
The consumer wants this, but they can't imagine that it's possible. Your job is to show them that it's not only possible, but it's here, and available for the low, low price of $10/month.
Will you get sued? Probably. But you're getting sued by these bastards anyways. Why not get the public on your side now, before the Content Cartel gets Congress to pass a law banning 30-second-skip or other ad-skipipng features in PVRs? (Or a judge bans your product, which is what the Cartel is trying to have done now?)
The Cartel can get away with it because Joe Sixpack doesn't know he can skip commercials.
I know this is horribly old-fashioned, but lots of people have made assloads of money by simply making the consumer aware of a need they didn't know they had ("I hate the 3-4 minute ad breaks") and that you have a product that meets that need ("You mean I don't have to watch commericals if I buy your box?").
When Joe Sixpack realizes he can skip commercials, it'll be too late. Just like Sony vs. Betamax - once Joe Sixpack found out how valuable time-shifting was, no court, (and just as importanly, no Congresscritters), will dare take it away from him.
Why work with the broadcasters? You guys sell hardware and subscription-based software. I can't see any legal reason why 30-second skip is any more "illegal" than fast-forwarding on a VCR, or channel-surfing during the commercials.
FUCK the broadcasters. You don't need them.
> Anakin is far more annoying. Terrible, terrible acting and I shudder watching every scene he is in. Jar-Jar gives the film some humor which overall is fairly dry. Ok the tongue thing in Anakin's house was lame.
No shit. What's up with Natalie Portman falling for Anakin when she can have a guy with a tongue that can do that?
(Although, now that I think about it, both alternatives are pretty sick at the time of TPM. Lucas musta been on some weird shit when he wrote that script.)
> > Like any young man, he is torn between the duties of being a Jedi and pursing the woman he loves. > >Did I miss something? I could have sworn no 19 yr old has had to choose between being a Jedi and boinking Nat Portman.:-P Hell, I don't think anyone has ever had that choice.
Probably not. So we really don't know what the right choice would be in Anakin's situation.
We can, however, say with some certainty that anyone who's ever had to choose between posting on Slashdot and boinking Natalie Portman, either (a) chose the hot grits, or (b) chose poorly.
I can't excerpt enough of it without it being a spoiler. Just read the whole thing - it's hysterical, and the scumbucket being baited more than gets his just desserts.
> Some medical offices use hand-held UV cleaners that kill keyboard germs in only five seconds. [link to "natural solutions" company deleted]
STOP.
While a UV-C (aka shortwave UV, 280-100nm, germicidal) lamp might be safe and effective for things that fit in an enclosed sterilizing chamber, the unit on the web site clearly isn't designed for that. In order to use it on a keyboard, you'd have to defeat the safety interlock and hold it over the keyboard. This does not sound like a good idea.
While your hands are designed to withstand some UV-C exposure before getting hellaciously sunburned, your eyeballs certainly aren't. Exposure to UV-C is a great way to get cataracts, corneal, or retinal burns.
If you were to use this unit as depicted (pointing an unshielded UV-C source at household items), the reflected UV-C (which you can't see, because it's outside the visible spectrum) from these items could eventually cause serious, permanent damage to your eyes.
Furthermore, the type of person to worry about "germs" on their combs, door handles, and phones to the extent of spending $180 for a UVC lamp for regular sterilizations thereof (I'm trying not to say "hypochondriac":-) is precisely the kind of person likely to overuse such a device and overexpose their eyes to it.
Furthermore, most of the gunk-retaining surfaces in a keyboard are hidden from light. So if you're worried about germs from gunk in your keyboard, a UV light isn't gonna kill everything anyways. Disassemble the keyboard, wash it with good ol' soap and water, dry thoroughly, and reassemble.
And finally, if you still want to fuck with UVC, $130 for a hand-held 4W UVC source is pretty pricy compared to $40 for a comparably-sized EPROM eraser.
Awright, public service mode off. Now for the fun gadget on the page -- looks like a 4W battery-operated blacklight. (You can get a 15W 18" wall-mountable blacklight from Home Despot for the same price, though, which is way more fun, 'cuz it "lights up" the whole room.)
Another funny note about the site linked to by the parent post - the "personal inspection light" the tout is just a blacklight (UV-A) tube.
It works because many of the compounds in piss, puke, and shit, as well as some - but not all - molds, will fluoresce under UV-A. (You pr0n-hounds are safe, jizz doesn't glow under UVA)
If you shine a blacklight on someone's pants and notice big splotches of glowing stuff, it doesn't mean they've pissed themselves recently, it means they poured their laundry detergent onto the load of laundry before adding the water. Most laundry detergents make clothes "whiter" by adding a fluorescent dye. The clothes look drab under normal lighting, but if you go outside, the small amount of UVA in sunlight will make the clothes look "brighter".
