The message is still the same, a bunch of people who always claim that all censorship is bad even if its is to protect society claiming that their censorship is alright to protect their society.
If you are against CCTV you can't put CCTV up in front of your house. If you are against speed bumps, you can't petition to have one put in place in your street.
This measure is nothing more then censorship and using extreme draconian laws to do it.
Considering the supposed background of the Burning Man event that is hypocrasy in the most extreme sense.
It does not matter in this discussion wether you agree with the measure. At issue is WHO is implementing the measure. It would be like greenpeace running its ships on whale oil. You might be pro-whale-hunting but would still have to say that such a measure would be completly and utterly wrong.
the guy's sentence had nothing to do with limewire or even downloading. If he had downloaded said tax records for just a laugh, he would be free. He has been jailed for fraud pure and simple.
Don't we hate "X but on the internet" patent claims? Then why are "X with a very loose connection the internet" stories okay?
So while you might hope for a consistent experience MS has its own agenda. Burn this into your brain. MS NEVER PLAYS NICE.
Remember that story about MS donating code to linux under the GPL? Oh how nice they were, how they had turned around, how this was a new beginning.
Oops, no. Turns out that MS had used GPL code and they had to release their mods to stay compliant with the GPL. The fact that they tried to pretend they had different motives, makes everything they did questionable. So they did NOT release the code to improve interoperability, so what were there real motives for using GPL in the first place? (MS is more then capable enough to avoid using GPL code).
So, I ask myself what are MS real motives here? To improve HTML 5.0? Get clear exactly what they should implement? Nah. Delay? Possible. Make it less potent, possible. The point is, I do not know, but I do know from experience that whatever MS intrests are, working together for a greater future can't possible be it.
If MS is involved with HTML 5 then there are really only two options.
A: they realized that by staying out of it, even they risk loosing.
B: they hope by getting involved they can delay it until they can either make it their own somehow, someway, or just delay it for the sake of delay and hope it dies or that silverlight will have changed the web.
But whatever their reason, it ain't: lets make a better product for the future that everyone can use. It ain't the MS way. Never has, never will be.
It was tried in holland with sports. Specific, soccer matches. They used to be televised by state tv (explaining the dutch tv system would take years, even to a dutch person, but extremely roughly, the NOS is a tiny bit like the serious section of the BBC, they have a duty to supply tv/radio to society for their benefits and don't have to entertain at all, which is why they used to air the best comedy...)
Anyway, there was some money exchanged but soccer is a national sport so all was good.
Then someone got greedy, surely if people were already willing to pay for the license fee (don't recall if it was still seperate or part of regular taxes at the time) AND a cable fee AND watch the commercials before and after a soccer match (no, not during) then surely they would will to pay for it?
So a new commercial station was born, sport 7. It was first to be "free" but would ask all cable supplier (who in holland are controlled by the towns) to pay them two guilders (roughly 1 dollar I guess) per connection. The cable suppliers said no. They listened to their customers who said no. Then it went behind the decoder. Nobody bought it. They lasted less then 3 months.
That was the dream of John de Mol, a dutch Murdoch wannabe. He tried later again with another tv station. Another disaster.
The audience is FAR less willing to pay then content supplier think and the reason is simple. Cost.
It wasn't juse the 2 guilders per month but that it all ads up. If Sport 7 can demand money, then why not MTV? Why not RTL4? Why not discovery channel etc etc?
Pretty soon every station would require an extra fee and then the fee would go up and up and...
Do you know why game magazines are dying? Not because a single magazine is HUGELY expensive but because all the costs togethr for a gamer get higher and higher. Consoles games go from 40 to 60 euro? Something has to give.
No, charging for something that people have to come to think of as freely available is extremely hard.
It is easier to grant freedoms then restrain them. Once blacks had to go in the back of the bus and on the whole for decades this didn't seem to cause any problems. Go ahead, tell a black guy he needs to sit in the back today. Bring a baggie for your teeth.
The customer doesn't want to pay for news station. Either do it with ads or don't do it.
There are women who indeed see through the bullshit. Most of them learned it however the hardway. After being used a dozen times even the biggest idiot will learn. Unless a woman can see through bullshit when she is a teen, there is nothing special. A woman of 30+ really should be able to tell when she is being lied to.
The problem for women is that our society still raises them with a lethal combo of:
A, love conquers all. Beauty will tame the beast (who even in the disney movie is an asshole) and so it doesn't matter how lousy guy he is, your love will save him.
B, Happiness is a boyfriend. No woman can be content alone, if you are single then you are miserable and therefor it is better to be with someone who makes you miserable because that way you can be miserable AND cleanup after two people.
