Besides being funny, does this say anything about space travel in the 21st century? Is space is no longer the final frontier? I'm pretty sure Roddenberry didn't have frequent flier miles in mind when he came up with the Enterprise.
That is 100% wrong. This is exactly what Gene Roddenberry had in mind. For a common person to be able to expiernce the wonders of space. Give props to him, we wouldn't be here without his vision.
Also... really slashdot...that comment is pure flamebait for this site.
Ha! I bet a lot of these addictied kids don't even have a level 60 yet and are thinking they're all Uber by running dead mines south and only getting killed 2 times by VC with their level 40 badddasss shadow priest.
And the grandma that's in the picture? I bet she plays horde.
Dwarft Priest FTW!
Oh shit.. I've gotta go mine some juju for Rag tomorrow..
Step One: Hundreds of Thousands of nerds wake up Sunday morning and click on your slashdot story. While discovering your site is bogus, a secret Firefox flaw is exploited and a (AT - Really? AT? Who the fuck uses AT anymore?) keystroke logger is installed on your computer.
Step Two: ???.. no wait.. Step two is to check your email for CC numbers as they go an order something from a real spy site to make themselves feel better.
Step Three: Profit.
Ummm... I think I'm going to go scan my computer for viruses.
This NSA story always gets me going in the morning...
Dear Qwest;
I recently signed up for your local phone service. I haven't been using it very much, and was considering dropping it. But because I read today that you're standing up for my rights (even at the cost of government jobs), I've suddenly decided, without hesitation, to keep the phone service.
In addition, my business will soon be doing complete overhaul of their phone system, as well as their internet setup. I have a bid from the local qwest office on the project. I think I'll go with them.
Thanks!
---
Dear 2600/EFF/ACLU;
Wouldn't it an interesting to have one of your guys go overseas, to say, France (republicans still hate the French) and call the US a bunch. Don't say anything weird. Just make a bunch of calls at odd times (completely random), for very short to very long lengths (again, random). And then start to make a bunch of calls every 15 minutes, exactly 15 minutes apart. Then call New York or DC or something like that (from France). Then call the same number from your US number. Just be sure to do something that would get flagged by George's precious little algorithm.
Then?
Watch the NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA show up at your door.
Proceed to Supreme Court doorstep and hold a vigil until this gets ruled unconstitutional, which shouldn't take very long (only 4 to 10 years).
Thank you!
---
Dear Verizon;
Why do I pay you $50 a month to tell George Bush that I'm talking to my parents every Sunday night? Or that I order pizza at 1:00 am often enough? Because Bush now knows that I've called planned parenthood, does that mean my federal student loans are in jeopardy, just like all those people in Africa who can't even talk about condoms?
To me, the Leeroy Jenkins video is something like a George Bush clip show on Letterman. Everytime I play with some idiot in a pick up group, I now laugh a little bit thinking that this idiot might be the next Leeroy Jenkins; just like everytime George gets on his soap box, I think how entertaining this will be on Letterman or Jon Stewart tonight.
My spelling mistakes are my own, and are not conductive to my ability to write. On slashdot, as well as with other forms of online communciation that occur quickly, I don't bother usign a spell check and type more as I would speak. Why would I waste my time spell checking something that is going to be read by a bunch of nerd's anyways? (self included).
Written English is not spoken English, any student thats taken introductor english would tell yout that. Additionaly, the rules of prose is simply more lax with online communication.
I recently went through the transistion in my previous college to not having these clicker type devices to having them. We call them PRS. Don't remember what it stands for..
But anyways, it takes all the fun out of college. At the beginning of class, the prof will require everyone in attendence to "click" into class. You have to point your unit at some sensors and then via wireless signals the computer records your attendance. Thus, every professor on campus is now taking attendence this way. No fun anymore, because you must attened every class, or your grade automaticaly drops.
