Uh, no. We won't do anything, because by introducing artificial controls, we've shortcircuited evolution. An unintelligent organism would eventually evolve to be ideally adapted to its environment. We're more likely to populate the universe through our own accumulation of knowledge and the expanding of our scientific abilities than by sitting around waiting to evolve telekinesis.
That news article was from my parts - I'm in Australia, that was from the Sydney Morning Herald. And yeah, the piracy is around Somalia. But in this case, the piracy was directed against a cruise ship on which there happened to be Australian passengers. And with the price of petrol these days, the hijacking of a super-tanker of oil makes the news too. Just beacuse the events happen a long way off doesn't mean they don't affect things back here in "civilization".
From what I hear, modern pirates tend to have heavy artillery on their shoulder rather than a parrot:
Maritime piracy still goes on, and is still a major problem in some parts of the world. Just because someone's smear tactic to conflate illegal copying with theft and murder has been successful doesn't mean we should stop resisting it.
Uh, yes, yes it is. If the government provides it, it's socialized (society is paying for it, not the individual). If the government declares it to be a right, then it really has to provide it (or at least, be the educator of last resort).
Why exactly should "accidemics" feel "ashamaned" for making kids feel dumb if they are dumb? Enough of this "Oh, don't hurt their feelings" crap. If they're wrong, they're wrong. If they failed, they failed. If you don't tell them, then their going to fail continuously.
I actually played it, and it was significantly different from WoW. The most obvious difference was the combat mechanism - it was rigged up like a first person shooter. You had targetting reticle, and you aimed at the enemy, and pulled the trigger to fire off bursts. It didn't have the usual timed-swing mechanism of most MMOs. It felt very dynamic. There were your usual RPG "dice"-rolls behind the scenes, but it felt very shooterish. There were some other differences, like the class tree, item creation mechanisms, etc, but that was the most obvious.
What lead to Tabula Rasa's failure, I think, wasn't that it was too much like WoW. Firstly, it was not enough content. Seriously, I think there were about twenty different enemy creatures in the entire game, and you just see more and more of the same. Secondly, the graphics, while gorgeous, were very toned-down and muted. This suited the game, but I don't think it attracts people as much as the vivid, eye-catching, over the top cartoonish graphics of WoW.
From what I hear, there was also very little endgame content. Unlike WoW, where the endgame brings a whole new level of gameplay, with Tabula Rasa, there was nothing really to do except start again with a new character. While a lot of players may not make it to endgame, I think an active endgame helps promote an enthusiastic community among the players. If all your most energetic players wander off after they cap out, your game is naturally going to fade away.
The fact that you can call it a "fine" really proves these guys point for them. The RIAA has no authority to levy fines against people. The fact that these settlements can be considered de facto fines really underlines the RIAA's abuse of the legal system.
No, innocent until proven guilty applies in all courts. The difference between civil and criminal court isn't that proof is required, it's the level of proof. Criminal court requires "beyond reasonable doubt". Civil requires "a preponderance of evidence". Regardless of the requirement, the defendant is still innocent until that requirement is met.
(IANAL, etc)
there are a few good universities for the hard sciences, sure, but we have a nationally funded Institute of Sport
Which is probably a good thing. The Americans don't, and it appears that all their colleges sell out academics in the name of sport. Why on earth do you get a scholarship for your sporting ability?
We? Uh, most of the megafauna died off on their own bat long before humankind became a significant threat to their species. Humamnity isn't the only cause of extinction you know. Mother nature can be a bitch.
Actually, that was Jews. They were determined to keep the "not taking the Lord's name in vain" bit, so whenever God's name was rendered in text, they replaced it with a series of symbols known as the divine tetragrammaton. In modern English Bible's, it's rendered as LORD in small caps, so you can distinguish it from the ordinary english use of the word lord. Yahweh, Jehovah, God, these are all different ways of assigning some name to that abstract placeholder that nobody really knows what to do with anymore - none are, as far as we know, the "actual" name of God.
You get much the same thing in literature sometimes. Say a story about a nasty aunt, who only ever refers to the protagonist as "boy". You'll often find that the word Boy becomes capitalized, showing that it represents a proper noun, and emphasizing the depersonalizing nature of that mode of address, etc. It's not unheard of.
e-voting with a paper trail, as it is usually envisioned, is just as transparent as the pen & paper variety. In fact, those sort of e-voting machines are nothing more than giant mechanical pencils that people use to mark their ballots with. They embed a bit of logic so that nonsense votes can't be cast, and when they have a legitimate vote, they spit out a bit of paper that shows the voter who they voted for, which can also be read by a computer. They may also keep an internal register of votes, but that's entirely redundant anyway, because the machine-readable ballots generated can be quickly and efficiently read to do the count anyway.
