The idea behind EULA's is that under some theories of copyright law you do not have the right to copy the software from the CD to your hard drive. The EULA grants you that right. (IANAL also) Surely if the software requires to be copied to a hard drive to fulfil its stated purpose, then any reasonable court would (or should) consider that there is implied permission to do just that, with no EULA necessary.
Viewed in that context, the EULA could be considered "damage limitation", that actually, they *will* explicitly let you copy it, but on their terms. Legally, if what I said above holds, then any "rights" the EULA gives you which are weaker than the (arguably) implied rights that you (again arguably) already have, they should be irrelevant. But I suspect they may be able to get away with fudging this sort of issue due to the vagueness of user rights in the first place.
When people say "adventure gaming is dead," what they're probably talking about is "point-and-click" adventure gaming is dead. Well, you said it yourself-
unless you want to go real old school and talk about text adventures, but it's a similar thing Text adventures used to be considered the "real" adventures (until the market died out in the late-80s/early-90s), with graphical adventures being considered more lightweight.
(Disclaimer for following: I haven't played anything like a recent point-and-click adventure; plese correct me if I'm glaringly wrong here).
There's perhaps a case to be made that even the best point-and-click adventures have (by necessity of interface design) to lead the player somewhat.
Consider it like a GUI versus a command line; the GUI presents you with the actions you can do. In a click-and-point adventure, this translates to "presents you with all the actions you can do" and thus implies those you can't. (Unless it presents a generic action list, possibly checking off impossible actions after trying once; but how long do you want the list to be?)
A command line does neither, and so could be considered to not be "leading" the player.
(Of course, a graphical adventure could be designed to mimic the human body (hands, etc) and eyes closely, making it like real life, and avoiding leading- but quite how practical- and desirable- this is for a game is open to question.)
Actually, the point I make above is slightly disingenuous; traditional text adventures, particularly cassette-based ones that had to fit in 16KB(!) had a limited range of actions, and clearly differentiated and signposted objects, simply because the elements had to be kept clear and simple to fit into that space. But if mainstream development had continued, imagine what modern text adventures could be like; this certainly wouldn't be an issue.
Well, as someone with 20 years experience as a software engineering on everything from desktops to supercomputers I will tell you that the math and theory is what separates the men from the boys when it comes to computers. I don't go back to CS theory that often - maybe once or twice a year. However, when I do need to pull that stuff out it is invaluable. Yep; this is the problem with our self-taught "genius" friend and others like him. They don't like something and don't see the immediate relevance, so they can't be bothered doing it. They're arrogant and can't see the bigger picture, and blame their failure at university level on the course and not their own lack of discipline, or inability to pick up the study skills that would help them pass.
They probably did quite well at school, until they had to start pushing themselves, spoiled by years of getting good marks without having to do too much. Actually, I've been there myself; I just wasn't childish enough to blame it all on the school/university...
I managed to fail first year twice, and dya know why? Cus of a mixture of two things. One they couldn't teach for shit and I lost interest!! And two, the material was sooooo boring!! A more likely guess; because you were too fucking immature and lazy.
University isn't all fun and games; like life, some of it's boring and you just have to plough through it. If you were as smart as you seem to think you are, you should have been able to get through these bits with a bit of self-discipline and have plenty of time left over for hacking about and drinking.
It's possible that the course wasn't that well taught; I doubt there's any Uni that doesn't have one or two poor and/or boring lecturers. But the University of Edinburgh is supposed to be one of the better Scottish unis for Computer Science (or was when I was looking into courses a few years back).
Did you consider applying for direct entry to second year? You're so smart, I'm sure they'd have let you in. Assuming you had the qualifications and/or obvious talent; or- let me guess- you didn't work that hard at school and got mediocre qualifications because you considered the work beneath you. Or somesuch excuse...
You thought university would be an excuse to intellectually self-indulge yourself and you're unhappy because it wasn't. Boo hoo.
unlike the American system, students in UK universities are enrolled on a particular degree scheme for 3-4 years. If they drop out, then they can not simply change their modules and get a different degree, they have to re-apply the next year to a different department. Careful; you talk about "UK universities", but I assume you were thinking of the typical course structure in England and Wales. Scottish universities are different in this respect.
Scottish degree courses are typically four (instead of three) years long (*), featuring two foundation years where the student studies three different subjects, and the final two years dedicated to the chosen major subject.
Certainly, you apply with the intention of doing a certain degree, but if you choose your foundation courses appropriately (and pass them), it is often possible to change your degree to something different for the final two years. I don't know how similar this is to the U.S. system.
(*) Supposedly because the traditional Scottish Higher is a one-year course instead of the two-year English A-Level (though the Higher system offers more breadth, and nowadays the Advanced Higher is available to take things further).
