With the DS Nintendo have officially stopped playing Sony/Microsoft's game. They can clearly see that games are being put in a box now with nothing but graphics improving, so they picked up there ball and started a new game.
You've about got it there. Nintendo have realised they can't compete with Sony or Microsoft on their own terms, so they've changed the rules. Nintendo now release amazing games that cannot be copied or cloned, because nobody else has the hardware.
We're seeing it already with the DS, and with the Revolution things will get interesting. That controller will allow games like nothing else there's ever been, and games unlike anything that any other console will be able to offer. I suppose if you've been sidelined and pushed into a smallish niche, the only thing to do is evolve like hell...
I'm actually quite glad of this. The outcome of this case will determine just what is and what is not enforceable in an EULA.
For instance, how about that bit about not disassembling, decompiling or reverse-engineering software that's in so many EULAs? That's the same kind of thing as this 'not use in spyware research' clause. If the one is unenforceable, then is the other one too?
Probably. Since the Sony Rootkit is the big story at the moment, this thread will get read by a lot of people. That post went to +5, and it's got Slashdot memeicity all over it.
I wouldn't use it as a straight drop-in replacement for ^H^H^H, though; that merely implies 'I nearly wrote this - whoops!' $sys$ conveys malevolence. So, for instance, if someone were to write
We must invade Iraq to look for oil^H^H^HWMD
would suggest that oil is at least part of the purpose of the invasion, and that it's just not diplomatic to mention it. A careless typo that reveals too much of what you're thinking. On the other hand
We must invade Iraq to look for $sys$oil WMD
would suggest that oil is the real purpose of the invasion, and that this is being deliberately hidden by a lot of bullshit about WMD. A subtext deliberately trojaned in and kept dark.
Use the $sys$ prefix in place of ^H^H^H to lend a nastier, more malevolent tone to what it is you're editing out.
You're not trying to say that Frenchies and Germans are racist against non-whites are you?
Sorry to reply twice, but I left out Germany. A good part of the Germans' problem with Turkey joining up is that Germany has a whole lot of Turkish gastarbeiter providing cheap labour. All these people are living and working in Germany but are not citizens and are basically on temporary permission to be there. Once Turkey joins the EU, though, they all have the same right as any other citizen of the Union to live and work in any member state they please... such as Germany.
Meanwhile, the British are enormously keen to see Turkey join. They're a huge market, and more importantly it'll piss off the French no end.
You're not trying to say that Frenchies and Germans are racist against non-whites are you?
Good gracious no. The French, they're just prejudiced against anyone who thinks maybe there are better uses for so much of the EU budget that goes on subsidies for French farmers...
Turkey's prime minister seems to think the riots all have to do with France violating musilms' human rights. This is probably a political game on Turkey's side
It sure is. Turkey is very keen to join the EU as soon as it possibly can. The existing membership is split on the issue, but France is probably the strongest opponent. It's in Turkey's interest to portray the French government as anti-Muslim, because then the other nations in the EU will come to perceive France's opposition to Turkish membership of the EU as a product of an anti-Muslim mindset, and will be less likely to support France in that matter.
What the French are actually against, of course, is the accession to the EU of a country with a population bigger than theirs. The Turks would quite naturally have more seats in the European Parliament than either the French or the Germans, and would tend to vote for policies benefiting the poorer countries of the East who have recently joined. In order to defeat such policies, the French and Germans might actually have to come to agreements with the British... Clearly this is inconceivable if you happen to be French:-)
Wouldn't it be ironic of France of all places was the starting point for a global uprising?
Quiet, fool! The existence of Silhouette must remain a secret until we are quite ready to begin the revolution! We cannot declare ourselves openly until we can either subvert or neutralise both the Dentons!
And you shouldn't forget that this whole mess started because French police stopped a group of people doing absolutely nothing wrong just so they could check immigrant IDs. Two of them ran away and died when they hid in an electrical substation. Say what you will about the United States but if our police/INS officers started randomly stopping people just to check if they had Green Cards there would be an outrage.
Surely, though, the innocent have nothing to hide from the police?
Papers please, citizen...
