Hardly. The lexicon was read aloud in court, along with the source material it pulled from. The book was a clear case of plagiarism to the court.
You mean selected snippets of the Lexicon were read in order to trick the judge into believing that that was all there was. A clear logical fallacy, but common tactic in cases like this.
The crux of your defense appears to be that a website previously existed that Rowling was happy with. Yet one has to be clear on one aspect here: There is a large gulf between publishing large pieces of someone's work for a no-cost reference and publishing someone else's work for profit.
Which is funny, considering the HP Lexicon website itself had advertising revenue associated with it.
And of course, there's the fact that the research was obviously independent, given that Rowling started attacking them for "getting things wrong":
Vander Ark's frown did turn upside down at one point during his three hour testimony when an attorney said Rowling had criticized his Lexicon's erroneous etymology for the door-opening charm "Alohomora;" Vander Ark had speculated that the word originated from "aloha" and the Latin word "mora." In fact, Rowling testified, Alohomora comes from a West African dialect.
In summary: the judge was dazzled by Rowling's star power and way too much lawyering, and should never be let near a copyright case again because he's proven himself utterly incompetent in the area.
The judge granted summary judgement on the flimsiest of grounds - a reference work for a multiple-volume work of fiction, by definition, will be "a dry reference."
Most reference books contain unique descriptions and commentary above and beyond the information presented in the source material.
And if you've ever looked at the Lexicon website, you know that it does precisely that. The judge fucked up on this point of law, because the Lexicon writer was a little guy and Rowling carries around an army of lawyers.
It's a sad day for the legal system and I hope this gets overturned on appeal - of course, by that point the damage is done.
Yeah that's great, except for those of us who work in high population density areas where multi-story buildings are the norm.
Did you look at the designs? The purpose of these is to get the collector on roof level, and run a tube down into the building. They also incorporate domed tops to collect more scattered light. I bet there's a large portion of your day where the top of most buildings gets a decent amount of sunlight.
Downmodding instead of answering the question?
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
I guess I have my answer.
Obama's supporters are as corrupt as their candidate.
New Belgium, imo the best brewing company in the Unites States, already has those. They also compost their waste and collect the methanol it produces, then burn it to provide 10% of their power needs. The rest of their power comes from wind
I suppose there's room here for a joke about feeding the employees beer, beans, and bratwurst for lunch each day and then collecting the "wind" during the afternoon;)
Seriously - good for them!
Depending on what business you're in, the number of things you can do to save energy varies - but just about ANY company ought to be able to set up some form of solar lighting solution, whether they're in an office building, small building, or warehouse setup.
Quite seriously - run some optical tube skylights (like this, they come in a wide variety of options) into your working areas. FAR too many companies are wasting energy powering internal lighting when the sun's out. You can always turn on the lights *if* you need them due to a storm.
As an added bonus, you'll start to eliminate health problems - daytime-constant lighting has been proven to mess with your internal cycles and messes up peoples' sleeping patterns, a large part of why sleep disorders are so prevalent in developed countries.
Look at the Article-For-Deletion pages on the ones "Oschaper" created.
Wikipedia itself seems to pretty clearly be unconvinced that "Olaf Schaper" exists - the evidence is that Oliver Schaper used the "Olaf Schaper" lie as a dodge when he was called out for writing articles about his own little scientology-promoting "organizations."
I'd say that the chance that an "Olaf Schaper" would happen to create wikipedia articles on not one, but TWO pro-$cientology setups created by "Oliver Schaper", AND would have been involved in the Cult-organized mass of false DMCA notices, is pretty improbable (probably on the order of 2^279460347:1 against).
I want to know
on
Review: Spore
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· Score: -1, Troll
from someone who downmodded me: why do you consider this way-too-positive review of a mediocre game any more than a Slashvertisement trying to hide its origins?
Or is this just the usual wave of brain-dead Obama supporters downmodding me for my sig?
Re:Rootkit? WTF are you talking about?
on
Review: Spore
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· Score: 5, Informative
SecuROM compromises multiple portions of the OS, including insinuating itself into the system to try to prevent you from using other programs (like ISO loaders). It also phones home constantly and has the ability to launch code that it feels like using, invisible to the user.
I'd say that pretty much fucking defines a rootkit.
And there are many LEGITIMATE reasons to use an ISO loader - such as having a laptop that uses extra power to run the DVD drive, wasting time and battery power to use the DVD drive as an expensive dongle.