Another fun trick to play with blacklights is to wave 'em around monitors and watch the phosphors glow. The old-school Sun 21" monochrome tubes really sing when hit with UVA.
Bottom line: UVA (blacklight) is fun to play with.
> The problem with this is that you're making the same mistaken assumptions about the solar
system/galaxy/universe that most humans are making about the earth... > > That there are infinite resources, and that they exist for the sole purpose of being consumed by humans. This is the kind of philosophy that has put us (and overpopulation) where we are...
...where we are? You mean, like, "at the top of the food chain?"
You mean, like "with Joe Sixpack having a higher standard of living today than any aristocrat on the planet 500 years ago?"
You mean, like "with doubled lifespans over the past 100 years"?
The meek will inherit the earth. After the rest of us are done with it, having left to take the stars.
> Just because Palestinians are terrorists doesnt mean they dont have REASON to do so, its not like they have an army so what else can they do really.
Umm... when an autonomous region (whether it be a "country" in the diplomatic sense of the word) doesn't have an army, and wants an army, there's always the option of, gee, I dunno, raising an army.
You raise an army in one of two ways: conscription (your cops go door-to-door and say "Abdude, you're getting a job in the army!"), or voluntary enlistment (you put out a big sign saying "Uncle Yasser Wants You").
Armies then defend their territory against other armies, or attack the armies of other nations in order to gain their territory.
Key concept here: other armies.
If your leaders encourage (whether through tacit support, rabble-rousing speeches, or even direct orders) you to target noncombatants, you're not part of an army. You're a murderer, thug, or an assassin.
The difference between armies and murderers is that if you're in an army and start blowing away noncombatants, God help you, because your commanding officers won't.
Now, we could go on forever about how the PA doesn't have enough resources to raise an army.
Fair enough, but why's that? How come a bunch of Jews get plunked in the only place in the Middle East without oil, can manage to raise their citizens' standard of living in the space of a generation, far outstripping their nearby competitors, despite their competitors' overwhelming advantage in terms of population and natural resources.
It's not a Zionist Conspiracy, it's just simple economics. Private property and free markets beat kingdoms every time.
> when you take their land and attempt to push them out of the middle east
because you refuse to respect them
What about Jordan? Gobs of land mass, plenty of like-thinking Moslems there, and it's 90% of what was originally "Palestine". What was wrong with that? Oh, right. Jews next door. Can't have that.
If Yasser had set up a market system and concentreated more on the economic development of his people, rather than the extermination of the Jews, he might be worthy of respect.
Until then, to hell with him and all who follow his way.
> Worse, just when you might
have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you
can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce your own
stereotypes.
With 80G drives down to $120, I was thinking of picking one up, but I wondered if I'd ever fill the damn thing.
I wondered that about five years ago when 6.4G drives became cheap, and then I discovered MP3s.
It's reassuring to know that pirated content will continue to grow fast enough to keep hard drive manufacturers in business, at least to the 10-Terabyte level. Woohoo!
> story changing constantly without making note of it... sounds hella like 1984 to me.
Some sick individuals view this as a feature, not a bug.
When this happens, these people presume that what was changed (and the more extensive the attempt to cover up the fact of the change) has some bearing on reality than what replaced it.
Personally, I feel disappointment when I notice the malreports and misprints. Sloppy work is one thing, but this is more than sloppy, it's dangerous. At this early, critical stage (when the malquotes may still bear some resemblance to reality), it's horrible OPSEC. It may actually enable such misguided individuals to make educated guesses as to who wanted the change and why they wanted it changed. The whole damn thing could come unglued.
For the diseased folks who actually keep track of these sorts of miniscule things when there are plenty of bright shiny things to look at, fine - go ahead and do your dirty work in the privacy of your own mind (for now), but don't ever keep copies the old malreported news stories around. Miniluv hates that.
(Are you listening, you RCS/CVS developers? You see what kind of treason you're enabling with your so-called "revision control" tools? Knock it right off this instant! Minitrue believes in Revision Control - the real kind, not the Goldsteinist malreport-preservation you do! How dare you corrupt Newspeak by calling that revision control! How on earth can you control revisions when you have a complete history of every change made? Pure Goldsteinism!)
> And yeah, my heart gets going a bit faster when I'm playing games, but isn't that part of relaxing?
To borrow a Clintonian phrase, it depends on the meaning of relaxing.
These guys appear to be using the metaphor of the game as a way to make biofeeback (that is, the user training himself to enter a particular mental state at will), well, less boring.
For gaming, I'm one of those old-school 80s types. Get an arcade machine and master one of those pure-adrenaline-overkill games. Robotron:2084 and Tempest are probably tops for this. Lots of flashing lights, sounds, and you're totally interrupt-driven the duration of the play.
When you're just starting out, it's frustrating. When you're merely "good", it's fun, but you work up a sweat. When you get past that point and can keep a game going for 15-20 minutes, you get a hypnotic effect. Most players call it "the zone", and it's probably not too different from the mental states achieved by great athletes - you're barely conscious of yourself, focussed solely on your game, and your performance skyrockets.