Grandparent: Our business model is to provide content which is trivially easy for people to duplicate and distribute, but to sue anyone who actually does that.
Parent: The alternative being DRM. Personally, I'd prefer for normal consumers to have their fair use rights, and for copyright violators to be sued, than to give no rights to anybody.
Using DRM does not replace the need to take legal action against those infringing copyright; inevitably, copy protection *will* be removed by someone, by some means, and if they were then allowed to *totally* freely distribute this unprotected copy, it would likely become more widespread than the original DRMed versions.
Bear in mind that this may include more than P2P; e.g. "pirate" DVDs at half the price and ten times the availability of the original.
Quit your bitching about advertising. How do you think they pay for the show? What exactly are you talking about?
First he criticised Viacom's publicity for the show itself for being misleading. Then he criticised them for missing bits out between the breaks, not the existence of the breaks themselves.
I agree that too many people on/. criticise advertising when they're not paying for the show any other way, but that clearly wasn't the case here.
Undermining the government is what loses wars and wether I can sit here confortably and debate all these moral and not issues, it is ultimately my ass too that might very well be in danger or if not future generations. I can be wrong but alive, right and dead. I'm not going to haul out that Benjamin Franklin quotation now, but your comment about not "undermining the government" smacks dangerously of fascism.
I believe that such US (and to some extent British) responses to terrorist attacks are where the greatest danger to freedom lies.
The majority of the measures taken will not make us more secure; some of them have been downright stupid. They exist merely to give the illusion of some security. Further, they will be used as justification for further erosion of freedom in the name of security.
I believe that the terrorists won the first round; their aim was to make people frightened and change their behaviour, and they succeeded; certainly in your case.
Do you thing anybody out there in the prison population and elswhere is concerned about your well being? The ones who are guilty? No. The ones who have been locked up without any access to justice? Probably not.
Whether they do or not, denying them justice is a tremendously powerful propoganda weapon. No-one will believe the confessions, because under torture people will admit anything, on the contrary, they will be seen as not merely innocent, but as victims and martyrs, drawing more to the cause. Believe me, the people who will exploit this are intolerant vermin of the lowest order, and it doesn't give me any pleasure to think of this. Bottom line; even if you don't give a fuck for justice, or for those you think are guilty (without or without proof), you will not crush your enemies or "show them who's boss" this way. You will raise countless more who see you as their enemy.
You may think that "might is right", but that hasn't got very far in Iraq. You may still have the power to reduce X, Y and Z to a glass parking lot (as so many armchair tough-guy strategists suggest), but you will (at best) lose both freedom and security as countless millions make it their life's purpose to destroy your country- any subtlety in who was right or wrong will be lost.
I misinterpreted the diagram due to it being in two dimensions (and not paying enough attention). I assumed there were two separate apertures at the top and the bottom, and that the whole construct was basically tube-shaped.
If that's not clear, it's hard to explain, but it's not important anyway; I realise now that the aperture was ring-shaped (having looked up "annular") and the whole thing was circular, with a large obstacle in the centre, making it similar to a traditional mirror lens.
Having 'been' there does in no way make you knowlegeable. Been *where* exactly?
Only anti-american. Probably therefore you do not live in the states. Or wish you didn't. In that case I've heard Kabul has some real-estate. You're right; I live in the UK.
Secondly, the Geneva Convention applies to nations specified in the Geneva Convention and not beyond. It is THERE in the Geneva Convention. Read it? Understand it? Obviously not. Technically correct, so why did your government spend so long trying to pretend it was sticking to it? Simple; because it knows that its treatment of POWs would be seen as unacceptable, regardless of their country of origin.
And I mentioned that in one sentence alone; of far more importance was the straightforward hypocrisy of the US government in these matters.
If I had been American, you're claiming that I should get the fuck out of my own country and move to Afghanistan because I disagreed with the government? Yeah; nice freedom of speech/thought there...
You aren't alone in arbitrarily wanting to make judgment on issues which fall outside the scope of your understanding of them. It doesn't matter what I want with 'Gitmo' either, with those prisoners. This democracy you speak of, while not perfect, has elected those who call the shots. Exactly. America voted for the people carrying out this shit, America is responsible. And "those who call the shots" doesn't imply any moral authority, just that you have bigger guns.
And because you are happily part of the system that voted them into power, you're responsible for their actions, regardless of whether or not you think that "it doesn't matter what I want with 'Gitmo' either".
Like it or not. Translation: You can't do shit about it, the US government has the guns, so shut the fuck up.
Answer: No.
