I can build a processor with 10m times as many transistors as in current processors. If I'm good at it, it may even be 10m times faster than current processors.
But in no way here have I broken Moores Law. Computing Power (10m x) != Transistor Density (1x)
But they seem to have forgotten about a third opponent of many of these schemes: Independant artists. Those that havn't sold their souls to the devil. What happens when they want to release high quality music?
Do they have to pay the powers that be exorbiant amounts in order to get their music to fans at this quality? Or are they just turned down, and told to come back once they are owned by a label?
Is it just me, or does this sound like illegal product tying? (Want to sell high quality music, sign up with us. Want to listen to this high quality music, buy our players. Want to use our players, buy our music)
I should also point out that the card they were able to benchmark was running at production speed (don't know about the RAM though), so they really should be representative of the retail versions.
Actually, if you read the article, what it is is numbers disguised as percents. They did the benchmarks, they compared the numbers to the numbers the other cards got on the benchmarks, then they posted the percentage. They even state that if you want a VERY close approximation of the real numbers they got, to apply the percents to the GF4 review numbers they have listed in other reviews.
Personally I would prefer that we find a way to encourage the politicians we like to stay in power, while removing the politicians that don't deserve their power in a timely fashion.
A method that comes to mind is an election on vacancy, and threshold of votes of non-confidence.
People could be elected to office in the standard manner, but I would prefer abolishing political parties and letting contestants run on their own merits, with advertising equalized and de-flashified.
An example of this would be that political advertising is government regulated. There would be a government owned set (with perhaps a national flag backdrop, and a simple desk/chair), which every political commercial would be filmed on, and on which no props were allowed (there could maybe be a pre-defined wardrobe as well). The commercials would only be allowed to consist of the candidate in question talking about his platform. These commercials would be the same length, and aired in roughly the same time slots.
Also, "When I'm elected" type promises could only be allowed if backed by documents showing what powers they would actually have to do so. This should prove that if they broke the promise, it was either because one of the hurdles outlined before hand was too big (which the constituents should sympathize with), or it was simply because they had broken the promise (which would make the constituents mad, and generate votes of non-confidence). As such, this should limit the number of professional liars (most politicians today) that try to get into office.
Debates would still be allowed, but again, on government run, neutral facilities.
A Q&A session with each contestant would also be created, with questions submitted and ranked by the constituents. (I'm thinking something like the interview question process on Slashdot.) These questions would ideally have added commentary by knowledgeable people to display the facts needed to analyze the answers to the questions, but how to find "knowledgeable people" without getting the stereotypical TV "experts", I don't know.
This would ideally mean that the candidates are elected solely on what their skills and beliefs are.
However, getting back to my original topic: In order to encourage politicians to keep working in the people's interests, there would be the threshold of votes of non-confidence. This system would work to ensure that the politician was still in favor with the majority of their constituents. If for example, 20% of constituents had cast a vote against them (or some equivalent percent that meant that more than 50% of the constituents no longer liked them, and equalized somehow to protect against tyranny of the majority) in the last 6 months (each person could cast these votes whenever they wished, but they had to be at least 6 months or 1 politician apart, again adjusted to the period of time that works the best) then that politician would be dismissed, and an election to replace them would be held.
Of course, in reality this would most likely not hold up, and greedy people would find ways around it.
PS: did you know MS Word auto-capitalizes Slashdot?
What I propose happen, is that the instant this bill passes, everyone DDOS the DoJ with notices of intent to DOS the RIAA servers.
Since the DoJ will not be physically able to respond to all of these notices, many will be legally allowed to go through on bogus claims.
Also, if each person only does a small DOS attack, no single individual should be vulnerable to "wrongfull impairment" charges, as that would require $250 of damages to be caused.
The RIAA will soon learn that a million people causing them $200 of damages per attack is not something they want to support, and promply get the bill pulled.
Umm, actually, you said: "Say, one unit of currency A is worth two units of currency B. Does that matter?
No. People in the country with currency B will earn about twice as many currency units and spend about twice as many units, so ultimately, there is no big difference."
which translats to:
"one American dollar is worth 1.5 Canadian dollars. Does that matter?
No. People in Canada will earn about 1.5 times as much money and spend about 1.5 times as much, so ultimately, there is no big difference."
While in reality, we often earn and spend 1.0 times as much, making a big difference.
Ok, taking your text, and rearanging it a bit we get:
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright... You can't sue anybody for copyright infringement...
...based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings. ...because some schmuck copied something with the device...
That sure sounds to me like they can't sue you
(or anyone else) for your non-commercial copying.
As a Canadian, I'd have to say you are completely wrong. There are many instances in many goods and careers where the price we pay/earn in Canadian $ is the same as Americans pay/earn in American dollars.
