They need a section for odd bugs that get encountered from time to time. For instance, I did a kernel upgrade on Slackware 10 to 2.6.7 using the mkinitrd instructions from Pat's mini how-to on a system with integrated i815 chipset video. Under the 2.4 kernel/dev/agpgart is working and happy, under 2.6.7/dev/agpgart is missing and you have to recreate it every boot with "mknod/dev/agpgart c 10 175". Sure, you could go Googling for the info, but it would be nice for them to have a single location for the odd stuff that can happen from time to time.
Going back quite a few years, there was a Mac game called Strategic Conquest that as far as I could tell didn't cheat at all. But it did do odd things (silly, stupid things) like load up its entire army on boats to try and find you. Sink the carriers and the computer surrendered. I *personally* never saw any cheating-type behavior.
Near as I can tell it's a two-fold requirement that makes DVDoctor need the 5700... (1) CineFX Engine version 2.0 and (2) Shader Model 2.0b or better, both those are only available in the 5700 or newer Vnidia cards (the 5600, for instance, has CineFX 1.0).
What if the term of a copyright was the longer of (a) the life of the author, or last living author for a collective work; or (b) 70 years. With no protection lasting beyond 70 years under any circumstances, even if it was a corporate asset.
If you ask me, and you didn't, but I'm gonna tell you anyways, a company is still reliant on a patent or copyright after 70 years they need a new idea or two: they're little better than a squatter at that point. Let's give a kick in the rear to innovation.
They don't understand technology, even something as simple as FTP or a freakin' browser, and yet they try to regulate behavior around the tech without pulling their heads out of their asses long enough to know what they're doing or the ramifications of such legislation. I can email home (to my Gmail acct, natch) warez; so does that mean that all the email vendors need to make attachment sending illegal? Ok, how about if I email myself just a registration code? How do you block plain text?
If I lived in CA, which I don't, I'd have some very unforgiving questions to ask of the author of this bill. Clearly, there's retardedness at work.
...and I could come up with at least a dozen good ideas for episodes. Hell, I bet each and every one of you could do the same.
Wouldn't it be nice if they took our ideas and went with it rather than bore the shit out of us for another season? I stopped caring at the end of Voyager and never really looked into Enterprise, I think I saw one episode and got bored.
(1) Patents must expire. No extensions. 50 years tops. If you are still requiring or relying on your patent to provide meaningful revenue after 50 years, you need a better idea.
(2) Things that are obvious, improvements on other ideas, or natural extensions of existing (or potentially existing) technologies should not be patentable.
(3) There needs to be an office that reviews patents to determine if they should be revoked. They must have the explicit power to nix a patent, with no possible recourse, and they must not be "owned" by any one.
(4) In conjunction with #1, all patents generated before 1954 immediately expire.
(5) Any organization that receives federal funding may not patent an idea. This eliminates Universities outright, and a lot of other companies. With the current system we're using taxpayer money to give a monopoly. That's not a really stellar idea.
(6) There should be a single, global, patent office to which all nations must be subjected.
(7) Genetic code derived from living things should not be patent worthy. What happens if someone accidentally patents my particular code, and I'm found to be in violation? I lose.
(8) Patent infringement suits must go to binding arbitration rather than the criminal or civil courts, to keep the lanes clear for trial worthy of such attention.
Here's what I'm yapping about:"(F)(1) The attorney general or an electronic mail service provider that is injured by a violation of this section may bring a civil action in an appropriate court of common pleas of this state seeking relief from any person whose conduct violated this section. The civil action may be commenced at any time within one year of the date after the act that is the basis of the civil action."
We have that same (or damn close to it) language in our state law. Notice the word "may", that's the key. If the AG chooses not to he doesn't have to do shit. He can let it all flush away. They should have put that word as "must", which would have mandated action. As it is, this law is no better than Iowa code 714E that we've had for a while now and not one case has been put to the measure, sadly.
I predict no real help from this "feel-good" legislation.
Indeed. Shrek 2 is this way, so are a lot of them. It's fucking annoying. This is one more reason to vote OUT all incombants every 2 terms. They get these wacky ideas, or are paid to support them, either way it's bad juju. Pretty soon we will be forced to have our TVs on all the time...shades of Max Headroom, anyone?...