Personally I couldn't give a flying fuck if all prisoners drown on their feces. Sooner the better. Personally I couldn't give a flying fuck for your opinions on much at all; it's clear that you believe that "might is right", and don't give a damn about the values that America constantly claims to support.
Sure, it'd be cooler to be a game programmer or device driver hack From what I've heard, a lot of game programming is pretty uninteresting stuff (i.e. low-level mundanity implementing other people's designs), with lots of hard work. Plus, there are relatively large numbers of kids whose dream it is (misguided or not) to get into writing games, so I doubt that the pay is the best either (though I might be wrong there, so if anyone out there is interested, best check that out).
EA in particular looks like a notoriously crap place to work...
I was always under the impression that the doughnut-shaped bokeh of mirror lenses was due to the second mirror blocking the centre of the main lens itself. But surely that doesn't apply in this case?
I think the "lousy" bokeh of mirror lenses is overstated. Sure, it's not desirable for every case, but it can be quite attractive under many circumstances.
Meanwhile, the Bokeh (of out-of-focus highlights) on the cheapish 28-80 zoom on my low-end Nikon SLR is a hard-edged circle, with most of the light around the edge, softly disappearing towards the centre. (See "Poor bokeh" here for an example). It's a decent lens otherwise...
Going by your comment history, I don't think you were trolling, (probably modded down because someone disagreed with what you said- not the purpose of the mod system but there you go). Bearing that in mind:-
Also, most of these people are actually guilty. "Also, most of these people are actually guilty." I like the way you mention that as if it's just a minor issue, and that you clearly imply (and just as clearly don't give a fuck that) there's a significant proportion that aren't.
And you know that they're guilty without anything like a fair trial. Because they're terrorists and they don't deserve a fair trial (or somesuch bullshit circular reasoning).
Let's not even get into the pseudo-legalistic weaselling BS that the US is trying to use to get around the Geneva Convention.
The people get "tortured" because they toss their urine and feces on the guards and refuse to eat. What the hell do the quotes mean? Were they or weren't they tortured, and if they were, are you claiming that the torture was justified?
Are you saying that the British government would have been justified in using torture against Irish Republican terrorists who covered the walls of their cells in excrement?
Anyway, let's make one thing absolutely clear. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and all their hardline Wahabi friends are vermin who I'd quite happily see stoned to death, or finished off in similarly appropriate medievel style. Who's worse- the Americans or the Taliban and friends? The Taliban.
But regardless of what your dumbfuck "With us or against us" black-and-white-world leader says, it doesn't justify what's going on at Gitmo, and if you need them to compare against and make yourselves look good, you're already fucked.
Also, apart from anything else.... nice little anti-American propaganda tool you set yourselves up there. Fucking idiots. Not that I'm bothered about it making the US look bad (deservedly so, and not my problem). But anything that lets those lowlife portray themselves (and co-opt the cases of the innocent who had nothing to do with them) as martyrs and recruit more to their cause isn't exactly desirable.
Gitmo proves that the Americans are all talk and full of shit when it comes to justice, democracy and whatever. Go on- bring up some spurious dichotomy and ask how I'd prefer living in a world ruled by the Taliban (because if I'm not kissing your ass, I'm endorsing them, right?)
I've been there as a communications support technician.
This may not be a popular opinion on slashdot these days, but from someone who has been there, learn your facts and shut your mouth. This may or may not be a popular opinion, and I don't give a fuck either way, but why don't you and everyone else involved with the Gitmo operation do us a favour and just fucking kill yourselves.
You can keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better Why would it make me feel better? I'm not an artist, and I'm not a particular fan of the guy that created Oddworld (I played the first in the series the better part of 10 years ago, and that's it).
about yourself but propaganda is the basest form of art. Do you classify *any* form of art which has more than purely aesthetic value (and *nothing* else) as propaganda? And do you lump this all together with the worst pack-of-lies, misleading, simplifying, fallacious, emotion-inducing, crowd-pandering propaganda out there?
What's worse, artists who do it are usually self-righteous pricks who've convinced themselves that they're on some sort of high moral ground. Some of them are.
Anyhow, you missed the point I was making. Whether or not you view them both as equally reprehensible, there's a difference between using your art to push your own point-of-view and hiring it out to push someone else's for money.
It's sad when an artist wants to reduce their art to propaganda... you may as well just go into marketing or advertising and be honest with yourself about what you're doing. Wrong; in advertising- rightly or wrongly- you're whoring your art out for someone else's message, in almost all cases to sell a product.
You might not like people trying to get across their own message and may even consider it propoganda, but to imply that it's selling out in the same way that advertising or marketing is, is nonsense.
