More seriously, it does seem that the video game industry has been moving more and more towards complete world simulations rather than "games with rules"
That was one of the problems of SWG imho. Neat world, but not much interesting to do.
Yeah the writeup was extremely weak on this one, especially for archival purposes. Once the cache changes, someone looking at the links a few months from now would be baffled.
You've given away your bias there by writing "blogger/journalist"
Not "bias", it's my opinion that this blogger should be considered a journalist.
If you claim that this law truly extends to anyone writing on any web page
I'm certainly not claiming that. Heck, you and I are writing on a webpage right now but I don't think that makes us the Journalists that the law was enacted to protect. I even keep a personal livejournal, so technically I am a Journalist - one who keeps a journal - but I don't believe the lawmakers intended to cover every kid who keeps a diary.
Perhaps by "Journalist" the lawmakers meant "person who reports news to the public"? Well the thinksecret writer was clearly reporting news about Apple in a journal. I believe that qualifies him as a Journalist that the California lawmakers intended to protect.
Why do you think the thinksecret writer should not qualify for protection as a Journalist under this law?
Can you quote the part of the law that refers to bloggers?
Seeing as how the most basic definition of "Journalist" is "One who keeps a journal", and that a blog is nothing more than an online journal, then a blogger "keeps a journal", and is thus "a Journalist". So the part of the law that refers to Journalists is the part of the law that refers to Bloggers.
Now that Apple has this ruling, if they don't give up the source, they are violating the order of a judge.
When you violate a judge/court's order, you are held in contempt of court - you have disrespected the judge's order.
The law says, however, that a blogger/journalist CANNOT be held in contempt of court for saying "No, I will not comply with your order to reveal my confidential source."
It is not legally disrespectful for a journalist to refuse a judge's order to reveal his confidential sources.
From the article: "Microsoft is supposed to be the one that 'knows how to ship software,' but you (the end user) are the one doing all the heavy lifting."
A few sentences earlier, he wrote in his blog:
From his blog: "They "shipped it", but it will take years for it to be deployed widely enough for you, the ISV to be able to take advantage of it."
The "you" in that sentence refers to Independent Software Vendors (ISV's) having difficulty taking advantage of the.NET framework without including it in their installers. "You" does NOT mean "the end user" like mom or pop or kid, as the article editor made it seem.
why would Google actually *want* to create their own OS?
They created their own OS (highly highly customized distribution), and thus can do what no other companies can. They created a create targeted advertisement system and have licensed it to other businesses with great success - Google Ads are all over the place. So the concept of turning an internal utility into a sellable product isn't foreign to google at all. I'd be surprised if they didn't try to make some extra money on their OS investment.
Furthermore, Google's main expertise is in the field of searching, and so far, literally ALL of its products services have been based around that. Where would an operating system fit in there?
A heck of a lot goes on behind the scenes, including marketing, advertising, javascript, xml/xhtml, etc. Searching is just what you see. Google's "searching" expertise involves being good at many things.
People have been so ingrained with scheduling their lives around their TV that it's just part of life. Oooh, Survivor on Thursday, gotta be home. Ooh, American Idol is on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the past three weeks... Sorry can't see karaoke at the bar because I'm watching sober singers sing worse on TV every day this week.
Except for the millions of ordinary people who have discovered Tivo.
> "The problem that they are really worried about is if I post a link to say Bush's campaign site in a post to Slashdot, how much have I contributed to his campaign."
Then the problem is any mention of the candidates anywhere - no matter how you report something (on the internet, in the newspaper, shouting it out of your car), it can always have some influencing effect.
Hypothetically, you could report:
"President Bush took a dump this morning that made the bathroom smell like feces". ...or you could report... "President Bush brushed his teeth this morning with toothpaste that made his breath smell like mint."
The two things are both equally factual (in this hypothetical situation), but one makes most people think nicely of the prez (minty breath) and the other makes most people think poorly. Even mentioning the person at all conveys his importance as a famous public figure.
The inverse of this, not mentioning someone at all, plagues third party candidates. For example back in October, a news story might have been "President Bush campaigned today in Cleveland, while John Kerry campaigned in Tampa." That is free publicity for both Kerry and Bush, but just because you're being unbiased regarding those two candidates, the fact that you exclude from your reporting any mention of third party candidates means you're helping the campaigns of Bush and Kerry to defeat their other competitors.
I don't envy the FEC for having to try to regulate this kind of campaign influence.
