I'm thinking two years max. I'm not sure what kind of scenario they'd set up, but it would be a blast to go on some "The Hobbit" style adventures with some online friends.
That was like the best Civilization scenario ever. It really seemed to capture the desperation of the forces of good and pretty much the only way to beat it was to follow the general outline of the story and take the ring "unit" to Mordor. Mad props to whoever made it.
The days when there was a standoff between the USA and the USSR, so that neither got to "take out" as many countries as they wanted, look pretty attractive in hindsight.
As a Hungarian, I can assure you that the Cold War era was in no way attractive relative to the current international situation. Furthermore as a "resident of the planet" myself, I also do not wax nostalgic over the threat of the planet being "cleansed" by an all-out nuclear war between two superpowers.
Although things could certainly be better right now (you American's voting out that clown Bush in 2004 would be great start), at least in my country, things are much better than they were only twenty-odd years ago.
Sounds counter-intuitive to the current situation , but its not. If more and more CS students would apply for law school, then there would be more attorneys qualified to work in the realm of software patents. Increased competition will drive down the cost of prosecuting and defending patents - thus lessening the so-called chilling effect.
My advice to CS students: Take the LSAT, you might suprise yourself. Law school is hard, but then so is your current curriculum. At the very least, you'll wind up in a profession that'll be one of the very last that's outsourced to India.
Because most of their talented, leftist-leaning, intellectual contributers and managers more or less despise the so-called "fly-over country" between the nation's coasts.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The hacker who breached a security system to get into credit card information had access to about 5.6 million Visa and Mastercard accounts, far more than originally announced, the two card associations told CNN Tuesday.
Monday, Visa and Mastercard said the hacker could look at as many as 2.2 million accounts after breaching the security system of a company that processes credit card transactions on behalf of merchants.
Just because our sub-culture invents a word, it doesn't mean the wider culture as a whole is in anyway obliged to adopt it.
Where do you think all of those black helicopters are coming from?
If you happen to live next to one of these "abandoned" strips - Watch Out! You never know when you might abducted by Zionist alien grays and flown northward - forced to toil for evermore in mind-control drug fields of the hollow world under the harsh light of the inner sun.
We ran into exactly the same problem. It was supposed to be a paragon of equality, a virtual worker's paradise even, but the first movers in our revolution quickly formed themselves into a wealthy elite and monopolized the resources of our nation to their benefit.
No underclass, my ass! As a beur (French citizen of North African descent) currently studying in America, I can attest that back home I regularly recieve just as much ill-will and discrimination as your Mexican "underclass." At least in US, society doesn't frown on intermarriage between the Mexicans and whites like it does between white french and beurs. And don't try tell me I'm a "race-hater" or some shit just because I date mostly outside my ethnic group - if 90% of the available women were outside your ethnicity you would too!
If you were a non-professional worker or just entering the labor force, living in Europe would be much better - guaranteed health care, good schools, decent holidays, great pension system.
If, on the other hand, you are a professional worker or otherwise successful, living in America would probably be preferrable - you've most likely got health care anyway, the ability to "take flight" towards decent schools, and most importantly: taxes are likely much lower for you and your fellow upper and upper-middle class citizens.
As for me, I'm rather poor at the moment, (recent college grad) but I certainly don't plan to stay that way so its hard to say which system I would prefer.
You are uninformed. Aside from Britain and Norway, most European nations import large quantities of oil. While it is true that mass transit and nuclear power are much more developed in Europe, a larger percentage of its total energy needs must be imported from outside its boundaries. European nations import more of their oil from the Middle East than the United States - which imports oil mostly from Canada and Latin America. (This is not to say we wouldn't feel the effects of say, a fundamentalist revolution in Saudi Arabia - we just wouldn't feel it quite so hard and fast as the Europeans would.) It partly explains why the U.S. is so much more cavalier in its Middle Eastern policy than the E.U.
Smokers are our nation's greatest citizens. Not only do they generate billions of dollars in state and local taxes with their tobacco purchases, they save the federal government still more billions by "removing" themselves from the Social Security System, on average, a decade or so earlier than other, less civic-minded Americans.
But, now, it appears that irresponsible genetic engineering threatens to eliminate an entire generation of such patriotic puffers.
This is not correct. If left unchecked, piracy will lead to fewer trashy books, overpriced movies, pointless video games, culturally-void albums, etc. being produced.
In a word, no.
People who are really good at writing books, designing software, making movies, etc. typically get quite a bit of compensation for their efforts. If fewer people are paying for such goods, then there is less money available to compensate these content producers. Maybe you'd prefer a world of shareware videogames and amateur movies, but I'll take my Warcraft III's and LOTR's any day of the week.
Take a page from the bottled water market. Somehow bottled water manages to eke out comfortable sales [perrier.com] despite the availability of free water in every home.
Faulty analogy. Bottled water is not the same thing as free water in your home. While you might could extend the analogy towards publishing with a "paper books = bottled water" and "free e-books = tap water" schema, that pirated movie or computer game is often the exact same thing as the copyrighted version.
Digital piracy does indeed threaten to overwhelm so-called "content" industries. As the power and reach of the internet continue to grow, the illicit trading of perfect copies may well devastate the music, movie and publishing industries.
Think about that for a minute, even a critic of today's ridiculous, century-long copyright laws, agrees that, left unchecked, piracy will lead to fewer books, movies, video games, albums, etc. being produced. That's bad.
As a producer of such copyrighted material (a programmer with delusions of one day being a novelist), I expect to receive compensation for what I've produced and will produce. If I can't expect compensation I'll decamp to another profession, and I won't be the only one either.
Maybe you do have an affirmative right to use short segments of copyrighted materials in your sermons or whatever. Maybe I have an affirmative right to exterminate those gophers who keep tearing up my garden. What I don't and shouldn't have the right to do is to use the absolutely most effective means of getting rid of those little buggers - minute quantities of nerve gas. No, I have to settle for a poison a little less hazardous to the neighbor's kids. Just like using nerve gas to exterminate gophers, ripping from a copyrighted DVD might be the easiest means of accomplishing your goal, but it's not really in the best interests of the neighborhood or society as a whole. I'm sure there's a compromise out there that while not making everyone happy, will allow you most of your rights, while safeguarding (if not maximizing the profits of) our nation's content-based industries.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking two years max. I'm not sure what kind of scenario they'd set up, but it would be a blast to go on some "The Hobbit" style adventures with some online friends.
That was like the best Civilization scenario ever. It really seemed to capture the desperation of the forces of good and pretty much the only way to beat it was to follow the general outline of the story and take the ring "unit" to Mordor. Mad props to whoever made it.
The days when there was a standoff between the USA and the USSR, so that neither got to "take out" as many countries as they wanted, look pretty attractive in hindsight.
As a Hungarian, I can assure you that the Cold War era was in no way attractive relative to the current international situation. Furthermore as a "resident of the planet" myself, I also do not wax nostalgic over the threat of the planet being "cleansed" by an all-out nuclear war between two superpowers.
Although things could certainly be better right now (you American's voting out that clown Bush in 2004 would be great start), at least in my country, things are much better than they were only twenty-odd years ago.
Sounds counter-intuitive to the current situation , but its not. If more and more CS students would apply for law school, then there would be more attorneys qualified to work in the realm of software patents. Increased competition will drive down the cost of prosecuting and defending patents - thus lessening the so-called chilling effect.
My advice to CS students: Take the LSAT, you might suprise yourself. Law school is hard, but then so is your current curriculum. At the very least, you'll wind up in a profession that'll be one of the very last that's outsourced to India.
I knew I shouldn't have been stealing bandwidth from the adult book store.
Coolest ... name ... ever
Because most of their talented, leftist-leaning, intellectual contributers and managers more or less despise the so-called "fly-over country" between the nation's coasts.
Too bad they don't have a nice, big sugar-daddy like Slate.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The hacker who breached a security system to get into credit card information had access to about 5.6 million Visa and Mastercard accounts, far more than originally announced, the two card associations told CNN Tuesday.
Monday, Visa and Mastercard said the hacker could look at as many as 2.2 million accounts after breaching the security system of a company that processes credit card transactions on behalf of merchants.
Just because our sub-culture invents a word, it doesn't mean the wider culture as a whole is in anyway obliged to adopt it.
Where do you think all of those black helicopters are coming from?
If you happen to live next to one of these "abandoned" strips - Watch Out! You never know when you might abducted by Zionist alien grays and flown northward - forced to toil for evermore in mind-control drug fields of the hollow world under the harsh light of the inner sun.
We ran into exactly the same problem. It was supposed to be a paragon of equality, a virtual worker's paradise even, but the first movers in our revolution quickly formed themselves into a wealthy elite and monopolized the resources of our nation to their benefit.
No underclass, my ass! As a beur (French citizen of North African descent) currently studying in America, I can attest that back home I regularly recieve just as much ill-will and discrimination as your Mexican "underclass." At least in US, society doesn't frown on intermarriage between the Mexicans and whites like it does between white french and beurs. And don't try tell me I'm a "race-hater" or some shit just because I date mostly outside my ethnic group - if 90% of the available women were outside your ethnicity you would too!