The VCR's you see on the shelves in Currys are models that have been in the company for a long time. What the announcement meant was that they'd be buying no *new* supplies once existing stocks were sold through. I've commented on this previously, and I allowed for that factor. However, let's be honest; it's wildly implausible that a business such as Dixons/Currys would still be holding large amounts of such stock over two years later(!).
If they were selling well, you'd have run out by now. If they hadn't been selling well (because- as you claimed- the technology had been nearing the end of the road), I certainly don't believe you would have risked sitting on this massive stockpile while it got even more out of date and hard-to-sell. You'd have cut your losses while you were still able to get something worthwhile for them.
There is still a huge amount of VCR stock in the company because a lot of them got pushed aside into warehouses to clear space on the shelves for DVD players/recorders. Nope; you might have reduced the shelf space dedicated to VCRs, but I don't believe that Dixons would be so incompetent that they'd shift that many VCRs into storage when the market was only likely to deteriorate. Last time I checked, the large Currys had a decent amount of shelf-space dedicated to VCRs, and four of five different models on sale.
Oh, and from the BBC article, "Dixons expects to sell its remaining stock of VCRs by Christmas" [2004]. That would have been just over a month after the article was published. Now, I can be charitable and say that it might have taken you a *little* longer to sell them all. However, unless someone was incredibly (and implausibly) incompetent, and unless the dynamics of the market changed abruptly, I don't see how stock you expected to last one month is still sitting around two years later.
While you might not choose to shop with any stores within the Dixons Group, a huge amount of people do. Yep; I (very) occasionally shop there myself. That having been said, your subtle implication is that by criticising DSG, I'm criticising them. Who knows what their individual reasons are?- it doesn't put your company beyond criticism.
And while these announcements might seem like a publicity stunt, they're actually quite useful. Very rarely do we get customers asking for VCR's or 35mm cameras anymore because the majority have heard of their demise in the news. Useful for you in that they keep away any low-value VCR-buying people and encourage the boys-toys hi-tech big-spending demographic.
I only wish they'd make the same annoucement for portable CD players as we've also stopped selling those. Another commodity item with no profit in it for Currys...
PC World in particular don't need the publicity as they have a stranglehold on the UK domestic computer market, and also do very well in the business market. They seem to advertise quite a lot on TV. And I doubt that any sane marketing person would turn down free publicity like that.
The LS-120 drive (and its successor, the 250) had the potential to supplant floppy drives, though they sadly did not. Problem is that even the original discs came out (acc. the Wikipedia article) in 1997, by which time Zip was already established, and only 2-3 years before writable CD drives got cheap enough.
If something similar (even with smaller capacity) had come out- and been a hit- circa 1992, it may well have hung around long enough to become standard.
The 250 drives went even further, by allowing you to format regular floppies to some ungodly (and ultimately unreliable) capacity in the range of 30 MB. This typically left them readable only by the original drive, even other LS-250s tended not to be able to read them. Very cool sounding; also not something I'd wish to archive (or even store) my data on, unfortunately. And the lack of cross-drive reliability wipes out the other obvious application, copying large files between different computers...
Technically you're correct, but just as no-one refers to the standard audio cassette by its formal name, "Compact Cassette"- yes, there were other (incompatible) cassette-based audiotape systems at the time of its launch- few people referred to them using those formal names. (Although to be fair, I doubt that's what you meant....)
Cassette tapes were just Cassttes - or in Commodore speak 'datasettes' (I think Adam cassettes were data-packs). Never used an Adam, but I read about it. Apparently it needed special-formulation cassettes.
Then there were the exatron tapes which were stringy floppies. Which weren't really floppies at all, just tape-based devices that gave some of their performance at a lower cost:)
And the tinly Sinclair QL tapes were micrdodrive cartridges or something like that. AFAIK the microdrive carts were just another form of tape-based "stringy floppy".
Hang on, looks like I *was* right; this article states that:-
The 9cm piece of plastic will no longer be available from Britain's biggest computer retailer. PC World announced last night it would stop selling the disks when stocks ran out. On reflection, the original article probably *was* referring to floppy discs; the reference to them phasing out the drives looks like a separate matter. (I assumed the reason for that part was to differente between them selling drives separately- external and OEM-style internal- and within computers, but on reflection this was wrong).
There's also a huge difference between not carrying the medium and not carrying the reading device. You're right; it appears that the article was referring to floppy disk drives. Unfortunately, the article is a POS; it keeps referring to "floppy disks", when on closer inspection it is referring to the drives, not the disks themselves.
floppies were never reliable I found them pretty reliable if you looked after them; the 5.25" discs on my Atari were almost 100% reliable. Had some minor problems with a few floppies on my Amiga, but that was probably because the drive was too close to the TV (or I was using old, worn discs).