If you want decent battery life to game on the go, the most common method is a secondary battery pack that replaces your optical media drive - meaning you HAVE to switch to either an ISO loader or else a no-CD crack for games that are trying to use the media drive that way.
And of course, any "Suppressive Person" is "Fair Game." (also here). Note the following: "May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."
From the Wikinews article:
Wikinews contacted Schaper for exclusive comments. Schaper replied saying that he is a "very strong advocate for the Church of Scientology, the religion of Scientology and a free speech advocate" and "I don't need to go into details but I felt that my family and myself have been direct targets and in an attempt to control the situation, I started to track down and remove online links between me and my religion. This included postings made by HouseSpiderAnon on his videos, who publicly connected the dots and made them available to a larger audience."
"I requested several times to have my information removed from his videos as I wanted no association with his work but he refused, even after I stated several times that he has the right to protest but that I would like to enforce my right of privacy. He refused and demanded documentation of the attacks, something I refused because it was not my attention to allow more documents to be available online in public hand," added Schaper who also said he has been a victim of identity theft and now has the FBI involved in investigating his claim.
"Tustin PD [police department] has been on the case and now the FBI is involved as well. Social Security has been notified and we have seen about 200 attempts to use the SSN [social security number] for fake credit cards applications," Schaper told Wikinews.
Certainly looks like typical lying/"fairgame" $cientology behavior in action, doesn't it? I doubt one thing Schaper said about himself is true - and certainly doubt the idea that the FBI would be "involved" in the lies of a $cientologist. But that never does stop the Cult of $cientology from going about its business.
there's no such thing as a "rogue $cientologist" - this guy was obviously pulling this stunt with the knowledge/approval of cult leadership and organization.
It was probably along the lines of something like this - his "auditor" told him this was what he needed to do to "clear" something, so he did it.
Of course, Wikipedia's completely bombarded by pro-$cientology stooges who try to whitewash whatever they can from articles on the cult. I'm not surprised one of their stooges popped up trying this on Youtube to remove videos by people who expose the cult for what it is.
Height/spacing of boxes: somewhat for convenience, but flooding and accessibility concerns exist as well. Minimum height above the floor also helps prevent a spark from easily igniting carpet.
Why not to try to go through a corner: because of the way house framing is constructed. If you go straight down through a wall frame from above, your run exists in one wall frame only. If you try to make a 90-degree turn through a corner, you're going through two different wall frames. If the house shifts/settles later or is damaged (say, by high winds) and those two frames move with relation to each other, you run a real risk of stretching/pinching/breaking the electrical line inside the wall itself, which can cause shorts and arcing and fire.
Dude, we have video evidence - recordings of the original fire investigator finding daisy-chained surge strips in the initial investigation after they put out the blaze. This is noted on the initial investigation report, too.
Her own insurance agent helped her make sure that mysteriously "went missing" before the final investigation/report (which we got a copy of for our own insurance's records). Our insurance company isn't willing to help press charges because they got fully reimbursed for their cost and they don't want to make waves (they file a suit against her and her insurance company, and all of a sudden EVERY reimbursement they're trying to get from that company gets put on hold until the suit's resolved). Her insurance company is taking the word of her agent (who probably got paid under the table later) over the video evidence and initial report because he has a "long and solid history" with them. The story they wrote up says that it was an "accidental" fire that started when a pile of her arts & crafts material and blankets fell over on top of a single surge strip (doesn't mention the daisy-chaining) and caused it to overheat.
The thing is - she's a fucking neat freak. She had an aneurism and screaming fit when the other neighbor's dog took a shit on her lawn; she's pathological about keeping everything neat and tidy. She bitches and moans about neighbors who don't have mexicans mowing their lawn every other day. So how in a house owned by someone like that, does a pile of blankets just "happen" to fall on a set of daisy-chained surge strips right next to a storage cabinet full of aerosol paint cans? Answer: it doesn't. But it's a hell of an easy way to start an electrical fire on cue.
I've done helpwork for a friend, wiring up a garage-to-room conversion. We did the gruntwork, his father-in-law (who is a certified master electrician but has physical issues with getting into some of the cramped attic spacing any more due to age) taught us and inspected the work so that it could be signed off in case the house is sold later.
I also have an EE degree. The theoreticals of the circuitry, I knew. The details of code and the reasons for how certain things are done (spacing of outlets, location and recommended height of boxes, and the biggie, NEVER try to put an electrical line through a corner, for instance) I didn't know.
