Perhaps they got hit with a massive lawsuit or someone is considering buying them out?
Perhaps they will get hit by a massive lawsuit when all those people who paid for games and relied on their representations that the games would be re-downloadable in the future sue them.
I never backed mine up locally as I relied on their (seemingly outstanding) service to give me access whenever I wanted it.
Th next step is to re-label all Australian beer 'Fosters'
I can't tell if you're an Australian making a joke about ignorant foreigners, or an ignorant foreigner.
Although Fosters the company has bought out many breweries in Australia, "Fosters" the beer is actually rarely sold or consumed here.
To quote Wikipedia:
Despite its heavy international presence, the so-called original Australian beer, Foster's Lager, has very low appeal and limited availability throughout Australia, and is made mostly for export, or made under licence in other countries, particularly the U.K.
The reason for this would be that it tastes like cat piss.
If any non-Australians want to try some decent Australian beer I suggest Coopers or James Squire.
That said, I really do understand that citizens from non-European countries, who are quite accustomed to use these words in a more generic sense, think it's wrong to suddenly take these words from the public domain and make them into protected trademarks.
This is the whole problem. Using "champagne" here (Australia) has a dual meaning. If I say "French Champagne" then it means what the EU thinks it means. If I say "champagne" it means wine in the style of the wine from Champagne, but sourced from anywhere in the world.
If I say "can I have some Parmesan" it means the hard cheese that tastes a certain way. I have no interest in its geographical origin, I just want to put it on my food.
Personally I believe these regions should compete on the basis that they make the original and best champagne or parmesan, not by enforcing silly IP/branding rules.
You can have those things when your country gets together as a whole and apologizes to the USA for Yahoo Serious and Paul Hogan!
Sorry... are you from the same USA that created Two and a Half Men and That 70s Show?
If we're apologising for exporting unfunny trash culture then I look forward to the USA apologising for... well, everything since the invention of radio, really.
PS I believe we've just struck a deal to send Paul Hogan back home to you, enjoy. You can rest assured he has been punished for his crimes.
Obviously, a single-threaded application will generally run better on the faster-clocked system, unless that system is being loaded down with a lot of other processes.
Most games, with a few exceptions, are single-threaded applications. Gamers are much better off with a higher clocked dual core system than a slower-clocked, 6 core system.
But do you really think it's not working for them? They've paid $16M to lawyers. For that amount they have received:
- nominal damages
- huge amounts of lobbying power with politicians ("look how much we're having to spend to defend our rights!")
- absolutely massive amounts of anti-piracy PR from their big media pals
- a hard to measure but very valuable creation of fear in the mind of the average file sharer
I'm sure I'm not alone in being distinctly more wary about file sharing than I was in, say, the era when Napster and Kazaa dominated.
I think for $16M they'd be delighted.
Of course, none of that negates the fact that a much, much, much better approach to selling media would be to make it affordable and DRM-free. Which is why, for example, I spend too much money at Good Old Games.
Grown men rolling around like they've been shot when they get a light tap on the ankle or shins?
Your argument about soccer being somehow more authentic would be more compelling if not for the blight of staging, which ruins an otherwise reasonable sport.
You might as well allow NYT editors to write articles like "Popo caps a bitch after she tried to jack a 7-11" instead of "police shoot a woman after she attempted to rob a convenience store".
Thanks to The Wire the rest of the world could finally begin to understand US media reports if articles did in fact take this form.
In free and democratic societies, an individual deciding on his or her own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process.
That's assuming we live in a free and democratic society. That's far from the case.
While I agree with your underlying sentiment it's worth reflecting on the fact that you are able to type that sentence without fear of personal repercussions.
Crohn's Disease is an inflammatory bowel disease. It presents in the form of parts of your digestive system being arbitrarily damaged by your body, seemingly in some kind of misplaced immune system response. This means ulcers, scarring, and a breakdown in effectiveness of whichever part or parts of the system are affected. It can occur anywhere from where food goes in to where waste comes out.