But the idea is the same, just less literal than Heaven and Hell as places in an afterworld. If you're honestly happy with yourself and know you've tried to do good for the world, then you are "in heaven" - or you are ethically fulfilled, or happy with yourself, or have a clean conscience, or whatever you want to call it. If you know you've behaved unethically, then (hopefully) it will bother you deep down and you're "in hell".
The theory of the afterlife serves two purposes - to comfort those who are trying to cope with the death of a loved one, and to encourage those people who DO need incentive in order to do good. I wish no one needed any more incentive than their own ethical drive to be good, but that's not the case.
I don't really believe in heaven or hell as places, even as spiritual or after-death place. I'd be glad if, once I die, I found out there was a heaven and I was in it, but I don't pretend to even begin to comprehend it while in the mortal world.
I consider heaven and hell to be living states of mind. Unless you're a sociopath, then you do know right from wrong, regardless of which you end up choosing in your own actions. Only you can know whether you honestly feel you've been good enough to be "in heaven" or have done bad enough to be "in hell".
So when I say "doomed to hell" I mean that deep down they know what they're doing is wrong, and regardless of how they spin it to the public and even how they justify it to themselves, there's always a mark in their minds reminding them of their "sins".
My main problem with traditional, organized religion is that people take it too literally. Everyone believes in the concept of heaven or hell - have you ever felt awful after doing something - like your mind was being tortured by the guilt? Or have you ever felt happy that you did a really good deed? Heaven and Hell obviously aren't places as we understand places, and you lose the point when you literalize them.
People have proposed having slashdot itself host large files (or torrents) from stories or copies of the articles to stave off slashdotting, but there are always these arguments against it:
1. Slashdot cannot assume it has the right to distribute potentially copyrighted material
2. Slashdot must respect the target site's right to control their content - whether that means registering users, displaying ads before or alongside the content, or charging a fee to view content.
For example, if someone posts a review of a book, they are free to include excerpts - they post them right into the slashdot story. But they cannot assume that they can attach an E-Book version of the book to the slashdot story, even if that E-Book is free on the author's site.
The content would need a license that allows distribution, and much of the content we link to here does not authorize free distribution.
Getting approval from content owners would require tedious effort, and seeing as how the slashdot editors don't even bother to make sure they're not posting a dupe, there's no way they'd bother getting approval from content owners.
It's not pedantic, it's central to the argument of whether you blame the product or the user. In P2P, the product is getting blamed for certain peoples' uses of it. Not once has guilt for a murder been placed on a gun manufacturer in a trial (though that argument has been proposed). So why is it different for P2P?
Since you added "use of guns by responsible owners", I totally agree - responsible gun owners keep a gun for use as a last resort way to fight back, or as a deterrent, or as sporting equipment (skeet shooting, hunting), or as part of an enthusiast collection.
If the owner used it for other reasons, I wouldn't consider him a responsible gun owner. (I'm sure there are some other responsible reasons that I've forgotten to list, but you know what I mean)
> "The primary purpose of a gun is to prevent violence."
A gun has no primary purpose; only a motivated person can have a purpose in mind for the gun. A gun may have a primary use: to launch bullets at things. But the purpose of that use varies on who's controlling the gun.
As for "preventing violence", that's all based on your perspective. Someone on a shooting spree isn't out to prevent violence for his victims. Someone with a gun in their home isn't either - the intruder won't know about the gun until threatened by it or shot by it. A sign on your door saying "WARNING: I AM ARMED WITH A GUN AND WILL DEFEND MYSELF IF THREATENED" has a primary goal of preventing violence, even if you don't really have a gun.
It sure is great to be a Bush and friend of the Republicans these days
Well yeah, there are certainly some benefits to selling your soul to the devil. It's a lot easier to move ahead by lying and stealing than through hard work. But I'd far rather be an honest, humble person than a rich cheater doomed to hell.
Slashdot Mirror
More seriously, it does seem that the video game industry has been moving more and more towards complete world simulations rather than "games with rules"
That was one of the problems of SWG imho. Neat world, but not much interesting to do.
Yeah the writeup was extremely weak on this one, especially for archival purposes. Once the cache changes, someone looking at the links a few months from now would be baffled.
You've given away your bias there by writing "blogger/journalist"
Not "bias", it's my opinion that this blogger should be considered a journalist.
