What would the Dean of Harvard have done faced with the decision you had to make
I doubt it. Harvard is interested in prestige, which this is unlikely to help, especially if they lost, as well as money, which they would lose in this fight, not gain.
If Harvard did decide differently, it would undoubtably be because Harvard has more money than Swarthmore to spend (and is less focused on spending that money on the student's education, to boot).
First of all, Swarthmore is not a university. It is a small school with not a lot of resources to devote towards legal battles. It is unfortunate that in this case, defending the right to Free Speech (which the school is generally a very strong supporter of) is likely to be highly expensive for the school and not just the students. But I don't blame the school for that, I blame the DMCA. Swarthmore has raised the publicity for this issue, but rest of the fight, I'm sad to say, is going to have to fought elsewhere.
Put your money where your mouth is (and don't rely on the money of the students at Swarthmore some of whom have no opinion on this matter) and donate to the EFF.
Just want to note that the write up about Swarthmore Dean Bob Gross above is a bit harsh. As I understand (I was unable to go to the large meeting that where this was discussed), he decided that while what the students were doing was a bold and important step, the college just did not have the financial resources to fight what could be a protracted legal battle with a large company like Diebold, especially when organiziations like the EFF are already involved in the issue. And I can understand this.
But while the college is not formally supporting the students on this cause, they are not cutting off student's access or anything like that. Why-War? is hosted off-campus and is continuing to spread the memos around. Several people are getting in contact with other schools in an effort to spread them in a more underground, but still visible, way.
Check out more on it on Swarthmore's Daily Gazette. The Phoenix should have something up on this soon, too.
Oh, and while you're reading, I always love plugging this little article. In short, GTA3 much better than GTA:VC, and that's all there is to it. Flame on!:^D
Love the article. I'm happy to see that there are others that think similarly to me -- it feels bad saying that I liked GTA3 better than VC since so many gaming sites and people have said the opposite, but really that article hit right on the head.
I would love the addition of motorcycles and helicopters to Liberty City, its one of the few things I miss when I go back to that game after getting bored with Vice City.
My god man, after playing vice city on my 3-year-old computer, I don't think I could ever stand the loading times on a PS2. Sure, the computer takes longer to turn on, but if its already booted up, getting to a playable screen in VC takes less than 30 seconds. A PS2 takes forever to load GTA!
"Did you try clicking on the date and time? That seems to bring up a calendar like application... Maybe its just me... but then i am a super geek. "
No, no, see in KDE you click on the time once to get the calendar. Roblimo clearly was rebelling against the fact that you need to *double-click* the time in the system tray in XP to get the calendar. It's not like he couldn't really figure out how to open the calendar. I mean, no one could be that stupid.
I'm a happy Linux user, switched about a month and half ago, and I have to say, learning all those little difference between Windows and Linux really isn't all that hard. Com'on people, it's a new system, what do you expect?
What's more annoying is when you frequently switch between different operating systems. I dual-boot Mandrake and XP (for Windows-only programs), and I also frequently use Mac OS9.2. Believe me, the various ways of copy/cutting/pasting becomes much more confusing when you've swithed back and forth between three different operating systems in one day! (and some days OS X gets thrown in there too, which has it's own quirks and differences)
Really the biggest thing that I miss from Linux when working in Windows is virtual desktops. (And yes, I'm aware that I can download that for Windows, and I promise you, I'll get around to it someday). For Linux, I miss the incredible simplicity of installing progams, which is pretty much always an exe that you just double-click on and follow the instructions. For Linux, sometimes its a tar.bz2 that has stuff that you need to compile but first you have to configure a makefile, sometimes its a shell script that you have to run, sometimes it's an rpm that you have to run (Mandrake). Sometimes it installs itself in some random folder in/usr (/usr/share?/usr/local/share) without asking me (most Windows programs give me a choice, which is always C:\Program Files, which I always override). Things that I miss on OS 9? A helluva lot, I'm not a big fan of that operating system, but I don't really use Macs for a wide enough variety of uses (just Quark, really) to have become very familiar with it. And is it just me, or does OS X's funky thing at the bottom of the screen showing programs that are running seem just like a poor-man's version of Window's/KDE's taskbar/kicker? (or at least a man-who-likes-shiny-animated-useless-things version)
Yeah, so while Linux is great, it's really not the be-all, end-all of operating systems, and XP/2k with the proper programs (Firebird/Thunderbird/GAIM/etc.) can be a fine operating system as well.
Linux is getting better all the time, however, while Windows seems to be going the wrong way with Palladium... =)
There's also a great extension for Mozilla Firebird where all Flash is displayed as a grey box, and if you want to see it just click on the box. This means you can avoid seizure-inducing crazy blinking ads, but be able to view great sites like Homestar Runner.
I've never fully understood this meme. I figured it was from some Unix shell that would display ^H when you pressed the backspace key. Teletype? As in (quickly googles) this?
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."
Actually, if you're from another country, it truly is free (minus bandwidth, and I mean as in beer), as the development was paid for by American taxpayer money. Enjoy!
(oh yeah, and I don't really think it's a big deal that my taxes paid for this... because I'm sure there have been far bigger, much less useful wastes of taxpayer money than this)
Yeah, but when you think about it, while oil eventually will be in short supply, right now it isn't. And let me tell you, the supply of usable real estate in a place like New York City is, well, very limited. The cost of building a parking garage there would be very expensive, and I'd imagine even more so in Tokyo. I wouldn't be surprised if parking in Tokyo was several times more expensive than the equivalent gas you'd burn driving around.
Would it even have to be GPS? Couldn't it be some kind of infrared/radio/I don't know transmitter that would alert your car that there is parking spot within 40 ft on this block?
Who would I rather see responsible for online play? A well respected, well funded developer, or the open source community? For a great example of how retarded the situation becomes when the servers are policed by the people who run it, just look into what Playmyth has become. Took the source from Bungienet and started their own server, and it was great, for a while. Now they're power tripping and banning anyone who disagrees with their philosophy.
In short, people running their OWN servers for online play is the equivalent of the lunatics taking over the asylum.
I come from a different direction about all this, and the above comments left me scratching my head. I play Day of Defeat, a Half-Life mod, online very often. There are no official servers.
Everything is player-policed, and it works often enough to ensure a good time. I learned which servers are good about banning cheaters and stopping team-killers and which weren't. And lest you think that this was a tedious job, it wasn't. It didn't take very long, largely because most of the servers are good, well-run servers by people who care.
Now, this might be because DoD has less cheaters and assholes than say, CS, but I imagine that there still are some well-run servers out there, and that they advertise themselves as such (NO CHEATERS/HACKERS YOU WILL BE BANNED!!).
I feel like you've gotten so used to Blizzard's safe little play environment that you can understand what we in other genres and other games take as the natural order of things: the "lunatics" run the "asylum", and those who do a good job become popular and easy to find.
Hear hear! Why is it that we demand that our musicians have to have deep, poetic thoughts while also being able to sing and play instruments well?
There's a reason publishers usually hire actors to record audiobooks rather than the original author.
Its like demanding that all of the dancers in a production of Swan Lake should be able to choreograph the steps and write the music as well.
Or like getting pissed off at Bob Dylan for having a shitty voice... just listen to the many many covers of his songs made by people with better voices and lesser songwriting skills.
Alright, something of an unfocused rant, but there.
The main problem that I see is when people don't sing their own songs... and the people who write their lyrics are crappy. Which is what happens nowadays, far too often.
when was the last time you saw an MTV video where the lead singer was....what's the word.. UGLY ?
Snoop Dogg? Okay, not ugly, but not a pretty boy either. In fact, many popular rappers are not particularly attractive, I find that hip-hop is far better about rewarding the artists that are actually good rather than just good looking than pop music (although still far behind most other genres of music). I mean, just look at Missy Elliot. When's the last time you saw a female performer that looks like her on TRL? (I find female performers tend to be chosen on the basis of looks even more than men).
As an aside: I just went to a Ben Folds concert this weekend. Man, that guy looks like the biggest nerd ever... but he can sing. And play a mean piano. Of course, he would never be on TRL now, but that doesn't disprove the point I made above =)
Man does this semantic argument annoy me. I cringe every time I read some I really wish both camps would lay off and just use the general term "illegal". If you are about to say either "steal" or "violate copyright", just say "downloading illegally" or "copying illegally" instead.
If you think its stealing, then the downloading or copying is illegal because stealing is illegal. If you want to stick with the more legally correct term 'copyright violation', then "downloading or copying illegally" will satisfy you as well, because in the US violating copyrights is illegal, and downloading or copying copyrighted music (in the US) is violating the copyright.
Now, there are a number of people on these forums who will write back with silly "but it shouldn't be illegal" or "information wants to be free". Fine, be that way. The above advice is not for you anyway. It is for people who are about to use either "theft" or "copyright violation" in their posts, and therefore already imply belief that it is illegal and perhaps, not all information wants to be free.
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What would the Dean of Harvard have done faced with the decision you had to make
I doubt it. Harvard is interested in prestige, which this is unlikely to help, especially if they lost, as well as money, which they would lose in this fight, not gain.
If Harvard did decide differently, it would undoubtably be because Harvard has more money than Swarthmore to spend (and is less focused on spending that money on the student's education, to boot).
First of all, Swarthmore is not a university. It is a small school with not a lot of resources to devote towards legal battles. It is unfortunate that in this case, defending the right to Free Speech (which the school is generally a very strong supporter of) is likely to be highly expensive for the school and not just the students. But I don't blame the school for that, I blame the DMCA. Swarthmore has raised the publicity for this issue, but rest of the fight, I'm sad to say, is going to have to fought elsewhere.
Put your money where your mouth is (and don't rely on the money of the students at Swarthmore some of whom have no opinion on this matter) and donate to the EFF.
And download the memos and host them.
Just want to note that the write up about Swarthmore Dean Bob Gross above is a bit harsh. As I understand (I was unable to go to the large meeting that where this was discussed), he decided that while what the students were doing was a bold and important step, the college just did not have the financial resources to fight what could be a protracted legal battle with a large company like Diebold, especially when organiziations like the EFF are already involved in the issue. And I can understand this.
But while the college is not formally supporting the students on this cause, they are not cutting off student's access or anything like that. Why-War? is hosted off-campus and is continuing to spread the memos around. Several people are getting in contact with other schools in an effort to spread them in a more underground, but still visible, way.
Check out more on it on Swarthmore's Daily Gazette. The Phoenix should have something up on this soon, too.
Oh, and while you're reading, I always love plugging this little article. In short, GTA3 much better than GTA:VC, and that's all there is to it. Flame on! :^D
Love the article. I'm happy to see that there are others that think similarly to me -- it feels bad saying that I liked GTA3 better than VC since so many gaming sites and people have said the opposite, but really that article hit right on the head.
I would love the addition of motorcycles and helicopters to Liberty City, its one of the few things I miss when I go back to that game after getting bored with Vice City.
That's why the clerk shouldn't have been asking questions.
And yeah I know that a 'fag' is a cigarette in the UK (and elsewhere?), but man did that set off all the *warning!troll!* bells at first.
Well, here's a pic of Mrs. Melinda Gates w/ hubby and Kofi Annan. Not bad, but not particularly attractive, either.
And can't you buy an adaptor to allow you to use a PS2 controller on an XBox? Although I might be getting confused with something else...
My god man, after playing vice city on my 3-year-old computer, I don't think I could ever stand the loading times on a PS2. Sure, the computer takes longer to turn on, but if its already booted up, getting to a playable screen in VC takes less than 30 seconds. A PS2 takes forever to load GTA!
"Did you try clicking on the date and time? That seems to bring up a calendar like application... Maybe its just me... but then i am a super geek. "
/usr (/usr/share? /usr/local/share) without asking me (most Windows programs give me a choice, which is always C:\Program Files, which I always override). Things that I miss on OS 9? A helluva lot, I'm not a big fan of that operating system, but I don't really use Macs for a wide enough variety of uses (just Quark, really) to have become very familiar with it. And is it just me, or does OS X's funky thing at the bottom of the screen showing programs that are running seem just like a poor-man's version of Window's/KDE's taskbar/kicker? (or at least a man-who-likes-shiny-animated-useless-things version)
No, no, see in KDE you click on the time once to get the calendar. Roblimo clearly was rebelling against the fact that you need to *double-click* the time in the system tray in XP to get the calendar. It's not like he couldn't really figure out how to open the calendar. I mean, no one could be that stupid.
I'm a happy Linux user, switched about a month and half ago, and I have to say, learning all those little difference between Windows and Linux really isn't all that hard. Com'on people, it's a new system, what do you expect?
What's more annoying is when you frequently switch between different operating systems. I dual-boot Mandrake and XP (for Windows-only programs), and I also frequently use Mac OS9.2. Believe me, the various ways of copy/cutting/pasting becomes much more confusing when you've swithed back and forth between three different operating systems in one day! (and some days OS X gets thrown in there too, which has it's own quirks and differences)
Really the biggest thing that I miss from Linux when working in Windows is virtual desktops. (And yes, I'm aware that I can download that for Windows, and I promise you, I'll get around to it someday). For Linux, I miss the incredible simplicity of installing progams, which is pretty much always an exe that you just double-click on and follow the instructions. For Linux, sometimes its a tar.bz2 that has stuff that you need to compile but first you have to configure a makefile, sometimes its a shell script that you have to run, sometimes it's an rpm that you have to run (Mandrake). Sometimes it installs itself in some random folder in
Yeah, so while Linux is great, it's really not the be-all, end-all of operating systems, and XP/2k with the proper programs (Firebird/Thunderbird/GAIM/etc.) can be a fine operating system as well.
Linux is getting better all the time, however, while Windows seems to be going the wrong way with Palladium... =)
and people will hear "Hi, I'm into piracy."
And a lot of people will say "Hey, so am I? What do you mean I can't install Kazaa?"
And by "embrace", he means "bone-crushing bear hug".
check out this extension
There's also a great extension for Mozilla Firebird where all Flash is displayed as a grey box, and if you want to see it just click on the box. This means you can avoid seizure-inducing crazy blinking ads, but be able to view great sites like Homestar Runner.
I've never fully understood this meme. I figured it was from some Unix shell that would display ^H when you pressed the backspace key. Teletype? As in (quickly googles) this?
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."
-- Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant
Actually, if you're from another country, it truly is free (minus bandwidth, and I mean as in beer), as the development was paid for by American taxpayer money. Enjoy!
(oh yeah, and I don't really think it's a big deal that my taxes paid for this... because I'm sure there have been far bigger, much less useful wastes of taxpayer money than this)
SCO SCO SCO?
Nope, didn't work.
I hear ya. I think I started drooling while watching that.
Yeah, but when you think about it, while oil eventually will be in short supply, right now it isn't. And let me tell you, the supply of usable real estate in a place like New York City is, well, very limited. The cost of building a parking garage there would be very expensive, and I'd imagine even more so in Tokyo. I wouldn't be surprised if parking in Tokyo was several times more expensive than the equivalent gas you'd burn driving around.
Would it even have to be GPS? Couldn't it be some kind of infrared/radio/I don't know transmitter that would alert your car that there is parking spot within 40 ft on this block?
Who would I rather see responsible for online play? A well respected, well funded developer, or the open source community? For a great example of how retarded the situation becomes when the servers are policed by the people who run it, just look into what Playmyth has become. Took the source from Bungienet and started their own server, and it was great, for a while. Now they're power tripping and banning anyone who disagrees with their philosophy.
In short, people running their OWN servers for online play is the equivalent of the lunatics taking over the asylum.
I come from a different direction about all this, and the above comments left me scratching my head. I play Day of Defeat, a Half-Life mod, online very often. There are no official servers.
Everything is player-policed, and it works often enough to ensure a good time. I learned which servers are good about banning cheaters and stopping team-killers and which weren't. And lest you think that this was a tedious job, it wasn't. It didn't take very long, largely because most of the servers are good, well-run servers by people who care.
Now, this might be because DoD has less cheaters and assholes than say, CS, but I imagine that there still are some well-run servers out there, and that they advertise themselves as such (NO CHEATERS/HACKERS YOU WILL BE BANNED!!).
I feel like you've gotten so used to Blizzard's safe little play environment that you can understand what we in other genres and other games take as the natural order of things: the "lunatics" run the "asylum", and those who do a good job become popular and easy to find.
I remember hearing that my friend's mom broke several mice on Diablo 1...
What's so wonderful about writing your own songs?
Hear hear! Why is it that we demand that our musicians have to have deep, poetic thoughts while also being able to sing and play instruments well?
There's a reason publishers usually hire actors to record audiobooks rather than the original author.
Its like demanding that all of the dancers in a production of Swan Lake should be able to choreograph the steps and write the music as well.
Or like getting pissed off at Bob Dylan for having a shitty voice... just listen to the many many covers of his songs made by people with better voices and lesser songwriting skills.
Alright, something of an unfocused rant, but there.
The main problem that I see is when people don't sing their own songs... and the people who write their lyrics are crappy. