"Graffiti artist? Oh you mean person who vandalizes property that doesn't belong to them"
Not necessarily. I don't know about America, but here in Australia, quite a few schools and towns have "graffiti walls" which are open slather. Generally the stuff that people like doesn't get painted over, but it's all based on community co-operation, there's no wall moderators or anything like that. It really is worth it; some people can do amazing things with a spray can.
Most ISPs Terms of Service agree that the payer is responsible for any data sent over the service. Many home ISPs also stipulate that the service is only for the use of the customer, and they cannot resell or give away the service.
I'm probably coming from a different persepctive. I'm guessing you're from America, but that's just an assumption, so yell at me if I'm wrong.
I'm Australian, and it seems to me that compared to the churches here, American denominations tend to be fairly polarised into uber-liberal or ultra-conservative. (Heard of some churches where they refuse to play music on any instrument not mentioned in the Bible - gives steady work to some zither players I suppose).
But then, I too might only have heard about the extreme cases. There's nothing interesting in talking about the happy medium.
Actually, most christian groups aren't anti-sex in their theology. They're pro-monogamy, which is quite different.
Of course, most do have hangups about talking about sex, but that is a social thing, probably dragged along out of the Victorian era, and a seperate thing to christian ideas about sexuality.
If a kid can write the word out on a card to show it to the damn (sorry, d*mn) doll, it ain't gonna hurt them if they hear it sounded out. Even if it didn't have this feature, it's not like the doll was suddenly going to start swearing its head off for no reason. It only says what it sees.
I study at the University of Wollongong in Australia, and did a subject on Australian Literature. One of our lectures was, I kid you not, an entire hour on the politics of using the word aboriginal instead of aborigine. Apparently, aborigine is phoentically too similar to indiginee, which has assosications with primitivism that the aboriginal community finds unpleasant.
Aboriginal is an adjective, aborigine is a noun, but in this English class, we were told to ignore the rules of grammar for the sake of political correctness. I didn't go to too many lectures after that.
Capitalism has nothing to do with the government being corrupt
Of course it has to do with Capitalism. Capitalism relies on Government regulation to ensure companies play fair (for example, anti-trust regulations). It's an oppositional system, just like the legal system; the corporations have the dollar, the people have the government.
The problem is that capitalism seems to overlook the fact that the people who compose the government want to make money just as much as anyone else. How this works out in practice is that the dollar trumps the government. If you want to make capitalism work, you've got to find some way of constructing a government to whome money doesn't matter.
Communist and socialist countries have corrupt governments too
So what? The grandparent said that capitalism makes corrupt government (capitalism implies corruption). He didn't say corruption implies capitalism, which is what you are arguing against.
Neither Japanese (Final Fantasy) nor Western (Baldur's Gate) RPGs are true RPGs. In a true RPG, you could generate a character, write your own background, description, etc, and the plot of the game would integrate and work with the character. Unfortunately, we don't have any AIs capable of doing this.
Japanese and Western RPGs have taken different routes, and neither is inherently better or worse. In Icewind Dale, I loved writing really long, descriptive histories for the characters. The thing that annoyed me was that, in the end, these histories meant bugger all throughout the game. Even if I made my character a morose, introspective type, the game would still popup conversation options totally counter to the characters personality. Even though my little fighter was raised by orcs from childhood, he is still forced to react to an encounter with orcs the same way any other character would.
In the opposite way, Japanese-style RPGs weave the character's background into the story very tightly. Because they do this, they limit the gamers choice. It means in Final Fantasy VI, I can't make the protagonist a 6-foot, muscled black guy. I'm stuck with Terra. On the other hand, it means that at all times, Terra acts like Terra, reacts in ways Terra would, and is generally consistent with her own character.
Personally, I prefer the tightly woven character-plots of the Final Fantasy series. But all of these type of games offer this trade off. Consider Baldur's Gate; All your NPCs were pre-generated, your own character had much of his background specified, and, as a result, the story of the Baldur's Gate series can be more tightly woven around the protagonist.
