One good thing about the end of Origin and the Ultima line of games is that we won't have any more impossible to load computer games which take hours to configure. I'm glad to see that the plague I called down on that company for enticing me with that Ultima game in the black box (ten years ago?) which I could never get to run properly is finally feeling my wrath.
Excuse me. I don't have to go and prove I'm innocent to anyone with a badge who happens to not like my looks. Police officers cannot go and simply ask me for identification or my name for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps your 'law enforcement background' has made you less sensitive to constitutional rights and so I can see why you wouldn't see a problem here. And my mother would be proud that I'm not a good little 'young pioneer'
I don't know whether this fellow is guilty in any way or involved in the theft of the code but I do know that he'll have a horrible time trying to get his possessions back. A lot of police departments around the country make a nice little profit from the use and sale of such property. It's not right but it happens.
What the heck does being American have to do with making any kind of mistake about what language is spoken in any particular place?
Norwegian is the official language spoken in Norway with small Sami and Finnish speaking minorities. I know this from checking the CIA World Factbook.
I cannot begin to tell you how horrible that 'merger' sounds to me. Reading one of the articles about the decision by the two Stanford graduates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page (who created Google) to have a limited public offering to reward initial investors and company workers once again confirms that Google continues to show why Google is the best.
"If we defied all the laws we didn't like, it wouldn't be much of a civilization, would it?"
Well, we'd still have slavery for one thing. Slavery was quite legal in the United States and during that time it was illegal to help escaped slaves. I say it's a pretty darn good thing that we defy some of the laws we don't like. Without doing so where would civilization be?
This looks like a bad job of research by the RIAA lawyers. You would think they would have confined themselves to unsympathetic looking guys with long hair, past criminal histories to include beating of their wives, drowning of kittens and possible ties to the KKK. NO, instead they find themselves a twelve year old girl in a single parent home. Personally I love it. I want to see more stupidity. I want the RIAA lawyer to come out and tell everyone a twelve year old girl is responsible for their 31 percent decrease in music sales. That decrease in sales has nothing to do with the overpriced crap they put out. I want him to say with a straight face that the 20 dollars for a Brittney Spears CD is worth the same as that 20 dollars I just paid for the Lord of the Rings Two Towers DVD. I want that lawyer to be on CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX and even the BBC telling us how this twelve year old needs to have her life ruined so that Justine Timeberlake can get another SUV. Please please, bring on more stupidity, I need to be entertained.
I came to that conclusion a while ago as well. The prices are too high, the general quality isn't there, they obviously don't sell to me since I'm not a teenager, I won't buy crippled music (even if you rename it 'enhanced'), and I won't buy from folks who take kids to court for having an illegal copy of the latest Eminem ditty. I have thousands of CD's myself that I've collected over time, I'm part of that decline in music sales. Oh-I hate you RIAA. Watch me wave my spending dollars in your face.:-)
There are none so blind as those who cannot see. If you cannot even accept the fact that the US won the cold war I don't know that there is a whole lot I or anyone can do for you. So there isn't much point in pointing out all of your errors. Again, you don't seem to have a grasp of history my friend. Take care, stay away from sharp objects and let me know how your recall of President Bush goes.
You said.
"From this we can deduce two things, first that the French can be insufferably arrogant..."
This is quite correct. The other thing you said,
"The other thing we may deduce is that despite the fact they are frequently arrogant and obnoxious the French are frequently right..."
is completely and absurdly wrong. Witness their love of Jerry Lewis, witness their recent decision to use Woody Allen to promote tourism in France. Witness the whole history of France. And as for French advice on 'Vietnam'- um you do know enough history to realize that Vietnam was a French colony don't you? You do know some little thing about the Cold War perhaps? You know, the one the US won in the end by specifically not taking any advice from France. But that would involve knowing some history I think. You are wrong.
As per the heat detectors used by the police to see if you were growing weed. We had that argument as our oral arguments at University of Dayton Law School. I argued that it was not constitutional and even though the Supreme Court gets it wrong on occasion, this time they did it right. Thanks for bringing it up.
You know, as I understand it there is nothing that is fair use according to these bastards. So your admission to having taken money from the mouths of starving record executives can be used against you in a court of law (as soon as they finish rewriting the constitution). The only thing you can now do is to embrace your evil criminality. So go ahead, go into your bedroom and find those "Do not remove under penalty of law" tags on your mattress and just rip them off! Then just go into the living room and wait for the FBI to come bash in your door. They are on the way anyways. (you evil downloader of mp3's for CD's you already own guy you)
And your reaction is knee-jerk as well. On the same amount of information you have come a different set of conclusions. The difference between your set of knee-jerk reactions and other peoples knee-jerk reactions are purely based on the point of view you came into the discussion with. -Points of view you entered with and left with.
I am happy that the last gasp effort of the RIAA has finally begun. The suing of individual file traders will most certainly result in an even more nasty backlash and even more hostility to the organization and the artists that support them.
I read in one of the articles about the 'crackdown' that the effort was analogized to a police officer on a highway and how the police officer is able to successfully stop the speeding of the vast majority of drivers by simply stopping a few of the drivers and writing them tickets for speeding. Well, we all know what really happens. We all slow down when we see the police officer in his patrol car and as soon as he is out of sight then it's back to the speed everyone else is going. The end result for the RIAA and the artists that publically support this is that there will be more hostility and a very noticeable drop in sales for the artists that foolishly get behind this effort. Can anyone say Metallica?
Microsoft will be glad to hear that some of their propaganda/education money has been put to good use. Yes indeed, blame it all on the 'pirates.' Microsoft isn't a greedy company bent on controlling all aspects of your computer/entertainment/multimedia experience- everything bad or stupid they do can be blamed on those 'pirates'
A Perfect Start to the Perfect Dictatorship
on
The Searchable Life
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Mao, Stalin or Hitler would weep with joy at the thought of such complete and total control over the individual. And make no mistake about it, in order to have complete control over each and every one of us it is necessary to have knowledge. Knowledge really is power and total knowledge of every aspect of your life is an important step in the governments ability to completely control you. Those civil liberties or those freedoms you thought belonged to you will eventually be crushed under the weight of the governments need to know. The Patriot Act, Total Information Awareness, Lifelog- welcome to your 1984/Brave New World.
Where to begin. This is a guy who has never had the first clue about what made Star Trek successful and will never ever know it. He killed Kirk stupidly and that was inexcusable. He's had a deathgrip on the Star Trek franchise and has been intent on squeezing the last dollar out of it. It's no fun, it's Politically Correct and boring. There isn't anyone 'Boldly going where no man has gone before' - it's all the same aliens with a different rubber thing on their heads. It's all about United Nations like problems and the proper UN type solutions. It's just completely unwatchable and just plain sad. Berman- don't go away mad, just go away.
Um, dude, there is no earthly reason to 'undermine' OPEC. See, there is this thing called the free market and it determines the price of oil. OPEC has found out that it is not in their interest to raise the price the oil past what the market can bear. See, their income depends on the rest of the world being able to pay a price for the oil. If they destabilize the world economy (which they are a part of) with whacked out oil prices they don't have customers.
Sorry, but the reasons for the war cannot be so simplistically and easily stated. It really is about taking out the ability of anyone to create and distribute weapons which any terrorist can use to attack any civilian population center. If you are a terrorist or terrorist group that has demonstrated a ability or desire to conduct such attacks then it's a no brainer that you are not long for this world. If you are a dictator or government that has demonstrated a disregard for the life of people-your own and your neighbors and you have already invaded two countries and tried to assassinate the President of the United States it's not unreasonable to assume that you could recreate chemical and biological weapons (which you have used before) or continue to seek nuclear weapons (a technology developed in the 1940's) and that you are therefore still a danger. Considering the number of people that can be killed at one time by any of those types of weapons and considering that we watched 3000 people killed in two huge buildings by 14 religious fanatics in two jetliners do you really think that President Bush would let such an obvious danger continue to exist? And do you really really think that an oil situation that has continued in a stabilized manner since the oil boycott of the seventies is really the answer for a war in Iraq? Perhaps you do but I recommend you read some history and reconsider your reasoning.
"Anyhow, by ensuring that we all have an accurate picture of the world, as citizens of Western society, we can better ensure that Western governments enact legislation that best deals with other nations and peoples."
--Really now, the Second Gulf War was the most reported war ever reported on the internet and the citizens of the Western nations couldn't be more divided over this event. Clearly an accurate picture of the world which is delivered by money making internet news services does not insure everyone sees the same 'accurately reported' events the same way. The way that we are all dealing with each other is with unofficial boycotts and invectives. A better way that what?
The 'Better immigration' policy you speak of is just silly. Whose immigration policy? What country? Japan has a policy where basically you can't immigrate to their country- and if you are there it takes generations to become a citizen-like maybe your children might be able to be japanese citizens someday. The United States has quotas for various groups for various regions of the world and pourous borders. Personally I think a better immigration policy would be no immigration. Is that the 'better immigration policy' you were thinking about?
Differences in degree, not in kind. In either event you are doing something that you have always been able to do which is to record music that you can hear. If it's more efficient than it was in years gone by well then that's just progress for you.
Dear Anonymous Coward-
I would bet you that I have purchased more CD's than you have my friend but I'm equally sure you have me beat with the porn since that seems to be your interest here.
Porn DVD buyers? Porno websites? Eh? I'm pretty sure we were talking about music here but if that's your interest I guess you already know about all of that.:-)
Look here. When I bought my first portable radio it had a cassette recorder so I could tape music from the radio. Then I bought a portable CD player that had a cassette recorder in it so I could tape music from the radio or CD. Then I bought I stereo with many components and fancy connections so I could tape from my CD and my FM receiver in high quality sound. Then I bought a VCR so I could record shows, movies and even music. Then I bought a fancier one so I could make even better quality tapes and copies of movies and shows. Now I have a computer and an internet connection, a CD burner and access to even more music than I could get from my radio or FM receiver with a high gain antenna. I can make tapes and CD's of music like I always have to listen in my car or elsewhere.
Now you want to tell me I'm a 'pirate', a 'thief' or a 'criminal' for doing what I've always done and I might add-something that the technology has always allowed me to do. I'm surprised that 9 percent of the people think it's wrong now. In better news, 91 percent of the people are not so gullible as to believe something that's always been legal and encouraged is now illegal.
I completely agree with this. Berman turned the Star Trek universe into a huge bland expanse of politically correct drivel. Every chance he got he killed what was good about the show. I have always loved Star Trek but I was one of those who didn't bother to go see this latest effort. I heard they killed Data and I said, humm, another good character dies. Nope, you aren't getting my money for that sort of insult to me as a fan.
I wish the evil ones would just hurry up and bring all of this out. Put the DRM tech in whatever they want. Then try to sell it. The sooner they just do it the sooner I can go on and not buy a damn bit of it. They can stack all of that crap right there with all those copy protected CD's I'm not buying any longer. Or as Clint Eastwood might say, "Go ahead, make my Millenium."
Please do put these on Kazaa or Winmx. Going to the website after it's been slashdotted and already it took about a half hour to get a minute or so of the video. I'm looking at a 1.6 kb download happening. From the minute I watched already I love this thing. Quick please, before Paramount swoops down in their stolen Bird of Prey and lobs a couple of antimatter torpedos on these guys. -Sorry couldn't help that last bit.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
One good thing about the end of Origin and the Ultima line of games is that we won't have any more impossible to load computer games which take hours to configure. I'm glad to see that the plague I called down on that company for enticing me with that Ultima game in the black box (ten years ago?) which I could never get to run properly is finally feeling my wrath.
Excuse me. I don't have to go and prove I'm innocent to anyone with a badge who happens to not like my looks. Police officers cannot go and simply ask me for identification or my name for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps your 'law enforcement background' has made you less sensitive to constitutional rights and so I can see why you wouldn't see a problem here. And my mother would be proud that I'm not a good little 'young pioneer'
I don't know whether this fellow is guilty in any way or involved in the theft of the code but I do know that he'll have a horrible time trying to get his possessions back. A lot of police departments around the country make a nice little profit from the use and sale of such property. It's not right but it happens.
What the heck does being American have to do with making any kind of mistake about what language is spoken in any particular place? Norwegian is the official language spoken in Norway with small Sami and Finnish speaking minorities. I know this from checking the CIA World Factbook.
I cannot begin to tell you how horrible that 'merger' sounds to me. Reading one of the articles about the decision by the two Stanford graduates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page (who created Google) to have a limited public offering to reward initial investors and company workers once again confirms that Google continues to show why Google is the best.
"If we defied all the laws we didn't like, it wouldn't be much of a civilization, would it?" Well, we'd still have slavery for one thing. Slavery was quite legal in the United States and during that time it was illegal to help escaped slaves. I say it's a pretty darn good thing that we defy some of the laws we don't like. Without doing so where would civilization be?
This looks like a bad job of research by the RIAA lawyers. You would think they would have confined themselves to unsympathetic looking guys with long hair, past criminal histories to include beating of their wives, drowning of kittens and possible ties to the KKK. NO, instead they find themselves a twelve year old girl in a single parent home. Personally I love it. I want to see more stupidity. I want the RIAA lawyer to come out and tell everyone a twelve year old girl is responsible for their 31 percent decrease in music sales. That decrease in sales has nothing to do with the overpriced crap they put out. I want him to say with a straight face that the 20 dollars for a Brittney Spears CD is worth the same as that 20 dollars I just paid for the Lord of the Rings Two Towers DVD. I want that lawyer to be on CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX and even the BBC telling us how this twelve year old needs to have her life ruined so that Justine Timeberlake can get another SUV. Please please, bring on more stupidity, I need to be entertained.
I came to that conclusion a while ago as well. The prices are too high, the general quality isn't there, they obviously don't sell to me since I'm not a teenager, I won't buy crippled music (even if you rename it 'enhanced'), and I won't buy from folks who take kids to court for having an illegal copy of the latest Eminem ditty. I have thousands of CD's myself that I've collected over time, I'm part of that decline in music sales. Oh-I hate you RIAA. Watch me wave my spending dollars in your face. :-)
There are none so blind as those who cannot see. If you cannot even accept the fact that the US won the cold war I don't know that there is a whole lot I or anyone can do for you. So there isn't much point in pointing out all of your errors. Again, you don't seem to have a grasp of history my friend. Take care, stay away from sharp objects and let me know how your recall of President Bush goes.
You said. "From this we can deduce two things, first that the French can be insufferably arrogant..." This is quite correct. The other thing you said, "The other thing we may deduce is that despite the fact they are frequently arrogant and obnoxious the French are frequently right..." is completely and absurdly wrong. Witness their love of Jerry Lewis, witness their recent decision to use Woody Allen to promote tourism in France. Witness the whole history of France. And as for French advice on 'Vietnam'- um you do know enough history to realize that Vietnam was a French colony don't you? You do know some little thing about the Cold War perhaps? You know, the one the US won in the end by specifically not taking any advice from France. But that would involve knowing some history I think. You are wrong.
As per the heat detectors used by the police to see if you were growing weed. We had that argument as our oral arguments at University of Dayton Law School. I argued that it was not constitutional and even though the Supreme Court gets it wrong on occasion, this time they did it right. Thanks for bringing it up.
You know, as I understand it there is nothing that is fair use according to these bastards. So your admission to having taken money from the mouths of starving record executives can be used against you in a court of law (as soon as they finish rewriting the constitution). The only thing you can now do is to embrace your evil criminality. So go ahead, go into your bedroom and find those "Do not remove under penalty of law" tags on your mattress and just rip them off! Then just go into the living room and wait for the FBI to come bash in your door. They are on the way anyways. (you evil downloader of mp3's for CD's you already own guy you)
And your reaction is knee-jerk as well. On the same amount of information you have come a different set of conclusions. The difference between your set of knee-jerk reactions and other peoples knee-jerk reactions are purely based on the point of view you came into the discussion with. -Points of view you entered with and left with.
I am happy that the last gasp effort of the RIAA has finally begun. The suing of individual file traders will most certainly result in an even more nasty backlash and even more hostility to the organization and the artists that support them. I read in one of the articles about the 'crackdown' that the effort was analogized to a police officer on a highway and how the police officer is able to successfully stop the speeding of the vast majority of drivers by simply stopping a few of the drivers and writing them tickets for speeding. Well, we all know what really happens. We all slow down when we see the police officer in his patrol car and as soon as he is out of sight then it's back to the speed everyone else is going. The end result for the RIAA and the artists that publically support this is that there will be more hostility and a very noticeable drop in sales for the artists that foolishly get behind this effort. Can anyone say Metallica?
Microsoft will be glad to hear that some of their propaganda/education money has been put to good use. Yes indeed, blame it all on the 'pirates.' Microsoft isn't a greedy company bent on controlling all aspects of your computer/entertainment/multimedia experience- everything bad or stupid they do can be blamed on those 'pirates'
Mao, Stalin or Hitler would weep with joy at the thought of such complete and total control over the individual. And make no mistake about it, in order to have complete control over each and every one of us it is necessary to have knowledge. Knowledge really is power and total knowledge of every aspect of your life is an important step in the governments ability to completely control you. Those civil liberties or those freedoms you thought belonged to you will eventually be crushed under the weight of the governments need to know. The Patriot Act, Total Information Awareness, Lifelog- welcome to your 1984/Brave New World.
Where to begin. This is a guy who has never had the first clue about what made Star Trek successful and will never ever know it. He killed Kirk stupidly and that was inexcusable. He's had a deathgrip on the Star Trek franchise and has been intent on squeezing the last dollar out of it. It's no fun, it's Politically Correct and boring. There isn't anyone 'Boldly going where no man has gone before' - it's all the same aliens with a different rubber thing on their heads. It's all about United Nations like problems and the proper UN type solutions. It's just completely unwatchable and just plain sad. Berman- don't go away mad, just go away.
