What is the IT coming to when your own soldiers start wearing wires? In the old days whatever happened in the IT, stayed in the IT. You didn't talk to outsiders, and if there was a problem you went to a Capo. Now, with all these immigrants it's hard to run a proper IT family... IT is quickly becoming like waste management, it's a dying way of doing business.
As the RIAA and the MPAA have shown in the past decade it's a perfectly legal way of doing business to threaten and blackmail people with the content they have downloaded. It's just that 10 dollars is very amateuristic. You should start with thousands of dollars for each item downloaded.
10 dollars almost seems like a realistic amount if the RIAA had a website saying: You, PjotrP, have downloaded a song by one of the artists we represent and for 10$ we will forget about it.
Browsing through this thread I have yet to see any kind of politically correct motivated posts. Seriously nowadays if you would oppose to dropping a nuke on the whole of Somalia on the grounds that it would could cost us some money because we trade with the country and because we want to keep dealing blood-diamonds/oil/cheap prostitutes/drugs or whatever with Somalian crime-lords, you would still get the "you're just being politically correct" answer thrown at you.
Most people in this thread oppose on practical grounds, which seems weird to some politically incorrect people because surely killing a problem is always the most practical solution, right?
That's what I read the first time my eyes glanced at the topic. Microsoft patenting and controlling the answer to the worlds energy problems... very disturbing and scary thought...
the point is that having a law one way or another, doesn't necessarily mean that the actual practice and reality is so. I'm no expert about how free speech works in practice in the US, but I refer to an index of the freedom of press. As I'm no expert I can't judge the index, but the way the index is compiled seems fair enough.
about the US they said: "There were slightly fewer press freedom violations in the United States [than last year] (48th) and blogger Josh Wolf was freed after 224 days in prison. But the detention of Al-Jazeera's Sudanese cameraman, Sami Al-Haj, since 13 June 2002 at the military base of Guantanamo and the murder of Chauncey Bailey in Oakland in August mean the United States is still unable to join the lead group."
anyway, just screaming "Our laws are better!" just doesn't say much about the actual state of freedom of speech in a country. I bet there are dictatorships that have even nicer looking laws about freedom of speech.
The hate speech thing always is an easy way to put europeans in their place. Then again it usually only works when you don't go into the details about just how free speech works in practice. In practice for example it might be that the freedom of the press somehow is in a much better shape in europe than in the united states.
The US might not have a law to limit free speech, but in reality it seems the free speech of journalists is more limited than in europe. If you use a law to limit it, or just use patriot acts, or even lawless operations by government agencies, doesnt matter much. How you limit free speech is irrelevant, but don't think there is no limiting going on in the US.
See the index of the Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders for example:
After 5 hours, does the truth suddenly pop up out of nowhere? Why do you think that five hours suddenly make the "problem" of his ID disappear? Did they use those five hours to go to his parents' house to show his picture? "Hello, we need you to verify that this is your son." "Could you please come with us to the police station, and ask him some questions only your real son would know the answer to, because he might just be a lookalike..." "oh, thank you, you have his ID right here... but how do we know it's not a fake one?" I'm afraid we have to hold him untill the end of his life, because we can never be sure that he is who he says he is...
Agreed, blaming the competition is just the easy way out. "If our game would have been the only game released that year, we're pretty confident it would have been that years best-seller."
If they, by some magical device, would be able to choose in which year they'd release the game, which year would they choose? I bet other years had some pretty big name games as well, as does practically every year.
The other games mentioned weren't even that big imo. Tom Clancy franchise? Prince of Persia revisited? I'm wondering if those games actually only were big sellers because no real big games came out that year...
Thank you, for pointing out how unpatriotic the press really is. Perhaps it's time this source of terrorist support becomes American again. And if they are unable to control themselves in these times of war, perhaps the government should do it for them.
I always liked the whole "yeah but the network has plenty of legals uses as well, think about the linux distros!" argument when anybody wanted to take down any of the p2p networks.
But with players like these, that argument seems to get even thinner. "noooo, it has legal uses as well, like yesterday i got the new openbsd song on my media player!"
Sure, there is media that is not copyrighted, but sadly far too little. Too little in the sense that I find it depressing that 99.9% of the creativity of a culture is "owned" by soo few, but also too little in the sense that it makes the above argument next to impossible.
A fully anonymous way to distribute files on the internet. It would be game over for them (MPAA,RIAA and evildoers like them) if such a thing would ever come into being. They have been forcing us in that direction anyway, so why not go all the way?
sure, freenet has some kind of anonymity but it's functionablity in the file distribution department is questionable at best.
so... come on guys, who's up for the challenge? who will save mankind?
Where does the money come from that companies use to buy advertisement time on television? yup, we pay for that by buying their products.
In some twisted way, we, the people, pay to be bothered by stupid irritating commercials. Without advertisement products could be cheaper. For example, just look at how much money goes to marketing when you buy a cd.
At least we should be allowed to not watch the commercials we paid for ourselves...
well if you beat up one person, would you call that terrorism? i wouldn't. if you beat up like 1 every night in a certain neighbourhood with the intent of intimidating the people in said neighbourhood to stay in doors? then i would call it terrorising the neighbourhood.