After your comic spoofing Strawberrry Shortcake (that ho), funning with American McGee's Alice, American greetings took the crap-road and sent a C and D letter, and then we never really learned what happened. So, what happened next, and why can't we still see the comic you did?
...kind of situation that makes me wonder about the legitimacy of any political party that would even attempt such a disservice to the populous. If the GOP trys this tactic, I say we boot them all out.
No, what should die are the morons that are in charge of the franchise. What we need is intelligent writers, good plots, and something that makes Trek interesting and fun again.
Here's a free idea for the Trek producers...I give it up freely to them: I call this idea Star Trek: Tour of Duty. Instead of the standard Federation-centric viewpoint, why not run a mini-series that takes place on an all Klingon ship (or Romulan if you like) and have the majority of the speaking done in Klingonese (or Romulan)...slowly becoming all English (or whatever your local dialect here is) as we learn more of their tongue? We always see things from the Human point of view. That's very dull. How about a more "Let's kill them all, eat their eyeballs, piss on their graves, drink grog, and go pillage some more" points of view? Trek is filled with great ideas, too bad we never see them because we're stuck with the Federation-centric point of view. And we all know that already.
New blood, people; new ideas. New creativity. That's the way to go boldly...and not wuss out.
Now, I know what you're saying "Fudgefactor7 has gone off the deep end...again," but hear me out.
A novel, let's say has 100 to 200 thousand words, and about 400 to 600 pages, all text. It's in a readable language (for instance, English) and has characters, development, a plot (one hopes), evokes moods (like anger or sadness or joy). It's a difficult thing to write a good novel.
By comparison, a graphic novel has to accomplish roughly the same thing in fewer pages (ususally there are 22 pages in a single issue, and usually no more than 20 issues in a miniseries, thereby making the number of pages no more than 440 pages, at the very most.) This, naturally, will not be all text, but mostly images with some sparse text and narration bubbles. The mood of the comic is depicted not by a paragraph of words, but by imagery. Choosing good words in a nvoel is hard, yes, but an image is worth, as they say, a thousand words--you have to get it right. And you have to get it right every page, every panel, every frame. In a written text, you can be given leniency in word choice, you can break the mood for narration purposes, or as a flashback--in a graphic novel, you can't ever break the mood or you lose the story and potentially the reader.
In a way, you have to deal with style and substance instead of style over substance, that a tratitional novel has as a restriction.
Plus to make a good graphic novel you have to have a good writer and a good artist. With a traditional novel, you need only a good writer (which sometimes is hard enough.) Combinations of good writer and good artist are magical when it comes together, and an abomination when it does not.
Finally, a traditional novel, if it sells 100000 copies is a pretty good deal, but that few comics can mean the death of an entire series--millions are printed and many more need to be sold just to make the publisher more happy. And on top of that, the creativity of a comic has to be repeatable throughout the entirety of the storyline, over months of work; a traditional novel only needs to be initially creative and not necessarily creative throughout. (How many of you read a novel that started great, then immediately became a rehash of some other, better, idea? I know I have. Sure, comics fall prey to this as well--as is evidenced by the amount of crud out there--but by far they're a more creative and vibrant force than the "real" authors in the bookstore.)
Congress, as a whole, just doesn't get it at all. Legislation like this won't stop the "evil doers" of the world, it will only limit the freedoms of your average Joe American. They want to make a difference, which is admirable, but they're going about it in the wrong way. What they should do is get an intelligence gathering system in place that uses people, works, and doesn't bicker and infight with other government agencies. The Department of Homeland Security is, was, and will never be the right way to handle this. They're innefectual, bloated, and led by a man who loves to perpetuate the climate of fear. Yesterday, for instance, they issued a warning that Al Queda may be in the planning phase for an attack against us.
No kiddin'? Ya think? Who gave these guys such a clue?
I could have made just an accurate prediction by reading tea leaves (so maybe the Gov't should just give me 40B a year so I can do that.)
Seriously, we need better and more accurate intelligence coming out of the NSA, CIA, and FBI, not legislation that tramples on the very ideas upon which this nation was founded.