My neighbor put his resume on 3 floppies and went to Kinko's to print it on nice paper. All 3 were bad. Floppies in the past 5 (well, probably closer to 10) years have suffered in reliability because they were ruthlessly commoditised, prices cut to the bone and beyond. No-one wanted to pay much for a technology which- by that time- was relatively ancient, very low in capacity and totally lacking in glamour. Falling manufacturing costs can only go so far if you have to retain design compatibility- particularly with a mechanical device- no matter how obsolete the tech, and I'd guess that there's still a price limit below which you can't produce a reliable drive.
I liked floppy discs, but the reason that the 3.5" 1.44MB floppy survived so long was that no-one came up with a truly universal successor (the Zip disc had some success in its day, but never became "standard"). Guaranteed bootability, universal support, etc... made it a near-essential even in the face of more advanced technologies that would otherwise have killed it far earlier; but you can see why no-one wanted to pay much for one.
I would say that its day was over, but people were saying that 2 years back. Truth is, despite PC World's attention-whoring announcment, the floppy won't die suddenly, it'll just continue fading away.
For those not familiar with the parent company of PC World, the former Dixons group, this is the third time that they've pulled this stunt. That is, with great ceremony, announcing that they are to stop selling a technology that is (supposedly) becoming long-in-the-tooth and obsolete, and getting lots of attention from the press, who use it as an excuse to describe the (supposed) passing of a particular technology:-
In the case of the VCR, their announcement was misleading at best, and more likely just a pack of lies. Dixons.co.uk (and the large-format Currys stores) *still* each sell a wide range of standalone VCRs, over 2 years later. (Visit dixons.co.uk and search for "video recorder").
IIRC the high-street Dixons stores (now called "Currys.Digital", ugh) still sold them long after the supposed phase-out date. I don't know about the 35mm cameras, but even if they were telling the truth in that case, it was a nice publicity stunt for them. Even more so for the floppy discs; you're stopping selling floppy discs and you felt the need to make a big announcement about it?!
Of course, the intention behind these announcements- besides the straight publicity- is to give the impression of Dixons and PC World as hi-tech, cutting-edge type places. When in fact they're mediocre at best; sometimes competitive, but just as often overpriced- particularly for more humble items such as USB and Ethernet cables, staffed by salespeople who like to pretend they know more than they do, flogging overpriced warranties and with a poor reputation. Online shopping is much cheaper, and with a better selection.
My idea: a web site exchange that sells old licenses of XP. When your laptop breaks, you can sell the license. We can even require you mail in your certificate to ensure its legit. eBay turned down this money. Lonely businessgeek looking for an idea, Will you? If it's legal (according to the license, or because the laws in whatever country say that you can't stop people doing this), and you can defend it.... this still sounds problematic.
The potential for people stealing, counterfeiting and/or just reusing existing licenses could be a major PITA.
For example, the sale of keys that are already in use. If the original installation is rarely used, someone could just "borrow" the keys without permission (either by taking or by copying the key certificate), and by the time the problems rear their head, the original seller is gone.
The sale of licenses where someone thinks they have XYZ permission, when in fact they don't (e.g. special registered corporate license, upgrade key instead of original). Blah blah....
Might be do-able, but you have to bear it all in mind.
Pretty unlikely; that would be more hassle than it was worth for MS probably. More likely that it'll just check some things and (possibly) retain some files (though I can't see what the point would be; so long as it knows you have a licensed copy of XP installed, why not just overwrite?).
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Viewed in that context, the EULA could be considered "damage limitation", that actually, they *will* explicitly let you copy it, but on their terms. Legally, if what I said above holds, then any "rights" the EULA gives you which are weaker than the (arguably) implied rights that you (again arguably) already have, they should be irrelevant. But I suspect they may be able to get away with fudging this sort of issue due to the vagueness of user rights in the first place.
(Disclaimer for following: I haven't played anything like a recent point-and-click adventure; plese correct me if I'm glaringly wrong here).
There's perhaps a case to be made that even the best point-and-click adventures have (by necessity of interface design) to lead the player somewhat.
Consider it like a GUI versus a command line; the GUI presents you with the actions you can do. In a click-and-point adventure, this translates to "presents you with all the actions you can do" and thus implies those you can't. (Unless it presents a generic action list, possibly checking off impossible actions after trying once; but how long do you want the list to be?)
A command line does neither, and so could be considered to not be "leading" the player.
(Of course, a graphical adventure could be designed to mimic the human body (hands, etc) and eyes closely, making it like real life, and avoiding leading- but quite how practical- and desirable- this is for a game is open to question.)