C, Men have to make the first move. 80% of women prefer to be chased.
This makes women extremely vulnerable to "the pose" as you call it. Especially C. If a woman waits to be chased, then the only she can ever date are the chasers. And who is more likely to be out chasing the most? A so-called "nice" guy or a user who just wants to nail as many women as possible? And of course, B means that even this man who she should be table to tell is only going to use her is better then nothing and A tells her that if only she loves him, he will change.
It is a neat package and coronors around the world tag and bag the results of it.
The first example, I seen a long time ago. A very bad hologram effect that really has little practical use. So, they added motion detection to it. Coupling TWO existing techs is not that mind-blowing. I would have been impressed if the hologram was either bigger, or more involved or the motion tracking had displayed something more. The ultra-sound for touch again has been done, it has also been tried with air, but really, if this is the future, then the future is still decades away.
The augmented reality TOY is a joke. Augmented reality MIGHT be worth something but this game is a pathetic example of it. Come on, we HAVE had laser games for YEARS. Also toys that shoot REAL (foam) rockets. Who is going to bother with a game where a simple cowboy's and indian's game takes this long and costs a fortune? Someone should give these guys a pc or console. Shooters have been done, both in the physical and virtual world and with a LOT more excitement.
The virtual reality... well, what is new this time? We seen this display for ages and for reason the 3d world always seem rather subpar to what a common console could render last year. So, I am in it. Useful for design but the future? Only for designers.
The 3d teleconfericing is even worse. Oh goodie, lets do away with ordinary monitors and beamers for quality video and instead buy a no-doubt expensive device that has a spinning plate in it and a huge black cowling, all that so we can see ONE face and nothing else.
And the scratching... that is just pathetic. I thought at first that it make a wall into a touch surface. Capable of detecting the POSITION. But no, this can just detect some sound. This is no more then the most basic voice control software provided over a decade or two ago. Record a sound and if that sound is repeated again with in certain parameters, a command is triggered. WHOO! That is the future! Oh wait, no it isn't. Can you imagine how many times you will either scratch wrong or do it accidently. Every time you bump your coffee-cup, your phone shuts-off.
All the above techs are somewhat intresting, but the "mindblowing" bit in the headline blew it for me. This stuff ain't mind-blowing. Just barely worthy of idle.
The US intellectual property laws, which sees a man facing a decade in jail for modding consoles people bought and therefor owned, are the US laws. Not chinese laws. Why should China respect US laws when the US does not respect Chinese laws?
Welcome to the world of international politics, in which you might think you are right, but so does everyone else. And they are right.
The dutch railroads (NS) never had a monopoly in holland. Not even when they completly controlled ALL rail travel because well, there was always the steam train in De Efteling (attraction park) and even some tourist trains.
I think most sensible people would have exclude these and say that a company that has 90%+ of a market has a very effect control, even a monopoly. It would depend partly on the market, but MS software is sadly one market where a monopoly quickly arrises. MS software a market? Indeed.
Lets say that Shell controls 100% of all petrol stations, would they then have monopoly on car fuel? No, cars can run on different things after all, but I would still say that Shell would effectivly have a monopoly.
MS software only interoperates with itself. It is famous for it, so the question is not so much wether other operating systems exists but wether anyone else can compete with MS on offering software that works with MS software. Just as I can put Shell and Exxon petrol in my car and not have it explode, can I run Active Directory and something else seemlessly together? How about the latest open office files?
Petrol is standard, and that allows for far easier competition, especially since Shell has no problem selling its fuel to "white" stations.
Windows and Office are NOT standards, they therefor have become their own market and it is a market MS controls (it can and does change its formats and protocols at the drop of a hat, to stop competitors from offering competing products).
Monopolies in the real world are not just about market share, and the market is not just a product category but oftne a product itself. For instance, lets say that printer catridges became regulated, that they all had to be the same shape with the same interface. Speculate what this would do to the printer industry? More expensive printers (no longer subsidised by outragous catridge prices) and cheaper catridges and never going to a store to find your model is no longer sold.
That monopolies are bad is proven by none other then MS itself. Internet Explorer was dying because with no competition, MS had no reason to improve it. Even today IE8 is still the runt of the litter because MS has had enormous problem gettings it people to produce something of reasonable quality again. That MS ignored IE for so long is proof enough they were a monopoly as well.
Look, the prosecutor rarely WANTS this, it is often the defender who makes claims of mental illness to get his client off. Personally I never understood that. if you would come to me with two cases, one who murdered simply for say a wad of cash and another because the voices told him too, guess which one would be first to fry? You can reason with a cold blooded killer, a psycho...