It's my creation. The fact that I chose to write it is my decision as an author.
And the fact that I choose to copy it is my decision. I have access to it, I can do it - you can't stop me, and I don't care about what you think your rights are. The only way you can stop me is by not letting me have access at all - by not publishing.
This is the impasse you reach when you have no external forces acting on the situation - the "natural" state of affairs. In order to rectify this, the artificial control of copyright was introduced. It's a compromise - it gives the authors something, and the public something. If content creators (or their owners) want to renege on that compromise, then we'll go back to the old system where you have no control over your work once published, and there is less publication overall. Demand the whole pie, and you'll be amazed at how fast it shrinks.
Just remember kids, the correct course of action is to try and sell the information to highest bidder. Crims pay good money for this information - "honest" people will lock you up for it. If you're going to do the time, hell, might as well do the crime.
I'm not actually endorsing the behaviour I describe above, but this use of the legal system is sending this exact message.
Also: whenever you try and run a poorly-written program.
The program is more a problem with all previous versions of Windows than with Vista. Previous versions lax security allowed developers to do stuff that should only have been allowed to happen under UAC. Because Microsoft allowed the lax security to continue on for so long, there are heaps of programs that assume access to things they shouldn't have, and don't really need.
As other's have pointed out, sudo is a similar mechanism under Linux. The difference is that Linux developers, used to a long-standing robust security model, try to avoid wherever possible occasions which require sudo access. Vista's UAC was a necessary step. It's needed to start retraining developers to write properly. But it's still annoying as hell for the users, and it doesn't really provide any near-term benefits to them. The benefits will be long-term, when developers have wised up and legacy programs have been phased out or re-written. Then UAC will only popup when absolutely necessary, there won't be the click-it-away immediate response, and Windows will be all the more secure for it.
At the moment, MS customers are reaping the consequences of MS' decision to put off the inevitable as long as possible. If they'd bitten the bullet earlier, the poor development techniques would be much less entrenched.
Just because they do something with some small fraction of it that might benefit you doesn't mean they still didn't take it from you with the threat of force.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt it'd be lossless though.
Uh, no. We won't do anything, because by introducing artificial controls, we've shortcircuited evolution. An unintelligent organism would eventually evolve to be ideally adapted to its environment. We're more likely to populate the universe through our own accumulation of knowledge and the expanding of our scientific abilities than by sitting around waiting to evolve telekinesis.
Either that, or idiocracy is right.
That news article was from my parts - I'm in Australia, that was from the Sydney Morning Herald. And yeah, the piracy is around Somalia. But in this case, the piracy was directed against a cruise ship on which there happened to be Australian passengers. And with the price of petrol these days, the hijacking of a super-tanker of oil makes the news too. Just beacuse the events happen a long way off doesn't mean they don't affect things back here in "civilization".
From what I hear, modern pirates tend to have heavy artillery on their shoulder rather than a parrot:
Maritime piracy still goes on, and is still a major problem in some parts of the world. Just because someone's smear tactic to conflate illegal copying with theft and murder has been successful doesn't mean we should stop resisting it.
I agree with you, but given the things that the rest of the tax money is spent on, I'd say go for it.
Uh, yes, yes it is. If the government provides it, it's socialized (society is paying for it, not the individual). If the government declares it to be a right, then it really has to provide it (or at least, be the educator of last resort).
That's the whole problem. You shouldn't be learning what 13 * 7 is. You should be learning how to multiply two numbers together.
I think your post just proves the point in case. Do you know what kids studied in the 50s that they don't today? How about basic spelling and grammar?
accidemics = academics
ashamaned = ashamed
revolation = revelation
Why exactly should "accidemics" feel "ashamaned" for making kids feel dumb if they are dumb? Enough of this "Oh, don't hurt their feelings" crap. If they're wrong, they're wrong. If they failed, they failed. If you don't tell them, then their going to fail continuously.
I actually played it, and it was significantly different from WoW. The most obvious difference was the combat mechanism - it was rigged up like a first person shooter. You had targetting reticle, and you aimed at the enemy, and pulled the trigger to fire off bursts. It didn't have the usual timed-swing mechanism of most MMOs. It felt very dynamic. There were your usual RPG "dice"-rolls behind the scenes, but it felt very shooterish. There were some other differences, like the class tree, item creation mechanisms, etc, but that was the most obvious.
What lead to Tabula Rasa's failure, I think, wasn't that it was too much like WoW. Firstly, it was not enough content. Seriously, I think there were about twenty different enemy creatures in the entire game, and you just see more and more of the same. Secondly, the graphics, while gorgeous, were very toned-down and muted. This suited the game, but I don't think it attracts people as much as the vivid, eye-catching, over the top cartoonish graphics of WoW.