Of course, this has it's puropse, and is a great motovational tool. A few of my friends have even reverse eng'ed the deivce and when they're feeling mischivous enough, disrupt the signal enough for the PRS recieving unit to go haywire and throw an error on the screen - thus ending the attendence taking or the quiz taking or what ever. I suspect that these people have learned more from studying the device then any bullshit 2nd/3rd year comp sci course could teach them.
Devices like these are a major form of social control. Awful for educational purposes, at least so says any student who's had to deal with the little bastards.
But then again.. when it comes time for me to be the grad student teaching, I'm sure I'll use it. Damn maturity.
I just want to point out, that in my setup of three large desktops cramed into a rather small room, it's not the power suppplys or the computers. I can easily take a nap with all the computers on - it's the gigabit switch that makes the most noise.
That said, I think a more universal solution needs to be found. A quieter power supply is great and all, but will only cut down on that part of the noise. A DVD spinning up probably creates twice as much noise (hmm.. i have sound equipment here, i should test, mabye get a slashdot article;-) ). The chruning of the harddrive after it's been spun down can even be heard over the hum of the power supply - but none of these can be heard over the drone of the box I love to hate - a $300 gigabit switch.
Also... another soultion is just to buy good headphones that have noise cancelation hardware in them. They can REALLY kill all continous sound that a fan would produce.
The Internet represents a great historical tool. Case and point is what happened on 9/11. Being able to go back and see the progression, paranoia, patrotism, and early iraq/afgahanistan/binladen/hussien posts and opinions on various new sites is amazing. cnn, fox, the ny times, all are archived several times on 9/11 on archive.org.
I for one think that archive.org should turn into some UN effort, with a mission to chronical and store daily/timely snapshots of the internet and the culture at the time, preserving it for future generations. What a tool for future historians!
The ability to look at a large representation of socity at one single critical moment in time, and being able to have first hand sources for all that information is something that can truely change the way history is recorded (and not in the bad newspeak ingsoc way either). Infact, a wholeistic archive of what happens day-to-day, in an easily accessible format, might well help written history to be more representative of actual history (instead of, say the history Bush wants us to believe; that the Iraq war was for human right and not wmd's). I love Foucault.
The internet archive rocks... really hope this project continues full blast.
Unless it can make me tea, I can't say I'm interested... then again... think about the new abilities to piss the RIAA/MPAA/USGOV off with this? It would make downloading music seem like childs play next to making an all plastic car **cough** **cough** saturn **cough** **cough** that I downloaded the blue prints from alt.binaries.replicator.cars.
Really though, I find the adoption timeline to bit a little bit optomistic... 5 to 10 years for it to become common place in homes? It's taken 5 to 10 years for the internet to catch on, and that doesn't require bulky equipment. Perhaps in the next 50 years before I'm gone, but not in 5 to 10.
My 2cents...
But man, I'd live a childhood fantsay to order my tea from a replicator.
Go and download the Mario Brothers 3 vid from the site and watch the count down clock. Not only does he double the clock speed on the motherboard, he also cuts the time in half that one is able to beat a level!
Either that's the explination, or some wierd time warp has opened up and defied the laws of relativity via NES. Perhaps that's why I got the orignal Zelda for christmas.
So wait.. why does this matter anyways? Just get an emulator. Still..Hella sweet mod. Right up there with softmodding an xbox.
...There are probably less Windows 95 users out there than that, yet just about all modern Windows programs still run on 95....
This is not true, there are a ton of users still on 95. Schools, home computers, old computers passed down to kids, office computers, etc., they all operate on that and other damned operating systems. I have personally interacted with over 100 of them in the past year.
What makes ReactOS and its like necessary is that it is needed to "fill the gap". If a company knows that an open source solultion can save them money and get more support then an end-of-life-cycle product like 95 or NT 4, then they will choose the free open source product, deploy it at the cost of labor, and support it themselves with their own cost of labor... this makes is significantly cheaper then keeping NT4 around and paying some disphit (like myself) $300 to come in and fix a computer everytime something gets scrwed up.