Doctors don't really know what causes it, and don't really know how to treat it.
Current theories about the cause include bacterial imbalance, extreme post-infective response by the immune system, genetics, and a lack of exposure to ordinary evironmental elements (Crohn's is much more prevalent in the developed world, suggesting that high levels of sanitation may play a part).
Current treatments range from oral steroids (nasty side effects) to hardcore anti-inflammatories, to immunomodulators (potentially very nasty side effects), to very scary drugs like Infliximab (which "works by binding to tumour necrosis factor alpha"... sounds great). Other fun treatments include moving to an all-liquid diet (which is a fringe treatment) and in many cases removal of chunks of your digestive tract.
So... based on the fact that Crohn's is more prevalent in the developed world, it has been suggested that maybe there is a link between the absence of a specific disease or parasite and Crohn's. Specifically, there are suggestions that hookworms, which are common in the developing world but almost non-existent in the developed world, might somehow play a role in preventing Crohn's. Eventually, a few people took the radical step of deliberately infecting themselves with hookworms. Lo and behold, the (admittedly not statistically significant) results were in some cases very promising indeed - something about the way hookworms trick your body into letting them live inside you also seems to help suppress whatever problem is behind Crohn's disease. In some cases patients have reported complete recovery from Crohn's by infecting themselves with around 100 specially grown, sanitized worms (initially from pigs, I think they use human-specific ones now).
Anyway, long story short: this was all looking interesting, and a controlled infection with a limited number of hookworms are widely accepted medically to present no serious health risk to humans. Proper testing was starting to be done, and there were steps being taken to properly commercialise hookworm production. However, in its wisdom about a year ago the FDA announced that (I understand without any data to support its concern) it was worried that hookworms might not be safe for people who are already sick. Like Crohn's sufferers. So it halted human studies on that basis. This has shut down studies in other countries because it makes the research less commercially appealing and because such things are inevitably a collaboration between several countries.
So, basically the FDA has said that research into a promising treatment to a nasty disease which might help people avoid horrible drugs or even more horrible surgery should be banned because, despite evidence to the contrary, it might be mildly bad for some people in some situations.
Coincidentally, Infliximab and some of the other big Crohn's drugs are extremely expensive and no doubt extremely profitable for large drug companies.
you (the west) hold up crack dealers and gangsters as heroes (50cent et al), corporate psychopaths are held up as examples of "successful business leaders" and have TV shows (the apprentice) where people are expected to emulate these leaders in "ruthless business decisions", where kids see a class of people rip off their savings and retirements (bankers) and have 0 consequences, where a celebrity class are held up as models of behaviour where you dont work but shop on your working husbands/wifes credit cards or your rich dads inheritance
and you are surprised there is less empathy ? i'm surprised there are no fucking lynch mobs
I don't disagree with you that we have poor role models, and it's not a counter-argument, but implicit in your post appears to be the suggestion that other parts of the world have better role models.
So, who shall we emulate?
Africa: corrupt, murderous tyrants widely revered as great leaders because at least they're not white colonialists; ancient tribal divisions regarded as more important than justice or democracy; women and minorities openly oppressed in many places
Asia: systematic corruption considered normal; democracy widely looked down upon as dangerous because it provides "too much freedom"; women and minorities openly oppressed in many places; many nations have dynastic style leadership systems where control passes from one anointed leader to the next. "Heroes" typically either appointed by governments or else sporting/pop idols.
India: systematic class/race based oppression built into the fabric of the culture; widespread religious violence. Many people idolise sports or pop stars.
Middle East: do I really need to go into it? Racist, religiously bigoted nutcases rule. Women and minorities in any given country systematically oppressed. "Heroes" tend to be individuals who have murdered others in furtherance of religious or political causes.
Russia: one man allowed to run former great nation as his own cult of personality; anyone who attempts to stand up to government ends up dead or in jail; most of the populace appears to be either happy with this arrangement or would prefer a return to the savage totalitarian government of the previous century. Heroes: V. Putin, Puppetmaster for Life.