And not all psycho's are criminals so we still have free will. We humans are wired for more things then you probably realize, doesn't mean we have to listen to it. Our body needs to breathe, but we can drown ourselves. Our body hates pain, but people put themselves on fire out of protest. We need to eat, yet some starve themselves to death. If we can be heroes against our nature then we can at least expect others to remain normal against their nature.
Who cares, seriously? I will tell you why you shou
on
Sims 3 Expansion Announced
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Really? Well, I will tell you why I should care. Because The Sims3 is PC and Mac ONLY! (the mobile versions do not compare). No true console version exists because consoles couldn't do The Sims and THAT sonny does MATTER.
Because causes are getting more and more crippled with DRM and even in hardware if Nintendo and even MS now are to carry out their announced policy of no longer pushing new hardware to its limits.
This might soon mean that console games will the same material re-hashed time and time again without ever improving. Not that great games cannot be made on the consoles, but do we REALLY want business rules to dictate what we will be gaming next? Because then we will end up with games that are the equivelant of yet another reality show.
The Sims, wether you like the game or not is a HUGE game that has tons of modders and many of the BUYERS are BUYERS who BUY mods. Valve is very nice to support modding in its games, but the financial impact of it is debatable especially to a company like EA. No EA does not exactly make it easy for modders but many a Sims player only bought the game with the idea of creating their own content for it.
As such the Sims is a reminder to everyone that A: openess/modding appeals to more then just the "small" group of hardcore nerds. B: That PC games can still be a cash cow. C: That games other then MMO's can make money. D: That not every game needs to be a FPS and finally, that releasing a game for the Mac makes financial sense.
So that is why The Sims 3 matters, not because you have to like running your own private menage of girls wetting their pants (but really, who could resist), but for the fact that this game shows another way for publishers.
If you ever get a girlfriend, and she complains that you are spending to much time on the PC, just giver her a copy of the sims. That alone means I want to hear about any new releases.
I do notice that some younger people actually prefer this "wall of sound"++ thing. they WANT their MUSIC TO BE IN ALL CAPS!
I prefer my own music with more melody, it don't matter much for me wether that is clasical, jazz or heavy metal but I DO prefer the few heavy metal songs that are "classical" in nature. Few of the young people get what I mean, how can I like One by metallica but not most of their other crap? Because One is not a constant barrage of sound. It has a "story", lows and highs, movement. It tells me something rather then just pound the same beat for an eternity.
So Louder is Better, for a certain audience.
the real tragedy here is that by trying to maximize market share, the record industry is instead driving customers away.
Both you, me and the writer of that article are old farts. This music has not been mastered for us.
LISTEN to a top 1000 and wonder about the many 1 time hits. Some of them were of course produced but a lot of them just happened by chance. Someone heard it, played it for some friends and it spread. Music promotion is overrated for a lot of artists, because either they never get it in the first place OR their big hit happens from word of mouth while they pay the record label for all the publicity that didn't work. Oh, you thought the record labels payed for promotion? How silly of you.
The record labels do a LOT less then a lot of people seem to think and still the best way to promote yourself is just to send your CD to every radio station and offer to perform live whenever you can to hope enough people hear your music to spread your music. And you do NOT need a billion dollar industry coming up with endless schemes to drive customers away to do that.
In fact, an old dutch project "One day fly" showed that you do not need the music industry at all to create a hit. A radio presenter and some friends made a crappy song, promoted it heavily on radio (themselves) and voila, instant hit. You need people who can play your music to others to get noticed. The record labels do precious little more then buy you some airtime and that only for the big sure fire hits.
Oh and for the small artists, all that promotion you end up paying yourself for, so that even when you score a big hit, most of the profits will be sucked up by the record label.
The records labels screw EVERYONE over, including themselves. If this wasn't the case, why do SO many artists start their own labels or fight long legal battles to get out of the constricting contracts they signed when young?
Why has the music industry not leapt on digital distribution from the beginning? They could have totally controlled the market by just creating iTunes before iTunes.
But they don't because the music industry is NOT about promoting artists or giving customers the best value for their money. it is about making the maximum amount of money for the least amount of work. Now you might call that sensible business, but it isn't.
McD sells you mayo for your fries as an extra, that is sensible. Selling you the salt as extra isn't and would just turn customers away.
The music industry would wish that you had to buy a CD for your stereo, a seperate MP3 for your portable, another CD for your car, a ringtone for your phone and then also pay them a fee for any blank CD's, hard-disks and media players you buy. That has nothing to do with promiting music anymore, that is pure and simple greed and comes bloody close to strip-mining the industry. Getting the last money out before it all collapses.