The neat part is that you're no longer thinking per se, you just... umm... are. It's not "move joystick to dodge missile", it's "move this way and watch missile that I didn't even see fly harmlessly past me".
> betcha when they find out it uses the advanced technology of their e-meters, they'll sue.
So? You just get real good at the game, walk into a Clam office, hook yourself up, and beat the cult's "auditor" at his own game.
Then you walk out, clacking your teeth together loudly, while ranting (between clacks) about how "YOUR PUNY E-METER IS NO MATCH FOR US! SOON OUR EMPEROR WILL ESCAPE FROM HIS PRISON AND SOON, ALL J00R BASE WILL BELONG TO XENU!"
The jaw-clacking really does fuck 'em up - I actually did the "clack your jaws and say 'poor little clams, snap snap snap'" routine on one cultist who was "body-routing fresh meat into the org" (read: "recruiting gullible people on the street by offering free personality tests"), and the cultist actually *flinched* and rubbed its jaw. I just laughed, said "Hail Xenu", and walked on. What a cult of weaklings. Why can't they make it go right? *giggle*
> I think the 'Troll' (as is marked right now) has a point, I was basically apalled in 2nd grade Lutheran School when I learned of the "Childrens Crusade". Make a game based on that, just don't put the religous twist on it right away.
Thanks for Getting It.:)
I was aiming for a or +1, (Ha Ha Only Serious) and lost my gamble.
Holy books from the three main world religions have just as much sex and violence in 'em - whether as historical accounts or as exhortations to the faithful - as video games. (Well, like I said, minus the carjackings.)
And I think anyone would recognize that the atrocities carried out in the name of the three main world religions have a considerably higher body count than video games.
Of course, religion's been around a lot longer than video gaming.
Then again, I think it's a pretty safe bet that the body count racked up by kids brought up on violent religious beliefs this afternoon is in excess of the body count racked up by kids who grew up on violent video games.
Compared with religion's power to fuck with people's heads and inspire them to murderous violence, GTA3 is pretty small potatoes.
I'd prefer to see as much speech as possible - however repugnant I may find it - protected. (Junk fax and spam and telemarketing fail because they're trespass to chattel. Virtual kid pr0n fails, IMHO, because legalizing it implies that when rendering tech makes it possible to produce something indistinguishable from "the real thing", the scum who produce "the real thing" will have a foolproof way to raise "reasonable doubt" in the minds of jurors.)
But if (as it appears) we're gonna throw away the First Amendment and eliminate certain forms of speech because they might incite some people to violence, we need to stop looking at video games and start looking at religious fanatacism.
If Microsoft can require an iMac to have a Windows license, maybe that's why California "needed" to buy 250,000 Oracle licenses, even though that's more than one Oracle license per state employee!
"Look, just because you can't even install or use the software doesn't mean you don't have to pay for it! I paid $25,000 to your campaign, and I want my $95M in revenues, dammit!"
> > decapitation, amputation, killing of humans with lethal weapons or through hand-to-hand combat, rape, car-jackings, aggravated assault and other violent felonies > > Admit it, you just lifted this from an ad for Grand Theft Auto 3.
*lol*
I think you're onto something, though. There are very few games that feature car-jackings.
Any Constitutional landsharks around? I think this law could fall simply on the basis that it's pretty obviously targeted at one game specifically.
This smells a lot like a law that says "We're not allowed to pass a law banning any specific brand of macaroni and cheese, but, uh, any manufacturer whose name has five letters, begins with 'K' and ends with 'T' is banned!"
I'm not saying this is a Bill of Attainder (one could argue that GTA3's creators could take it to court on behalf of their distributors), but it's pretty damn close.
> It doesn't say "realistically" depict. Nor does it even say "graphically" depict; it's a valid statement to say that "Zork depicts a fantasy world" or that "Zork depicts the possibility of gruesome death at the claws of monsters lurking in the dark". > >
An aggressive, if stupid, DA could twist the law into banning, [... ]
You left out the other possibility: Corrupt.
What better way to make sure your competitor's game never gets to market than to tip off the DA in some ultraconservative town in East Buttfuck, Montana, and have your competitor's company bogged down in standards/litigation/reviews for six months?
This doesn't happen in Hollyweird with movies (except on rare occasions) because the Content Cartel has agreed that NC-17 movies don't get sold. So everyone makes R at most.
Likewise with RIAA - good God, we almost had Tipper "Explicit Lyrics must be banned" Gore as First Lady. *shudder* - but there's a cartel there that limits what gets out.
The game development community hasn't had time to form cartels and lobby groups to the extent that the dinosaur industries have, and as a result, we've got the current situation - they're a sitting duck for crap like this law.