South America: numerous examples of far right military dictatorships murdering innocent people. Many citizens maintain view to this day that past acts are acceptable. Slavish devotion to a major religion based in central Italy which is known to have systematically covered up the rape of children by its agents. Soccer players typically revered as heroes.
Also, despite what you suggest, if you look at a longer timeline than just a few years, I think you will realise that "the west" actually holds up some interesting people are heroes. Say, for example:
1. Rosa Parks 2. Guy Fawkes 3. George Washington 4. Jean Moulin 5. Martin Luther 6. Numerous non-westerners who champion freedom, democracy and human rights (Mandela, Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ghandi)
Would these people (or their equivalents) be regarded as heroes outside "the west"?
What I found troubling about the questions was that they conflated "irrationality" with "empathy". I would say I am a very empathetic person, but only where I rationally observe that empathy is warranted. In my mind, "empathy" is quite different from sentimental, irrational refusal to link consequences to earlier actions.
Some of the questions, however, seem to require me to choose between "empathy" and rationality:
Sometimes I don't feel very sorry for other people when they are having problems.
What kind of problems? What caused them? Am I allowed to distinguish between, say, George W Bush being unpopular due to his policies and a homeless guy who gets cancer? Am I allowed to think about George W Bush the human being and try to understand how he got where he is and why he acts the way he does without feeling sorry for him because things didn't end too well with his Presidency?
If I'm sure I'm right about something, I don't waste much time listening to other people's arguments.
Define "sure". Am I "sure" because I'm an arrogant idiot, or "sure" because I have some powerful evidentiary or logical basis for my conclusion? If it's the latter, then not listening to arguments I know to be wrong doesn't necessarily make me lacking in empathy does it? Is it evidence of "empathy" if I indulge people who hold views I know to be objectively incorrect?
I believe that there are two sides to every question and try to look at them both.
This appears to test whether I am stupid enough to agree with the American mainstream media's concept of "balance" (i.e. there are no facts, just two different opinions which have to be 'balanced' with one another), rather than whether I am empathetic. Am I more "empathetic" if I answer the question "is this building on fire?" with "Let's talk about the two different views on that for a while." rather than "Yes, get the $#%^ out before you get hurt!"
and voted to censor child porn (only to have the president kill the ban as unconstituitonal).
Except he didn't, he signed this law. It's just that everybody (including half the people who voted for it) hoped he wouldn't because a few month after this law was voted on the pirate party gained 2% in the federal election (5% is the minimum to get seats, which they did get in some regions). The last thing any of the established parties want is yet another party to worry about so internet topics suddenly because important. The ministry of justice has instructed the police to treat this law as the most unimportant one of all (i.e. not enforce it) and the parliament is actively working on replacing it with a law that does not allow filtering.
Am I in some parallel universe where banning child porn is considered a good thing? I'm not talking cartoons and the like, but actual child porn featuring actual children?
Watchmen was such a faithful adaptation of the comic that it was unwatchable as a film
And yet, interestingly, I wasn't particularly aware of or into the graphic novel previously, thought the film was terrific, and now like the book too. I know I'm not alone in that experience, either.
Hell, the movie was worth it just for the opening credits.
Dare I say, if you don't find xkcd funny, the material might be somewhat... not aimed at you.
Ah, so I assume the target market is "pretentious know-it-all nerds who like to explain their isolation and irrelevance to themselves as being a consequence of their 'quirky' personality and their amazingly unique way of seeing the world via maths, science and amazing ideas and philosophies".
I imagine it also helps if one has had no previous interactions with women, thus enabling a suspension of disbelief in relation to the excruciatingly lame love/sex themed-comics.
Humour is highly relative, and contrary to what you imply it is entirely possible for someone intelligent to not find xkcd funny even though it relies on references and (alleged) subtleties which the average McDonald's employee might not understand.