This particular vulnerability has been patched for two months (MS04-011). Had the administrators applied that patch when it becase available this would have been half fixed. Then all you'd need to do is get an IE fix. And then that would be the end of this particular issue. Since the patch existed before any known use of the exploit, the blame is squarely on the shoulders of two groups: (1) the malware author(s) themselves; and, (2) the lazy sysetm administrator too slow or stupid to deploy the patch in a timely manner.
Really, this is an issue settled by termination of the employee responsible for not keeping a good record of patches and updates. Of course, that still leaves the IE problem, but with the IE team recently recreated, probably for Longhorn, but perhaps they're therer just to release an update to IE to fix this type of crap, we may see the end of these types of things. If only people would quite exploiting innocent code... Sadly, people left to their own devices will revert to base and vile activities, then add in the anonymity of the internet, you get the jerks who think it's fun to spoil the party for everyone.
Gilliam wasn't a Brit, and he was a Python, and they adored him. But he was *in* Britain, so maybe there's luck that an emigrated Yank could score a roll...
Here's hoping, at any rate.
What happens when MS' security get's better and they manage to halt the proliferation of viruses and worms and trojans and the like? What will be the need for anyone (such as a big account like the USAF) to switch away from MS' prodcut line? There's a lot of discussion here about hammering on MS about security and whatnot, but nobody's asked the big question: what happens if they finally get things right?
(1) Look stuff up; and,
(2) Remember that stuff long enough to take an exam.
It's experience that's really valuable, but a cert has it's place. Plus it gets your foot in the door. It also can be used to confuse the clueless boss (or potential boss) as some companies follow the insane process of having the CIO and the CFO (who is almost always a CPA) be the same person. That's a true disaster, folks, I know...it's what I have to deal with daily.
MCP, A+, Net+ -- and I'm not upset I spent the time and money on them, but I'm also smart enough to not lord it over people either.
that if these are American companies offloading jobs to the cheap labor markets (India, Sudan, etc.) perhaps the best way to limit that is to have a federal law passed that says, in essence, if you are a company operating on American soil all employees and contracted workers (including off-shore centers) must be paid as if the site and employee was within the U.S. This would mean that then all those Indian workers would be subject to taxes and federal minimum wage.... Then the union can step in and start rabble rousing "Your American brothers and sisters are making 10 times the money for the job you now do!" Eventually, they'll see that dealing with that whole mess is a pain and they'll just keep the jobs here. If Indians or Sudanis want jobs from American companies perhaps it would be wiser for them to move to the U.S., and instantly improve their lives in the process.
Call me crazy and a freak, but it's just a thought.
People keep blaming MS for this mess. It's not MS, it's the coders at i-lookup.com.
Look, it's like this: let's say I buy a new F-150, then I drive it around, and eventually it gets carjacked (with me in it) and the guy with the gun has me run over your grandma.
Do we place the blame with Ford on this? Nope. We blame the fool who didn't lock the door (me), and the guy with the gun.
MS can only do so much without people complaining about not being able to do things they want. Javascript and ActiveX aren't "broken," they're being used incorrectly by criminally minded folks. Just like in my example above, it's not the Ford to blame, but the driver and the hijacker for using tools in an incorrect manner.
So, let's all place the blame squarely where it belongs: on the malware coder and the moron user that follows any random link sent to them.
Try getting the SO involved in the game with you. That's what they want, you know, more time with you. I did that with my wife, she plays Doom and all the stuff that will run on our crappy machine. She keeps harping about wanting a Gamecube now... You can bring the SO with you to LAN parties, you can be together doing something fun. Nothing wrong with that at all, and remember the statistic that most online gamers now are females over 40 (or something like that.) So there's no reason not to try. I don't think there's anyone who doesn't like a good videogame. Spouses or girl-/boy-friends are no exception.
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They need a section for odd bugs that get encountered from time to time. For instance, I did a kernel upgrade on Slackware 10 to 2.6.7 using the mkinitrd instructions from Pat's mini how-to on a system with integrated i815 chipset video. Under the 2.4 kernel /dev/agpgart is working and happy, under 2.6.7 /dev/agpgart is missing and you have to recreate it every boot with "mknod /dev/agpgart c 10 175". Sure, you could go Googling for the info, but it would be nice for them to have a single location for the odd stuff that can happen from time to time.