Restaraunts are a good example, the numerical price difference in the food is nearly always very small, and sometimes (not that infrequently) the American prices are even higher (without being a higher class restaraunt).
But contrary to what you may beleive, we Canadians don't have money worth the same, or more than American money, in fact, it currently takes ~$1.50 for us to buy a single American dollar.
When you make ~$50/day working full time at minimum wage, paying the extra $5-10/meal to eat in the 'States is not something you can afford to do very often.
Similarly, there are countries which have this situation with software, and just because the Americans can afford $400US for a program, doesn't mean that other countries' citizens could even earn that amount in a month.
Having written hardware-level non-accelerated graphics programs in the past (involving implemented software based double buffering), I am well aware of all of this. Despite quoting what I said, you seem to have missed the critical part of it: "when the game speed relies on the frames rendered"
I never said game speed had to rely on them. And in fact, you yourself give examples of where I am correct, so while you see me as needing "whackin'", I think you need your glasses checked.
Also, while I know that all recent games rely on time, I have seen some semi-recent titles in which some animations or other non-physics related portions still seem to use frames. (I recall reading that some games had 1 frame delays between bullets being fired and them hitting their targets for example)
With VSYNC enabled, it also means that any FPS above what the monitor can display are lost frames. This can actually be detrimental to gameplay when the game speed relies on the frames rendered, as you can miss a frame you "need".
Frankly, I'm quite surprized that the citizens and government of the US of A are so fanatic about calling everyone on 2 whole continents (North and South America) members of their country. I mean, I thought they didn't like 2/3 of the countries on those continents?
Ahh well, I guess they can do as they please, though I feel distinctly uncomfortable when they suggest that I (a non-USA American) have to do things for the good of THEIR country.
Easy, we speak of beleiving the death camps are wrong, and the Nazis speak of beleiving the death camps are right. There's no reason to assume either of us are ACTUALLY "right" in some ultimate sense.
You make some good points, and I agree there is most likely something missing from the explanation I was able to drag out in my dyliria (sp?).
However I still don't think there are set rules which we can rely on to always give us an indication of whether something is moral or now, and I still think it is very foolish of you to insist that without beleiving in these mythical things, we can not beleive in morality at all.
It's called "Truth in advertising". When you go to a search engine to find something, the average person expects the search engine to do what it claims: sort by accuracy. When the search engine behaves differently than they advertise it to, or make it difficult to discover how it behaves, they are commiting false advertising. This is BAD.
You are correct that in a free market, a buisness may choose it's own model. However society as a whole has a right to protect themselves from unethical practises. THAT's what the FTC is doing, ensuring that users are aware that some of these links (and possibly which) are in fact paid ads, and not sites ranked according to their criteria.
I can't come up with a well organized response to this. So here's a bunch of rambling thoughts. I beleive that any all-encompasing set of moral rules will be forced to contradict itself. Any set of criteria must weigh the importance of the myriad of freedoms of individual humans, masses of humans, society, individual animals, masses of animals, plants, the planet in general, and many others. No matter what the criteria are, all but possibly one person will disagree with at least one of the criteria. If it does not matter what humans think than the criteria will have little importance to humans. The very idea that there is morality is inherintly tied to the idea that either animals also know what is moral, or that humans are seperate and judged by different rules than the rest of the species on earth. There will invariably be animals that do not follow this morality, which would lead one to beleive that all animals have souls and make their own decisions. You are trying to proclaim that there is "God's will" for what we should and should not do. This may be true, but I do not see how it can have any bearing over what happens in earthly life.
I'm tired and can't think very clearly at the moment, so I will end with this:
I beleive that morals are a social phenomina which have nothing to do with the overall concequences of people's actions. As humans experiance morals, they are simply an instict to avoid pain. Anything someone does is likely to have an effect on them later, "moral" activities are simply the ones that will have positive repurcusions for that person in the future. People often feel that benefiting society in general will help them in ways they have a vauge idea of, and ones they can not forsee, and due to this, benefiting society is also considered moral. The "golden rule" has also sprung from this phenomina. We are hesitant to do things we do not want done to us, since in doing those things we may encourage others to do them, possibly eventually leading back to having them done to us. None of this relies on any set of rules to judge which is right or wrong, but is rather a large psychological game of "guess the reaction", the results of which change when the society surrounding you changes.
Slashdot Mirror
I can build a processor with 10m times as many transistors as in current processors. If I'm good at it, it may even be 10m times faster than current processors.
But in no way here have I broken Moores Law.
Computing Power (10m x) != Transistor Density (1x)
No, seriously.
Music watermarks had two opponents
But they seem to have forgotten about a third opponent of many of these schemes: Independant artists. Those that havn't sold their souls to the devil. What happens when they want to release high quality music?
Do they have to pay the powers that be exorbiant amounts in order to get their music to fans at this quality? Or are they just turned down, and told to come back once they are owned by a label?