You have more computing power in a Toyota Prius and many other cars than you do in an iPad. Why aren't slashdotters demanding free development tools, etc. for cars? If you took it upon your self to hack your car; would you expect to be covered by the manufacturer if it was then unsafe, unreliable or inoperative? I want Linux for on my Prius! Open source my BMW!
Funny you should mention this considering that there is a big issue about whether people should have the right to access their cars computer software and hardware in order to repair or modify their vehicles. IIRC there is even a push to mandate this access by law, so that you aren't locked in to "official" Toyota service for your Prius.
So it's the same issue - a product maker trying to control what you do with your own property.
Amazing that something that fitted on a couple of floppy disks has so much depth, and many games taking up whole DVDs today don't come close.
I recently started playing Jagged Alliance 2, which is very similar to X-Com but has more of a plot with specific characters. I recommend staying away from it if you value your free time.
Re:Monopolies are not illegal
on
Apple To Buy ARM?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It is not illegal to have a monopoly, it is illegal to abuse that monopoly. Whether Apple gets a monopoly or not in the handset market is not relevant until it looks like the position is being abused.
It seems like slashdot is getting fewer and fewer user posts and more and more M$ related astroturf.
YANAL, and you're wrong.
It IS relevant before deals get done, and mergers can be blocked in the US, UK, Europe and Australia and no doubt many other places without any "abuse" being demonstrated.
Here we're talking about one of the major players in the smart phone market acquiring the ability to significantly harm the competitiveness of ALL of the other players by controlling an essential component of smart phones. It would be surprising if that is allowed to happen.
they aren't very devious and don't particularly try to break interoperability.
Interesting. Then how come they arbitrarily change the way that the database is read and written on every single new ipod release? Not to break compatibility with third party ipod software, perchance?
Nope. Google's Market does not allow porn. Steve is just being an asshole because
... because Google has the same policy. No, wait.
Except its policy is in a different context, namely, we won't sell you porn, but feel free to go and buy apps that do that elsewhere.
In contrast to Apple's policy, which is we won't sell you porn, and we control what you are allowd to do with your device, which does not and never will include buying apps from anyone except us.
Apple fanboys will do what Apple says, regardless of what anyone thinks. And those of us who aren't in Apple's lap really aren't affect by this. So long story short - who cares? Apple is performing the sacred duty of separating fools from their money.
You're right. But there's a solid 90% who are neither Apple fanboys nor enlightened nerds. As enlightened nerds our duty is to inform them of exactly what they are signing up for when they buy an iphone/pod/pad/whatever. Note, not to hinder them: just to ensure they know what they're buying.
I think it would be great if every person considering buying an iphone has someone say to them, "Hey, did you know Apple refused to carry the work of a pulitzer prize winning cartoonist because it thought it might offend people?"
I also encourage people to think about what they are signing up for with GMail, Facebook etc.
... but is this part of the price we pay for free websites?
AFA harvesting data from social networking sites, well, if you're willing to post every detail of your life you can't be surprised if someone, or some company, is willing to suck up that data. It doesn't make it right, but I find it hard to feel sorry for people who want their lives to be a "web based reality show" for their friends but don't want anyone to actually use that information (either for marketing or for passing judgement on their character when it comes to employment, etc).
Well, yes and no.
Yes, if you post information in a public forum you should expect that anyone who wants it will take it. Yes, behind the scenese this is the price we pay for "free" websites.
But no, I don't think people using Facebook realise that everything they look at is being tracked, indexed and stored, regardless of what privacy settings they have in place. No, I don't think people using GMail realise that the content of the emails they send and receive is being trawled, analysed and stored for marketing purposes (in fact I KNOW they aren't - I've had the discussion many times with GMail drones).
At the very least it would be nice to see a law requiring the full disclosure, in non-legalese, of what is being collected and with whom it is being shared. They shouldn't be allowed to advertise these services as "free" either - the exchange should be made explicit.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they got hit with a massive lawsuit or someone is considering buying them out?