Going back quite a few years, there was a Mac game called Strategic Conquest that as far as I could tell didn't cheat at all. But it did do odd things (silly, stupid things) like load up its entire army on boats to try and find you. Sink the carriers and the computer surrendered. I *personally* never saw any cheating-type behavior.
Near as I can tell it's a two-fold requirement that makes DVDoctor need the 5700... (1) CineFX Engine version 2.0 and (2) Shader Model 2.0b or better, both those are only available in the 5700 or newer Vnidia cards (the 5600, for instance, has CineFX 1.0).
Just thinking out loud here...don't kill me.
What if the term of a copyright was the longer of (a) the life of the author, or last living author for a collective work; or (b) 70 years. With no protection lasting beyond 70 years under any circumstances, even if it was a corporate asset.
If you ask me, and you didn't, but I'm gonna tell you anyways, a company is still reliant on a patent or copyright after 70 years they need a new idea or two: they're little better than a squatter at that point. Let's give a kick in the rear to innovation.
They don't understand technology, even something as simple as FTP or a freakin' browser, and yet they try to regulate behavior around the tech without pulling their heads out of their asses long enough to know what they're doing or the ramifications of such legislation. I can email home (to my Gmail acct, natch) warez; so does that mean that all the email vendors need to make attachment sending illegal? Ok, how about if I email myself just a registration code? How do you block plain text?
If I lived in CA, which I don't, I'd have some very unforgiving questions to ask of the author of this bill. Clearly, there's retardedness at work.
...and I could come up with at least a dozen good ideas for episodes. Hell, I bet each and every one of you could do the same.
Wouldn't it be nice if they took our ideas and went with it rather than bore the shit out of us for another season? I stopped caring at the end of Voyager and never really looked into Enterprise, I think I saw one episode and got bored.
Berman, you are teh ghey. Go Away.
I'm thinking out loud here, so don't kill me...
(1) Patents must expire. No extensions. 50 years tops. If you are still requiring or relying on your patent to provide meaningful revenue after 50 years, you need a better idea.
(2) Things that are obvious, improvements on other ideas, or natural extensions of existing (or potentially existing) technologies should not be patentable.
(3) There needs to be an office that reviews patents to determine if they should be revoked. They must have the explicit power to nix a patent, with no possible recourse, and they must not be "owned" by any one.
(4) In conjunction with #1, all patents generated before 1954 immediately expire.
(5) Any organization that receives federal funding may not patent an idea. This eliminates Universities outright, and a lot of other companies. With the current system we're using taxpayer money to give a monopoly. That's not a really stellar idea.
(6) There should be a single, global, patent office to which all nations must be subjected.
(7) Genetic code derived from living things should not be patent worthy. What happens if someone accidentally patents my particular code, and I'm found to be in violation? I lose.
(8) Patent infringement suits must go to binding arbitration rather than the criminal or civil courts, to keep the lanes clear for trial worthy of such attention.
Ok, opinions?
Here's what I'm yapping about:"(F)(1) The attorney general or an electronic mail service provider that is injured by a violation of this section may bring a civil action in an appropriate court of common pleas of this state seeking relief from any person whose conduct violated this section. The civil action may be commenced at any time within one year of the date after the act that is the basis of the civil action."
We have that same (or damn close to it) language in our state law. Notice the word "may", that's the key. If the AG chooses not to he doesn't have to do shit. He can let it all flush away. They should have put that word as "must", which would have mandated action. As it is, this law is no better than Iowa code 714E that we've had for a while now and not one case has been put to the measure, sadly.
I predict no real help from this "feel-good" legislation.
Indeed. Shrek 2 is this way, so are a lot of them. It's fucking annoying. This is one more reason to vote OUT all incombants every 2 terms. They get these wacky ideas, or are paid to support them, either way it's bad juju. Pretty soon we will be forced to have our TVs on all the time...shades of Max Headroom, anyone?...