Is it just me, or does this sound like illegal product tying? (Want to sell high quality music, sign up with us. Want to listen to this high quality music, buy our players. Want to use our players, buy our music)
Before the site went down, I was getting redirects using both IE, and Opera.
At the moment, the 404 error messages I get are different between IE and Opera, but that's usually the case.
rash or irrational
Preferably both.
The point was that YES, open source does this, but NO, that's not a reason to lock out everything else.
If someone were to write software that met all these criteria, the government SHOULD NOT CARE if it's closed source or not.
I should also point out that the card they were able to benchmark was running at production speed (don't know about the RAM though), so they really should be representative of the retail versions.
Actually, if you read the article, what it is is numbers disguised as percents. They did the benchmarks, they compared the numbers to the numbers the other cards got on the benchmarks, then they posted the percentage. They even state that if you want a VERY close approximation of the real numbers they got, to apply the percents to the GF4 review numbers they have listed in other reviews.
News flash: You can zip a WAV file
Personally I would prefer that we find a way to encourage the politicians we like to stay in power, while removing the politicians that don't deserve their power in a timely fashion.
A method that comes to mind is an election on vacancy, and threshold of votes of non-confidence.
People could be elected to office in the standard manner, but I would prefer abolishing political parties and letting contestants run on their own merits, with advertising equalized and de-flashified.
An example of this would be that political advertising is government regulated. There would be a government owned set (with perhaps a national flag backdrop, and a simple desk/chair), which every political commercial would be filmed on, and on which no props were allowed (there could maybe be a pre-defined wardrobe as well). The commercials would only be allowed to consist of the candidate in question talking about his platform. These commercials would be the same length, and aired in roughly the same time slots.
Also, "When I'm elected" type promises could only be allowed if backed by documents showing what powers they would actually have to do so. This should prove that if they broke the promise, it was either because one of the hurdles outlined before hand was too big (which the constituents should sympathize with), or it was simply because they had broken the promise (which would make the constituents mad, and generate votes of non-confidence). As such, this should limit the number of professional liars (most politicians today) that try to get into office.
Debates would still be allowed, but again, on government run, neutral facilities.
A Q&A session with each contestant would also be created, with questions submitted and ranked by the constituents. (I'm thinking something like the interview question process on Slashdot.) These questions would ideally have added commentary by knowledgeable people to display the facts needed to analyze the answers to the questions, but how to find "knowledgeable people" without getting the stereotypical TV "experts", I don't know.
This would ideally mean that the candidates are elected solely on what their skills and beliefs are.
However, getting back to my original topic:
In order to encourage politicians to keep working in the people's interests, there would be the threshold of votes of non-confidence. This system would work to ensure that the politician was still in favor with the majority of their constituents. If for example, 20% of constituents had cast a vote against them (or some equivalent percent that meant that more than 50% of the constituents no longer liked them, and equalized somehow to protect against tyranny of the majority) in the last 6 months (each person could cast these votes whenever they wished, but they had to be at least 6 months or 1 politician apart, again adjusted to the period of time that works the best) then that politician would be dismissed, and an election to replace them would be held.
Of course, in reality this would most likely not hold up, and greedy people would find ways around it.
PS: did you know MS Word auto-capitalizes Slashdot?
What I propose happen, is that the instant this bill passes, everyone DDOS the DoJ with notices of intent to DOS the RIAA servers.
Since the DoJ will not be physically able to respond to all of these notices, many will be legally allowed to go through on bogus claims.
Also, if each person only does a small DOS attack, no single individual should be vulnerable to "wrongfull impairment" charges, as that would require $250 of damages to be caused.
The RIAA will soon learn that a million people causing them $200 of damages per attack is not something they want to support, and promply get the bill pulled.
I'm not entirely sure whether I agree or disagree with you :-)
LOL, I didn't think I had expressed an opinion for you to agree/dissagree with...
I stated a fact which disproved your theory...
Umm, actually, you said:
"Say, one unit of currency A is worth two units of currency B. Does that matter?
No. People in the country with currency B will earn about twice as many currency units and spend about twice as many units, so ultimately, there is no big difference."
which translats to:
"one American dollar is worth 1.5 Canadian dollars. Does that matter?
No. People in Canada will earn about 1.5 times as much money and spend about 1.5 times as much, so ultimately, there is no big difference."
While in reality, we often earn and spend 1.0 times as much, making a big difference.
I'm glad you have changed your mind.
Ok, taking your text, and rearanging it a bit we get:
...based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
...because some schmuck copied something with the device...
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright...
You can't sue anybody for copyright infringement...
That sure sounds to me like they can't sue you (or anyone else) for your non-commercial copying.
As a Canadian, I'd have to say you are completely wrong. There are many instances in many goods and careers where the price we pay/earn in Canadian $ is the same as Americans pay/earn in American dollars.