Wallace and Grommet Doctrines... *ROFLMAO* - well trolled, dude!
Though I think you do deserve your Insightful modpoints - your Article 3 ("as is Deemed Apt for the Preservation of a Free and Fair Societie.") is pretty much how the Canadian definition of free speech would have been written in an older dialect of English.
For you Americans who don't quite get what I'm on about, in Canada, you have free speech (and other civil rights) only insofar as the government decides you need them. Your rights are "only" subject to whatever "reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society" - as per Section 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982. Freedom of speech, just watch what you say.
If that's not enough, there's Section 33 - the "notwithstanding clause", which states, in effect, that even if a law does break the Charter, you can still pass laws that violate the Charter as long as you admit it while you write the law. Basically, you invoke it by adding a phrase like "notwithstanding that this law is unconstitutional, we're passing it anyways."
That's why you can still go to jail for having English on a sign in Quebec, even though such a law is blatantly unconstitutional.
"games that feature decapitation, amputation, killing of humans with lethal weapons or through hand-to-hand combat, rape, car-jackings, aggravated assault and other violent felonies"
Ban those. After all, those aren't free speech, according to our judiciary.
Meantime, kids grow up with the Bible (Mk. I for the Jews, Mk. II for the Christians), and some with the Koran - all three of which feature plenty of all of the above, (OK, with the possible exception of carjackings, though I'm sure the Hebrews ripped off a couple of chariots while hauling ass out of Egypt) - all of a sudden, it's "Congress Shall Make No Law Abridging..." again.
And while we're at it - virtual kiddie pr0n is protected free speech, and so are junk faxes.
So while we wade through junk faxes every day, and our kids have to put up with a flood of spams for "hot lolita incest teen in barnyard", and we've got a whole segment of the population that's raising a generation of kids taught that the extermination of the Jews is religious duty because it's in their "holy" book (at least the Christians and Jews decided the calls for genocide in their holy books no longer applied), but it's a federal crime to sell Grand Theft Auto or Mortal Kombat to a kid because it might warp his innocent little mind?!?!?
What the almighty high holy fuck are our judges and legislators smoking, and would they at least be so kind to least legalize it?
> I love how the article is titled "The Pop-Up Ad Campaign from Hell"--and you get a pop-up when
you first visit it. Also a nice Flash ad delay when you hit Back.
Really? Funny, I never saw that. Of course, I don't do Javashit. Or Flush. Gee, it really sucks to be in the dark ages, maybe I should upgrade... tomorrow.:)
> Hell, Ellison would do something loony like buy Costa Rica and turn it into the Federated Republic of Oracle, complete with its own airforce and navy.
Costa Rica? Fuck, that's what he's doing to California. What do you think that $95M Oraclegate scandal's all about?:-)
> Sure, capitalism is a cure all! Tell that to the people who live directly below me that can't feed themselves if the kids eat.
Capitalism means finding the best your money can buy, not the most convenient or cheapest.
Maybe that means spending $10.00 on a pound and a half of fish, some green onions, a pat of butter, a splash of white wine and grinding up some toast for bread crumbs, and some rice. Chop onions, lay between two filets, pour in half an inch of wine, sprinkle with bread crumbs, bake at 300F for an hour. Steam rice while the fish bakes. You end up with four restaurant-quality ($15.00/plate) meals for $10.00, a savings of $50.00 over a midrange restaurant, and (at a minimum) cost parity with Burger King or Kentucky Fried.
> My question is that when one company has more cash on hand than Fort Knox - doesn't that make our money worthless (or more since they don't spread it around).
Inflation is too much money chasing not enough goods. If MSFT were to go out and start buying $40B worth of fish, I might not be able to eat as well. So long as it remains MSFT's money in MSFT's vaults, it's harmless. (And indeed, beneficial, as if I believe MSFT is going to use this money to make more money, I can buy MSFT stock and own a piece of their pie.
But I digress. $40B divided by 260M people in the States is $153.00 - if Bill gave everyone a check for $153.00, how much better a place would America be?
OK, let's soak the rich -- if Bill gave everyone in the lower half (
And even if it did - with MSFT's treasury looted, from whom would you pillage next year?
There are approximately 5 million dead of famine during Russian Civil War (1917-1922), plus 30-50 million dead (excluding WW2 casualties) in Stalin's Russia, and 30 million dead of famine in Mao's "Great Leap Forward" who might beg to differ with you.
(Actually, Stalin's count may have "only" been another 5-10 million from famine. The other 40 million were executed in purges or worked to death in labor camps. So I suppose you were right - not as many people starved, per se, under Stalin.)
I'll take my changes with Capitalism, if you don't mind.
> Get them hooked on coffee. Not just something in the water, but the frigging powdered kind. Kind of
like a drug addict, where they inject it. Frogs are different though. It would diffuse right through their
skin.
We all know that if you put a frog in a pot of water and heat it up slowly, the frog won't notice, and will boil to death.