Record labels support the artists. My god man, read a book, just once.
If it was a bunch of lies, then the bank officials would have pointed that out. That they are scrambling to censor is proof this is absolutly 100% legit. kind of nice of them to remove any doubt eh?
Putting your head in a boiling pot of water or in a working oven is dangerous as well. Ergo standing several feet away from it is going to kill you as well... NO.
The microwave kills you because it cooks you. In fact, you will be CURED of any cancer because cooked cancer cells are just as dead as anything else that is cooked.
Guns kill, so carrying a gun gives you cancer because cancer is caused by lead and since guns kill with lead... BAD LOGIC.
If you buy through iTunes then you support the idea that a digitially distributed song should cost not only the same as if it was pressed on a CD with all the logistics costs involved but that said songs should never land in the discount bin.
Really, iTunes is NOT freedom, it is enslavement of a kind the media companies would only drool about if there dreams didn't go so far as that EVERY song must be rented and paid for each variation (mp3 player, home stereo, ring tone) and for each performance (ring tone can be heard by dozens, so you should pay for that).
The current western legal system has become a joke. You really can't achieve anything in the lower courts except to act as the most basic pursuader. So if the other side is already 99% convinced then the lower courts can tip the balance but for real cases, they are worthless. The judges are all incompetent. It would like getting your medical diagnoses from a highschool biology class. Biology class is to seperate the plumbers from the doctors and even those that pass won't be any good until AFTER they been through med-school and some years of practice.
Judges are tried and tested in the lower courts and most never make it. Relying on them to rule fairly or even sanely is an excersise in futility.
Rather use it as a test bed, get to see what your opponent has to show and then build you next defence based on that.
Really, every serious case is appealed. Even if a judge ruled in your favour it is worthless, because the other side would just appeal.
You say the token black guy was a gangster. HELLO? The entire series is about criminals with absolutely no social value whatsoever. They kill left and right for no other reason then that they are in a hurry. None of the leads are heroes, but this is only bad if he is black right?
The black guy is no worse then any of the "white" guys. Who by the way happen to be hispanic or slavic as well as western europe white. Or do ethnic groups only count based on the amount of pigment?
You then mention japanese games as an example... where of course the lead is japanese... but that is all right because a japanese person making a game with a japanese lead is totally different from a white person making a game with a white lead.
You also happily ignore the countless western games where UNLIKE the japanese games, you can choose your own race. MMO's like WoW and Lotro. The sims. Dues EX. Fallout, all of them. Far cry 2(probably the widest assortment of backgrounds).
You are indeed a closet racist. Everything whites do is wrong and everything someone else does is alright. Japanese games as an example of racial diversity. I want some of what you are smoking.
The company received the signal and they decoded it. The subterfuge is that they send the Nostromo in to investigate an UNIDENTIFIED distress signal when they full well knew that it was instead a warning.
Lets face it, most of us here are probably a bit more clueed in then some MSCE drone who thinks unix is something they did to men in harems.
I get along fairly well with the windows admins because I am good enough to find work in places where I can run my own system, seperated from the meddlings of foolish admins.
There are no doubt excellent sysadmins out there, for my own sites I sometimes deal with an excellent admin who just keeps everything running smooth as silk, but your proffesion is most visible through the "reboot" and "no" and "what is ssh" crowd. Sometimes I have to deal with big companies and these places are overrun by sysadmins of the crappy kind. Still stuck on Windows XP and IE6 they limit everyone because doing even the tiniest amount of work would mean they loose the contract to the next lowest bidder and you know that NOBODY even remotely competent would work for a lowest bidder.
Sysadmins that want to be appreciated above the level of sewer rat have but one choice, cut the dead weight. Cut the people that think windows should be used for anything else then the as the desktop for sales and other lower forms of life and stop saying windows can run servers if you have to reboot more then once per decade.
As said, there are good sysadmins out there, but I am willing to say they are outnumbered 1 to 100.
Slashdot Mirror
The message is still the same, a bunch of people who always claim that all censorship is bad even if its is to protect society claiming that their censorship is alright to protect their society.
If you are against CCTV you can't put CCTV up in front of your house. If you are against speed bumps, you can't petition to have one put in place in your street.
This measure is nothing more then censorship and using extreme draconian laws to do it.
Considering the supposed background of the Burning Man event that is hypocrasy in the most extreme sense.
It does not matter in this discussion wether you agree with the measure. At issue is WHO is implementing the measure. It would be like greenpeace running its ships on whale oil. You might be pro-whale-hunting but would still have to say that such a measure would be completly and utterly wrong.