In the house I currently live in, were there to be a lot of work done, there's a certain amount of wiring that would have to be ripped out of the house because it met 1980s code but doesn't meet today's updated code. This has been confirmed by two inspectors (one when the house was purchased, one after a rebuild when my bitch of a neighbor burned her house down to scam a free remodeling out of her insurance company and damaged mine in the process).
You may claim you can do it on your own design "perfectly safe", and building codes do differ from region to region. Maybe one area is more cautious than another. Maybe one area has different risks in terms of weather patterns (wind, humidity, etc) or has seen historical common construction flaws (soil notorious for shifting, local building materials that weren't as sturdy as another region's) that mandate some extra safety precautions.
The point is, you can bitch all you want about "unnecessary" building and electrical codes, but you don't know everything that goes into their existence, and you should still follow them for legal reasons (and if you want to eventually sell your house, or your kids/wife might after they inherit it, etc...) even if you think they're garbage.
- Deliberately train/lure high-level mobs onto someone - "Hypercamp" areas (gold farmer bots/groups usually sit in known spawn spots for days at time, preventing real players from enjoying the area) - Message-spam people (either people they think they can get a sale from, or people they are trying to drive out of a region; and before you say "but you have an ignore option", try to/ignore over 500 accounts while still trying to play a game and tell me it doesn't impact your play experience).
FFXI is plagued with those three to the point of nonplayability, or at least it was before I (and the vast majority of its former player base) got the hell out.
Kingdom of Loathing is a lot like this - I've donated to support the game, but I know a lot of people who've not donated anything, and one of the nicer things is that we don't notice a difference in the game experience when I show them what I've got or they show me theirs. I figure my occasional donation is worth enough of the developers' time to keep them around, since I've been playing for a couple years.
Of course, it helps that it's playable (easily) as a semi-single-player game. I don't bother turning on the MMO/griefing component, because it's just stupid - I'd rather not deal with the dicks and griefers who infest most MMO environments.
And therein lies the real rub. If a game doesn't have PvP, a certain amount of a "buy X stuff" mechanic can work. If it's an MMO with PvP, "buy X stuff" allows griefers to artificially level and harm anyone they feel like, and that's not cool - eventually it gets to be like Final Fantasy XI or every Turbine game in existence, where there's nothing left but griefers and chinese money farmers because they drove everyone else off.
As far as Xbox Live is concerned, the one thing I like about it most is that almost every title has a free downloadable demo. If a game doesn't have a demo, I know they don't have enough faith in it that I'll buy it. If it has a demo but I don't like it, I don't buy. I've found enough games worth the $5-10 (and of course the $20 for Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness) that I can respect the model even if I don't like Micro$oft all that much.
Now if only I could get a properly sized (read: 500 or so GB) hard drive for the damn thing...
yea, right, I don't know if you are an actual registered Republican, but you don't pass the duck test. I've been down this road before, next message, and there will be a next message, you'll tell me that you'll vote for McCain simply because you hate me so much. I'll bet even money that if polled, you'd claim to be a Hillary support who's voting McCain. It's just the game you play, I understand, hope you had fun beating down this 'crazy liberal':)
Actually, until last year I was a card-carrying Libertarian (finally got fed up with the pot-smoking crazy wing of that party). Now I'm just a libertarian with a small "l".
And alas, I haven't paid the Slashdot Extortion Fee, so I can't point you to my posts on the Bush Administration's crimes with regard to their taking of political prisoners, running roughshod over the legal system against border agents (including hiding exculpatory evidence by Bush's "good friend and buddy" Johnny Sutton), or the ridiculous actions of the fed recently, desperately pushing down the interest rates despite KNOWING that they were building a bubble, and now having nowhere for interest rates to go but up precisely when the bubble has actually popped and the economy's in a real (and now truly unavoidable) slowdown.
It didn't start under Bush, but Bush and Greenspan's "successor" have successfully fucked up royally - the best analogy I can give for the US economy is one of those Mexican cars we get here on our streets, where you see the guy doing 60-70 down the highway with a plume of smoke coming out his tailpipe, and it's obvious he's holding the gas pedal (read:interest rates) to the floor because he knows the moment he lets off the engine is just going to fucking sieze up and die.