If you were a non-professional worker or just entering the labor force, living in Europe would be much better - guaranteed health care, good schools, decent holidays, great pension system.
If, on the other hand, you are a professional worker or otherwise successful, living in America would probably be preferrable - you've most likely got health care anyway, the ability to "take flight" towards decent schools, and most importantly: taxes are likely much lower for you and your fellow upper and upper-middle class citizens.
As for me, I'm rather poor at the moment, (recent college grad) but I certainly don't plan to stay that way so its hard to say which system I would prefer.
It depends much less on imported oil.
You are uninformed. Aside from Britain and Norway, most European nations import large quantities of oil. While it is true that mass transit and nuclear power are much more developed in Europe, a larger percentage of its total energy needs must be imported from outside its boundaries. European nations import more of their oil from the Middle East than the United States - which imports oil mostly from Canada and Latin America. (This is not to say we wouldn't feel the effects of say, a fundamentalist revolution in Saudi Arabia - we just wouldn't feel it quite so hard and fast as the Europeans would.) It partly explains why the U.S. is so much more cavalier in its Middle Eastern policy than the E.U.
The only question is: Has it happened too soon?
..IT'S CRAP!!!"
Smokers are our nation's greatest citizens. Not only do they generate billions of dollars in state and local taxes with their tobacco purchases, they save the federal government still more billions by "removing" themselves from the Social Security System, on average, a decade or so earlier than other, less civic-minded Americans.
But, now, it appears that irresponsible genetic engineering threatens to eliminate an entire generation of such patriotic puffers.
Shame on science and shame on the Amish!
This is not correct. If left unchecked, piracy will lead to fewer trashy books, overpriced movies, pointless video games, culturally-void albums, etc. being produced.
In a word, no.
People who are really good at writing books, designing software, making movies, etc. typically get quite a bit of compensation for their efforts. If fewer people are paying for such goods, then there is less money available to compensate these content producers. Maybe you'd prefer a world of shareware videogames and amateur movies, but I'll take my Warcraft III's and LOTR's any day of the week.
Take a page from the bottled water market. Somehow bottled water manages to eke out comfortable sales [perrier.com] despite the availability of free water in every home.
Faulty analogy. Bottled water is not the same thing as free water in your home. While you might could extend the analogy towards publishing with a "paper books = bottled water" and "free e-books = tap water" schema, that pirated movie or computer game is often the exact same thing as the copyrighted version.
These people will fight tooth and claw to retain total control of our culture until we wrest it from their grasping hands.
Which we will promptly suffocate by our steadfast refusal to compensate the producers of such culture.
Consider this quotation from the article:
Digital piracy does indeed threaten to overwhelm so-called "content" industries. As the power and reach of the internet continue to grow, the illicit trading of perfect copies may well devastate the music, movie and publishing industries.
Think about that for a minute, even a critic of today's ridiculous, century-long copyright laws, agrees that, left unchecked, piracy will lead to fewer books, movies, video games, albums, etc. being produced. That's bad.
As a producer of such copyrighted material (a programmer with delusions of one day being a novelist), I expect to receive compensation for what I've produced and will produce. If I can't expect compensation I'll decamp to another profession, and I won't be the only one either.
Maybe you do have an affirmative right to use short segments of copyrighted materials in your sermons or whatever. Maybe I have an affirmative right to exterminate those gophers who keep tearing up my garden. What I don't and shouldn't have the right to do is to use the absolutely most effective means of getting rid of those little buggers - minute quantities of nerve gas. No, I have to settle for a poison a little less hazardous to the neighbor's kids. Just like using nerve gas to exterminate gophers, ripping from a copyrighted DVD might be the easiest means of accomplishing your goal, but it's not really in the best interests of the neighborhood or society as a whole. I'm sure there's a compromise out there that while not making everyone happy, will allow you most of your rights, while safeguarding (if not maximizing the profits of) our nation's content-based industries.
Your analogy doesn't really make any sense.
You do realize that if all everyone did was leech then the entire system would collapse right??
Exactly the same argument used by the music and entertainment industries, but they're evil so it's OK to "leech" off them.
Not a troll :)
There were wooden planks, ropes, and even geometry.
Apparently, according to Slashdot, these items still exist today. Whoah, blows the mind!
I guess I had better call the local newspaper and tell them to stop the fuckin presses.
But when enough people get sick of it, won't they just build something else?
Sorta like China's doing? The adage about the bird in the hand comes to mind.