So, censorship is alright to protect YOUR society but wrong if it protects someone elses society.
Hypocrisy, you are doing it right.
the guy's sentence had nothing to do with limewire or even downloading. If he had downloaded said tax records for just a laugh, he would be free. He has been jailed for fraud pure and simple.
Don't we hate "X but on the internet" patent claims? Then why are "X with a very loose connection the internet" stories okay?
No need to fight wars for a nuclear, or solar or wind energie or geo-energie.
That is the beauty of the electric grid. it don't give a damn what you hook up to it.
Petrol cars run on petrol.
Electric cars run on anything that pump out juice.
And MS does NOT play nice. Ever.
So while you might hope for a consistent experience MS has its own agenda. Burn this into your brain. MS NEVER PLAYS NICE.
Remember that story about MS donating code to linux under the GPL? Oh how nice they were, how they had turned around, how this was a new beginning.
Oops, no. Turns out that MS had used GPL code and they had to release their mods to stay compliant with the GPL. The fact that they tried to pretend they had different motives, makes everything they did questionable. So they did NOT release the code to improve interoperability, so what were there real motives for using GPL in the first place? (MS is more then capable enough to avoid using GPL code).
So, I ask myself what are MS real motives here? To improve HTML 5.0? Get clear exactly what they should implement? Nah. Delay? Possible. Make it less potent, possible. The point is, I do not know, but I do know from experience that whatever MS intrests are, working together for a greater future can't possible be it.
If MS is involved with HTML 5 then there are really only two options.
A: they realized that by staying out of it, even they risk loosing.
B: they hope by getting involved they can delay it until they can either make it their own somehow, someway, or just delay it for the sake of delay and hope it dies or that silverlight will have changed the web.
But whatever their reason, it ain't: lets make a better product for the future that everyone can use. It ain't the MS way. Never has, never will be.
It was tried in holland with sports. Specific, soccer matches. They used to be televised by state tv (explaining the dutch tv system would take years, even to a dutch person, but extremely roughly, the NOS is a tiny bit like the serious section of the BBC, they have a duty to supply tv/radio to society for their benefits and don't have to entertain at all, which is why they used to air the best comedy...)
Anyway, there was some money exchanged but soccer is a national sport so all was good.
Then someone got greedy, surely if people were already willing to pay for the license fee (don't recall if it was still seperate or part of regular taxes at the time) AND a cable fee AND watch the commercials before and after a soccer match (no, not during) then surely they would will to pay for it?
So a new commercial station was born, sport 7. It was first to be "free" but would ask all cable supplier (who in holland are controlled by the towns) to pay them two guilders (roughly 1 dollar I guess) per connection. The cable suppliers said no. They listened to their customers who said no. Then it went behind the decoder. Nobody bought it. They lasted less then 3 months.
That was the dream of John de Mol, a dutch Murdoch wannabe. He tried later again with another tv station. Another disaster.
The audience is FAR less willing to pay then content supplier think and the reason is simple. Cost.
It wasn't juse the 2 guilders per month but that it all ads up. If Sport 7 can demand money, then why not MTV? Why not RTL4? Why not discovery channel etc etc?
Pretty soon every station would require an extra fee and then the fee would go up and up and ...
Do you know why game magazines are dying? Not because a single magazine is HUGELY expensive but because all the costs togethr for a gamer get higher and higher. Consoles games go from 40 to 60 euro? Something has to give.
No, charging for something that people have to come to think of as freely available is extremely hard.
It is easier to grant freedoms then restrain them. Once blacks had to go in the back of the bus and on the whole for decades this didn't seem to cause any problems. Go ahead, tell a black guy he needs to sit in the back today. Bring a baggie for your teeth.
The customer doesn't want to pay for news station. Either do it with ads or don't do it.
There are women who indeed see through the bullshit. Most of them learned it however the hardway. After being used a dozen times even the biggest idiot will learn. Unless a woman can see through bullshit when she is a teen, there is nothing special. A woman of 30+ really should be able to tell when she is being lied to.
The problem for women is that our society still raises them with a lethal combo of:
A, love conquers all. Beauty will tame the beast (who even in the disney movie is an asshole) and so it doesn't matter how lousy guy he is, your love will save him.
B, Happiness is a boyfriend. No woman can be content alone, if you are single then you are miserable and therefor it is better to be with someone who makes you miserable because that way you can be miserable AND cleanup after two people.
C, Men have to make the first move. 80% of women prefer to be chased.