Perhaps they will get hit by a massive lawsuit when all those people who paid for games and relied on their representations that the games would be re-downloadable in the future sue them.
I never backed mine up locally as I relied on their (seemingly outstanding) service to give me access whenever I wanted it.
Very, very poor.
Th next step is to re-label all Australian beer 'Fosters'
I can't tell if you're an Australian making a joke about ignorant foreigners, or an ignorant foreigner.
Although Fosters the company has bought out many breweries in Australia, "Fosters" the beer is actually rarely sold or consumed here.
To quote Wikipedia:
Despite its heavy international presence, the so-called original Australian beer, Foster's Lager, has very low appeal and limited availability throughout Australia, and is made mostly for export, or made under licence in other countries, particularly the U.K.
The reason for this would be that it tastes like cat piss.
If any non-Australians want to try some decent Australian beer I suggest Coopers or James Squire.
That said, I really do understand that citizens from non-European countries, who are quite accustomed to use these words in a more generic sense, think it's wrong to suddenly take these words from the public domain and make them into protected trademarks.
This is the whole problem. Using "champagne" here (Australia) has a dual meaning. If I say "French Champagne" then it means what the EU thinks it means. If I say "champagne" it means wine in the style of the wine from Champagne, but sourced from anywhere in the world.
If I say "can I have some Parmesan" it means the hard cheese that tastes a certain way. I have no interest in its geographical origin, I just want to put it on my food.
Personally I believe these regions should compete on the basis that they make the original and best champagne or parmesan, not by enforcing silly IP/branding rules.
Champagne comes from champagne. End of story.
So how do I label something which is a wine made in the style of the wine from Champagne?
I.e., why is it not ok to tell consumers that the style of the wine is the same as the style which originated in that region?
You can have those things when your country gets together as a whole and apologizes to the USA for Yahoo Serious and Paul Hogan!
Sorry... are you from the same USA that created Two and a Half Men and That 70s Show?
If we're apologising for exporting unfunny trash culture then I look forward to the USA apologising for... well, everything since the invention of radio, really.
PS I believe we've just struck a deal to send Paul Hogan back home to you, enjoy. You can rest assured he has been punished for his crimes.
Civ II is clearly the best. Civ IV is good, but not as good as II.
Obviously, a single-threaded application will generally run better on the faster-clocked system, unless that system is being loaded down with a lot of other processes.
Most games, with a few exceptions, are single-threaded applications. Gamers are much better off with a higher clocked dual core system than a slower-clocked, 6 core system.
I really, really loathe these guys.
But do you really think it's not working for them? They've paid $16M to lawyers. For that amount they have received:
- nominal damages
- huge amounts of lobbying power with politicians ("look how much we're having to spend to defend our rights!")
- absolutely massive amounts of anti-piracy PR from their big media pals
- a hard to measure but very valuable creation of fear in the mind of the average file sharer
I'm sure I'm not alone in being distinctly more wary about file sharing than I was in, say, the era when Napster and Kazaa dominated.
I think for $16M they'd be delighted.
Of course, none of that negates the fact that a much, much, much better approach to selling media would be to make it affordable and DRM-free. Which is why, for example, I spend too much money at Good Old Games.
The action on the pitch speaks for itself.
Grown men rolling around like they've been shot when they get a light tap on the ankle or shins?
Your argument about soccer being somehow more authentic would be more compelling if not for the blight of staging, which ruins an otherwise reasonable sport.
You might as well allow NYT editors to write articles like "Popo caps a bitch after she tried to jack a 7-11" instead of "police shoot a woman after she attempted to rob a convenience store".
Thanks to The Wire the rest of the world could finally begin to understand US media reports if articles did in fact take this form.
In free and democratic societies, an individual deciding on his or her own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process.
That's assuming we live in a free and democratic society. That's far from the case.
While I agree with your underlying sentiment it's worth reflecting on the fact that you are able to type that sentence without fear of personal repercussions.
Here's an example.