Um, dude, there is no earthly reason to 'undermine' OPEC. See, there is this thing called the free market and it determines the price of oil. OPEC has found out that it is not in their interest to raise the price the oil past what the market can bear. See, their income depends on the rest of the world being able to pay a price for the oil. If they destabilize the world economy (which they are a part of) with whacked out oil prices they don't have customers. Sorry, but the reasons for the war cannot be so simplistically and easily stated. It really is about taking out the ability of anyone to create and distribute weapons which any terrorist can use to attack any civilian population center. If you are a terrorist or terrorist group that has demonstrated a ability or desire to conduct such attacks then it's a no brainer that you are not long for this world. If you are a dictator or government that has demonstrated a disregard for the life of people-your own and your neighbors and you have already invaded two countries and tried to assassinate the President of the United States it's not unreasonable to assume that you could recreate chemical and biological weapons (which you have used before) or continue to seek nuclear weapons (a technology developed in the 1940's) and that you are therefore still a danger. Considering the number of people that can be killed at one time by any of those types of weapons and considering that we watched 3000 people killed in two huge buildings by 14 religious fanatics in two jetliners do you really think that President Bush would let such an obvious danger continue to exist? And do you really really think that an oil situation that has continued in a stabilized manner since the oil boycott of the seventies is really the answer for a war in Iraq? Perhaps you do but I recommend you read some history and reconsider your reasoning.
"Anyhow, by ensuring that we all have an accurate picture of the world, as citizens of Western society, we can better ensure that Western governments enact legislation that best deals with other nations and peoples." --Really now, the Second Gulf War was the most reported war ever reported on the internet and the citizens of the Western nations couldn't be more divided over this event. Clearly an accurate picture of the world which is delivered by money making internet news services does not insure everyone sees the same 'accurately reported' events the same way. The way that we are all dealing with each other is with unofficial boycotts and invectives. A better way that what? The 'Better immigration' policy you speak of is just silly. Whose immigration policy? What country? Japan has a policy where basically you can't immigrate to their country- and if you are there it takes generations to become a citizen-like maybe your children might be able to be japanese citizens someday. The United States has quotas for various groups for various regions of the world and pourous borders. Personally I think a better immigration policy would be no immigration. Is that the 'better immigration policy' you were thinking about?
Differences in degree, not in kind. In either event you are doing something that you have always been able to do which is to record music that you can hear. If it's more efficient than it was in years gone by well then that's just progress for you.
Dear Anonymous Coward- I would bet you that I have purchased more CD's than you have my friend but I'm equally sure you have me beat with the porn since that seems to be your interest here. Porn DVD buyers? Porno websites? Eh? I'm pretty sure we were talking about music here but if that's your interest I guess you already know about all of that. :-)
Look here. When I bought my first portable radio it had a cassette recorder so I could tape music from the radio. Then I bought a portable CD player that had a cassette recorder in it so I could tape music from the radio or CD. Then I bought I stereo with many components and fancy connections so I could tape from my CD and my FM receiver in high quality sound. Then I bought a VCR so I could record shows, movies and even music. Then I bought a fancier one so I could make even better quality tapes and copies of movies and shows. Now I have a computer and an internet connection, a CD burner and access to even more music than I could get from my radio or FM receiver with a high gain antenna. I can make tapes and CD's of music like I always have to listen in my car or elsewhere. Now you want to tell me I'm a 'pirate', a 'thief' or a 'criminal' for doing what I've always done and I might add-something that the technology has always allowed me to do. I'm surprised that 9 percent of the people think it's wrong now. In better news, 91 percent of the people are not so gullible as to believe something that's always been legal and encouraged is now illegal.
I completely agree with this. Berman turned the Star Trek universe into a huge bland expanse of politically correct drivel. Every chance he got he killed what was good about the show. I have always loved Star Trek but I was one of those who didn't bother to go see this latest effort. I heard they killed Data and I said, humm, another good character dies. Nope, you aren't getting my money for that sort of insult to me as a fan.
I wish the evil ones would just hurry up and bring all of this out. Put the DRM tech in whatever they want. Then try to sell it. The sooner they just do it the sooner I can go on and not buy a damn bit of it. They can stack all of that crap right there with all those copy protected CD's I'm not buying any longer. Or as Clint Eastwood might say, "Go ahead, make my Millenium."
Please do put these on Kazaa or Winmx. Going to the website after it's been slashdotted and already it took about a half hour to get a minute or so of the video. I'm looking at a 1.6 kb download happening. From the minute I watched already I love this thing. Quick please, before Paramount swoops down in their stolen Bird of Prey and lobs a couple of antimatter torpedos on these guys. -Sorry couldn't help that last bit. :-)