I think you didn't read the article carefully because you already had your mind made up. In this study, the stem cells are taken from the bone marrow in the child's own hip, cultured and separated, and put back into the childs bloodstream.
I can't see any downside here except that I've heard that taking the marrow out is quite painfull.
"drug companies may not be sensitive to how poverty can undermine the spirit of informed consent. Individuals who participate in Indian clinical trials usually won't be educated. Offering $100 may be undue enticement; they may not even realize that they are being coerced...more and more drug companies are conducting clinical trials in developing countries where government oversight is more lax."
If any of that applied to Texas we might be just as upset about it as we are about India. Clear enough?
"What "no no"... hard time for just copying stuff? It's just entertainment, the loss of some is a small price to pay for freedom of information in the information age."
Well, first of all, I think it is a lot easier to call it a "small price to pay" when it is someone else's money. If it were your money, you might think differently. And secondly, I don't see how punishing people for selling things they don't own does anything to hurt freedom of information.
I hate the DMCA too, and I hate the government backing up commercial copy protection schemes with laws that deny customers their property rights. But the DMCA is coincident with this case. These guys were selling games they didn't have a right to.
Now I don't like to see non-violent crimes that happen to have a computer involved or some other particular issue raised to the level of punishment that should be reserved for violent crime. But I wouldn't object to these guys being punished in the same ballpark as a car thief.
Ok, so you're going to avoid: Microsoft, both XBox and Windows PCs Nintendo, they strong arm their suppliers and developers Sony, they make everything proprietary and tie developers into exclusive releases to limit customer choice, and they are going to be putting the customer-unfriendly Blu-Ray into the PS3. EA, the biggest publisher is notorious for overworking their employees, and just did the very anti-competitive exclusive contracts with the NFL, ESPN and NHL. They don't even want to use the ESPN brand, they just wanted to take it away from Sega.
So who is on the whitelist? I think Id Software makes a Linux version of their games. I think that is it for Tier-One games. I'm sure knowledgeable people could list "great" games made for Linux, but I think Quake and Doom titles would be the only ones that cracked the Top 10 in the last 5 years that qualify as "thug-free." I'd get pretty bored playing only those games.
I guess I should have Googled it first:"The Small Arms Protective Insert (SAPI) is made of a boron carbide ceramic with a spectra shield backing that's an extremely hard material. It stops, shatters and catches any fragments up to a 7.62 mm round with a muzzle velocity of 2,750 feet per second. It's harder than Kevlar."
"The new Tungsten based IF material has up to twice the strength of the best impact resistant materials currently used in protective armor applications such as boron carbide and silicon carbide."
I guess your "ceramic" plates are made of boron carbide or silicon carbide?
Because nobody has a HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray player available for purchase, and won't for at least a year, it is FAR, FAR too early to declare anyone the winner in this format war.
And the fact is that both camps have a reason to lie to you and tell you they are going to be ready as soon as or sooner than the competition to keep supporters from leaving them. At this point there is no way to know when either product is really going to be available. Although HD-DVD may seem to be behind right now because Hollywood prefers the more-restrictive Blu-Ray, IF (and that is a big IF) HD-DVD comes to market significantly earlier than Blu-Ray, then there will be content producers that put stuff out on it (not Sony of course but their competitors who wish to get a leg up on them.) And if there is a critical mass of content available, then all those people who have spent $1300 on a big-screen and want something, anything HD to watch on it will buy HD-DVD players. Once that market is established the studios HAVE to follow, because they can't tell stockholders "yeah would could make lots of money selling HD-DVDs, but its icky so we're not going to."
Now if all the content producers stick together and don't release anything on HD-DVD, then it will be just as dead as Divx (the Circuit City format, not the codec). So will the studios all stick together? Will some of them be afraid to be on the wrong side of Microsoft and Intel? Will Dell start putting HD-DVD drives in all their computers as soon as they are available? Will Apple?
I'm a PC gamer too. But XBox Live is very appealing.