I can think of one other that you should add to the list you have:
3. Maus
Damn good stuff.
After your comic spoofing Strawberrry Shortcake (that ho), funning with American McGee's Alice, American greetings took the crap-road and sent a C and D letter, and then we never really learned what happened. So, what happened next, and why can't we still see the comic you did?
...kind of situation that makes me wonder about the legitimacy of any political party that would even attempt such a disservice to the populous. If the GOP trys this tactic, I say we boot them all out.
No, what should die are the morons that are in charge of the franchise. What we need is intelligent writers, good plots, and something that makes Trek interesting and fun again.
Here's a free idea for the Trek producers...I give it up freely to them: I call this idea Star Trek: Tour of Duty. Instead of the standard Federation-centric viewpoint, why not run a mini-series that takes place on an all Klingon ship (or Romulan if you like) and have the majority of the speaking done in Klingonese (or Romulan)...slowly becoming all English (or whatever your local dialect here is) as we learn more of their tongue? We always see things from the Human point of view. That's very dull. How about a more "Let's kill them all, eat their eyeballs, piss on their graves, drink grog, and go pillage some more" points of view? Trek is filled with great ideas, too bad we never see them because we're stuck with the Federation-centric point of view. And we all know that already.
New blood, people; new ideas. New creativity. That's the way to go boldly...and not wuss out.
...you are now an awkward teen.
Now, stay the hell out of my pr0n.
I'd call them "cornholes." Those aren't rigidly defined either. ;)
/ok, that joke sucked. sorry.
Now, I know what you're saying "Fudgefactor7 has gone off the deep end...again," but hear me out.
A novel, let's say has 100 to 200 thousand words, and about 400 to 600 pages, all text. It's in a readable language (for instance, English) and has characters, development, a plot (one hopes), evokes moods (like anger or sadness or joy). It's a difficult thing to write a good novel.
By comparison, a graphic novel has to accomplish roughly the same thing in fewer pages (ususally there are 22 pages in a single issue, and usually no more than 20 issues in a miniseries, thereby making the number of pages no more than 440 pages, at the very most.) This, naturally, will not be all text, but mostly images with some sparse text and narration bubbles. The mood of the comic is depicted not by a paragraph of words, but by imagery. Choosing good words in a nvoel is hard, yes, but an image is worth, as they say, a thousand words--you have to get it right. And you have to get it right every page, every panel, every frame. In a written text, you can be given leniency in word choice, you can break the mood for narration purposes, or as a flashback--in a graphic novel, you can't ever break the mood or you lose the story and potentially the reader.
In a way, you have to deal with style and substance instead of style over substance, that a tratitional novel has as a restriction.
Plus to make a good graphic novel you have to have a good writer and a good artist. With a traditional novel, you need only a good writer (which sometimes is hard enough.) Combinations of good writer and good artist are magical when it comes together, and an abomination when it does not.
Finally, a traditional novel, if it sells 100000 copies is a pretty good deal, but that few comics can mean the death of an entire series--millions are printed and many more need to be sold just to make the publisher more happy. And on top of that, the creativity of a comic has to be repeatable throughout the entirety of the storyline, over months of work; a traditional novel only needs to be initially creative and not necessarily creative throughout. (How many of you read a novel that started great, then immediately became a rehash of some other, better, idea? I know I have. Sure, comics fall prey to this as well--as is evidenced by the amount of crud out there--but by far they're a more creative and vibrant force than the "real" authors in the bookstore.)
That's my 2-cents anyway...
Congress, as a whole, just doesn't get it at all. Legislation like this won't stop the "evil doers" of the world, it will only limit the freedoms of your average Joe American. They want to make a difference, which is admirable, but they're going about it in the wrong way. What they should do is get an intelligence gathering system in place that uses people, works, and doesn't bicker and infight with other government agencies. The Department of Homeland Security is, was, and will never be the right way to handle this. They're innefectual, bloated, and led by a man who loves to perpetuate the climate of fear. Yesterday, for instance, they issued a warning that Al Queda may be in the planning phase for an attack against us.
No kiddin'? Ya think? Who gave these guys such a clue?