It's even possible to "terrorise" one person, but it would be weird imo to call that "terrorism". i mean even threatening one person would then be considered to be terrorism. I guess in the US loads of things have gotten the terrorism tag.
anyway, all im saying is that it's quite a slippery slope if you begin calling all illegal actions which involve one person in some way damaging or negatively influencing another with the big word "terrorism". why not arrest all trolls on./ for terrorising this site... hmmm might not be a bad idea...
I've managed some quite succesfull clans for quake, and i really dont see how you could at the one hand limit yourself when putting a clan together by just accepting female members and on the other hand take an fps team game seriously enough to compete at tournaments. If the pool of players you have to draw the talented ones from is like 20 times smaller than the pool of players other clans pick their players from, it would be very unlikely for you to ever beat those other clans.
We had one female in our team and she was with us because she was very skilled. one of our better players actually. but the chances of getting together enough equally skilled players for a clan seem next to zero.
why make an all girl team and then complain about not getting to play with the boys? first you say no to the boys and then complain when the boys say no to you (which they probably dont even do based on the fact that you're a girl but because you're probably just not skilled enough to compete.)
uhm the US let's Microsoft get away with things that are even against US law, and now when the EU doesn't do the same you assume it's probably because they don't like Microsoft?
Can't you see that Microsoft is actually getting away with it with barely any punishment. They have been using their dominance/monopoly in one field to get the same in another field, this is against the law in Europe but in the US as well. This Dominance gets Microsoft billions and now they get a little stupid fine (compared to those billions already made because of their breaking the law) and they are asked to stop breaking the law, which of course has nothing to do with punishment. "mr serial-killer, we sentence you to not killing any more people..."
The way Microsoft has been acting is like a big fuck you to any monopoly-related laws in the US and in Europe. And now because the US was too weak to even uphold their laws in relation to Microsoft while Europe tries to stop Microsoft you get the impression the EU is out to get them? The US SHOULD have fined Microsoft properly and if they had it wouldn't have even looked like the EU was out to make an example of them.
The EU doesn't hold the same viewpoint on law and economics as you seem to have. From your last sentence I'd say you actually believe the capitalist system is self-regulating. "if Microsoft is bad they will fail all by themselves." yeah right... (and if people keep buying shoes that have been made by child-labor it apparently becomes ok to do so...) And besides even if you'd actually believe this when Microsoft does business in Europe shouldn't it at least respect that the EU does not believe capitalism should reign completely and does not believe capitalism to be self-regulatory?
1 million? yeah right... you're doing something wrong when it costs 1 million to record music to a digital format.
there are thousands of music artists putting out stuff for free... and not all of them have invested 1 million to put out their album of free music...
anyway it's a stupid argument. BOTH music cd's and movie DVD's are way too expensive and stay that way because capitalisms major (only?) positive point isn't working properly. it's called a monopoly...
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What is the IT coming to when your own soldiers start wearing wires? In the old days whatever happened in the IT, stayed in the IT. You didn't talk to outsiders, and if there was a problem you went to a Capo. Now, with all these immigrants it's hard to run a proper IT family... IT is quickly becoming like waste management, it's a dying way of doing business.
As the RIAA and the MPAA have shown in the past decade it's a perfectly legal way of doing business to threaten and blackmail people with the content they have downloaded. It's just that 10 dollars is very amateuristic. You should start with thousands of dollars for each item downloaded. 10 dollars almost seems like a realistic amount if the RIAA had a website saying: You, PjotrP, have downloaded a song by one of the artists we represent and for 10$ we will forget about it.
your point being that Israel and Iran are comparable in how they handle criticism?
Browsing through this thread I have yet to see any kind of politically correct motivated posts. Seriously nowadays if you would oppose to dropping a nuke on the whole of Somalia on the grounds that it would could cost us some money because we trade with the country and because we want to keep dealing blood-diamonds/oil/cheap prostitutes/drugs or whatever with Somalian crime-lords, you would still get the "you're just being politically correct" answer thrown at you. Most people in this thread oppose on practical grounds, which seems weird to some politically incorrect people because surely killing a problem is always the most practical solution, right?
Time for them to pay the piper!
That's what I read the first time my eyes glanced at the topic. Microsoft patenting and controlling the answer to the worlds energy problems... very disturbing and scary thought...
So you probably mean your sig is most likely sarcastic?
the point is that having a law one way or another, doesn't necessarily mean that the actual practice and reality is so.
I'm no expert about how free speech works in practice in the US, but I refer to an index of the freedom of press. As I'm no expert I can't judge the index, but the way the index is compiled seems fair enough.
about the US they said:
"There were slightly fewer press freedom violations in the United States [than last year] (48th) and blogger Josh Wolf was freed after 224 days in prison. But the detention of Al-Jazeera's Sudanese cameraman, Sami Al-Haj, since 13 June 2002 at the military base of Guantanamo and the murder of Chauncey Bailey in Oakland in August mean the United States is still unable to join the lead group."
anyway, just screaming "Our laws are better!" just doesn't say much about the actual state of freedom of speech in a country. I bet there are dictatorships that have even nicer looking laws about freedom of speech.