Actually, the point I make above is slightly disingenuous; traditional text adventures, particularly cassette-based ones that had to fit in 16KB(!) had a limited range of actions, and clearly differentiated and signposted objects, simply because the elements had to be kept clear and simple to fit into that space. But if mainstream development had continued, imagine what modern text adventures could be like; this certainly wouldn't be an issue.
They probably did quite well at school, until they had to start pushing themselves, spoiled by years of getting good marks without having to do too much. Actually, I've been there myself; I just wasn't childish enough to blame it all on the school/university...
University isn't all fun and games; like life, some of it's boring and you just have to plough through it. If you were as smart as you seem to think you are, you should have been able to get through these bits with a bit of self-discipline and have plenty of time left over for hacking about and drinking.
It's possible that the course wasn't that well taught; I doubt there's any Uni that doesn't have one or two poor and/or boring lecturers. But the University of Edinburgh is supposed to be one of the better Scottish unis for Computer Science (or was when I was looking into courses a few years back).
Did you consider applying for direct entry to second year? You're so smart, I'm sure they'd have let you in. Assuming you had the qualifications and/or obvious talent; or- let me guess- you didn't work that hard at school and got mediocre qualifications because you considered the work beneath you. Or somesuch excuse...
You thought university would be an excuse to intellectually self-indulge yourself and you're unhappy because it wasn't. Boo hoo.
Scottish degree courses are typically four (instead of three) years long (*), featuring two foundation years where the student studies three different subjects, and the final two years dedicated to the chosen major subject.
Certainly, you apply with the intention of doing a certain degree, but if you choose your foundation courses appropriately (and pass them), it is often possible to change your degree to something different for the final two years. I don't know how similar this is to the U.S. system.
(*) Supposedly because the traditional Scottish Higher is a one-year course instead of the two-year English A-Level (though the Higher system offers more breadth, and nowadays the Advanced Higher is available to take things further).
Grandparent: Our business model is to provide content which is trivially easy for people to duplicate and distribute, but to sue anyone who actually does that.
Parent: The alternative being DRM. Personally, I'd prefer for normal consumers to have their fair use rights, and for copyright violators to be sued, than to give no rights to anybody.
Using DRM does not replace the need to take legal action against those infringing copyright; inevitably, copy protection *will* be removed by someone, by some means, and if they were then allowed to *totally* freely distribute this unprotected copy, it would likely become more widespread than the original DRMed versions.
Bear in mind that this may include more than P2P; e.g. "pirate" DVDs at half the price and ten times the availability of the original.
First he criticised Viacom's publicity for the show itself for being misleading. Then he criticised them for missing bits out between the breaks, not the existence of the breaks themselves.
I agree that too many people on
I believe that such US (and to some extent British) responses to terrorist attacks are where the greatest danger to freedom lies.
The majority of the measures taken will not make us more secure; some of them have been downright stupid. They exist merely to give the illusion of some security. Further, they will be used as justification for further erosion of freedom in the name of security.
I believe that the terrorists won the first round; their aim was to make people frightened and change their behaviour, and they succeeded; certainly in your case. Do you thing anybody out there in the prison population and elswhere is concerned about your well being? The ones who are guilty? No. The ones who have been locked up without any access to justice? Probably not.
Whether they do or not, denying them justice is a tremendously powerful propoganda weapon. No-one will believe the confessions, because under torture people will admit anything, on the contrary, they will be seen as not merely innocent, but as victims and martyrs, drawing more to the cause. Believe me, the people who will exploit this are intolerant vermin of the lowest order, and it doesn't give me any pleasure to think of this. Bottom line; even if you don't give a fuck for justice, or for those you think are guilty (without or without proof), you will not crush your enemies or "show them who's boss" this way. You will raise countless more who see you as their enemy.
You may think that "might is right", but that hasn't got very far in Iraq. You may still have the power to reduce X, Y and Z to a glass parking lot (as so many armchair tough-guy strategists suggest), but you will (at best) lose both freedom and security as countless millions make it their life's purpose to destroy your country- any subtlety in who was right or wrong will be lost.
I misinterpreted the diagram due to it being in two dimensions (and not paying enough attention). I assumed there were two separate apertures at the top and the bottom, and that the whole construct was basically tube-shaped.
If that's not clear, it's hard to explain, but it's not important anyway; I realise now that the aperture was ring-shaped (having looked up "annular") and the whole thing was circular, with a large obstacle in the centre, making it similar to a traditional mirror lens.
And I mentioned that in one sentence alone; of far more importance was the straightforward hypocrisy of the US government in these matters.