It's really quite an ingenous project, and has quietly been gaining support and interest. Give it another 7 years, and something like WinNT4 will have been created. BTW: How long did NT4 take to make? Nearly 14 years....
/BEGIN_MORAL_RANT The only thing he's done wrong is not get worked up about his illness fast enough. He saw doctors, he engaged them, he went to hospitals, told everything was OK, and went home like a goog little HMO paitent. After all this is done (and after a resolution is in sight for him) he's posting online. Good for him./END_MORAL_RANT
Now... Fargo is populated by old people, a ton of old people. I'm a student up at the North Dakota State University and the area has execlent medical care. Not only because of old people and their need for doctors, but because it's the only large medical center next to the U of Minn campuses. I had some problems myself up here last year, and I found something out: the majority of doctors who are the head of their departments in various hospitals have all been trained and spent many many years working at Rochester. (I've also been there, the quality of care is damn near the same).
Patrick - If you're reading this, get the care you need here if you can. Though I'm sure you know this since your from the area. Anything that they need to get from minnesota they can have shipped here in hours.
but I expect that to many of us on slashdot, Doohan represented an element in our lives that started many of us down the path of technology. I know for myself at least, it was watching Star Trek with my father (who's name is Scott, an engineer, and has was called Scotty by his coworkers) that started myself on the path of computers, science, and engineerning.
It is unfortunate that this all is happening to him, as he is a very nice person. After a star trek convention in the mid 90's, I was waiting around for an autograph, a small kid, and he was the only person to come over and say hello. Something I'll remember.
There's really no point to this post, just random museings from yet another Star Trek nerd.
Baldur's Gate?
This article confuses me on several levels.. First, it's operating within a microcosm of video games that are based off of AD&D - in particular just one. This isn't really that great of a study if it's just using one source. I'm taking an introductory statistic's course right now at my college, and my professor would fail me if I used only one souce. (He also mentions something called d20 in passing a few times but makes no arguments over it.)
Second, what about Baldur's Gate? There are very few more successful game series then the Baldur's Gate line. The game is able to be played as a traditional RPG with pause's after each move, the storyline is diverse, and with BG2 onward you have different plots devlop based on your char's alignment, class, race, etc.. it's quite a wonderful and diverse game. Neverwinter Nights continues to expand it allowing user/gameplayer customization of the settings and rules.
This customization of the rules of the game is also my third point with what's wrong with this "article". The author says that Pen and Paper games are much more flexiable and adaptable based on their player's needs.. well, if I am playing a game of NWN or BG or Ice Wind Dale, all I have to do is change the settings in my preference box to change the level of hardness of the monsters or the speed of the game, etc. It's not difficult, and just requires a few clicks of a button.
So in conclusion, what happened to the Baldur's Gate line of games? I mean, come one... the games span three platforms, are wellknown amongst gamers, and have won more awards then I can count. Why didn't the author include BG and Black Isle analysis in his article? All this means is that this article is a bit of FOO and should be sent to/dev/null, or rather/dev/menzoberranzan.
- Simrook.
The Patriot Act is having it's death sentence written by every presidential canidate with the exception of Bush.
Ineed, my statement still remains.
America has not stood down in the face of a constitutional violation (The Patriot Act), they are soon going to ellect new leaders that will get rid of it.
And this is a tad off topic, but the Patriot Act is set to expire soon, and Bush would be uncommonly stupid to actually try to get it passed through congress. He needs all the political capitol he can muster to pull of this election - he won't spend any of it trying to get the act renewed.
Let's remember, after Bush said in his State of The Union "Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire this year," people cheared. People did not when he said he wanted it renewed.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and propose the following;
RIAA/MIPI/"Recording Industry" has been conducting police raids in the United States out on the streets, handing out false tickets on false pretenses, etc... This began occuring over a month ago. Since then, they have lost key decisions in the courts, both in US and Europe, and things are looking bad for them. Now, they are beginning to conduct actual raids on property under obscure laws outside of the United States - obviously an intimidation tatic for those of us in the United States.
Now... why is this good you ask?
Because the day will come when an RIAA representative will knock at my university door and demand to see recipets for all my jazz mp3's (legally and educationaly obtained) I have laying around my harddrives. When this happens, hello Supreme Court.
This series of events is giving us a very clear picture: The RIAA is a dying animal who is now lashing out in any means necessary. Non governmental agencies playing cops - be it here or austrilla - is a fundemental violation of human liberty - which is a value upheld by the UN and the World Court (which Austrilla is a member of). Not that this really matters since no one is going to do anything about it, at least right now.
Later on, we are going to see events like these help us in a completely different court though - the court of public opinion. Isn't it easy to see a Dateline episode being made of this event? Isn't it easy to connect the dots and see that the RIAA and their chums are just doing this so the average American thinks that their home could be raided by Will Smith and his men in black protecting his copyright? Isn't it easy to see that the Average American would go apeshit if the RIAA actually tried to enter their house, and they later found out it was completely against the law?
Let's return to the orignal question. Why is this good?
Because the RIAA and every incarnation of it is pushing the very lines of human rights and freedoms that have been affirmed around the globe since the end of World War II.
I have never seen America stand down in the face of a constitutional violation, never. Hell, even some of my republican friends acknowledge Roe v. Wade. Let the RIAA come and try to impose this scare tatic here in the USA. I fore one can't wait for this good thing to happen. Two days after they try to enter a house in the US (legally or illegaly) Scallia and Rehinquist will join forces and strike the RIAA back to the seventh circle of hell from which it spawned.
Be happy with the RIAA's actions - it's a sign the end is near.
- The Ever Defiant Simrook
(p/s - All spelling errors are mine and mine alone.)
I also forgot to add that the appeals court will first look at if there was anything wrong with the lower court's orignal decision, which will then lead to the consideration of constitutionality of the said decisions.
The appeals court only exists to correct constitutionaly-minded mistakes made by lower court judges, not as another place to hear the trial.
There is going to be very little evidence to submit, contrary to some of the popular posts above. An appeals court does not validate the evidence or the warrents gained from claims on the evidence, the only thing they do is validate the constitutionality of the case and the constitutionality of the evidence.
In other words, they make a judgement if any of our rights under the constitution have been infringed upon.
Only in extrodrionary circumstances will the court look at evidence and make warrented assertions on it. I am by no means a legal scholar, so someone please correct me, but I do not remember this happening in any largely publisized case recently.
What will go down is something along the lines of the RIAA (or what ever legal firm is handling it) saying " violates the artist fundemental right to the pursuit of happiness. This is demonstrated in our orignal evidence we provided in x, y, z exhibits." Right of happiness a fundemental right normally associated with making money; which is also where "copy right" rights are derrived from.
The p2p people will come back and say "Actually, the artists right to pursuit of happiness is not infringed, as they are already making exhoberant amount of money, and p2p doesn't impact this at all, as is demonstrated in evidence a, b, c." The p2p people will probably also try, ablit unsuccessfully, to throw in there that the RIAA and their cronies are using unconstitutional scare tatics, but that won't be listened to and will eventualy result in one of the largest cases of violation of rights ever seen in resent times (I'm talking about the RIAA police).
Somone with more knowledge on the subject please feel free to correct me, I only have several years of debate team expierence and a few law classes, not too much, but enough to give my 2 cents.
Slashdot Mirror
What does being Jewish have anything to do with the article?
I HOPE this wasn't used in any sort of derogatory way...
Today, Kurt Vonnegut became unstuck in time. /salute /rip
Besides being funny, does this say anything about space travel in the 21st century? Is space is no longer the final frontier? I'm pretty sure Roddenberry didn't have frequent flier miles in mind when he came up with the Enterprise.
That is 100% wrong. This is exactly what Gene Roddenberry had in mind. For a common person to be able to expiernce the wonders of space. Give props to him, we wouldn't be here without his vision.
Also... really slashdot...that comment is pure flamebait for this site.
Ha! I bet a lot of these addictied kids don't even have a level 60 yet and are thinking they're all Uber by running dead mines south and only getting killed 2 times by VC with their level 40 badddasss shadow priest.
And the grandma that's in the picture? I bet she plays horde.
Dwarft Priest FTW!
Oh shit.. I've gotta go mine some juju for Rag tomorrow..
Hahaha...
Haven't we learned anything from The Simpsons?
If we block out the sun, Mr. Gates will die at the hand of a lollipop suckling 2 year old as he attempts to rench it away.
And that, would be bad for all the starving children he's saving with his foundations.
Won't somebody, please, think of the children!!!
Step One: Hundreds of Thousands of nerds wake up Sunday morning and click on your slashdot story. While discovering your site is bogus, a secret Firefox flaw is exploited and a (AT - Really? AT? Who the fuck uses AT anymore?) keystroke logger is installed on your computer.
Step Two: ???.. no wait.. Step two is to check your email for CC numbers as they go an order something from a real spy site to make themselves feel better.
Step Three: Profit.
Ummm... I think I'm going to go scan my computer for viruses.
This NSA story always gets me going in the morning...
Dear Qwest;
I recently signed up for your local phone service. I haven't been using it very much, and was considering dropping it. But because I read today that you're standing up for my rights (even at the cost of government jobs), I've suddenly decided, without hesitation, to keep the phone service.
In addition, my business will soon be doing complete overhaul of their phone system, as well as their internet setup. I have a bid from the local qwest office on the project. I think I'll go with them.
Thanks!
---
Dear 2600/EFF/ACLU;
Wouldn't it an interesting to have one of your guys go overseas, to say, France (republicans still hate the French) and call the US a bunch. Don't say anything weird. Just make a bunch of calls at odd times (completely random), for very short to very long lengths (again, random). And then start to make a bunch of calls every 15 minutes, exactly 15 minutes apart. Then call New York or DC or something like that (from France). Then call the same number from your US number. Just be sure to do something that would get flagged by George's precious little algorithm.
Then?
Watch the NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA show up at your door.
Proceed to Supreme Court doorstep and hold a vigil until this gets ruled unconstitutional, which shouldn't take very long (only 4 to 10 years).
Thank you!
---
Dear Verizon;
Why do I pay you $50 a month to tell George Bush that I'm talking to my parents every Sunday night? Or that I order pizza at 1:00 am often enough? Because Bush now knows that I've called planned parenthood, does that mean my federal student loans are in jeopardy, just like all those people in Africa who can't even talk about condoms?
Fuck you.
What? ICE9 doesn't exist. That's just the point, it doesn't exist!
At least, so it goes.
(Modding this down would mean -1 Intelligence to you because you don't read books.)
Butter's Sidekick: Simpsons Did It! Simpsons Did It!
Solution to this? Send Dick down there with a gun.
To me, the Leeroy Jenkins video is something like a George Bush clip show on Letterman. Everytime I play with some idiot in a pick up group, I now laugh a little bit thinking that this idiot might be the next Leeroy Jenkins; just like everytime George gets on his soap box, I think how entertaining this will be on Letterman or Jon Stewart tonight.
Let's do this! Geeeeeeoooooooooooooorrrrrge Bush!
My spelling mistakes are my own, and are not conductive to my ability to write. On slashdot, as well as with other forms of online communciation that occur quickly, I don't bother usign a spell check and type more as I would speak. Why would I waste my time spell checking something that is going to be read by a bunch of nerd's anyways? (self included).
Written English is not spoken English, any student thats taken introductor english would tell yout that. Additionaly, the rules of prose is simply more lax with online communication.
My 0011 cents.
I recently went through the transistion in my previous college to not having these clicker type devices to having them. We call them PRS. Don't remember what it stands for..
But anyways, it takes all the fun out of college. At the beginning of class, the prof will require everyone in attendence to "click" into class. You have to point your unit at some sensors and then via wireless signals the computer records your attendance. Thus, every professor on campus is now taking attendence this way. No fun anymore, because you must attened every class, or your grade automaticaly drops.
Of course, this has it's puropse, and is a great motovational tool. A few of my friends have even reverse eng'ed the deivce and when they're feeling mischivous enough, disrupt the signal enough for the PRS recieving unit to go haywire and throw an error on the screen - thus ending the attendence taking or the quiz taking or what ever. I suspect that these people have learned more from studying the device then any bullshit 2nd/3rd year comp sci course could teach them.
Devices like these are a major form of social control. Awful for educational purposes, at least so says any student who's had to deal with the little bastards.
But then again.. when it comes time for me to be the grad student teaching, I'm sure I'll use it. Damn maturity.
My 0010 cents.
I just want to point out, that in my setup of three large desktops cramed into a rather small room, it's not the power suppplys or the computers. I can easily take a nap with all the computers on - it's the gigabit switch that makes the most noise.
;-) ). The chruning of the harddrive after it's been spun down can even be heard over the hum of the power supply - but none of these can be heard over the drone of the box I love to hate - a $300 gigabit switch.
That said, I think a more universal solution needs to be found. A quieter power supply is great and all, but will only cut down on that part of the noise. A DVD spinning up probably creates twice as much noise (hmm.. i have sound equipment here, i should test, mabye get a slashdot article
Also... another soultion is just to buy good headphones that have noise cancelation hardware in them. They can REALLY kill all continous sound that a fan would produce.
The Internet represents a great historical tool. Case and point is what happened on 9/11. Being able to go back and see the progression, paranoia, patrotism, and early iraq/afgahanistan/binladen/hussien posts and opinions on various new sites is amazing. cnn, fox, the ny times, all are archived several times on 9/11 on archive.org.
I for one think that archive.org should turn into some UN effort, with a mission to chronical and store daily/timely snapshots of the internet and the culture at the time, preserving it for future generations. What a tool for future historians!
The ability to look at a large representation of socity at one single critical moment in time, and being able to have first hand sources for all that information is something that can truely change the way history is recorded (and not in the bad newspeak ingsoc way either). Infact, a wholeistic archive of what happens day-to-day, in an easily accessible format, might well help written history to be more representative of actual history (instead of, say the history Bush wants us to believe; that the Iraq war was for human right and not wmd's). I love Foucault.
The internet archive rocks... really hope this project continues full blast.
- Peace
1. Make self replicating machiene free
2. ???
3. Profit
Unless it can make me tea, I can't say I'm interested... then again... think about the new abilities to piss the RIAA/MPAA/USGOV off with this? It would make downloading music seem like childs play next to making an all plastic car **cough** **cough** saturn **cough** **cough** that I downloaded the blue prints from alt.binaries.replicator.cars.
Really though, I find the adoption timeline to bit a little bit optomistic... 5 to 10 years for it to become common place in homes? It's taken 5 to 10 years for the internet to catch on, and that doesn't require bulky equipment. Perhaps in the next 50 years before I'm gone, but not in 5 to 10.
My 2cents...
But man, I'd live a childhood fantsay to order my tea from a replicator.
Go and download the Mario Brothers 3 vid from the site and watch the count down clock. Not only does he double the clock speed on the motherboard, he also cuts the time in half that one is able to beat a level!
Either that's the explination, or some wierd time warp has opened up and defied the laws of relativity via NES. Perhaps that's why I got the orignal Zelda for christmas.
So wait.. why does this matter anyways? Just get an emulator. Still..Hella sweet mod. Right up there with softmodding an xbox.
HoHoHo - Simrook
...There are probably less Windows 95 users out there than that, yet just about all modern Windows programs still run on 95....
This is not true, there are a ton of users still on 95. Schools, home computers, old computers passed down to kids, office computers, etc., they all operate on that and other damned operating systems. I have personally interacted with over 100 of them in the past year.
What makes ReactOS and its like necessary is that it is needed to "fill the gap". If a company knows that an open source solultion can save them money and get more support then an end-of-life-cycle product like 95 or NT 4, then they will choose the free open source product, deploy it at the cost of labor, and support it themselves with their own cost of labor... this makes is significantly cheaper then keeping NT4 around and paying some disphit (like myself) $300 to come in and fix a computer everytime something gets scrwed up.
It's really quite an ingenous project, and has quietly been gaining support and interest. Give it another 7 years, and something like WinNT4 will have been created. BTW: How long did NT4 take to make? Nearly 14 years....
A Two Cents Post.
- Simrook
/BEGIN_MORAL_RANT /END_MORAL_RANT
The only thing he's done wrong is not get worked up about his illness fast enough. He saw doctors, he engaged them, he went to hospitals, told everything was OK, and went home like a goog little HMO paitent. After all this is done (and after a resolution is in sight for him) he's posting online. Good for him.
Now... Fargo is populated by old people, a ton of old people. I'm a student up at the North Dakota State University and the area has execlent medical care. Not only because of old people and their need for doctors, but because it's the only large medical center next to the U of Minn campuses. I had some problems myself up here last year, and I found something out: the majority of doctors who are the head of their departments in various hospitals have all been trained and spent many many years working at Rochester. (I've also been there, the quality of care is damn near the same).
Patrick - If you're reading this, get the care you need here if you can. Though I'm sure you know this since your from the area. Anything that they need to get from minnesota they can have shipped here in hours.
Peace All - Simrook
but I expect that to many of us on slashdot, Doohan represented an element in our lives that started many of us down the path of technology. I know for myself at least, it was watching Star Trek with my father (who's name is Scott, an engineer, and has was called Scotty by his coworkers) that started myself on the path of computers, science, and engineerning.
It is unfortunate that this all is happening to him, as he is a very nice person. After a star trek convention in the mid 90's, I was waiting around for an autograph, a small kid, and he was the only person to come over and say hello. Something I'll remember.
There's really no point to this post, just random museings from yet another Star Trek nerd.
Baldur's Gate? This article confuses me on several levels.. First, it's operating within a microcosm of video games that are based off of AD&D - in particular just one. This isn't really that great of a study if it's just using one source. I'm taking an introductory statistic's course right now at my college, and my professor would fail me if I used only one souce. (He also mentions something called d20 in passing a few times but makes no arguments over it.) Second, what about Baldur's Gate? There are very few more successful game series then the Baldur's Gate line. The game is able to be played as a traditional RPG with pause's after each move, the storyline is diverse, and with BG2 onward you have different plots devlop based on your char's alignment, class, race, etc.. it's quite a wonderful and diverse game. Neverwinter Nights continues to expand it allowing user/gameplayer customization of the settings and rules. This customization of the rules of the game is also my third point with what's wrong with this "article". The author says that Pen and Paper games are much more flexiable and adaptable based on their player's needs.. well, if I am playing a game of NWN or BG or Ice Wind Dale, all I have to do is change the settings in my preference box to change the level of hardness of the monsters or the speed of the game, etc. It's not difficult, and just requires a few clicks of a button. So in conclusion, what happened to the Baldur's Gate line of games? I mean, come one... the games span three platforms, are wellknown amongst gamers, and have won more awards then I can count. Why didn't the author include BG and Black Isle analysis in his article? All this means is that this article is a bit of FOO and should be sent to /dev/null, or rather /dev/menzoberranzan.
- Simrook.
The Patriot Act is having it's death sentence written by every presidential canidate with the exception of Bush.
Ineed, my statement still remains.
America has not stood down in the face of a constitutional violation (The Patriot Act), they are soon going to ellect new leaders that will get rid of it.
And this is a tad off topic, but the Patriot Act is set to expire soon, and Bush would be uncommonly stupid to actually try to get it passed through congress. He needs all the political capitol he can muster to pull of this election - he won't spend any of it trying to get the act renewed.
Let's remember, after Bush said in his State of The Union "Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire this year," people cheared. People did not when he said he wanted it renewed.
- Simrook
I'm going to go out on a limb here and propose the following;
RIAA/MIPI/"Recording Industry" has been conducting police raids in the United States out on the streets, handing out false tickets on false pretenses, etc... This began occuring over a month ago. Since then, they have lost key decisions in the courts, both in US and Europe, and things are looking bad for them. Now, they are beginning to conduct actual raids on property under obscure laws outside of the United States - obviously an intimidation tatic for those of us in the United States.
Now... why is this good you ask?
Because the day will come when an RIAA representative will knock at my university door and demand to see recipets for all my jazz mp3's (legally and educationaly obtained) I have laying around my harddrives. When this happens, hello Supreme Court.
This series of events is giving us a very clear picture: The RIAA is a dying animal who is now lashing out in any means necessary. Non governmental agencies playing cops - be it here or austrilla - is a fundemental violation of human liberty - which is a value upheld by the UN and the World Court (which Austrilla is a member of). Not that this really matters since no one is going to do anything about it, at least right now.
Later on, we are going to see events like these help us in a completely different court though - the court of public opinion. Isn't it easy to see a Dateline episode being made of this event? Isn't it easy to connect the dots and see that the RIAA and their chums are just doing this so the average American thinks that their home could be raided by Will Smith and his men in black protecting his copyright? Isn't it easy to see that the Average American would go apeshit if the RIAA actually tried to enter their house, and they later found out it was completely against the law?
Let's return to the orignal question. Why is this good?
Because the RIAA and every incarnation of it is pushing the very lines of human rights and freedoms that have been affirmed around the globe since the end of World War II.
I have never seen America stand down in the face of a constitutional violation, never. Hell, even some of my republican friends acknowledge Roe v. Wade. Let the RIAA come and try to impose this scare tatic here in the USA. I fore one can't wait for this good thing to happen. Two days after they try to enter a house in the US (legally or illegaly) Scallia and Rehinquist will join forces and strike the RIAA back to the seventh circle of hell from which it spawned.
Be happy with the RIAA's actions - it's a sign the end is near.
- The Ever Defiant Simrook
(p/s - All spelling errors are mine and mine alone.)
I also forgot to add that the appeals court will first look at if there was anything wrong with the lower court's orignal decision, which will then lead to the consideration of constitutionality of the said decisions.
The appeals court only exists to correct constitutionaly-minded mistakes made by lower court judges, not as another place to hear the trial.
My 3 cents.
- Simrook
There is going to be very little evidence to submit, contrary to some of the popular posts above. An appeals court does not validate the evidence or the warrents gained from claims on the evidence, the only thing they do is validate the constitutionality of the case and the constitutionality of the evidence.
In other words, they make a judgement if any of our rights under the constitution have been infringed upon.
Only in extrodrionary circumstances will the court look at evidence and make warrented assertions on it. I am by no means a legal scholar, so someone please correct me, but I do not remember this happening in any largely publisized case recently.
What will go down is something along the lines of the RIAA (or what ever legal firm is handling it) saying " violates the artist fundemental right to the pursuit of happiness. This is demonstrated in our orignal evidence we provided in x, y, z exhibits." Right of happiness a fundemental right normally associated with making money; which is also where "copy right" rights are derrived from.
The p2p people will come back and say "Actually, the artists right to pursuit of happiness is not infringed, as they are already making exhoberant amount of money, and p2p doesn't impact this at all, as is demonstrated in evidence a, b, c." The p2p people will probably also try, ablit unsuccessfully, to throw in there that the RIAA and their cronies are using unconstitutional scare tatics, but that won't be listened to and will eventualy result in one of the largest cases of violation of rights ever seen in resent times (I'm talking about the RIAA police).
Somone with more knowledge on the subject please feel free to correct me, I only have several years of debate team expierence and a few law classes, not too much, but enough to give my 2 cents.
- Simrook