This makes women extremely vulnerable to "the pose" as you call it. Especially C. If a woman waits to be chased, then the only she can ever date are the chasers. And who is more likely to be out chasing the most? A so-called "nice" guy or a user who just wants to nail as many women as possible? And of course, B means that even this man who she should be table to tell is only going to use her is better then nothing and A tells her that if only she loves him, he will change.
It is a neat package and coronors around the world tag and bag the results of it.
The first example, I seen a long time ago. A very bad hologram effect that really has little practical use. So, they added motion detection to it. Coupling TWO existing techs is not that mind-blowing. I would have been impressed if the hologram was either bigger, or more involved or the motion tracking had displayed something more. The ultra-sound for touch again has been done, it has also been tried with air, but really, if this is the future, then the future is still decades away.
The augmented reality TOY is a joke. Augmented reality MIGHT be worth something but this game is a pathetic example of it. Come on, we HAVE had laser games for YEARS. Also toys that shoot REAL (foam) rockets. Who is going to bother with a game where a simple cowboy's and indian's game takes this long and costs a fortune? Someone should give these guys a pc or console. Shooters have been done, both in the physical and virtual world and with a LOT more excitement.
The virtual reality... well, what is new this time? We seen this display for ages and for reason the 3d world always seem rather subpar to what a common console could render last year. So, I am in it. Useful for design but the future? Only for designers.
The 3d teleconfericing is even worse. Oh goodie, lets do away with ordinary monitors and beamers for quality video and instead buy a no-doubt expensive device that has a spinning plate in it and a huge black cowling, all that so we can see ONE face and nothing else.
And the scratching... that is just pathetic. I thought at first that it make a wall into a touch surface. Capable of detecting the POSITION. But no, this can just detect some sound. This is no more then the most basic voice control software provided over a decade or two ago. Record a sound and if that sound is repeated again with in certain parameters, a command is triggered. WHOO! That is the future! Oh wait, no it isn't. Can you imagine how many times you will either scratch wrong or do it accidently. Every time you bump your coffee-cup, your phone shuts-off.
All the above techs are somewhat intresting, but the "mindblowing" bit in the headline blew it for me. This stuff ain't mind-blowing. Just barely worthy of idle.
The US intellectual property laws, which sees a man facing a decade in jail for modding consoles people bought and therefor owned, are the US laws. Not chinese laws. Why should China respect US laws when the US does not respect Chinese laws?
Welcome to the world of international politics, in which you might think you are right, but so does everyone else. And they are right.
The dutch railroads (NS) never had a monopoly in holland. Not even when they completly controlled ALL rail travel because well, there was always the steam train in De Efteling (attraction park) and even some tourist trains.
I think most sensible people would have exclude these and say that a company that has 90%+ of a market has a very effect control, even a monopoly. It would depend partly on the market, but MS software is sadly one market where a monopoly quickly arrises. MS software a market? Indeed.
Lets say that Shell controls 100% of all petrol stations, would they then have monopoly on car fuel? No, cars can run on different things after all, but I would still say that Shell would effectivly have a monopoly.
MS software only interoperates with itself. It is famous for it, so the question is not so much wether other operating systems exists but wether anyone else can compete with MS on offering software that works with MS software. Just as I can put Shell and Exxon petrol in my car and not have it explode, can I run Active Directory and something else seemlessly together? How about the latest open office files?
Petrol is standard, and that allows for far easier competition, especially since Shell has no problem selling its fuel to "white" stations.
Windows and Office are NOT standards, they therefor have become their own market and it is a market MS controls (it can and does change its formats and protocols at the drop of a hat, to stop competitors from offering competing products).
Monopolies in the real world are not just about market share, and the market is not just a product category but oftne a product itself. For instance, lets say that printer catridges became regulated, that they all had to be the same shape with the same interface. Speculate what this would do to the printer industry? More expensive printers (no longer subsidised by outragous catridge prices) and cheaper catridges and never going to a store to find your model is no longer sold.
That monopolies are bad is proven by none other then MS itself. Internet Explorer was dying because with no competition, MS had no reason to improve it. Even today IE8 is still the runt of the litter because MS has had enormous problem gettings it people to produce something of reasonable quality again. That MS ignored IE for so long is proof enough they were a monopoly as well.
Look, the prosecutor rarely WANTS this, it is often the defender who makes claims of mental illness to get his client off. Personally I never understood that. if you would come to me with two cases, one who murdered simply for say a wad of cash and another because the voices told him too, guess which one would be first to fry? You can reason with a cold blooded killer, a psycho...