Now you're telling me that if you put a frog in a pot of water with some nice fresh-roasted and fresh-ground coffee, and heat it up slowly, the frog will notice, but it just won't care. Cool!:-)
Meantime, I have visions of programmers on vacation in Hawaii sneaking
out of the hotels at night to catch frogs and lick them in the
same way that hippies and druggies lick toads for the bufotinin. (Except that the programmer gets paid $75 per frog for every "empty" frog he turns in;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Which is what bugs me about this.
The court shouldn't even be fucking involved in this. It's legal to piss while you watch TV. It's legal to tape a show to an analog VCR and fast-forward through the commercials. There's no law that says that VCR's can only fast-forward at a certain rate - just an engineering problem with spinning a shaft and winding a spool of magnetic tape. A VCR with extremely powerful motors (and really strong tape :-) could do this and nobody would bat an eye.
The difference between the VCR and PVR is that a VCR engineered to do that would cost thousands, and the tape, hundreds. The PVR makers have merely built a better ad-skipping mousetrap, by swapping analog stretchy tape for bits on a disk and a CPU to decode them.
So how the fuck are the Content Cartel able to browbeat judges into thinking that 30-second skip is somehow worthy of a lawsuit? (Yes, I know that's not the thrust of this suit, but with that fucknozzle from AOL/TW calling PVR users "thieves", we know it's coming). Why the hell aren't such suits immediately recognized as SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participations) and thrown out?
All the PVR industry needs to do to achieve total world domination(tm) is run one 30-second spot, something like this:
Presto! Instant consumer adoption - it gives the consumer what he wants - the ability to watch a 2-hour broadcast of a movie in 90 minutes. (The ability to watch a whole baseball game in 20 minutes
The consumer wants this, but they can't imagine that it's possible. Your job is to show them that it's not only possible, but it's here, and available for the low, low price of $10/month.
Will you get sued? Probably. But you're getting sued by these bastards anyways. Why not get the public on your side now, before the Content Cartel gets Congress to pass a law banning 30-second-skip or other ad-skipipng features in PVRs? (Or a judge bans your product, which is what the Cartel is trying to have done now?)
The Cartel can get away with it because Joe Sixpack doesn't know he can skip commercials.
I know this is horribly old-fashioned, but lots of people have made assloads of money by simply making the consumer aware of a need they didn't know they had ("I hate the 3-4 minute ad breaks") and that you have a product that meets that need ("You mean I don't have to watch commericals if I buy your box?").
When Joe Sixpack realizes he can skip commercials, it'll be too late. Just like Sony vs. Betamax - once Joe Sixpack found out how valuable time-shifting was, no court, (and just as importanly, no Congresscritters), will dare take it away from him.
Why work with the broadcasters? You guys sell hardware and subscription-based software. I can't see any legal reason why 30-second skip is any more "illegal" than fast-forwarding on a VCR, or channel-surfing during the commercials. FUCK the broadcasters. You don't need them.
No shit. What's up with Natalie Portman falling for Anakin when she can have a guy with a tongue that can do that?
(Although, now that I think about it, both alternatives are pretty sick at the time of TPM. Lucas musta been on some weird shit when he wrote that script.)
>
>Did I miss something? I could have sworn no 19 yr old has had to choose between being a Jedi and boinking Nat Portman.
Probably not. So we really don't know what the right choice would be in Anakin's situation.
We can, however, say with some certainty that anyone who's ever had to choose between posting on Slashdot and boinking Natalie Portman, either (a) chose the hot grits, or (b) chose poorly.
Funniest bait I ever saw was this one: Does ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny?
I can't excerpt enough of it without it being a spoiler. Just read the whole thing - it's hysterical, and the scumbucket being baited more than gets his just desserts.
STOP.
While a UV-C (aka shortwave UV, 280-100nm, germicidal) lamp might be safe and effective for things that fit in an enclosed sterilizing chamber, the unit on the web site clearly isn't designed for that. In order to use it on a keyboard, you'd have to defeat the safety interlock and hold it over the keyboard. This does not sound like a good idea.
While your hands are designed to withstand some UV-C exposure before getting hellaciously sunburned, your eyeballs certainly aren't. Exposure to UV-C is a great way to get cataracts, corneal, or retinal burns.
If you were to use this unit as depicted (pointing an unshielded UV-C source at household items), the reflected UV-C (which you can't see, because it's outside the visible spectrum) from these items could eventually cause serious, permanent damage to your eyes.
Furthermore, the type of person to worry about "germs" on their combs, door handles, and phones to the extent of spending $180 for a UVC lamp for regular sterilizations thereof (I'm trying not to say "hypochondriac" :-) is precisely the kind of person likely to overuse such a device and overexpose their eyes to it.