The big difference between XBox Live and what you are describing, is that your $156/yr and all the neat organization is for ONE GAME. Xbox Live support is mandatory for all XBox 360 games.
If I were Microsoft, I would talk up shortages to create excitement and push pre-orders. I might even hold up the first day supply so that it could "sell out." However, I would do everything I could to make sure that everyone that wanted one would be able to buy one in the first week.
If I'm right, you have a very small window to get a premium price on Ebay. And if people believe they can get one at a major retailer by Friday, they aren't going to buy one from some unknown on Ebay and wait for it to be shipped.
Elder Scrolls:Oblivion just got delayed, and I had two XBox/HDTV freaks tell me yesterday that they have decided to wait until spring to buy. Perfect Dark and PGR3 are not exactly going to drive demand for the XBox360.
" Wouldn't you say that it was more or less 'too late' for Jack Thompson to withdraw his proposal?"
I am not a lawyer, but yes, I would say it is less than too late to withdraw the offer. And I would say that the game is less than done too. I would also guess that Rockstar would not be interested in licensing the engine for this purpose. Why give the idiot more press for a share of $10,000 that he is unlikely to deliver on?
You still don't get it. It wasn't the equivalent of buying a Rolex from a guy on the street corner. And if there are no laws against it, you'll get fake Rolex's in Sak's Fifth Avenue.
Congratulatons on never being duped. I, unfortunately, have been duped, once. And it wasn't an anonymous stranger, it was at a large, well-respected web-portal. It was supposed to download and install *a* game. I was never shown a EULA or informed of anything else being installed. I certainly didn't see anything with GAIN or Gator or whatnot that would have tipped me off. But something made me suspicious and I ran Spybot and AdAware and Norton and finally killed the 6 programs that were included.
See it isn't like your example. It is more like it asks if it can use the phone and then comes in and makes itself and home and invites a bunch of friends and then none of them will leave. THAT is why it should be illegal.
"either of the following:
(B) Enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images of human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner...cruel...in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim."
All I have done there is remove some of the "or" options. As I understand it, one of the most popular games of all times, The Sims, allows one to lock one's Sim into a house or even a closet and deny them food or water or a bathroom. If that isn't torture, I don't know what is. Even a stick figure is an image of a human being, so when game with educational value like SimCity allows you to "test" your city by starting fires or tornadoes or plane crashes or monster attacks, it can be argued that you are terrorizing and therefore tortureing the people of your city. All you have to do is find a D.A. and a judge or 12 people to agree and there is a great deal of software that would be illegal.
This law is worded so vaugely that it isn't just about beating a prostitute to death with a big, purple dildo.
You're mostly right, but consumers do have SOME say. If there is enough content available on HD-DVD (at least 2 studios have committed to it, and nobody knows what porn will do yet) and the players and movies are available before Blu-Ray; IF consumers choose to buy HD-DVD then it may get enough of an install base that the other studios will have to produce movies for it because they can't turn away from revenue.
On the other hand, if there is enough confusion, consumers may not buy anything and they all lose, the studios, the player manufacturers, the TV manufacturers, the computer makers.
I, for one, have not bought an HD-TV yet partially because of DVI vs. HDMI, and the fact that today's HDMI doesn't have enough bandwidth for 1080p. I don't want to buy anything that may be obsolete in a couple years. I'm also not crazy about Blu-Ray's remote disable feature.
If by "anyone" you mean anyone west of Istanbul, then yes. But in case you haven't noticed, there are a very large number of people in China and India, and they make a lot of movies there. If 1% of those people buy an HD-TV and a new Hi-Def disc player in the next 5 years, that is more than enough for a market.
But I went to the store and bought a copy, transaction over. Why can they slap a EULA on it after the fact and say I didn't buy it? If I don't agree to the license, I'm not a licensee am I? What did I just buy? Why can they take away my property rights just by writing a document that says I need to agree to their terms?