Until someone in AI solves the natural language problem, we're going to be stuck with this tradeoff.
It started off with low market-share, and introduced a free system.
Then it bundled the system with it's OS, and because it played nicely, it gained in market share, and everyone could still chat to each other OK.
Now, because primarily of its bundling, it has a large market share. So MS shuts the doors. All the people who now have a vested interest in Messenger are locked in. All other players are locked out.
It is an abuse of monopolistic powers, not because they closed their network, but because by bundling it with their OS, they leveraged off their monopoly to gain market share in another area, and closing their network is an attempt to artificially manufacture a second monopoly in the IM market.
I thought EULAs weren't legally binding in most of the world. I thought the only places where click-through agreements were found to be binding were 1 or 2 US states?
I'm an Aussie, not an American, and I haven't heard of any particular group called The Abortion Clinic Bombers, if any exists. But the name is fairly descriptive, and I get the idea of what they're about. I'd hazard a guess that the grandparent is in the same category; he's commenting on generalities, not specifics.
You say: Yes, lets stop the babies from being cruelly murdered by cruelly murdering doctors, nurses, and innocent bystanders
Whereas he was in no way supporting the murder of these people: provided that innocent people are not harmed in the process.
I personally agree with the grandparent in that abortion clinics are immoral. But I don't think that destruction of property (or by killing more people) are appropriate ways of voicing disfavour. Throwing all pro-choicers into the category of hypocritical, condemning, violent zealots is just plain simplistic.
If your behind NAT, redirect ports 6881-6889 to your bittorrenting PC. I got shite download rates before I did this, now it maxes my DSL downstream in seconds.
First of all, why are you pretending you know ANYTHING about the procedures of this type of lawsuit?
Why the hell are you assuming he doesn't? Just because one hasn't gone through law school doesn't mean one is totally ignorant of legal prodedings. People can *gasp* research these things you know.
And the poster is not just relying on his own assumptions like they were the gospel, he is referring to comments made by a professor of law and legal history. His opinions are based on legal education and experience.
SCO is a professional organization with a good litigation team with a very good track record.
SCO is an organization that is busily muddying legal waters as fast as it can. People like this are trying to clarify things.
What makes you think they WON'T show code in court? What makes you think they have to show ALL of the infringing code?
Where does he say they won't? What he says, if you read his post, is:
"Unless they have a lot better evidence than what they showed at the SCOsource fiasco, they would get bounced in a heartbeat"
To clarify, that's if they don't have any good evidence then their court case is frivolous. Thats if-then, not a sweeping generalization with no proof, even though there is much tangential evidence that suggests SCO is parading about in the emperor's new code (The code showed at SCOsource was not, in fact, SCOs; they're persuing multiple law suits without showing evidence; insiders are dumping shares while they're at a litigation-inspired high)
Rather than spouting conjecture about something you seemingly know very little about, maybe you should consider asserting fewer "facts" and asking more questions.
Maybe instead of attacking someone's well-supported opinions, you should shut your mouth and read what he's said.
From the article: The government argued that the message was incorrect, useful to would-be attackers...
How can it be wrong and useful to attackers? Man, the prosecution lawyers must have had fun with that one:
"Your Honour, the security flaw described here does not exist. You can see how dangerous it would be for hackers to know about this non-existent flaw."
Slashdot Mirror
"Graffiti artist? Oh you mean person who vandalizes property that doesn't belong to them"
Not necessarily. I don't know about America, but here in Australia, quite a few schools and towns have "graffiti walls" which are open slather. Generally the stuff that people like doesn't get painted over, but it's all based on community co-operation, there's no wall moderators or anything like that. It really is worth it; some people can do amazing things with a spray can.
Then, under the provisions of the DMCA, wouldn't you be required to keep logs and present them when they were requisitioned by the RIAA?
Most ISPs Terms of Service agree that the payer is responsible for any data sent over the service. Many home ISPs also stipulate that the service is only for the use of the customer, and they cannot resell or give away the service.