Furthermore, most of the gunk-retaining surfaces in a keyboard are hidden from light. So if you're worried about germs from gunk in your keyboard, a UV light isn't gonna kill everything anyways. Disassemble the keyboard, wash it with good ol' soap and water, dry thoroughly, and reassemble.
And finally, if you still want to fuck with UVC, $130 for a hand-held 4W UVC source is pretty pricy compared to $40 for a comparably-sized EPROM eraser.
Awright, public service mode off. Now for the fun gadget on the page -- looks like a 4W battery-operated blacklight. (You can get a 15W 18" wall-mountable blacklight from Home Despot for the same price, though, which is way more fun, 'cuz it "lights up" the whole room.)
Another funny note about the site linked to by the parent post - the "personal inspection light" the tout is just a blacklight (UV-A) tube.
It works because many of the compounds in piss, puke, and shit, as well as some - but not all - molds, will fluoresce under UV-A. (You pr0n-hounds are safe, jizz doesn't glow under UVA)
If you shine a blacklight on someone's pants and notice big splotches of glowing stuff, it doesn't mean they've pissed themselves recently, it means they poured their laundry detergent onto the load of laundry before adding the water. Most laundry detergents make clothes "whiter" by adding a fluorescent dye. The clothes look drab under normal lighting, but if you go outside, the small amount of UVA in sunlight will make the clothes look "brighter".
Another fun trick to play with blacklights is to wave 'em around monitors and watch the phosphors glow. The old-school Sun 21" monochrome tubes really sing when hit with UVA.
Bottom line: UVA (blacklight) is fun to play with.
UVB and UVC, however, are not to be fscked with.
>
> That there are infinite resources, and that they exist for the sole purpose of being consumed by humans. This is the kind of philosophy that has put us (and overpopulation) where we are...
You mean, like "with Joe Sixpack having a higher standard of living today than any aristocrat on the planet 500 years ago?"
You mean, like "with doubled lifespans over the past 100 years"?
The meek will inherit the earth. After the rest of us are done with it, having left to take the stars.
I tried building that. I'm 70% of the way there.
Umm... when an autonomous region (whether it be a "country" in the diplomatic sense of the word) doesn't have an army, and wants an army, there's always the option of, gee, I dunno, raising an army.
You raise an army in one of two ways: conscription (your cops go door-to-door and say "Abdude, you're getting a job in the army!"), or voluntary enlistment (you put out a big sign saying "Uncle Yasser Wants You").
Armies then defend their territory against other armies, or attack the armies of other nations in order to gain their territory.
Key concept here: other armies.
If your leaders encourage (whether through tacit support, rabble-rousing speeches, or even direct orders) you to target noncombatants, you're not part of an army. You're a murderer, thug, or an assassin.
The difference between armies and murderers is that if you're in an army and start blowing away noncombatants, God help you, because your commanding officers won't.
Now, we could go on forever about how the PA doesn't have enough resources to raise an army.
Fair enough, but why's that? How come a bunch of Jews get plunked in the only place in the Middle East without oil, can manage to raise their citizens' standard of living in the space of a generation, far outstripping their nearby competitors, despite their competitors' overwhelming advantage in terms of population and natural resources.
It's not a Zionist Conspiracy, it's just simple economics. Private property and free markets beat kingdoms every time.
> when you take their land and attempt to push them out of the middle east because you refuse to respect them
What about Jordan? Gobs of land mass, plenty of like-thinking Moslems there, and it's 90% of what was originally "Palestine". What was wrong with that? Oh, right. Jews next door. Can't have that.
If Yasser had set up a market system and concentreated more on the economic development of his people, rather than the extermination of the Jews, he might be worthy of respect.
Until then, to hell with him and all who follow his way.
Cool! He's discovered Slashdot!
With 80G drives down to $120, I was thinking of picking one up, but I wondered if I'd ever fill the damn thing.
I wondered that about five years ago when 6.4G drives became cheap, and then I discovered MP3s.
It's reassuring to know that pirated content will continue to grow fast enough to keep hard drive manufacturers in business, at least to the 10-Terabyte level. Woohoo!
Some sick individuals view this as a feature, not a bug.
When this happens, these people presume that what was changed (and the more extensive the attempt to cover up the fact of the change) has some bearing on reality than what replaced it.
Personally, I feel disappointment when I notice the malreports and misprints. Sloppy work is one thing, but this is more than sloppy, it's dangerous. At this early, critical stage (when the malquotes may still bear some resemblance to reality), it's horrible OPSEC. It may actually enable such misguided individuals to make educated guesses as to who wanted the change and why they wanted it changed. The whole damn thing could come unglued.
For the diseased folks who actually keep track of these sorts of miniscule things when there are plenty of bright shiny things to look at, fine - go ahead and do your dirty work in the privacy of your own mind (for now), but don't ever keep copies the old malreported news stories around. Miniluv hates that.