From the Sun press release: "The agreement aims to make it easier for users to freely obtain Sun's Java Runtime Environment (JRE), the Google Toolbar and the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite"
And they also say: "About OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is an open-source project, home of the OpenOffice.org software, the most widely distributed open-source multi-platform productivity suite. The OpenOffice.org community was founded by Sun Microsystems in 2000. An active community, of which Sun is a key member, enhances and supports the OpenOffice.org office suite. "
Actually, innocence doesn't enter into it in either case. In a criminal proceeding one is found "guilty" or "not guilty." "Not Guilty" doesn't mean we are sure they didn't do it, it means we are not sure beyond a reasonable doubt that they did it.
And it doesn't matter if it is a civil or criminal trial, she still broke the law.
"...a case of literally not seeing the forest for the trees."
"Literally" is not a word to add emphasis, it has a specific meaning that is opposite of how you are using it. It conveys that you are not using a figure of speech and you intend the words to be taken at their most basic meaning. But you are using a figure of speech. It is actually a case of figureatively not seeing the forest for the trees.
Hey, if they are going to make a mindless special effects extravaganza, I would MUCH rather they do it from video game source material instead of pissing all over one of my favorite books...again. With the exception of LOTR, all my favorite books have been screwed up. And for some reason they always take the best parts out: Johnny Mnemonic (where did Molly's claws go?), Starship Troopers (where is the exoskeletal armor? they took the mobile out of mobile infantry) Puppet Masters. Its too painfull to list more.
Be thankfull they are just using a stupid video game, that way you won't get your hopes up.
"NASCAR, Indy , and F1 are all technologically advanced machines..."
Your overall point may be fine, but calling NASCAR advanced is a bit of a stretch. They are still running pretty much the same iron-block, pushrod, carburated small-block V8 engines that they have been using for 40 years.
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Apple uses software to sell hardware. If Apple licenses it, they give away their reason to exist. I don't think you'll ever see that.
I don't think the AACS delay favors either format because it is delaying them both equally.
I think you didn't read the article carefully because you already had your mind made up. In this study, the stem cells are taken from the bone marrow in the child's own hip, cultured and separated, and put back into the childs bloodstream.
I can't see any downside here except that I've heard that taking the marrow out is quite painfull.
"drug companies may not be sensitive to how poverty can undermine the spirit of informed consent. Individuals who participate in Indian clinical trials usually won't be educated. Offering $100 may be undue enticement; they may not even realize that they are being coerced...more and more drug companies are conducting clinical trials in developing countries where government oversight is more lax."
If any of that applied to Texas we might be just as upset about it as we are about India. Clear enough?
"What "no no" ... hard time for just copying stuff? It's just entertainment, the loss of some is a small price to pay for freedom of information in the information age."
Well, first of all, I think it is a lot easier to call it a "small price to pay" when it is someone else's money. If it were your money, you might think differently. And secondly, I don't see how punishing people for selling things they don't own does anything to hurt freedom of information.
I hate the DMCA too, and I hate the government backing up commercial copy protection schemes with laws that deny customers their property rights. But the DMCA is coincident with this case. These guys were selling games they didn't have a right to.
Now I don't like to see non-violent crimes that happen to have a computer involved or some other particular issue raised to the level of punishment that should be reserved for violent crime. But I wouldn't object to these guys being punished in the same ballpark as a car thief.
Ok, so you're going to avoid:
Microsoft, both XBox and Windows PCs
Nintendo, they strong arm their suppliers and developers
Sony, they make everything proprietary and tie developers into exclusive releases to limit customer choice, and they are going to be putting the customer-unfriendly Blu-Ray into the PS3.
EA, the biggest publisher is notorious for overworking their employees, and just did the very anti-competitive exclusive contracts with the NFL, ESPN and NHL. They don't even want to use the ESPN brand, they just wanted to take it away from Sega.