They needed to not let the Fed's interest rate get below 3% at lowest. Instead, they took it all the way to 1%, and did critical damage. Was it already in bad shape before they took over? Certainly.
But I'll agree with you: they finished the job, in a REAL bad way.
Of course, this is from someone who understands math, finance, and economics. I understand your generation never got even the basics of those in your public school years or your college years. It would certainly explain the sheer amount of credit card debt you've run up.
The replacement hadn't been mailed yet - I made QUITE sure of that.
I know you want to absolve the cc/bank companies, somehow - but I'm 100% sure it was them. They don't have the security they should, and they have financial incentive to defraud people.
Ok: there was ONE transaction, three years prior, in which the card was activated.
At every point after that, it spent its time in that sealed envelope. I paid off the balance transfer on it (done for a lower interest rate) in 1.5 years.
2 months before it was due to be replaced (expiration date), it "mysteriously" was released and someone started pushing fraudulent transactions.
I never used it at a retail location, at a restaurant, or to purchase anything at all. It was an emergency reserve and that was that. The ONLY possible point of leak was the CC company or bank.
There was one piece of legislation you should be referring to theOmnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. Which was fiscal responsibility at it's core, as it included both tax increases and spending decreases.
I was referring to the large number of social programs the Democrats tried to expand/create during that time, actually. And of course, you're misrepresenting the supposed "fiscal responsibility" of it - the Republicans at the time had offered amendments for another $313 Billion, but the Democrats nixed those (hardly "fiscal responsibility").
You might find that the effect of the Republican congresses was a gain of 11 billion in spending.
And I do fault the Republicans for that, if you didn't clearly read what I said earlier.
Many such as yourself actually credit legislative gridlock with the budget surplus, when in reality it was this really tough bill which produced the surplus.
Actually, "A little from Column A, A little from Column B." First we get a good, fiscally responsible bill, THEN we make sure the Congresscritters don't fuck it up later. We failed the latter.
I submit to you, that you, sir, are the one with blinders.
Right back At'cha.
They never take the chances they have to reduce spending, or balance the budget, or build nuclear power plants, or reduce foreign oil. For all their talk about government being the problem rather than the solution Republican's sure do love to add federal jobs and contracts (especially contracts). Even Roe v. Wade is still law even though there should be a supreme court which would overturn it in a second. The fact that every couple of years, they keep fooling people into believing the same platform they couldn't (or maybe wouldn't) deliver on, is amazing.
I find the same bit humorous on all the promises the Democrats have been giving for 30 years, with no change in sight because they never do anything on them either - things like fixing America's deplorable Death Maintenance Organization-run health care system, or various "civil rights" pledges that they never seem to get around to (or else have realized that progress is working better without interference, except that they need a permanent brown/black uneducated underclass stupid enough to vote party line at the beck and call of people like Sharpton and Jackson), or responsible fiscal policy (and let's face it here, it was CLINTON who let Greenspan and the Fed build bubbles galore that are now popping in rapid succession), or realistic fixes for the US "moving at the pace of the slowest idiot" public education system that leaves so many of our brightest kids getting their education ruined by the kids who just got pushed along by social promotion.
The fact that people such as yourself continue to spout out Republican Lore as if it's the truth would be funny, if it weren't for the seriousness of the problems we face.
Actually, I'm giving you the view from someone who has a firm grip on reality. But then again, I'm not a Rethuglicrat or a Demonican. I'm a voter who happened to still be in a high school that taught civics, who was involved enough to become an Eagle Scout (and who thinks the ACLU and Demonicrats should go to hell for what they've done to Scouting these days) and active in my community, and who votes for the best person for the job rather than voting based on what party someone sticks next to their name.
So, I ask you again: are you going to keep spouting off DailyKOS vitriol points, or are you going to start engaging in an honest conversation?
Stepping back a second from some of these - Credit Card companies and/or Banks do definitely have incentive to allow fraudulent transactions to occur - if they're getting money from them.
Both time my CC information was let loose, I'm 99% sure it was from inside the CC company. Both times, the fraud started small: $4-5 charges here and there with very innocuous looking names on them, that would have been easily overlooked if the card in question wasn't my "emergency" card that sits in a sealed envelope in the bottom of my filing cabinet and never gets used.
There was never a transaction in which the details could have been let loose.