(Are you listening, you RCS/CVS developers? You see what kind of treason you're enabling with your so-called "revision control" tools? Knock it right off this instant! Minitrue believes in Revision Control - the real kind, not the Goldsteinist malreport-preservation you do! How dare you corrupt Newspeak by calling that revision control! How on earth can you control revisions when you have a complete history of every change made? Pure Goldsteinism!)
To borrow a Clintonian phrase, it depends on the meaning of relaxing.
These guys appear to be using the metaphor of the game as a way to make biofeeback (that is, the user training himself to enter a particular mental state at will), well, less boring.
For gaming, I'm one of those old-school 80s types. Get an arcade machine and master one of those pure-adrenaline-overkill games. Robotron:2084 and Tempest are probably tops for this. Lots of flashing lights, sounds, and you're totally interrupt-driven the duration of the play.
When you're just starting out, it's frustrating. When you're merely "good", it's fun, but you work up a sweat. When you get past that point and can keep a game going for 15-20 minutes, you get a hypnotic effect. Most players call it "the zone", and it's probably not too different from the mental states achieved by great athletes - you're barely conscious of yourself, focussed solely on your game, and your performance skyrockets.
The neat part is that you're no longer thinking per se, you just... umm... are. It's not "move joystick to dodge missile", it's "move this way and watch missile that I didn't even see fly harmlessly past me".
Freaky shit.
So? You just get real good at the game, walk into a Clam office, hook yourself up, and beat the cult's "auditor" at his own game.
Then you walk out, clacking your teeth together loudly, while ranting (between clacks) about how "YOUR PUNY E-METER IS NO MATCH FOR US! SOON OUR EMPEROR WILL ESCAPE FROM HIS PRISON AND SOON, ALL J00R BASE WILL BELONG TO XENU!"
The jaw-clacking really does fuck 'em up - I actually did the "clack your jaws and say 'poor little clams, snap snap snap'" routine on one cultist who was "body-routing fresh meat into the org" (read: "recruiting gullible people on the street by offering free personality tests"), and the cultist actually *flinched* and rubbed its jaw. I just laughed, said "Hail Xenu", and walked on. What a cult of weaklings. Why can't they make it go right? *giggle*
Thanks for Getting It. :)
I was aiming for a or +1, (Ha Ha Only Serious) and lost my gamble.
Holy books from the three main world religions have just as much sex and violence in 'em - whether as historical accounts or as exhortations to the faithful - as video games. (Well, like I said, minus the carjackings.)
And I think anyone would recognize that the atrocities carried out in the name of the three main world religions have a considerably higher body count than video games.
Of course, religion's been around a lot longer than video gaming.
Then again, I think it's a pretty safe bet that the body count racked up by kids brought up on violent religious beliefs this afternoon is in excess of the body count racked up by kids who grew up on violent video games.
Compared with religion's power to fuck with people's heads and inspire them to murderous violence, GTA3 is pretty small potatoes.
I'd prefer to see as much speech as possible - however repugnant I may find it - protected. (Junk fax and spam and telemarketing fail because they're trespass to chattel. Virtual kid pr0n fails, IMHO, because legalizing it implies that when rendering tech makes it possible to produce something indistinguishable from "the real thing", the scum who produce "the real thing" will have a foolproof way to raise "reasonable doubt" in the minds of jurors.)
But if (as it appears) we're gonna throw away the First Amendment and eliminate certain forms of speech because they might incite some people to violence, we need to stop looking at video games and start looking at religious fanatacism.
"Look, just because you can't even install or use the software doesn't mean you don't have to pay for it! I paid $25,000 to your campaign, and I want my $95M in revenues, dammit!"
>
> Admit it, you just lifted this from an ad for Grand Theft Auto 3.
*lol*
I think you're onto something, though. There are very few games that feature car-jackings.
Any Constitutional landsharks around? I think this law could fall simply on the basis that it's pretty obviously targeted at one game specifically.
This smells a lot like a law that says "We're not allowed to pass a law banning any specific brand of macaroni and cheese, but, uh, any manufacturer whose name has five letters, begins with 'K' and ends with 'T' is banned!"
I'm not saying this is a Bill of Attainder (one could argue that GTA3's creators could take it to court on behalf of their distributors), but it's pretty damn close.
>
> An aggressive, if stupid, DA could twist the law into banning, [
You left out the other possibility: Corrupt.
What better way to make sure your competitor's game never gets to market than to tip off the DA in some ultraconservative town in East Buttfuck, Montana, and have your competitor's company bogged down in standards/litigation/reviews for six months?
This doesn't happen in Hollyweird with movies (except on rare occasions) because the Content Cartel has agreed that NC-17 movies don't get sold. So everyone makes R at most.
Likewise with RIAA - good God, we almost had Tipper "Explicit Lyrics must be banned" Gore as First Lady. *shudder* - but there's a cartel there that limits what gets out.