The US might not have a law to limit free speech, but in reality it seems the free speech of journalists is more limited than in europe. If you use a law to limit it, or just use patriot acts, or even lawless operations by government agencies, doesnt matter much. How you limit free speech is irrelevant, but don't think there is no limiting going on in the US.
See the index of the Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders for example:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24025/
After 5 hours, does the truth suddenly pop up out of nowhere? Why do you think that five hours suddenly make the "problem" of his ID disappear? Did they use those five hours to go to his parents' house to show his picture? "Hello, we need you to verify that this is your son." "Could you please come with us to the police station, and ask him some questions only your real son would know the answer to, because he might just be a lookalike..."
"oh, thank you, you have his ID right here... but how do we know it's not a fake one?"
I'm afraid we have to hold him untill the end of his life, because we can never be sure that he is who he says he is...
if your best try is to blame it on xenophobia im not sure you're trying to understand...
If they, by some magical device, would be able to choose in which year they'd release the game, which year would they choose? I bet other years had some pretty big name games as well, as does practically every year.
The other games mentioned weren't even that big imo. Tom Clancy franchise? Prince of Persia revisited? I'm wondering if those games actually only were big sellers because no real big games came out that year...
Thank you, for pointing out how unpatriotic the press really is. Perhaps it's time this source of terrorist support becomes American again. And if they are unable to control themselves in these times of war, perhaps the government should do it for them.
Sure, there is media that is not copyrighted, but sadly far too little. Too little in the sense that I find it depressing that 99.9% of the creativity of a culture is "owned" by soo few, but also too little in the sense that it makes the above argument next to impossible.
sure, freenet has some kind of anonymity but it's functionablity in the file distribution department is questionable at best.
so... come on guys, who's up for the challenge? who will save mankind?
In some twisted way, we, the people, pay to be bothered by stupid irritating commercials. Without advertisement products could be cheaper. For example, just look at how much money goes to marketing when you buy a cd.
At least we should be allowed to not watch the commercials we paid for ourselves...
And you have to send the $5 to some son of a wealthy king in Nigeria who just died and left behind $35,000,000.00(THIRTYFIVEMILLION), right?
Wonder how many compatible sound cards one could buy with the money one would have to spend to buy Windows XP....
well since only about 5% of the typical album cost goes to the artist, he shouldn't whine too much about the 50 cents or so i "stole" from him...
It's even possible to "terrorise" one person, but it would be weird imo to call that "terrorism". i mean even threatening one person would then be considered to be terrorism. I guess in the US loads of things have gotten the terrorism tag.
anyway, all im saying is that it's quite a slippery slope if you begin calling all illegal actions which involve one person in some way damaging or negatively influencing another with the big word "terrorism". why not arrest all trolls on ./ for terrorising this site... hmmm might not be a bad idea...
We had one female in our team and she was with us because she was very skilled. one of our better players actually. but the chances of getting together enough equally skilled players for a clan seem next to zero.
why make an all girl team and then complain about not getting to play with the boys? first you say no to the boys and then complain when the boys say no to you (which they probably dont even do based on the fact that you're a girl but because you're probably just not skilled enough to compete.)
Can't you see that Microsoft is actually getting away with it with barely any punishment. They have been using their dominance/monopoly in one field to get the same in another field, this is against the law in Europe but in the US as well. This Dominance gets Microsoft billions and now they get a little stupid fine (compared to those billions already made because of their breaking the law) and they are asked to stop breaking the law, which of course has nothing to do with punishment. "mr serial-killer, we sentence you to not killing any more people..."
The way Microsoft has been acting is like a big fuck you to any monopoly-related laws in the US and in Europe. And now because the US was too weak to even uphold their laws in relation to Microsoft while Europe tries to stop Microsoft you get the impression the EU is out to get them? The US SHOULD have fined Microsoft properly and if they had it wouldn't have even looked like the EU was out to make an example of them.
The EU doesn't hold the same viewpoint on law and economics as you seem to have. From your last sentence I'd say you actually believe the capitalist system is self-regulating. "if Microsoft is bad they will fail all by themselves." yeah right... (and if people keep buying shoes that have been made by child-labor it apparently becomes ok to do so...) And besides even if you'd actually believe this when Microsoft does business in Europe shouldn't it at least respect that the EU does not believe capitalism should reign completely and does not believe capitalism to be self-regulatory?
I'd say it's a lesser risk than letting the RIAA continue to control the music industry...
if 90% of the people use the terms "incorrectly", maybe you should reconsider your own views on what is correct and what is incorrect?
1 million? yeah right... you're doing something wrong when it costs 1 million to record music to a digital format. there are thousands of music artists putting out stuff for free... and not all of them have invested 1 million to put out their album of free music... anyway it's a stupid argument. BOTH music cd's and movie DVD's are way too expensive and stay that way because capitalisms major (only?) positive point isn't working properly. it's called a monopoly...