I was wondering how this happened until I looked at the numbers and realized the simple math - for every one person who does catch the fraudulent activity, if there are 10 who don't, then the CC company just made a pretty penny on the finance/transaction fees they charged to process the fraudulent transactions. The fraudulent "merchant" gets money, the CC company gets money when the unsuspecting rubes pay their bill... and both of them laugh to whichever bank account they dump the stolen money in.
I keep daily watch on my statements these days - I have to. The credit card companies and banks and merchants have a financial incentive to defraud the public, as long as they can do it and make more money than they think they'll be fined if it's caught.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a better idea for you.
Read my response to your bullshit below, and stop flaming people (especially Mr. Beckerman), you disgusting little troll.
The law is clear. The fact that the judge was an idiot who didn't pay attention to the points of law is also clear.
Hardly. The lexicon was read aloud in court, along with the source material it pulled from. The book was a clear case of plagiarism to the court.
You mean selected snippets of the Lexicon were read in order to trick the judge into believing that that was all there was. A clear logical fallacy, but common tactic in cases like this.
The crux of your defense appears to be that a website previously existed that Rowling was happy with. Yet one has to be clear on one aspect here: There is a large gulf between publishing large pieces of someone's work for a no-cost reference and publishing someone else's work for profit.
Which is funny, considering the HP Lexicon website itself had advertising revenue associated with it.
And of course, there's the fact that the research was obviously independent, given that Rowling started attacking them for "getting things wrong":
In summary: the judge was dazzled by Rowling's star power and way too much lawyering, and should never be let near a copyright case again because he's proven himself utterly incompetent in the area.
Oh please.
The judge granted summary judgement on the flimsiest of grounds - a reference work for a multiple-volume work of fiction, by definition, will be "a dry reference."
Most reference books contain unique descriptions and commentary above and beyond the information presented in the source material.
And if you've ever looked at the Lexicon website, you know that it does precisely that. The judge fucked up on this point of law, because the Lexicon writer was a little guy and Rowling carries around an army of lawyers.
It's a sad day for the legal system and I hope this gets overturned on appeal - of course, by that point the damage is done.
Yeah that's great, except for those of us who work in high population density areas where multi-story buildings are the norm.
Did you look at the designs? The purpose of these is to get the collector on roof level, and run a tube down into the building. They also incorporate domed tops to collect more scattered light. I bet there's a large portion of your day where the top of most buildings gets a decent amount of sunlight.
I guess I have my answer.
Obama's supporters are as corrupt as their candidate.
New Belgium, imo the best brewing company in the Unites States, already has those. They also compost their waste and collect the methanol it produces, then burn it to provide 10% of their power needs. The rest of their power comes from wind
I suppose there's room here for a joke about feeding the employees beer, beans, and bratwurst for lunch each day and then collecting the "wind" during the afternoon ;)
Seriously - good for them!
Depending on what business you're in, the number of things you can do to save energy varies - but just about ANY company ought to be able to set up some form of solar lighting solution, whether they're in an office building, small building, or warehouse setup.
Quite seriously - run some optical tube skylights (like this, they come in a wide variety of options) into your working areas. FAR too many companies are wasting energy powering internal lighting when the sun's out. You can always turn on the lights *if* you need them due to a storm.
As an added bonus, you'll start to eliminate health problems - daytime-constant lighting has been proven to mess with your internal cycles and messes up peoples' sleeping patterns, a large part of why sleep disorders are so prevalent in developed countries.
Look at the Article-For-Deletion pages on the ones "Oschaper" created.
Wikipedia itself seems to pretty clearly be unconvinced that "Olaf Schaper" exists - the evidence is that Oliver Schaper used the "Olaf Schaper" lie as a dodge when he was called out for writing articles about his own little scientology-promoting "organizations."
I'd say that the chance that an "Olaf Schaper" would happen to create wikipedia articles on not one, but TWO pro-$cientology setups created by "Oliver Schaper", AND would have been involved in the Cult-organized mass of false DMCA notices, is pretty improbable (probably on the order of 2^279460347:1 against).
from someone who downmodded me: why do you consider this way-too-positive review of a mediocre game any more than a Slashvertisement trying to hide its origins?
Or is this just the usual wave of brain-dead Obama supporters downmodding me for my sig?
SecuROM compromises multiple portions of the OS, including insinuating itself into the system to try to prevent you from using other programs (like ISO loaders). It also phones home constantly and has the ability to launch code that it feels like using, invisible to the user.
I'd say that pretty much fucking defines a rootkit.