" While I might equate the severity of the crime with speeding"
I've yet to hear of a death due to copyright violation however...
Yes, well, the motto doesn't say anything about what they do to bad things now, does it?
I'm probably coming from a different persepctive. I'm guessing you're from America, but that's just an assumption, so yell at me if I'm wrong.
I'm Australian, and it seems to me that compared to the churches here, American denominations tend to be fairly polarised into uber-liberal or ultra-conservative. (Heard of some churches where they refuse to play music on any instrument not mentioned in the Bible - gives steady work to some zither players I suppose).
But then, I too might only have heard about the extreme cases. There's nothing interesting in talking about the happy medium.
It's not so much the transformation, but the reason for it.
Actually, most christian groups aren't anti-sex in their theology. They're pro-monogamy, which is quite different.
Of course, most do have hangups about talking about sex, but that is a social thing, probably dragged along out of the Victorian era, and a seperate thing to christian ideas about sexuality.
I'd guess poorly educatd reporters before poorly educated dolls.
If a kid can write the word out on a card to show it to the damn (sorry, d*mn) doll, it ain't gonna hurt them if they hear it sounded out. Even if it didn't have this feature, it's not like the doll was suddenly going to start swearing its head off for no reason. It only says what it sees.
I study at the University of Wollongong in Australia, and did a subject on Australian Literature. One of our lectures was, I kid you not, an entire hour on the politics of using the word aboriginal instead of aborigine. Apparently, aborigine is phoentically too similar to indiginee, which has assosications with primitivism that the aboriginal community finds unpleasant.
Aboriginal is an adjective, aborigine is a noun, but in this English class, we were told to ignore the rules of grammar for the sake of political correctness. I didn't go to too many lectures after that.
The key is to deligate only enough power for the government to make sure everybody is playing by the rules.
And then find a way to ensure the government doesn't sell that power to the highest bidder.
Capitalism has nothing to do with the government being corrupt
Of course it has to do with Capitalism. Capitalism relies on Government regulation to ensure companies play fair (for example, anti-trust regulations). It's an oppositional system, just like the legal system; the corporations have the dollar, the people have the government.
The problem is that capitalism seems to overlook the fact that the people who compose the government want to make money just as much as anyone else. How this works out in practice is that the dollar trumps the government. If you want to make capitalism work, you've got to find some way of constructing a government to whome money doesn't matter.
Communist and socialist countries have corrupt governments too So what? The grandparent said that capitalism makes corrupt government (capitalism implies corruption). He didn't say corruption implies capitalism, which is what you are arguing against.
"I have shit-loads of money and no girlfriend"
Not after he gets his post-slashdot bandwidth bill he won't. Have shit-loads of money that is. A slashdotting can't help with the girlfriend.
You're right, they should have used *wizard.
Neither Japanese (Final Fantasy) nor Western (Baldur's Gate) RPGs are true RPGs. In a true RPG, you could generate a character, write your own background, description, etc, and the plot of the game would integrate and work with the character. Unfortunately, we don't have any AIs capable of doing this.
Japanese and Western RPGs have taken different routes, and neither is inherently better or worse. In Icewind Dale, I loved writing really long, descriptive histories for the characters. The thing that annoyed me was that, in the end, these histories meant bugger all throughout the game. Even if I made my character a morose, introspective type, the game would still popup conversation options totally counter to the characters personality. Even though my little fighter was raised by orcs from childhood, he is still forced to react to an encounter with orcs the same way any other character would.
In the opposite way, Japanese-style RPGs weave the character's background into the story very tightly. Because they do this, they limit the gamers choice. It means in Final Fantasy VI, I can't make the protagonist a 6-foot, muscled black guy. I'm stuck with Terra. On the other hand, it means that at all times, Terra acts like Terra, reacts in ways Terra would, and is generally consistent with her own character.