If I had been American, you're claiming that I should get the fuck out of my own country and move to Afghanistan because I disagreed with the government? Yeah; nice freedom of speech/thought there... You aren't alone in arbitrarily wanting to make judgment on issues which fall outside the scope of your understanding of them. It doesn't matter what I want with 'Gitmo' either, with those prisoners. This democracy you speak of, while not perfect, has elected those who call the shots. Exactly. America voted for the people carrying out this shit, America is responsible. And "those who call the shots" doesn't imply any moral authority, just that you have bigger guns.
And because you are happily part of the system that voted them into power, you're responsible for their actions, regardless of whether or not you think that "it doesn't matter what I want with 'Gitmo' either". Like it or not. Translation: You can't do shit about it, the US government has the guns, so shut the fuck up.
Answer: No. Personally I couldn't give a flying fuck if all prisoners drown on their feces. Sooner the better. Personally I couldn't give a flying fuck for your opinions on much at all; it's clear that you believe that "might is right", and don't give a damn about the values that America constantly claims to support.
EA in particular looks like a notoriously crap place to work...
I was always under the impression that the doughnut-shaped bokeh of mirror lenses was due to the second mirror blocking the centre of the main lens itself. But surely that doesn't apply in this case?
I think the "lousy" bokeh of mirror lenses is overstated. Sure, it's not desirable for every case, but it can be quite attractive under many circumstances.
Meanwhile, the Bokeh (of out-of-focus highlights) on the cheapish 28-80 zoom on my low-end Nikon SLR is a hard-edged circle, with most of the light around the edge, softly disappearing towards the centre. (See "Poor bokeh" here for an example). It's a decent lens otherwise...
And you know that they're guilty without anything like a fair trial. Because they're terrorists and they don't deserve a fair trial (or somesuch bullshit circular reasoning).
Let's not even get into the pseudo-legalistic weaselling BS that the US is trying to use to get around the Geneva Convention.
The people get "tortured" because they toss their urine and feces on the guards and refuse to eat. What the hell do the quotes mean? Were they or weren't they tortured, and if they were, are you claiming that the torture was justified?
Are you saying that the British government would have been justified in using torture against Irish Republican terrorists who covered the walls of their cells in excrement?
Anyway, let's make one thing absolutely clear. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and all their hardline Wahabi friends are vermin who I'd quite happily see stoned to death, or finished off in similarly appropriate medievel style. Who's worse- the Americans or the Taliban and friends? The Taliban.
But regardless of what your dumbfuck "With us or against us" black-and-white-world leader says, it doesn't justify what's going on at Gitmo, and if you need them to compare against and make yourselves look good, you're already fucked.
Also, apart from anything else.... nice little anti-American propaganda tool you set yourselves up there. Fucking idiots. Not that I'm bothered about it making the US look bad (deservedly so, and not my problem). But anything that lets those lowlife portray themselves (and co-opt the cases of the innocent who had nothing to do with them) as martyrs and recruit more to their cause isn't exactly desirable.
Gitmo proves that the Americans are all talk and full of shit when it comes to justice, democracy and whatever. Go on- bring up some spurious dichotomy and ask how I'd prefer living in a world ruled by the Taliban (because if I'm not kissing your ass, I'm endorsing them, right?) I've been there as a communications support technician. This may not be a popular opinion on slashdot these days, but from someone who has been there, learn your facts and shut your mouth. This may or may not be a popular opinion, and I don't give a fuck either way, but why don't you and everyone else involved with the Gitmo operation do us a favour and just fucking kill yourselves.
Anyhow, you missed the point I was making. Whether or not you view them both as equally reprehensible, there's a difference between using your art to push your own point-of-view and hiring it out to push someone else's for money.
You might not like people trying to get across their own message and may even consider it propoganda, but to imply that it's selling out in the same way that advertising or marketing is, is nonsense.
If they were selling well, you'd have run out by now. If they hadn't been selling well (because- as you claimed- the technology had been nearing the end of the road), I certainly don't believe you would have risked sitting on this massive stockpile while it got even more out of date and hard-to-sell. You'd have cut your losses while you were still able to get something worthwhile for them. There is still a huge amount of VCR stock in the company because a lot of them got pushed aside into warehouses to clear space on the shelves for DVD players/recorders. Nope; you might have reduced the shelf space dedicated to VCRs, but I don't believe that Dixons would be so incompetent that they'd shift that many VCRs into storage when the market was only likely to deteriorate. Last time I checked, the large Currys had a decent amount of shelf-space dedicated to VCRs, and four of five different models on sale.