And there are many LEGITIMATE reasons to use an ISO loader - such as having a laptop that uses extra power to run the DVD drive, wasting time and battery power to use the DVD drive as an expensive dongle.
If you want decent battery life to game on the go, the most common method is a secondary battery pack that replaces your optical media drive - meaning you HAVE to switch to either an ISO loader or else a no-CD crack for games that are trying to use the media drive that way.
How does "Bought" sound?
As in, "EA paid Slashdot a lot of money to get this review placed as news. And they got what they paid for."
it infects your system with a rootkit.
That alone is a reason you shouldn't buy it. Just Say No to DRM.
Remember L. Ron's first rule of dealing with the media - "Never Defend, Always Attack."
And of course, any "Suppressive Person" is "Fair Game." (also here). Note the following: "May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."
From the Wikinews article:
Certainly looks like typical lying/"fairgame" $cientology behavior in action, doesn't it? I doubt one thing Schaper said about himself is true - and certainly doubt the idea that the FBI would be "involved" in the lies of a $cientologist. But that never does stop the Cult of $cientology from going about its business.
there's no such thing as a "rogue $cientologist" - this guy was obviously pulling this stunt with the knowledge/approval of cult leadership and organization.
It was probably along the lines of something like this - his "auditor" told him this was what he needed to do to "clear" something, so he did it.
Of course, Wikipedia's completely bombarded by pro-$cientology stooges who try to whitewash whatever they can from articles on the cult. I'm not surprised one of their stooges popped up trying this on Youtube to remove videos by people who expose the cult for what it is.
Height/spacing of boxes: somewhat for convenience, but flooding and accessibility concerns exist as well. Minimum height above the floor also helps prevent a spark from easily igniting carpet.
Why not to try to go through a corner: because of the way house framing is constructed. If you go straight down through a wall frame from above, your run exists in one wall frame only. If you try to make a 90-degree turn through a corner, you're going through two different wall frames. If the house shifts/settles later or is damaged (say, by high winds) and those two frames move with relation to each other, you run a real risk of stretching/pinching/breaking the electrical line inside the wall itself, which can cause shorts and arcing and fire.
Dude, we have video evidence - recordings of the original fire investigator finding daisy-chained surge strips in the initial investigation after they put out the blaze. This is noted on the initial investigation report, too.
Her own insurance agent helped her make sure that mysteriously "went missing" before the final investigation/report (which we got a copy of for our own insurance's records). Our insurance company isn't willing to help press charges because they got fully reimbursed for their cost and they don't want to make waves (they file a suit against her and her insurance company, and all of a sudden EVERY reimbursement they're trying to get from that company gets put on hold until the suit's resolved). Her insurance company is taking the word of her agent (who probably got paid under the table later) over the video evidence and initial report because he has a "long and solid history" with them. The story they wrote up says that it was an "accidental" fire that started when a pile of her arts & crafts material and blankets fell over on top of a single surge strip (doesn't mention the daisy-chaining) and caused it to overheat.
The thing is - she's a fucking neat freak. She had an aneurism and screaming fit when the other neighbor's dog took a shit on her lawn; she's pathological about keeping everything neat and tidy. She bitches and moans about neighbors who don't have mexicans mowing their lawn every other day. So how in a house owned by someone like that, does a pile of blankets just "happen" to fall on a set of daisy-chained surge strips right next to a storage cabinet full of aerosol paint cans? Answer: it doesn't. But it's a hell of an easy way to start an electrical fire on cue.
I've done helpwork for a friend, wiring up a garage-to-room conversion. We did the gruntwork, his father-in-law (who is a certified master electrician but has physical issues with getting into some of the cramped attic spacing any more due to age) taught us and inspected the work so that it could be signed off in case the house is sold later.
I also have an EE degree. The theoreticals of the circuitry, I knew. The details of code and the reasons for how certain things are done (spacing of outlets, location and recommended height of boxes, and the biggie, NEVER try to put an electrical line through a corner, for instance) I didn't know.
In the house I currently live in, were there to be a lot of work done, there's a certain amount of wiring that would have to be ripped out of the house because it met 1980s code but doesn't meet today's updated code. This has been confirmed by two inspectors (one when the house was purchased, one after a rebuild when my bitch of a neighbor burned her house down to scam a free remodeling out of her insurance company and damaged mine in the process).