So who is on the whitelist? I think Id Software makes a Linux version of their games. I think that is it for Tier-One games. I'm sure knowledgeable people could list "great" games made for Linux, but I think Quake and Doom titles would be the only ones that cracked the Top 10 in the last 5 years that qualify as "thug-free." I'd get pretty bored playing only those games.
I guess I should have Googled it first:"The Small Arms Protective Insert (SAPI) is made of a boron carbide ceramic with a spectra shield backing that's an extremely hard material. It stops, shatters and catches any fragments up to a 7.62 mm round with a muzzle velocity of 2,750 feet per second. It's harder than Kevlar."
So when they said twice as strong, they meant it.
"The new Tungsten based IF material has up to twice the strength of the best impact resistant materials currently used in protective armor applications such as boron carbide and silicon carbide."
I guess your "ceramic" plates are made of boron carbide or silicon carbide?
Because nobody has a HD-DVD or a Blu-Ray player available for purchase, and won't for at least a year, it is FAR, FAR too early to declare anyone the winner in this format war.
And the fact is that both camps have a reason to lie to you and tell you they are going to be ready as soon as or sooner than the competition to keep supporters from leaving them. At this point there is no way to know when either product is really going to be available. Although HD-DVD may seem to be behind right now because Hollywood prefers the more-restrictive Blu-Ray, IF (and that is a big IF) HD-DVD comes to market significantly earlier than Blu-Ray, then there will be content producers that put stuff out on it (not Sony of course but their competitors who wish to get a leg up on them.) And if there is a critical mass of content available, then all those people who have spent $1300 on a big-screen and want something, anything HD to watch on it will buy HD-DVD players. Once that market is established the studios HAVE to follow, because they can't tell stockholders "yeah would could make lots of money selling HD-DVDs, but its icky so we're not going to."
Now if all the content producers stick together and don't release anything on HD-DVD, then it will be just as dead as Divx (the Circuit City format, not the codec). So will the studios all stick together? Will some of them be afraid to be on the wrong side of Microsoft and Intel? Will Dell start putting HD-DVD drives in all their computers as soon as they are available? Will Apple?
I'm a PC gamer too. But XBox Live is very appealing.
The big difference between XBox Live and what you are describing, is that your $156/yr and all the neat organization is for ONE GAME. Xbox Live support is mandatory for all XBox 360 games.
That is a pretty risky proposition.
If I were Microsoft, I would talk up shortages to create excitement and push pre-orders. I might even hold up the first day supply so that it could "sell out." However, I would do everything I could to make sure that everyone that wanted one would be able to buy one in the first week.
If I'm right, you have a very small window to get a premium price on Ebay. And if people believe they can get one at a major retailer by Friday, they aren't going to buy one from some unknown on Ebay and wait for it to be shipped.
Elder Scrolls:Oblivion just got delayed, and I had two XBox/HDTV freaks tell me yesterday that they have decided to wait until spring to buy. Perfect Dark and PGR3 are not exactly going to drive demand for the XBox360.
" Wouldn't you say that it was more or less 'too late' for Jack Thompson to withdraw his proposal?"
I am not a lawyer, but yes, I would say it is less than too late to withdraw the offer. And I would say that the game is less than done too. I would also guess that Rockstar would not be interested in licensing the engine for this purpose. Why give the idiot more press for a share of $10,000 that he is unlikely to deliver on?
You still don't get it. It wasn't the equivalent of buying a Rolex from a guy on the street corner. And if there are no laws against it, you'll get fake Rolex's in Sak's Fifth Avenue.
Congratulatons on never being duped. I, unfortunately, have been duped, once. And it wasn't an anonymous stranger, it was at a large, well-respected web-portal. It was supposed to download and install *a* game. I was never shown a EULA or informed of anything else being installed. I certainly didn't see anything with GAIN or Gator or whatnot that would have tipped me off. But something made me suspicious and I ran Spybot and AdAware and Norton and finally killed the 6 programs that were included.
See it isn't like your example. It is more like it asks if it can use the phone and then comes in and makes itself and home and invites a bunch of friends and then none of them will leave. THAT is why it should be illegal.