If you claim that this law truly extends to anyone writing on any web page
I'm certainly not claiming that. Heck, you and I are writing on a webpage right now but I don't think that makes us the Journalists that the law was enacted to protect. I even keep a personal livejournal, so technically I am a Journalist - one who keeps a journal - but I don't believe the lawmakers intended to cover every kid who keeps a diary.
Perhaps by "Journalist" the lawmakers meant "person who reports news to the public"? Well the thinksecret writer was clearly reporting news about Apple in a journal. I believe that qualifies him as a Journalist that the California lawmakers intended to protect.
Why do you think the thinksecret writer should not qualify for protection as a Journalist under this law?
Can you quote the part of the law that refers to bloggers?
Seeing as how the most basic definition of "Journalist" is "One who keeps a journal", and that a blog is nothing more than an online journal, then a blogger "keeps a journal", and is thus "a Journalist". So the part of the law that refers to Journalists is the part of the law that refers to Bloggers.
Now that Apple has this ruling, if they don't give up the source, they are violating the order of a judge.
When you violate a judge/court's order, you are held in contempt of court - you have disrespected the judge's order.
The law says, however, that a blogger/journalist CANNOT be held in contempt of court for saying "No, I will not comply with your order to reveal my confidential source."
It is not legally disrespectful for a journalist to refuse a judge's order to reveal his confidential sources.
The article severely misquoted his blog:
.NET framework without including it in their installers. "You" does NOT mean "the end user" like mom or pop or kid, as the article editor made it seem.
From the article: "Microsoft is supposed to be the one that 'knows how to ship software,' but you (the end user) are the one doing all the heavy lifting."
A few sentences earlier, he wrote in his blog:
From his blog: "They "shipped it", but it will take years for it to be deployed widely enough for you, the ISV to be able to take advantage of it."
The "you" in that sentence refers to Independent Software Vendors (ISV's) having difficulty taking advantage of the
Use Slashfix, and never worry about slashdot rendering errors again.
Well I do too, but this guy obviously didn't have to take a pay cut, and as a programmer myself I'm just curious what elite software jobs can pay.
Any guesses on how much this guy was raking in at Microsoft, and how much they offered him to defect to Google?
Part of it was philosophical - he wanted to work for Google, but I'm guessing a bigger part was good ole moolah.
why would Google actually *want* to create their own OS?
They created their own OS (highly highly customized distribution), and thus can do what no other companies can. They created a create targeted advertisement system and have licensed it to other businesses with great success - Google Ads are all over the place. So the concept of turning an internal utility into a sellable product isn't foreign to google at all. I'd be surprised if they didn't try to make some extra money on their OS investment.
Furthermore, Google's main expertise is in the field of searching, and so far, literally ALL of its products services have been based around that. Where would an operating system fit in there?
A heck of a lot goes on behind the scenes, including marketing, advertising, javascript, xml/xhtml, etc. Searching is just what you see. Google's "searching" expertise involves being good at many things.
People have been so ingrained with scheduling their lives around their TV that it's just part of life. Oooh, Survivor on Thursday, gotta be home. Ooh, American Idol is on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the past three weeks... Sorry can't see karaoke at the bar because I'm watching sober singers sing worse on TV every day this week.
Except for the millions of ordinary people who have discovered Tivo.
> "The problem that they are really worried about is if I post a link to say Bush's campaign site in a post to Slashdot, how much have I contributed to his campaign."
Then the problem is any mention of the candidates anywhere - no matter how you report something (on the internet, in the newspaper, shouting it out of your car), it can always have some influencing effect.
Hypothetically, you could report:
"President Bush took a dump this morning that made the bathroom smell like feces".
...or you could report...
"President Bush brushed his teeth this morning with toothpaste that made his breath smell like mint."
The two things are both equally factual (in this hypothetical situation), but one makes most people think nicely of the prez (minty breath) and the other makes most people think poorly. Even mentioning the person at all conveys his importance as a famous public figure.
The inverse of this, not mentioning someone at all, plagues third party candidates. For example back in October, a news story might have been "President Bush campaigned today in Cleveland, while John Kerry campaigned in Tampa." That is free publicity for both Kerry and Bush, but just because you're being unbiased regarding those two candidates, the fact that you exclude from your reporting any mention of third party candidates means you're helping the campaigns of Bush and Kerry to defeat their other competitors.
I don't envy the FEC for having to try to regulate this kind of campaign influence.
As for your example, it even depends on how you linked: Miserable Failure or Gleaming Success
Agreed.