Restaraunts are a good example, the numerical price difference in the food is nearly always very small, and sometimes (not that infrequently) the American prices are even higher (without being a higher class restaraunt).
But contrary to what you may beleive, we Canadians don't have money worth the same, or more than American money, in fact, it currently takes ~$1.50 for us to buy a single American dollar.
When you make ~$50/day working full time at minimum wage, paying the extra $5-10/meal to eat in the 'States is not something you can afford to do very often.
Similarly, there are countries which have this situation with software, and just because the Americans can afford $400US for a program, doesn't mean that other countries' citizens could even earn that amount in a month.
LOL, knew you'd ask, can't remember though, sorry.
Having written hardware-level non-accelerated graphics programs in the past (involving implemented software based double buffering), I am well aware of all of this.
Despite quoting what I said, you seem to have missed the critical part of it: "when the game speed relies on the frames rendered"
I never said game speed had to rely on them. And in fact, you yourself give examples of where I am correct, so while you see me as needing "whackin'", I think you need your glasses checked.
Also, while I know that all recent games rely on time, I have seen some semi-recent titles in which some animations or other non-physics related portions still seem to use frames. (I recall reading that some games had 1 frame delays between bullets being fired and them hitting their targets for example)
I'm going to give you some credit, and assume that had you read my post, you would have wrote something that made at least a small amount of sense.
For now though, I'll just remind you that I live no where near europe.
With VSYNC enabled, it also means that any FPS above what the monitor can display are lost frames. This can actually be detrimental to gameplay when the game speed relies on the frames rendered, as you can miss a frame you "need".
Now that moderation is FUNNY!
No, people who live in America are Americans.
Frankly, I'm quite surprized that the citizens and government of the US of A are so fanatic about calling everyone on 2 whole continents (North and South America) members of their country. I mean, I thought they didn't like 2/3 of the countries on those continents?
Ahh well, I guess they can do as they please, though I feel distinctly uncomfortable when they suggest that I (a non-USA American) have to do things for the good of THEIR country.
even if Mickey Mouse became public domain
You forget, Micky Mouse IS in the public domain. Here's the legal reasoning.
Easy, we speak of beleiving the death camps are wrong, and the Nazis speak of beleiving the death camps are right. There's no reason to assume either of us are ACTUALLY "right" in some ultimate sense.
You make some good points, and I agree there is most likely something missing from the explanation I was able to drag out in my dyliria (sp?).
However I still don't think there are set rules which we can rely on to always give us an indication of whether something is moral or now, and I still think it is very foolish of you to insist that without beleiving in these mythical things, we can not beleive in morality at all.
It's called "Truth in advertising". When you go to a search engine to find something, the average person expects the search engine to do what it claims: sort by accuracy. When the search engine behaves differently than they advertise it to, or make it difficult to discover how it behaves, they are commiting false advertising. This is BAD.
You are correct that in a free market, a buisness may choose it's own model. However society as a whole has a right to protect themselves from unethical practises. THAT's what the FTC is doing, ensuring that users are aware that some of these links (and possibly which) are in fact paid ads, and not sites ranked according to their criteria.
I can't come up with a well organized response to this. So here's a bunch of rambling thoughts.
I beleive that any all-encompasing set of moral rules will be forced to contradict itself.
Any set of criteria must weigh the importance of the myriad of freedoms of individual humans, masses of humans, society, individual animals, masses of animals, plants, the planet in general, and many others.
No matter what the criteria are, all but possibly one person will disagree with at least one of the criteria.
If it does not matter what humans think than the criteria will have little importance to humans.
The very idea that there is morality is inherintly tied to the idea that either animals also know what is moral, or that humans are seperate and judged by different rules than the rest of the species on earth.
There will invariably be animals that do not follow this morality, which would lead one to beleive that all animals have souls and make their own decisions.
You are trying to proclaim that there is "God's will" for what we should and should not do. This may be true, but I do not see how it can have any bearing over what happens in earthly life.
I'm tired and can't think very clearly at the moment, so I will end with this:
I beleive that morals are a social phenomina which have nothing to do with the overall concequences of people's actions. As humans experiance morals, they are simply an instict to avoid pain. Anything someone does is likely to have an effect on them later, "moral" activities are simply the ones that will have positive repurcusions for that person in the future. People often feel that benefiting society in general will help them in ways they have a vauge idea of, and ones they can not forsee, and due to this, benefiting society is also considered moral. The "golden rule" has also sprung from this phenomina. We are hesitant to do things we do not want done to us, since in doing those things we may encourage others to do them, possibly eventually leading back to having them done to us. None of this relies on any set of rules to judge which is right or wrong, but is rather a large psychological game of "guess the reaction", the results of which change when the society surrounding you changes.