Re:Just goes to show that even smart people can be
on
Cow Tipping is a Myth
·
· Score: 1
Cows can stand in a variety of poses
I really love the choice of words there. I've got a mental image now of a cow doing an exciting combat stance. Ginyuu Toku-Sentai: Ushi! Attakku!
Colour screen and USB host are the only real difference
Colour screen I don't care about, but USB host attracts me. Hook up direct to someone else's player and plunder its whole collection, no computer needed? Where do I sign!
Shame the thing looks so ugly. I'm keeping my iHP-140, which is incredibly stylish:-)
Out of curiosity, how do people pay for their allofmp3 purchases? I mean, isn't it playing with fire to hand them your credit card?
Look, for the sake of argument let's suppose that allofmp3.com IS run by the Russian mafia. It's not so unlikely, the Russian mafia is huge, they run a lot of stuff over there.
Nonetheless, it's never going to be in their interests to screw over their customers. If they just took your card number and plundered your account, you'd scream about it all over the internet. Suddenly allofmp3.com is finished - even if the mafia's contacts in the Moscow police keep them from being arrested, they'll lose all their customers once word of their misbehaviour gets out.
I don't really see what the problem is. There are people in this thread saying that because allofmp3.com is run by the mafia then it's bad to shop there. Why? allofmp3.com is itself a legitimate business, even if its backers have other business interests that are illegal.
English-speakers shamelessly steal foreign word, change meaning, confuse hell out of everyone. In other news today, protests against lack of diversity in religious background of recent Popes...
an encrypted report on security breaches in US nuclear command&control protocols better stay unbroken for the better part of the next century
Nah. Ten years, tops.
If a report exists on security breaches in the nuclear command protocols, then presumably those flaws were fixed, and fixed fast - nobody wants to risk a Strangelove scenario. The only serious risk, then, is the embarrassment factor of a leak, and that does not matter once the president of the day is no longer in power. Who cares if a scandal comes to light affecting the president-before-last?
I see... recent Mars "search for signs of life" missions as a combination PR stunt and the space equivalent of the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost because that's where it's light
I think that's a little unfair. We know for a fact that Earth is completely infested with life. Everywhere on Earth that life could imaginably exist, it is found, and also in some places where we never imagined we would find it at all. Deep underground in solid rock, in the furthest Antarctic, in the driest deserts, in the irradiated high atmosphere, at volcanic vents in the ocean completely independent from the sun... Everywhere. We also know that Earth life can survive in spore form in space; bacteria survived for years on the Surveyor moon probe until returned by Apollo. In recent years, what we've discovered about the ability of life to adapt to hellish conditions has been absolutely amazing.
So it's not so unreasonable to look for life on Mars. It's not that far-fetched. Other places that might be worth checking are the upper atmosphere of Venus (where it's cooler) and the oceans of Europa. Whether native life or Earth life spread by impacts, it's not unrealistic to suppose it might be there and, if found, it would be a huge discovery.
we can't get Government funded missions to map and photograph our own planet which put the results in the public domain? It occurs to me that the latter would not only be substantially cheaper to do but also far more useful to the general populous.
The difference here is that there's little commercial use for a high-resolution map of Mars or Venus. Accurate maps of Earth are extremely economically valuable.
However, although it's not public domain, Google Earth is freely as in gratis.
... of finding active volcanoes on Venus? Could someone get some practical use out of such a find?
Venus is an extreme case of climatology. It's about the same size as the Earth. It actually receives less sunlight than the Earth, even though it's closer to the Sun, because its cloud layer reflects so much incoming radiation. But it's hot hot hot.
That atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, with some nitrogen, water vapour and sulphur dioxide. It's hot, acidic, and the pressure is the sort of thing you only get on Earth in the deep seas.
Now, we have to wonder how Venus got that way. One possibility for how Venus got such a thick, acidic atmosphere is that it is continually undergoing massive volcanic activity. If we can observe Venusian volcanoes, we can determine to what extent they might reasonably affect the climate on Venus.