And not all psycho's are criminals so we still have free will. We humans are wired for more things then you probably realize, doesn't mean we have to listen to it. Our body needs to breathe, but we can drown ourselves. Our body hates pain, but people put themselves on fire out of protest. We need to eat, yet some starve themselves to death. If we can be heroes against our nature then we can at least expect others to remain normal against their nature.
Really? Well, I will tell you why I should care. Because The Sims3 is PC and Mac ONLY! (the mobile versions do not compare). No true console version exists because consoles couldn't do The Sims and THAT sonny does MATTER.
Because causes are getting more and more crippled with DRM and even in hardware if Nintendo and even MS now are to carry out their announced policy of no longer pushing new hardware to its limits.
This might soon mean that console games will the same material re-hashed time and time again without ever improving. Not that great games cannot be made on the consoles, but do we REALLY want business rules to dictate what we will be gaming next? Because then we will end up with games that are the equivelant of yet another reality show.
The Sims, wether you like the game or not is a HUGE game that has tons of modders and many of the BUYERS are BUYERS who BUY mods. Valve is very nice to support modding in its games, but the financial impact of it is debatable especially to a company like EA. No EA does not exactly make it easy for modders but many a Sims player only bought the game with the idea of creating their own content for it.
As such the Sims is a reminder to everyone that A: openess/modding appeals to more then just the "small" group of hardcore nerds. B: That PC games can still be a cash cow. C: That games other then MMO's can make money. D: That not every game needs to be a FPS and finally, that releasing a game for the Mac makes financial sense.
So that is why The Sims 3 matters, not because you have to like running your own private menage of girls wetting their pants (but really, who could resist), but for the fact that this game shows another way for publishers.
If you ever get a girlfriend, and she complains that you are spending to much time on the PC, just giver her a copy of the sims. That alone means I want to hear about any new releases.
Read up on the guy and just WHY he is hosting his current show the way he is. BECAUSE HE WAS CENSORED OF THE AIRWAVES.
No country that throws a hissy fit over a nipple has the right to lecture anyone else on free speech.
American TV is the most bleeped tv in the western world and you critize others? Hypocrasy, you are doing it right.
I do notice that some younger people actually prefer this "wall of sound"++ thing. they WANT their MUSIC TO BE IN ALL CAPS!
I prefer my own music with more melody, it don't matter much for me wether that is clasical, jazz or heavy metal but I DO prefer the few heavy metal songs that are "classical" in nature. Few of the young people get what I mean, how can I like One by metallica but not most of their other crap? Because One is not a constant barrage of sound. It has a "story", lows and highs, movement. It tells me something rather then just pound the same beat for an eternity.
So Louder is Better, for a certain audience.
the real tragedy here is that by trying to maximize market share, the record industry is instead driving customers away.
Both you, me and the writer of that article are old farts. This music has not been mastered for us.
LISTEN to a top 1000 and wonder about the many 1 time hits. Some of them were of course produced but a lot of them just happened by chance. Someone heard it, played it for some friends and it spread. Music promotion is overrated for a lot of artists, because either they never get it in the first place OR their big hit happens from word of mouth while they pay the record label for all the publicity that didn't work. Oh, you thought the record labels payed for promotion? How silly of you.
The record labels do a LOT less then a lot of people seem to think and still the best way to promote yourself is just to send your CD to every radio station and offer to perform live whenever you can to hope enough people hear your music to spread your music. And you do NOT need a billion dollar industry coming up with endless schemes to drive customers away to do that.
In fact, an old dutch project "One day fly" showed that you do not need the music industry at all to create a hit. A radio presenter and some friends made a crappy song, promoted it heavily on radio (themselves) and voila, instant hit. You need people who can play your music to others to get noticed. The record labels do precious little more then buy you some airtime and that only for the big sure fire hits.
Oh and for the small artists, all that promotion you end up paying yourself for, so that even when you score a big hit, most of the profits will be sucked up by the record label.
The records labels screw EVERYONE over, including themselves. If this wasn't the case, why do SO many artists start their own labels or fight long legal battles to get out of the constricting contracts they signed when young?
Why has the music industry not leapt on digital distribution from the beginning? They could have totally controlled the market by just creating iTunes before iTunes.
But they don't because the music industry is NOT about promoting artists or giving customers the best value for their money. it is about making the maximum amount of money for the least amount of work. Now you might call that sensible business, but it isn't.
McD sells you mayo for your fries as an extra, that is sensible. Selling you the salt as extra isn't and would just turn customers away.