The game development community hasn't had time to form cartels and lobby groups to the extent that the dinosaur industries have, and as a result, we've got the current situation - they're a sitting duck for crap like this law.
Though I think you do deserve your Insightful modpoints - your Article 3 ("as is Deemed Apt for the Preservation of a Free and Fair Societie.") is pretty much how the Canadian definition of free speech would have been written in an older dialect of English.
For you Americans who don't quite get what I'm on about, in Canada, you have free speech (and other civil rights) only insofar as the government decides you need them. Your rights are "only" subject to whatever "reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society" - as per Section 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982. Freedom of speech, just watch what you say.
If that's not enough, there's Section 33 - the "notwithstanding clause", which states, in effect, that even if a law does break the Charter, you can still pass laws that violate the Charter as long as you admit it while you write the law. Basically, you invoke it by adding a phrase like "notwithstanding that this law is unconstitutional, we're passing it anyways."
That's why you can still go to jail for having English on a sign in Quebec, even though such a law is blatantly unconstitutional.
Lessee here.
"games that feature decapitation, amputation, killing of humans with lethal weapons or through hand-to-hand combat, rape, car-jackings, aggravated assault and other violent felonies"
Ban those. After all, those aren't free speech, according to our judiciary.
Meantime, kids grow up with the Bible (Mk. I for the Jews, Mk. II for the Christians), and some with the Koran - all three of which feature plenty of all of the above, (OK, with the possible exception of carjackings, though I'm sure the Hebrews ripped off a couple of chariots while hauling ass out of Egypt) - all of a sudden, it's "Congress Shall Make No Law Abridging..." again.
And while we're at it - virtual kiddie pr0n is protected free speech, and so are junk faxes.
So while we wade through junk faxes every day, and our kids have to put up with a flood of spams for "hot lolita incest teen in barnyard", and we've got a whole segment of the population that's raising a generation of kids taught that the extermination of the Jews is religious duty because it's in their "holy" book (at least the Christians and Jews decided the calls for genocide in their holy books no longer applied), but it's a federal crime to sell Grand Theft Auto or Mortal Kombat to a kid because it might warp his innocent little mind?!?!?
What the almighty high holy fuck are our judges and legislators smoking, and would they at least be so kind to least legalize it?
Really? Funny, I never saw that. Of course, I don't do Javashit. Or Flush. Gee, it really sucks to be in the dark ages, maybe I should upgrade... tomorrow. :)
It may not be right, but it's certainly expected in California.
Costa Rica? Fuck, that's what he's doing to California. What do you think that $95M Oraclegate scandal's all about? :-)
Capitalism means finding the best your money can buy, not the most convenient or cheapest.
Maybe that means spending $10.00 on a pound and a half of fish, some green onions, a pat of butter, a splash of white wine and grinding up some toast for bread crumbs, and some rice. Chop onions, lay between two filets, pour in half an inch of wine, sprinkle with bread crumbs, bake at 300F for an hour. Steam rice while the fish bakes. You end up with four restaurant-quality ($15.00/plate) meals for $10.00, a savings of $50.00 over a midrange restaurant, and (at a minimum) cost parity with Burger King or Kentucky Fried.
> My question is that when one company has more cash on hand than Fort Knox - doesn't that make our money worthless (or more since they don't spread it around).
Inflation is too much money chasing not enough goods. If MSFT were to go out and start buying $40B worth of fish, I might not be able to eat as well. So long as it remains MSFT's money in MSFT's vaults, it's harmless. (And indeed, beneficial, as if I believe MSFT is going to use this money to make more money, I can buy MSFT stock and own a piece of their pie.
But I digress. $40B divided by 260M people in the States is $153.00 - if Bill gave everyone a check for $153.00, how much better a place would America be?
OK, let's soak the rich -- if Bill gave everyone in the lower half ( And even if it did - with MSFT's treasury looted, from whom would you pillage next year?
There are approximately 5 million dead of famine during Russian Civil War (1917-1922), plus 30-50 million dead (excluding WW2 casualties) in Stalin's Russia, and 30 million dead of famine in Mao's "Great Leap Forward" who might beg to differ with you.
(Actually, Stalin's count may have "only" been another 5-10 million from famine. The other 40 million were executed in purges or worked to death in labor camps. So I suppose you were right - not as many people starved, per se, under Stalin.)
I'll take my changes with Capitalism, if you don't mind.
We all know that if you put a frog in a pot of water and heat it up slowly, the frog won't notice, and will boil to death.
Now you're telling me that if you put a frog in a pot of water with some nice fresh-roasted and fresh-ground coffee, and heat it up slowly, the frog will notice, but it just won't care. Cool! :-)
Meantime, I have visions of programmers on vacation in Hawaii sneaking out of the hotels at night to catch frogs and lick them in the same way that hippies and druggies lick toads for the bufotinin. (Except that the programmer gets paid $75 per frog for every "empty" frog he turns in ;-)