If we can understand Venus, then we can use it to stress-test our planetary climate models and thereby improve our understanding of comparable processes on Earth. It shouldn't be too hard to think of a reason why we might urgently want to improve our understanding of Earth's climate systems as regards atmospheric carbon dioxide content...
There's a very good writeup of Venus and why it's interesting here.
Interesting... isn't Rockstar North, makers of GTA3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas, a US company? I guess maybe they moved to Japan and I didn't realize it.
They're British, actually, based in Edinburgh IIRC (though I think they also absorbed Psygnosis, who were in the Liverpool area). Of course, it's easier to whip up racism against the Japanese, and since when did bigoted fools feel the need to worry about accuracy?
Ironically, the rest of his argument still stands. It's illegal in the UK to sell any of the Grand Theft Auto series to anybody under 18. They're classified the same way as movies, and so Vice City rather appropriately carries the exact same rating as Scarface.
Barring unforseen vectors, radioactive carbon simply does not add itself to the system.
We should also point out that radioactive carbon is completely irrelevant on an evolutionary timescale. Carbon dating only works on a timescale up to tens of thousands of years; it's great for putting dates on Saxon spears and Egyptian burial masks and mummies and maybe even mammoths, but is completely useless if you're dealing with a T. rex.
This is, of course, a common mistake among the creationist crowd. I suppose it comes of the mindset in which six thousand years is the entire history of the world...
BTW,/. editors: can we put a link to talkorigins.org in the summary of any future articles on this subject? The 'common creationist mistakes' page would do quite nicely. It would save having to repeat the same explanations over and over again...
FROM: it_director@norad.mil
TO: president@whitehouse.gov
SUBJECT: New systems
Mr President, I'm pleased to report that the new national radar systems are fully tested and operational.
FROM: r.q.hacker@norad.mil
TO: it_director@norad.mil
SUBJECT: possible bug in calendar module
UNREAD
Hey, we may have a problem in the calendar system. I suspect there's a memory allocation issue here, we've been seeing occasional bugs in testing. Might be worth delaying rollout.
FROM: president@whitehouse.gov
TO: SACEUR@nato.int
SUBJECT: Re: Your plans
Please find attached confirmation that your proposed military exercises to be held on Feb 29th have been authorised. I look forward to evaluating the performance of our strategic defences in a full-scale battle simulation.
It's a breath of fresh air in a stagnant marketplace. I'm feeling bright and breezy about its prospects. I think it should go ahead with great gusto, and hopefully it won't be long before production models are on sail.
Imagine what the station could have been like if our government hadn't wasted that $300 billion dollars bombing the shit out of another nation based on lies about invisible weapons of mass destruction.
Better yet, imagine what the Apollo programme could have been like if the government hadn't wasted all that money bombing the shit out of another nation based on paranoia about communism and the domino theory...
Another space programme, another pointless bloody mess of a war. America, Fuck Yeah!
Slashdot Mirror
You've about got it there. Nintendo have realised they can't compete with Sony or Microsoft on their own terms, so they've changed the rules. Nintendo now release amazing games that cannot be copied or cloned, because nobody else has the hardware.
We're seeing it already with the DS, and with the Revolution things will get interesting. That controller will allow games like nothing else there's ever been, and games unlike anything that any other console will be able to offer. I suppose if you've been sidelined and pushed into a smallish niche, the only thing to do is evolve like hell...
I'm pretty sure closed-source != "Democracy"
I'm pretty sure 'socialism' and 'democracy' are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, some would argue that in their ideal forms, the two are synonymous...
For instance, how about that bit about not disassembling, decompiling or reverse-engineering software that's in so many EULAs? That's the same kind of thing as this 'not use in spyware research' clause. If the one is unenforceable, then is the other one too?
Probably. Since the Sony Rootkit is the big story at the moment, this thread will get read by a lot of people. That post went to +5, and it's got Slashdot memeicity all over it.