"either of the following: (B) Enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images of human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner...cruel...in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim."
All I have done there is remove some of the "or" options. As I understand it, one of the most popular games of all times, The Sims, allows one to lock one's Sim into a house or even a closet and deny them food or water or a bathroom. If that isn't torture, I don't know what is. Even a stick figure is an image of a human being, so when game with educational value like SimCity allows you to "test" your city by starting fires or tornadoes or plane crashes or monster attacks, it can be argued that you are terrorizing and therefore tortureing the people of your city. All you have to do is find a D.A. and a judge or 12 people to agree and there is a great deal of software that would be illegal.
This law is worded so vaugely that it isn't just about beating a prostitute to death with a big, purple dildo.
You're mostly right, but consumers do have SOME say. If there is enough content available on HD-DVD (at least 2 studios have committed to it, and nobody knows what porn will do yet) and the players and movies are available before Blu-Ray; IF consumers choose to buy HD-DVD then it may get enough of an install base that the other studios will have to produce movies for it because they can't turn away from revenue.
On the other hand, if there is enough confusion, consumers may not buy anything and they all lose, the studios, the player manufacturers, the TV manufacturers, the computer makers.
I, for one, have not bought an HD-TV yet partially because of DVI vs. HDMI, and the fact that today's HDMI doesn't have enough bandwidth for 1080p. I don't want to buy anything that may be obsolete in a couple years. I'm also not crazy about Blu-Ray's remote disable feature.
If by "anyone" you mean anyone west of Istanbul, then yes. But in case you haven't noticed, there are a very large number of people in China and India, and they make a lot of movies there. If 1% of those people buy an HD-TV and a new Hi-Def disc player in the next 5 years, that is more than enough for a market.
But I went to the store and bought a copy, transaction over. Why can they slap a EULA on it after the fact and say I didn't buy it? If I don't agree to the license, I'm not a licensee am I? What did I just buy? Why can they take away my property rights just by writing a document that says I need to agree to their terms?
Which raises the question: If I have lawfully purchased a copy of software, why do I need a license?
From the Sun press release:
"The agreement aims to make it easier for users to freely obtain Sun's Java Runtime Environment (JRE), the Google Toolbar and the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite"
And they also say:
"About OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org is an open-source project, home of the OpenOffice.org software, the most widely distributed open-source multi-platform productivity suite. The OpenOffice.org community was founded by Sun Microsystems in 2000. An active community, of which Sun is a key member, enhances and supports the OpenOffice.org office suite. "
Actually, innocence doesn't enter into it in either case. In a criminal proceeding one is found "guilty" or "not guilty." "Not Guilty" doesn't mean we are sure they didn't do it, it means we are not sure beyond a reasonable doubt that they did it.
And it doesn't matter if it is a civil or criminal trial, she still broke the law.
"...a case of literally not seeing the forest for the trees."
"Literally" is not a word to add emphasis, it has a specific meaning that is opposite of how you are using it. It conveys that you are not using a figure of speech and you intend the words to be taken at their most basic meaning. But you are using a figure of speech. It is actually a case of figureatively not seeing the forest for the trees.
Hey, if they are going to make a mindless special effects extravaganza, I would MUCH rather they do it from video game source material instead of pissing all over one of my favorite books...again. With the exception of LOTR, all my favorite books have been screwed up. And for some reason they always take the best parts out: Johnny Mnemonic (where did Molly's claws go?), Starship Troopers (where is the exoskeletal armor? they took the mobile out of mobile infantry) Puppet Masters. Its too painfull to list more.
Be thankfull they are just using a stupid video game, that way you won't get your hopes up.
"NASCAR, Indy , and F1 are all technologically advanced machines..."
Your overall point may be fine, but calling NASCAR advanced is a bit of a stretch. They are still running pretty much the same iron-block, pushrod, carburated small-block V8 engines that they have been using for 40 years.