But the idea is the same, just less literal than Heaven and Hell as places in an afterworld. If you're honestly happy with yourself and know you've tried to do good for the world, then you are "in heaven" - or you are ethically fulfilled, or happy with yourself, or have a clean conscience, or whatever you want to call it. If you know you've behaved unethically, then (hopefully) it will bother you deep down and you're "in hell".
The theory of the afterlife serves two purposes - to comfort those who are trying to cope with the death of a loved one, and to encourage those people who DO need incentive in order to do good. I wish no one needed any more incentive than their own ethical drive to be good, but that's not the case.
I don't really believe in heaven or hell as places, even as spiritual or after-death place. I'd be glad if, once I die, I found out there was a heaven and I was in it, but I don't pretend to even begin to comprehend it while in the mortal world.
I consider heaven and hell to be living states of mind. Unless you're a sociopath, then you do know right from wrong, regardless of which you end up choosing in your own actions. Only you can know whether you honestly feel you've been good enough to be "in heaven" or have done bad enough to be "in hell".
So when I say "doomed to hell" I mean that deep down they know what they're doing is wrong, and regardless of how they spin it to the public and even how they justify it to themselves, there's always a mark in their minds reminding them of their "sins".
My main problem with traditional, organized religion is that people take it too literally. Everyone believes in the concept of heaven or hell - have you ever felt awful after doing something - like your mind was being tortured by the guilt? Or have you ever felt happy that you did a really good deed? Heaven and Hell obviously aren't places as we understand places, and you lose the point when you literalize them.
An unlike ActiveX and Zone Security issues which are inherent design flaws in IE, bugs found in Firefox will be fixed overnight.
Newsflash: Intel launches empty grey plastic box! Film at eleven.
People have proposed having slashdot itself host large files (or torrents) from stories or copies of the articles to stave off slashdotting, but there are always these arguments against it:
1. Slashdot cannot assume it has the right to distribute potentially copyrighted material
2. Slashdot must respect the target site's right to control their content - whether that means registering users, displaying ads before or alongside the content, or charging a fee to view content.
For example, if someone posts a review of a book, they are free to include excerpts - they post them right into the slashdot story. But they cannot assume that they can attach an E-Book version of the book to the slashdot story, even if that E-Book is free on the author's site.
The content would need a license that allows distribution, and much of the content we link to here does not authorize free distribution.
Getting approval from content owners would require tedious effort, and seeing as how the slashdot editors don't even bother to make sure they're not posting a dupe, there's no way they'd bother getting approval from content owners.
It's not pedantic, it's central to the argument of whether you blame the product or the user. In P2P, the product is getting blamed for certain peoples' uses of it. Not once has guilt for a murder been placed on a gun manufacturer in a trial (though that argument has been proposed). So why is it different for P2P?
Since you added "use of guns by responsible owners", I totally agree - responsible gun owners keep a gun for use as a last resort way to fight back, or as a deterrent, or as sporting equipment (skeet shooting, hunting), or as part of an enthusiast collection.
If the owner used it for other reasons, I wouldn't consider him a responsible gun owner. (I'm sure there are some other responsible reasons that I've forgotten to list, but you know what I mean)
> "The primary purpose of a gun is to prevent violence."
A gun has no primary purpose; only a motivated person can have a purpose in mind for the gun. A gun may have a primary use: to launch bullets at things. But the purpose of that use varies on who's controlling the gun.
As for "preventing violence", that's all based on your perspective. Someone on a shooting spree isn't out to prevent violence for his victims. Someone with a gun in their home isn't either - the intruder won't know about the gun until threatened by it or shot by it. A sign on your door saying "WARNING: I AM ARMED WITH A GUN AND WILL DEFEND MYSELF IF THREATENED" has a primary goal of preventing violence, even if you don't really have a gun.
It sure is great to be a Bush and friend of the Republicans these days
Well yeah, there are certainly some benefits to selling your soul to the devil. It's a lot easier to move ahead by lying and stealing than through hard work. But I'd far rather be an honest, humble person than a rich cheater doomed to hell.
Perhaps they should change the slashcode to append "We reported on this a few days ago, but this has more info." to every story summary.
>"Stop pollution? But that would cost us votes... erm, jobs! No way!"
More like "But that would cost us millions in corporate donations! No way!"
If you win legal fees, then it's free for you.
Not if you countersue for legal costs and loss of time at work, etc.
Attorneys can only sue you if you've broken a law. If you don't like the laws then vote for different lawmakers.