I wouldn't use it as a straight drop-in replacement for ^H^H^H, though; that merely implies 'I nearly wrote this - whoops!' $sys$ conveys malevolence. So, for instance, if someone were to write
We must invade Iraq to look for oil^H^H^HWMD
would suggest that oil is at least part of the purpose of the invasion, and that it's just not diplomatic to mention it. A careless typo that reveals too much of what you're thinking. On the other hand
We must invade Iraq to look for $sys$oil WMD
would suggest that oil is the real purpose of the invasion, and that this is being deliberately hidden by a lot of bullshit about WMD. A subtext deliberately trojaned in and kept dark.
Use the $sys$ prefix in place of ^H^H^H to lend a nastier, more malevolent tone to what it is you're editing out.
Sorry to reply twice, but I left out Germany. A good part of the Germans' problem with Turkey joining up is that Germany has a whole lot of Turkish gastarbeiter providing cheap labour. All these people are living and working in Germany but are not citizens and are basically on temporary permission to be there. Once Turkey joins the EU, though, they all have the same right as any other citizen of the Union to live and work in any member state they please... such as Germany.
Meanwhile, the British are enormously keen to see Turkey join. They're a huge market, and more importantly it'll piss off the French no end.
Good gracious no. The French, they're just prejudiced against anyone who thinks maybe there are better uses for so much of the EU budget that goes on subsidies for French farmers...
It sure is. Turkey is very keen to join the EU as soon as it possibly can. The existing membership is split on the issue, but France is probably the strongest opponent. It's in Turkey's interest to portray the French government as anti-Muslim, because then the other nations in the EU will come to perceive France's opposition to Turkish membership of the EU as a product of an anti-Muslim mindset, and will be less likely to support France in that matter.
What the French are actually against, of course, is the accession to the EU of a country with a population bigger than theirs. The Turks would quite naturally have more seats in the European Parliament than either the French or the Germans, and would tend to vote for policies benefiting the poorer countries of the East who have recently joined. In order to defeat such policies, the French and Germans might actually have to come to agreements with the British... Clearly this is inconceivable if you happen to be French :-)
Quiet, fool! The existence of Silhouette must remain a secret until we are quite ready to begin the revolution! We cannot declare ourselves openly until we can either subvert or neutralise both the Dentons!
Surely, though, the innocent have nothing to hide from the police?
Papers please, citizen...
I really love the choice of words there. I've got a mental image now of a cow doing an exciting combat stance. Ginyuu Toku-Sentai: Ushi! Attakku!
Colour screen I don't care about, but USB host attracts me. Hook up direct to someone else's player and plunder its whole collection, no computer needed? Where do I sign!
Shame the thing looks so ugly. I'm keeping my iHP-140, which is incredibly stylish :-)
Look, for the sake of argument let's suppose that allofmp3.com IS run by the Russian mafia. It's not so unlikely, the Russian mafia is huge, they run a lot of stuff over there.
Nonetheless, it's never going to be in their interests to screw over their customers. If they just took your card number and plundered your account, you'd scream about it all over the internet. Suddenly allofmp3.com is finished - even if the mafia's contacts in the Moscow police keep them from being arrested, they'll lose all their customers once word of their misbehaviour gets out.
I don't really see what the problem is. There are people in this thread saying that because allofmp3.com is run by the mafia then it's bad to shop there. Why? allofmp3.com is itself a legitimate business, even if its backers have other business interests that are illegal.
English-speakers shamelessly steal foreign word, change meaning, confuse hell out of everyone. In other news today, protests against lack of diversity in religious background of recent Popes...
They should have picked up Azumanga Daioh.
Damn right they should. Bloody terrific, that.
It's delightfully thorough.
Nah. Ten years, tops.
If a report exists on security breaches in the nuclear command protocols, then presumably those flaws were fixed, and fixed fast - nobody wants to risk a Strangelove scenario. The only serious risk, then, is the embarrassment factor of a leak, and that does not matter once the president of the day is no longer in power. Who cares if a scandal comes to light affecting the president-before-last?
I think that's a little unfair. We know for a fact that Earth is completely infested with life. Everywhere on Earth that life could imaginably exist, it is found, and also in some places where we never imagined we would find it at all. Deep underground in solid rock, in the furthest Antarctic, in the driest deserts, in the irradiated high atmosphere, at volcanic vents in the ocean completely independent from the sun... Everywhere. We also know that Earth life can survive in spore form in space; bacteria survived for years on the Surveyor moon probe until returned by Apollo. In recent years, what we've discovered about the ability of life to adapt to hellish conditions has been absolutely amazing.