Personally, I prefer the tightly woven character-plots of the Final Fantasy series. But all of these type of games offer this trade off. Consider Baldur's Gate; All your NPCs were pre-generated, your own character had much of his background specified, and, as a result, the story of the Baldur's Gate series can be more tightly woven around the protagonist.
Until someone in AI solves the natural language problem, we're going to be stuck with this tradeoff.
The problem is that Microsoft keeps changing it.
It started off with low market-share, and introduced a free system.
Then it bundled the system with it's OS, and because it played nicely, it gained in market share, and everyone could still chat to each other OK.
Now, because primarily of its bundling, it has a large market share. So MS shuts the doors. All the people who now have a vested interest in Messenger are locked in. All other players are locked out.
It is an abuse of monopolistic powers, not because they closed their network, but because by bundling it with their OS, they leveraged off their monopoly to gain market share in another area, and closing their network is an attempt to artificially manufacture a second monopoly in the IM market.
I thought EULAs weren't legally binding in most of the world. I thought the only places where click-through agreements were found to be binding were 1 or 2 US states?
But unless I misunderstand things, private corporations don't go around installing LoJack onto peoples car without telling them.
LoJack is opt-in.
I'm an Aussie, not an American, and I haven't heard of any particular group called The Abortion Clinic Bombers, if any exists. But the name is fairly descriptive, and I get the idea of what they're about. I'd hazard a guess that the grandparent is in the same category; he's commenting on generalities, not specifics.
You say:
Yes, lets stop the babies from being cruelly murdered by cruelly murdering doctors, nurses, and innocent bystanders
Whereas he was in no way supporting the murder of these people: provided that innocent people are not harmed in the process.
I personally agree with the grandparent in that abortion clinics are immoral. But I don't think that destruction of property (or by killing more people) are appropriate ways of voicing disfavour. Throwing all pro-choicers into the category of hypocritical, condemning, violent zealots is just plain simplistic.
If your behind NAT, redirect ports 6881-6889 to your bittorrenting PC. I got shite download rates before I did this, now it maxes my DSL downstream in seconds.
It's not willful infringement - it's potential willful infringement.
It's like saying there might be a possible case against them, sometime, one day in the future, maybe.
You can tell SCO's got strong evidence to support its arguments there, eh?
First of all, why are you pretending you know ANYTHING about the procedures of this type of lawsuit?
Why the hell are you assuming he doesn't? Just because one hasn't gone through law school doesn't mean one is totally ignorant of legal prodedings. People can *gasp* research these things you know.
And the poster is not just relying on his own assumptions like they were the gospel, he is referring to comments made by a professor of law and legal history. His opinions are based on legal education and experience.
SCO is a professional organization with a good litigation team with a very good track record.
SCO is an organization that is busily muddying legal waters as fast as it can. People like this are trying to clarify things.
What makes you think they WON'T show code in court? What makes you think they have to show ALL of the infringing code?
Where does he say they won't? What he says, if you read his post, is:
"Unless they have a lot better evidence than what they showed at the SCOsource fiasco, they would get bounced in a heartbeat"
To clarify, that's if they don't have any good evidence then their court case is frivolous. Thats if-then, not a sweeping generalization with no proof, even though there is much tangential evidence that suggests SCO is parading about in the emperor's new code (The code showed at SCOsource was not, in fact, SCOs; they're persuing multiple law suits without showing evidence; insiders are dumping shares while they're at a litigation-inspired high)
Rather than spouting conjecture about something you seemingly know very little about, maybe you should consider asserting fewer "facts" and asking more questions.
Maybe instead of attacking someone's well-supported opinions, you should shut your mouth and read what he's said.
In other news, the RIAA is now suing music owners for having sex.
From the article: The government argued that the message was incorrect, useful to would-be attackers...
How can it be wrong and useful to attackers? Man, the prosecution lawyers must have had fun with that one:
"Your Honour, the security flaw described here does not exist. You can see how dangerous it would be for hackers to know about this non-existent flaw."