Oh, and from the BBC article, "Dixons expects to sell its remaining stock of VCRs by Christmas" [2004]. That would have been just over a month after the article was published. Now, I can be charitable and say that it might have taken you a *little* longer to sell them all. However, unless someone was incredibly (and implausibly) incompetent, and unless the dynamics of the market changed abruptly, I don't see how stock you expected to last one month is still sitting around two years later. While you might not choose to shop with any stores within the Dixons Group, a huge amount of people do. Yep; I (very) occasionally shop there myself. That having been said, your subtle implication is that by criticising DSG, I'm criticising them. Who knows what their individual reasons are?- it doesn't put your company beyond criticism. And while these announcements might seem like a publicity stunt, they're actually quite useful. Very rarely do we get customers asking for VCR's or 35mm cameras anymore because the majority have heard of their demise in the news. Useful for you in that they keep away any low-value VCR-buying people and encourage the boys-toys hi-tech big-spending demographic. I only wish they'd make the same annoucement for portable CD players as we've also stopped selling those. Another commodity item with no profit in it for Currys... PC World in particular don't need the publicity as they have a stranglehold on the UK domestic computer market, and also do very well in the business market. They seem to advertise quite a lot on TV. And I doubt that any sane marketing person would turn down free publicity like that.
If something similar (even with smaller capacity) had come out- and been a hit- circa 1992, it may well have hung around long enough to become standard. The 250 drives went even further, by allowing you to format regular floppies to some ungodly (and ultimately unreliable) capacity in the range of 30 MB. This typically left them readable only by the original drive, even other LS-250s tended not to be able to read them. Very cool sounding; also not something I'd wish to archive (or even store) my data on, unfortunately. And the lack of cross-drive reliability wipes out the other obvious application, copying large files between different computers...
I liked floppy discs, but the reason that the 3.5" 1.44MB floppy survived so long was that no-one came up with a truly universal successor (the Zip disc had some success in its day, but never became "standard"). Guaranteed bootability, universal support, etc... made it a near-essential even in the face of more advanced technologies that would otherwise have killed it far earlier; but you can see why no-one wanted to pay much for one.
I would say that its day was over, but people were saying that 2 years back. Truth is, despite PC World's attention-whoring announcment, the floppy won't die suddenly, it'll just continue fading away.
Hang on a minute; after some searching, it looks like even our favourite website picked up those stories (via the BBC):-
(1) "The UK's largest retailer of electronics is phasing out VHS VCRs." (Note that as I pointed out then, Dixons' "discontinuation" of the VCR took place before DVD recorders (*not* playback-only devices) and HDD-based PVRs had taken off.
(2) "Digital Cameras Force Film Off Dixons' Shelves"
For those not familiar with the parent company of PC World, the former Dixons group, this is the third time that they've pulled this stunt. That is, with great ceremony, announcing that they are to stop selling a technology that is (supposedly) becoming long-in-the-tooth and obsolete, and getting lots of attention from the press, who use it as an excuse to describe the (supposed) passing of a particular technology:-
(1) Death of video recorder (i.e. VCR) in sight
(2) Dixons to end 35mm camera sales.
In the case of the VCR, their announcement was misleading at best, and more likely just a pack of lies. Dixons.co.uk (and the large-format Currys stores) *still* each sell a wide range of standalone VCRs, over 2 years later. (Visit dixons.co.uk and search for "video recorder").
IIRC the high-street Dixons stores (now called "Currys.Digital", ugh) still sold them long after the supposed phase-out date. I don't know about the 35mm cameras, but even if they were telling the truth in that case, it was a nice publicity stunt for them. Even more so for the floppy discs; you're stopping selling floppy discs and you felt the need to make a big announcement about it?!
Of course, the intention behind these announcements- besides the straight publicity- is to give the impression of Dixons and PC World as hi-tech, cutting-edge type places. When in fact they're mediocre at best; sometimes competitive, but just as often overpriced- particularly for more humble items such as USB and Ethernet cables, staffed by salespeople who like to pretend they know more than they do, flogging overpriced warranties and with a poor reputation. Online shopping is much cheaper, and with a better selection.
The potential for people stealing, counterfeiting and/or just reusing existing licenses could be a major PITA.
For example, the sale of keys that are already in use. If the original installation is rarely used, someone could just "borrow" the keys without permission (either by taking or by copying the key certificate), and by the time the problems rear their head, the original seller is gone.
The sale of licenses where someone thinks they have XYZ permission, when in fact they don't (e.g. special registered corporate license, upgrade key instead of original). Blah blah....
Might be do-able, but you have to bear it all in mind.
Pretty unlikely; that would be more hassle than it was worth for MS probably. More likely that it'll just check some things and (possibly) retain some files (though I can't see what the point would be; so long as it knows you have a licensed copy of XP installed, why not just overwrite?).