You may claim you can do it on your own design "perfectly safe", and building codes do differ from region to region. Maybe one area is more cautious than another. Maybe one area has different risks in terms of weather patterns (wind, humidity, etc) or has seen historical common construction flaws (soil notorious for shifting, local building materials that weren't as sturdy as another region's) that mandate some extra safety precautions.
The point is, you can bitch all you want about "unnecessary" building and electrical codes, but you don't know everything that goes into their existence, and you should still follow them for legal reasons (and if you want to eventually sell your house, or your kids/wife might after they inherit it, etc...) even if you think they're garbage.
"Griefers" can also do the following things:
- Deliberately train/lure high-level mobs onto someone /ignore over 500 accounts while still trying to play a game and tell me it doesn't impact your play experience).
- "Hypercamp" areas (gold farmer bots/groups usually sit in known spawn spots for days at time, preventing real players from enjoying the area)
- Message-spam people (either people they think they can get a sale from, or people they are trying to drive out of a region; and before you say "but you have an ignore option", try to
FFXI is plagued with those three to the point of nonplayability, or at least it was before I (and the vast majority of its former player base) got the hell out.
Kingdom of Loathing is a lot like this - I've donated to support the game, but I know a lot of people who've not donated anything, and one of the nicer things is that we don't notice a difference in the game experience when I show them what I've got or they show me theirs. I figure my occasional donation is worth enough of the developers' time to keep them around, since I've been playing for a couple years.
Of course, it helps that it's playable (easily) as a semi-single-player game. I don't bother turning on the MMO/griefing component, because it's just stupid - I'd rather not deal with the dicks and griefers who infest most MMO environments.
And therein lies the real rub. If a game doesn't have PvP, a certain amount of a "buy X stuff" mechanic can work. If it's an MMO with PvP, "buy X stuff" allows griefers to artificially level and harm anyone they feel like, and that's not cool - eventually it gets to be like Final Fantasy XI or every Turbine game in existence, where there's nothing left but griefers and chinese money farmers because they drove everyone else off.
As far as Xbox Live is concerned, the one thing I like about it most is that almost every title has a free downloadable demo. If a game doesn't have a demo, I know they don't have enough faith in it that I'll buy it. If it has a demo but I don't like it, I don't buy. I've found enough games worth the $5-10 (and of course the $20 for Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness) that I can respect the model even if I don't like Micro$oft all that much.
Now if only I could get a properly sized (read: 500 or so GB) hard drive for the damn thing...
No, I said the only "transaction" was when I specifically called the CC company to activate the card. I've never used it for any purchase.
yea, right, I don't know if you are an actual registered Republican, but you don't pass the duck test. I've been down this road before, next message, and there will be a next message, you'll tell me that you'll vote for McCain simply because you hate me so much. I'll bet even money that if polled, you'd claim to be a Hillary support who's voting McCain. It's just the game you play, I understand, hope you had fun beating down this 'crazy liberal' :)
Actually, until last year I was a card-carrying Libertarian (finally got fed up with the pot-smoking crazy wing of that party). Now I'm just a libertarian with a small "l".
And alas, I haven't paid the Slashdot Extortion Fee, so I can't point you to my posts on the Bush Administration's crimes with regard to their taking of political prisoners, running roughshod over the legal system against border agents (including hiding exculpatory evidence by Bush's "good friend and buddy" Johnny Sutton), or the ridiculous actions of the fed recently, desperately pushing down the interest rates despite KNOWING that they were building a bubble, and now having nowhere for interest rates to go but up precisely when the bubble has actually popped and the economy's in a real (and now truly unavoidable) slowdown.
It didn't start under Bush, but Bush and Greenspan's "successor" have successfully fucked up royally - the best analogy I can give for the US economy is one of those Mexican cars we get here on our streets, where you see the guy doing 60-70 down the highway with a plume of smoke coming out his tailpipe, and it's obvious he's holding the gas pedal (read:interest rates) to the floor because he knows the moment he lets off the engine is just going to fucking sieze up and die.
They needed to not let the Fed's interest rate get below 3% at lowest. Instead, they took it all the way to 1%, and did critical damage. Was it already in bad shape before they took over? Certainly.
But I'll agree with you: they finished the job, in a REAL bad way.
Of course, this is from someone who understands math, finance, and economics. I understand your generation never got even the basics of those in your public school years or your college years. It would certainly explain the sheer amount of credit card debt you've run up.
The replacement hadn't been mailed yet - I made QUITE sure of that.