The music industry would wish that you had to buy a CD for your stereo, a seperate MP3 for your portable, another CD for your car, a ringtone for your phone and then also pay them a fee for any blank CD's, hard-disks and media players you buy. That has nothing to do with promiting music anymore, that is pure and simple greed and comes bloody close to strip-mining the industry. Getting the last money out before it all collapses.
Record labels support the artists. My god man, read a book, just once.
If it was a bunch of lies, then the bank officials would have pointed that out. That they are scrambling to censor is proof this is absolutly 100% legit. kind of nice of them to remove any doubt eh?
Putting your head in a boiling pot of water or in a working oven is dangerous as well. Ergo standing several feet away from it is going to kill you as well... NO.
The microwave kills you because it cooks you. In fact, you will be CURED of any cancer because cooked cancer cells are just as dead as anything else that is cooked.
Guns kill, so carrying a gun gives you cancer because cancer is caused by lead and since guns kill with lead... BAD LOGIC.
If you buy through iTunes then you support the idea that a digitially distributed song should cost not only the same as if it was pressed on a CD with all the logistics costs involved but that said songs should never land in the discount bin.
Really, iTunes is NOT freedom, it is enslavement of a kind the media companies would only drool about if there dreams didn't go so far as that EVERY song must be rented and paid for each variation (mp3 player, home stereo, ring tone) and for each performance (ring tone can be heard by dozens, so you should pay for that).
The current western legal system has become a joke. You really can't achieve anything in the lower courts except to act as the most basic pursuader. So if the other side is already 99% convinced then the lower courts can tip the balance but for real cases, they are worthless. The judges are all incompetent. It would like getting your medical diagnoses from a highschool biology class. Biology class is to seperate the plumbers from the doctors and even those that pass won't be any good until AFTER they been through med-school and some years of practice.
Judges are tried and tested in the lower courts and most never make it. Relying on them to rule fairly or even sanely is an excersise in futility.
Rather use it as a test bed, get to see what your opponent has to show and then build you next defence based on that.
Really, every serious case is appealed. Even if a judge ruled in your favour it is worthless, because the other side would just appeal.
You say the token black guy was a gangster. HELLO? The entire series is about criminals with absolutely no social value whatsoever. They kill left and right for no other reason then that they are in a hurry. None of the leads are heroes, but this is only bad if he is black right?
The black guy is no worse then any of the "white" guys. Who by the way happen to be hispanic or slavic as well as western europe white. Or do ethnic groups only count based on the amount of pigment?
You then mention japanese games as an example... where of course the lead is japanese... but that is all right because a japanese person making a game with a japanese lead is totally different from a white person making a game with a white lead.
You also happily ignore the countless western games where UNLIKE the japanese games, you can choose your own race. MMO's like WoW and Lotro. The sims. Dues EX. Fallout, all of them. Far cry 2(probably the widest assortment of backgrounds).
You are indeed a closet racist. Everything whites do is wrong and everything someone else does is alright. Japanese games as an example of racial diversity. I want some of what you are smoking.
So you are saying that back when kids had no mobile phones, there were no school schootings by said kids... What is the next conclusion to be made?
On slashdot, everyone can hear you quote the WRONG MOVIE!
This is ALIEN, not ALIENS.
To get you started:
It's a robot. Cowboyneal is a god damn robot.
Bones are bent outward, like he exploded from inside.
Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Meaow. Here Jonesy.
Open the door!
I can't do that dave... oops wrong movie (this line not the previous one).
The company received the signal and they decoded it. The subterfuge is that they send the Nostromo in to investigate an UNIDENTIFIED distress signal when they full well knew that it was instead a warning.
The book of the movie, you should read it.
Lets face it, most of us here are probably a bit more clueed in then some MSCE drone who thinks unix is something they did to men in harems.
I get along fairly well with the windows admins because I am good enough to find work in places where I can run my own system, seperated from the meddlings of foolish admins.
There are no doubt excellent sysadmins out there, for my own sites I sometimes deal with an excellent admin who just keeps everything running smooth as silk, but your proffesion is most visible through the "reboot" and "no" and "what is ssh" crowd. Sometimes I have to deal with big companies and these places are overrun by sysadmins of the crappy kind. Still stuck on Windows XP and IE6 they limit everyone because doing even the tiniest amount of work would mean they loose the contract to the next lowest bidder and you know that NOBODY even remotely competent would work for a lowest bidder.
Sysadmins that want to be appreciated above the level of sewer rat have but one choice, cut the dead weight. Cut the people that think windows should be used for anything else then the as the desktop for sales and other lower forms of life and stop saying windows can run servers if you have to reboot more then once per decade.
As said, there are good sysadmins out there, but I am willing to say they are outnumbered 1 to 100.