Crohn's Disease is an inflammatory bowel disease. It presents in the form of parts of your digestive system being arbitrarily damaged by your body, seemingly in some kind of misplaced immune system response. This means ulcers, scarring, and a breakdown in effectiveness of whichever part or parts of the system are affected. It can occur anywhere from where food goes in to where waste comes out.
Doctors don't really know what causes it, and don't really know how to treat it.
Current theories about the cause include bacterial imbalance, extreme post-infective response by the immune system, genetics, and a lack of exposure to ordinary evironmental elements (Crohn's is much more prevalent in the developed world, suggesting that high levels of sanitation may play a part).
Current treatments range from oral steroids (nasty side effects) to hardcore anti-inflammatories, to immunomodulators (potentially very nasty side effects), to very scary drugs like Infliximab (which "works by binding to tumour necrosis factor alpha"... sounds great). Other fun treatments include moving to an all-liquid diet (which is a fringe treatment) and in many cases removal of chunks of your digestive tract.
So... based on the fact that Crohn's is more prevalent in the developed world, it has been suggested that maybe there is a link between the absence of a specific disease or parasite and Crohn's. Specifically, there are suggestions that hookworms, which are common in the developing world but almost non-existent in the developed world, might somehow play a role in preventing Crohn's. Eventually, a few people took the radical step of deliberately infecting themselves with hookworms. Lo and behold, the (admittedly not statistically significant) results were in some cases very promising indeed - something about the way hookworms trick your body into letting them live inside you also seems to help suppress whatever problem is behind Crohn's disease. In some cases patients have reported complete recovery from Crohn's by infecting themselves with around 100 specially grown, sanitized worms (initially from pigs, I think they use human-specific ones now).
Anyway, long story short: this was all looking interesting, and a controlled infection with a limited number of hookworms are widely accepted medically to present no serious health risk to humans. Proper testing was starting to be done, and there were steps being taken to properly commercialise hookworm production. However, in its wisdom about a year ago the FDA announced that (I understand without any data to support its concern) it was worried that hookworms might not be safe for people who are already sick. Like Crohn's sufferers. So it halted human studies on that basis. This has shut down studies in other countries because it makes the research less commercially appealing and because such things are inevitably a collaboration between several countries.
So, basically the FDA has said that research into a promising treatment to a nasty disease which might help people avoid horrible drugs or even more horrible surgery should be banned because, despite evidence to the contrary, it might be mildly bad for some people in some situations.
Coincidentally, Infliximab and some of the other big Crohn's drugs are extremely expensive and no doubt extremely profitable for large drug companies.
Thank you, FDA. Thank you.
you (the west) hold up crack dealers and gangsters as heroes (50cent et al), corporate psychopaths are held up as examples of "successful business leaders" and have TV shows (the apprentice) where people are expected to emulate these leaders in "ruthless business decisions", where kids see a class of people rip off their savings and retirements (bankers) and have 0 consequences, where a celebrity class are held up as models of behaviour where you dont work but shop on your working husbands/wifes credit cards or your rich dads inheritance
and you are surprised there is less empathy ?
i'm surprised there are no fucking lynch mobs
I don't disagree with you that we have poor role models, and it's not a counter-argument, but implicit in your post appears to be the suggestion that other parts of the world have better role models.
So, who shall we emulate?
Africa: corrupt, murderous tyrants widely revered as great leaders because at least they're not white colonialists; ancient tribal divisions regarded as more important than justice or democracy; women and minorities openly oppressed in many places
Asia: systematic corruption considered normal; democracy widely looked down upon as dangerous because it provides "too much freedom"; women and minorities openly oppressed in many places; many nations have dynastic style leadership systems where control passes from one anointed leader to the next. "Heroes" typically either appointed by governments or else sporting/pop idols.
India: systematic class/race based oppression built into the fabric of the culture; widespread religious violence. Many people idolise sports or pop stars.
Middle East: do I really need to go into it? Racist, religiously bigoted nutcases rule. Women and minorities in any given country systematically oppressed. "Heroes" tend to be individuals who have murdered others in furtherance of religious or political causes.