I know you want to absolve the cc/bank companies, somehow - but I'm 100% sure it was them. They don't have the security they should, and they have financial incentive to defraud people.
Ok: there was ONE transaction, three years prior, in which the card was activated.
At every point after that, it spent its time in that sealed envelope. I paid off the balance transfer on it (done for a lower interest rate) in 1.5 years.
2 months before it was due to be replaced (expiration date), it "mysteriously" was released and someone started pushing fraudulent transactions.
I never used it at a retail location, at a restaurant, or to purchase anything at all. It was an emergency reserve and that was that. The ONLY possible point of leak was the CC company or bank.
There was one piece of legislation you should be referring to theOmnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. Which was fiscal responsibility at it's core, as it included both tax increases and spending decreases.
I was referring to the large number of social programs the Democrats tried to expand/create during that time, actually. And of course, you're misrepresenting the supposed "fiscal responsibility" of it - the Republicans at the time had offered amendments for another $313 Billion, but the Democrats nixed those (hardly "fiscal responsibility").
You might find that the effect of the Republican congresses was a gain of 11 billion in spending.
And I do fault the Republicans for that, if you didn't clearly read what I said earlier.
Many such as yourself actually credit legislative gridlock with the budget surplus, when in reality it was this really tough bill which produced the surplus.
Actually, "A little from Column A, A little from Column B." First we get a good, fiscally responsible bill, THEN we make sure the Congresscritters don't fuck it up later. We failed the latter.
I submit to you, that you, sir, are the one with blinders.
Right back At'cha.
They never take the chances they have to reduce spending, or balance the budget, or build nuclear power plants, or reduce foreign oil. For all their talk about government being the problem rather than the solution Republican's sure do love to add federal jobs and contracts (especially contracts). Even Roe v. Wade is still law even though there should be a supreme court which would overturn it in a second. The fact that every couple of years, they keep fooling people into believing the same platform they couldn't (or maybe wouldn't) deliver on, is amazing.
I find the same bit humorous on all the promises the Democrats have been giving for 30 years, with no change in sight because they never do anything on them either - things like fixing America's deplorable Death Maintenance Organization-run health care system, or various "civil rights" pledges that they never seem to get around to (or else have realized that progress is working better without interference, except that they need a permanent brown/black uneducated underclass stupid enough to vote party line at the beck and call of people like Sharpton and Jackson), or responsible fiscal policy (and let's face it here, it was CLINTON who let Greenspan and the Fed build bubbles galore that are now popping in rapid succession), or realistic fixes for the US "moving at the pace of the slowest idiot" public education system that leaves so many of our brightest kids getting their education ruined by the kids who just got pushed along by social promotion.
The fact that people such as yourself continue to spout out Republican Lore as if it's the truth would be funny, if it weren't for the seriousness of the problems we face.
Actually, I'm giving you the view from someone who has a firm grip on reality. But then again, I'm not a Rethuglicrat or a Demonican. I'm a voter who happened to still be in a high school that taught civics, who was involved enough to become an Eagle Scout (and who thinks the ACLU and Demonicrats should go to hell for what they've done to Scouting these days) and active in my community, and who votes for the best person for the job rather than voting based on what party someone sticks next to their name.
So, I ask you again: are you going to keep spouting off DailyKOS vitriol points, or are you going to start engaging in an honest conversation?
Stepping back a second from some of these - Credit Card companies and/or Banks do definitely have incentive to allow fraudulent transactions to occur - if they're getting money from them.
Both time my CC information was let loose, I'm 99% sure it was from inside the CC company. Both times, the fraud started small: $4-5 charges here and there with very innocuous looking names on them, that would have been easily overlooked if the card in question wasn't my "emergency" card that sits in a sealed envelope in the bottom of my filing cabinet and never gets used.
There was never a transaction in which the details could have been let loose.
I was wondering how this happened until I looked at the numbers and realized the simple math - for every one person who does catch the fraudulent activity, if there are 10 who don't, then the CC company just made a pretty penny on the finance/transaction fees they charged to process the fraudulent transactions. The fraudulent "merchant" gets money, the CC company gets money when the unsuspecting rubes pay their bill... and both of them laugh to whichever bank account they dump the stolen money in.
I keep daily watch on my statements these days - I have to. The credit card companies and banks and merchants have a financial incentive to defraud the public, as long as they can do it and make more money than they think they'll be fined if it's caught.