From what I hear, there was also very little endgame content. Unlike WoW, where the endgame brings a whole new level of gameplay, with Tabula Rasa, there was nothing really to do except start again with a new character. While a lot of players may not make it to endgame, I think an active endgame helps promote an enthusiastic community among the players. If all your most energetic players wander off after they cap out, your game is naturally going to fade away.
The fact that you can call it a "fine" really proves these guys point for them. The RIAA has no authority to levy fines against people. The fact that these settlements can be considered de facto fines really underlines the RIAA's abuse of the legal system.
No, innocent until proven guilty applies in all courts. The difference between civil and criminal court isn't that proof is required, it's the level of proof. Criminal court requires "beyond reasonable doubt". Civil requires "a preponderance of evidence". Regardless of the requirement, the defendant is still innocent until that requirement is met. (IANAL, etc)
there are a few good universities for the hard sciences, sure, but we have a nationally funded Institute of Sport
Which is probably a good thing. The Americans don't, and it appears that all their colleges sell out academics in the name of sport. Why on earth do you get a scholarship for your sporting ability?
Dell is cheaper than Sun and IBM? Wow, what an endorsement.
Actually, the left-right political scale is one-dimensional.
We? Uh, most of the megafauna died off on their own bat long before humankind became a significant threat to their species. Humamnity isn't the only cause of extinction you know. Mother nature can be a bitch.
As long as the salmon ends up on my place, I don't give a dam(n).
Actually, that was Jews. They were determined to keep the "not taking the Lord's name in vain" bit, so whenever God's name was rendered in text, they replaced it with a series of symbols known as the divine tetragrammaton. In modern English Bible's, it's rendered as LORD in small caps, so you can distinguish it from the ordinary english use of the word lord. Yahweh, Jehovah, God, these are all different ways of assigning some name to that abstract placeholder that nobody really knows what to do with anymore - none are, as far as we know, the "actual" name of God. You get much the same thing in literature sometimes. Say a story about a nasty aunt, who only ever refers to the protagonist as "boy". You'll often find that the word Boy becomes capitalized, showing that it represents a proper noun, and emphasizing the depersonalizing nature of that mode of address, etc. It's not unheard of.
e-voting with a paper trail, as it is usually envisioned, is just as transparent as the pen & paper variety. In fact, those sort of e-voting machines are nothing more than giant mechanical pencils that people use to mark their ballots with. They embed a bit of logic so that nonsense votes can't be cast, and when they have a legitimate vote, they spit out a bit of paper that shows the voter who they voted for, which can also be read by a computer. They may also keep an internal register of votes, but that's entirely redundant anyway, because the machine-readable ballots generated can be quickly and efficiently read to do the count anyway.
It's my creation. The fact that I chose to write it is my decision as an author.
And the fact that I choose to copy it is my decision. I have access to it, I can do it - you can't stop me, and I don't care about what you think your rights are. The only way you can stop me is by not letting me have access at all - by not publishing.
This is the impasse you reach when you have no external forces acting on the situation - the "natural" state of affairs. In order to rectify this, the artificial control of copyright was introduced. It's a compromise - it gives the authors something, and the public something. If content creators (or their owners) want to renege on that compromise, then we'll go back to the old system where you have no control over your work once published, and there is less publication overall. Demand the whole pie, and you'll be amazed at how fast it shrinks.
Just remember kids, the correct course of action is to try and sell the information to highest bidder. Crims pay good money for this information - "honest" people will lock you up for it. If you're going to do the time, hell, might as well do the crime.
I'm not actually endorsing the behaviour I describe above, but this use of the legal system is sending this exact message.
Cause => Effect
Also: whenever you try and run a poorly-written program.
The program is more a problem with all previous versions of Windows than with Vista. Previous versions lax security allowed developers to do stuff that should only have been allowed to happen under UAC. Because Microsoft allowed the lax security to continue on for so long, there are heaps of programs that assume access to things they shouldn't have, and don't really need.
As other's have pointed out, sudo is a similar mechanism under Linux. The difference is that Linux developers, used to a long-standing robust security model, try to avoid wherever possible occasions which require sudo access. Vista's UAC was a necessary step. It's needed to start retraining developers to write properly. But it's still annoying as hell for the users, and it doesn't really provide any near-term benefits to them. The benefits will be long-term, when developers have wised up and legacy programs have been phased out or re-written. Then UAC will only popup when absolutely necessary, there won't be the click-it-away immediate response, and Windows will be all the more secure for it.
At the moment, MS customers are reaping the consequences of MS' decision to put off the inevitable as long as possible. If they'd bitten the bullet earlier, the poor development techniques would be much less entrenched.
BOB II
Money is property.
Just because they do something with some small fraction of it that might benefit you doesn't mean they still didn't take it from you with the threat of force.