I could have made just an accurate prediction by reading tea leaves (so maybe the Gov't should just give me 40B a year so I can do that.)
Seriously, we need better and more accurate intelligence coming out of the NSA, CIA, and FBI, not legislation that tramples on the very ideas upon which this nation was founded.
This particular vulnerability has been patched for two months (MS04-011). Had the administrators applied that patch when it becase available this would have been half fixed. Then all you'd need to do is get an IE fix. And then that would be the end of this particular issue. Since the patch existed before any known use of the exploit, the blame is squarely on the shoulders of two groups: (1) the malware author(s) themselves; and, (2) the lazy sysetm administrator too slow or stupid to deploy the patch in a timely manner.
Really, this is an issue settled by termination of the employee responsible for not keeping a good record of patches and updates. Of course, that still leaves the IE problem, but with the IE team recently recreated, probably for Longhorn, but perhaps they're therer just to release an update to IE to fix this type of crap, we may see the end of these types of things. If only people would quite exploiting innocent code... Sadly, people left to their own devices will revert to base and vile activities, then add in the anonymity of the internet, you get the jerks who think it's fun to spoil the party for everyone.
Clearly, I've been playing WAAAAY too much D&D...
Sorry about that. And I am a bit peckish. Hmm, off to the snack table I think.
Gilliam wasn't a Brit, and he was a Python, and they adored him. But he was *in* Britain, so maybe there's luck that an emigrated Yank could score a roll... Here's hoping, at any rate.
What happens when MS' security get's better and they manage to halt the proliferation of viruses and worms and trojans and the like? What will be the need for anyone (such as a big account like the USAF) to switch away from MS' prodcut line? There's a lot of discussion here about hammering on MS about security and whatnot, but nobody's asked the big question: what happens if they finally get things right?
They prove that you can: It's experience that's really valuable, but a cert has it's place. Plus it gets your foot in the door. It also can be used to confuse the clueless boss (or potential boss) as some companies follow the insane process of having the CIO and the CFO (who is almost always a CPA) be the same person. That's a true disaster, folks, I know...it's what I have to deal with daily.
MCP, A+, Net+ -- and I'm not upset I spent the time and money on them, but I'm also smart enough to not lord it over people either.
that if these are American companies offloading jobs to the cheap labor markets (India, Sudan, etc.) perhaps the best way to limit that is to have a federal law passed that says, in essence, if you are a company operating on American soil all employees and contracted workers (including off-shore centers) must be paid as if the site and employee was within the U.S. This would mean that then all those Indian workers would be subject to taxes and federal minimum wage.... Then the union can step in and start rabble rousing "Your American brothers and sisters are making 10 times the money for the job you now do!" Eventually, they'll see that dealing with that whole mess is a pain and they'll just keep the jobs here. If Indians or Sudanis want jobs from American companies perhaps it would be wiser for them to move to the U.S., and instantly improve their lives in the process.
Call me crazy and a freak, but it's just a thought.
People keep blaming MS for this mess. It's not MS, it's the coders at i-lookup.com.
Look, it's like this: let's say I buy a new F-150, then I drive it around, and eventually it gets carjacked (with me in it) and the guy with the gun has me run over your grandma.
Do we place the blame with Ford on this? Nope. We blame the fool who didn't lock the door (me), and the guy with the gun.
MS can only do so much without people complaining about not being able to do things they want. Javascript and ActiveX aren't "broken," they're being used incorrectly by criminally minded folks. Just like in my example above, it's not the Ford to blame, but the driver and the hijacker for using tools in an incorrect manner.
So, let's all place the blame squarely where it belongs: on the malware coder and the moron user that follows any random link sent to them.
Try getting the SO involved in the game with you. That's what they want, you know, more time with you. I did that with my wife, she plays Doom and all the stuff that will run on our crappy machine. She keeps harping about wanting a Gamecube now... You can bring the SO with you to LAN parties, you can be together doing something fun. Nothing wrong with that at all, and remember the statistic that most online gamers now are females over 40 (or something like that.) So there's no reason not to try. I don't think there's anyone who doesn't like a good videogame. Spouses or girl-/boy-friends are no exception.