So it's not so unreasonable to look for life on Mars. It's not that far-fetched. Other places that might be worth checking are the upper atmosphere of Venus (where it's cooler) and the oceans of Europa. Whether native life or Earth life spread by impacts, it's not unrealistic to suppose it might be there and, if found, it would be a huge discovery.
The difference here is that there's little commercial use for a high-resolution map of Mars or Venus. Accurate maps of Earth are extremely economically valuable.
However, although it's not public domain, Google Earth is freely as in gratis.
What rot. If that was the case we'd have used an Ariane. The rocket used here was Soyuz / Fregat - a Russian launcher.
Venus is an extreme case of climatology. It's about the same size as the Earth. It actually receives less sunlight than the Earth, even though it's closer to the Sun, because its cloud layer reflects so much incoming radiation. But it's hot hot hot.
That atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, with some nitrogen, water vapour and sulphur dioxide. It's hot, acidic, and the pressure is the sort of thing you only get on Earth in the deep seas.
Now, we have to wonder how Venus got that way. One possibility for how Venus got such a thick, acidic atmosphere is that it is continually undergoing massive volcanic activity. If we can observe Venusian volcanoes, we can determine to what extent they might reasonably affect the climate on Venus.
If we can understand Venus, then we can use it to stress-test our planetary climate models and thereby improve our understanding of comparable processes on Earth. It shouldn't be too hard to think of a reason why we might urgently want to improve our understanding of Earth's climate systems as regards atmospheric carbon dioxide content...
There's a very good writeup of Venus and why it's interesting here.
They're British, actually, based in Edinburgh IIRC (though I think they also absorbed Psygnosis, who were in the Liverpool area). Of course, it's easier to whip up racism against the Japanese, and since when did bigoted fools feel the need to worry about accuracy?
Ironically, the rest of his argument still stands. It's illegal in the UK to sell any of the Grand Theft Auto series to anybody under 18. They're classified the same way as movies, and so Vice City rather appropriately carries the exact same rating as Scarface.
We should also point out that radioactive carbon is completely irrelevant on an evolutionary timescale. Carbon dating only works on a timescale up to tens of thousands of years; it's great for putting dates on Saxon spears and Egyptian burial masks and mummies and maybe even mammoths, but is completely useless if you're dealing with a T. rex.
This is, of course, a common mistake among the creationist crowd. I suppose it comes of the mindset in which six thousand years is the entire history of the world...
BTW, /. editors: can we put a link to talkorigins.org in the summary of any future articles on this subject? The 'common creationist mistakes' page would do quite nicely. It would save having to repeat the same explanations over and over again...
The former dinosaurian population of the Yucatan Peninsula might disagree...
Um, what really big bug?
FROM: it_director@norad.mil
TO: president@whitehouse.gov
SUBJECT: New systems
Mr President, I'm pleased to report that the new national radar systems are fully tested and operational.
FROM: r.q.hacker@norad.mil
TO: it_director@norad.mil
SUBJECT: possible bug in calendar module
UNREAD
Hey, we may have a problem in the calendar system. I suspect there's a memory allocation issue here, we've been seeing occasional bugs in testing. Might be worth delaying rollout.
FROM: president@whitehouse.gov
TO: SACEUR@nato.int
SUBJECT: Re: Your plans
Please find attached confirmation that your proposed military exercises to be held on Feb 29th have been authorised. I look forward to evaluating the performance of our strategic defences in a full-scale battle simulation.
It's a breath of fresh air in a stagnant marketplace. I'm feeling bright and breezy about its prospects. I think it should go ahead with great gusto, and hopefully it won't be long before production models are on sail.
Better yet, imagine what the Apollo programme could have been like if the government hadn't wasted all that money bombing the shit out of another nation based on paranoia about communism and the domino theory...
Another space programme, another pointless bloody mess of a war. America, Fuck Yeah!