Russia: one man allowed to run former great nation as his own cult of personality; anyone who attempts to stand up to government ends up dead or in jail; most of the populace appears to be either happy with this arrangement or would prefer a return to the savage totalitarian government of the previous century. Heroes: V. Putin, Puppetmaster for Life.
South America: numerous examples of far right military dictatorships murdering innocent people. Many citizens maintain view to this day that past acts are acceptable. Slavish devotion to a major religion based in central Italy which is known to have systematically covered up the rape of children by its agents. Soccer players typically revered as heroes.
Also, despite what you suggest, if you look at a longer timeline than just a few years, I think you will realise that "the west" actually holds up some interesting people are heroes. Say, for example:
1. Rosa Parks
2. Guy Fawkes
3. George Washington
4. Jean Moulin
5. Martin Luther
6. Numerous non-westerners who champion freedom, democracy and human rights (Mandela, Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ghandi)
Would these people (or their equivalents) be regarded as heroes outside "the west"?
What I found troubling about the questions was that they conflated "irrationality" with "empathy". I would say I am a very empathetic person, but only where I rationally observe that empathy is warranted. In my mind, "empathy" is quite different from sentimental, irrational refusal to link consequences to earlier actions.
Some of the questions, however, seem to require me to choose between "empathy" and rationality:
What kind of problems? What caused them? Am I allowed to distinguish between, say, George W Bush being unpopular due to his policies and a homeless guy who gets cancer? Am I allowed to think about George W Bush the human being and try to understand how he got where he is and why he acts the way he does without feeling sorry for him because things didn't end too well with his Presidency?
Define "sure". Am I "sure" because I'm an arrogant idiot, or "sure" because I have some powerful evidentiary or logical basis for my conclusion? If it's the latter, then not listening to arguments I know to be wrong doesn't necessarily make me lacking in empathy does it? Is it evidence of "empathy" if I indulge people who hold views I know to be objectively incorrect?
This appears to test whether I am stupid enough to agree with the American mainstream media's concept of "balance" (i.e. there are no facts, just two different opinions which have to be 'balanced' with one another), rather than whether I am empathetic. Am I more "empathetic" if I answer the question "is this building on fire?" with "Let's talk about the two different views on that for a while." rather than "Yes, get the $#%^ out before you get hurt!"
Except he didn't, he signed this law. It's just that everybody (including half the people who voted for it) hoped he wouldn't because a few month after this law was voted on the pirate party gained 2% in the federal election (5% is the minimum to get seats, which they did get in some regions). The last thing any of the established parties want is yet another party to worry about so internet topics suddenly because important. The ministry of justice has instructed the police to treat this law as the most unimportant one of all (i.e. not enforce it) and the parliament is actively working on replacing it with a law that does not allow filtering.
Am I in some parallel universe where banning child porn is considered a good thing? I'm not talking cartoons and the like, but actual child porn featuring actual children?
Watchmen was such a faithful adaptation of the comic that it was unwatchable as a film
And yet, interestingly, I wasn't particularly aware of or into the graphic novel previously, thought the film was terrific, and now like the book too. I know I'm not alone in that experience, either.
Hell, the movie was worth it just for the opening credits.
Dare I say, if you don't find xkcd funny, the material might be somewhat... not aimed at you.
Ah, so I assume the target market is "pretentious know-it-all nerds who like to explain their isolation and irrelevance to themselves as being a consequence of their 'quirky' personality and their amazingly unique way of seeing the world via maths, science and amazing ideas and philosophies".
I imagine it also helps if one has had no previous interactions with women, thus enabling a suspension of disbelief in relation to the excruciatingly lame love/sex themed-comics.
Humour is highly relative, and contrary to what you imply it is entirely possible for someone intelligent to not find xkcd funny even though it relies on references and (alleged) subtleties which the average McDonald's employee might not understand.
You have more computing power in a Toyota Prius and many other cars than you do in an iPad. Why aren't slashdotters demanding free development tools, etc. for cars? If you took it upon your self to hack your car; would you expect to be covered by the manufacturer if it was then unsafe, unreliable or inoperative? I want Linux for on my Prius! Open source my BMW!
Funny you should mention this considering that there is a big issue about whether people should have the right to access their cars computer software and hardware in order to repair or modify their vehicles. IIRC there is even a push to mandate this access by law, so that you aren't locked in to "official" Toyota service for your Prius.
So it's the same issue - a product maker trying to control what you do with your own property.
Welcome to arguably the best game ever made...
Amazing that something that fitted on a couple of floppy disks has so much depth, and many games taking up whole DVDs today don't come close.
I recently started playing Jagged Alliance 2, which is very similar to X-Com but has more of a plot with specific characters. I recommend staying away from it if you value your free time.
It is not illegal to have a monopoly, it is illegal to abuse that monopoly. Whether Apple gets a monopoly or not in the handset market is not relevant until it looks like the position is being abused.
It seems like slashdot is getting fewer and fewer user posts and more and more M$ related astroturf.
YANAL, and you're wrong.
It IS relevant before deals get done, and mergers can be blocked in the US, UK, Europe and Australia and no doubt many other places without any "abuse" being demonstrated.
Here we're talking about one of the major players in the smart phone market acquiring the ability to significantly harm the competitiveness of ALL of the other players by controlling an essential component of smart phones. It would be surprising if that is allowed to happen.
they aren't very devious and don't particularly try to break interoperability.
Interesting. Then how come they arbitrarily change the way that the database is read and written on every single new ipod release? Not to break compatibility with third party ipod software, perchance?
Nope. Google's Market does not allow porn. Steve is just being an asshole because
... because Google has the same policy. No, wait.
Except its policy is in a different context, namely, we won't sell you porn, but feel free to go and buy apps that do that elsewhere.
In contrast to Apple's policy, which is we won't sell you porn, and we control what you are allowd to do with your device, which does not and never will include buying apps from anyone except us.
Apple fanboys will do what Apple says, regardless of what anyone thinks. And those of us who aren't in Apple's lap really aren't affect by this. So long story short - who cares? Apple is performing the sacred duty of separating fools from their money.
You're right. But there's a solid 90% who are neither Apple fanboys nor enlightened nerds. As enlightened nerds our duty is to inform them of exactly what they are signing up for when they buy an iphone/pod/pad/whatever. Note, not to hinder them: just to ensure they know what they're buying.
I think it would be great if every person considering buying an iphone has someone say to them, "Hey, did you know Apple refused to carry the work of a pulitzer prize winning cartoonist because it thought it might offend people?"
I also encourage people to think about what they are signing up for with GMail, Facebook etc.
Yes, I'm a blast at dinner parties.
... but is this part of the price we pay for free websites?
AFA harvesting data from social networking sites, well, if you're willing to post every detail of your life you can't be surprised if someone, or some company, is willing to suck up that data. It doesn't make it right, but I find it hard to feel sorry for people who want their lives to be a "web based reality show" for their friends but don't want anyone to actually use that information (either for marketing or for passing judgement on their character when it comes to employment, etc).
Well, yes and no.
Yes, if you post information in a public forum you should expect that anyone who wants it will take it. Yes, behind the scenese this is the price we pay for "free" websites.
But no, I don't think people using Facebook realise that everything they look at is being tracked, indexed and stored, regardless of what privacy settings they have in place. No, I don't think people using GMail realise that the content of the emails they send and receive is being trawled, analysed and stored for marketing purposes (in fact I KNOW they aren't - I've had the discussion many times with GMail drones).
At the very least it would be nice to see a law requiring the full disclosure, in non-legalese, of what is being collected and with whom it is being shared. They shouldn't be allowed to advertise these services as "free" either - the exchange should be made explicit.
And make denying it a crime, no doubt.
No, idiots will be ignored in the traditional way.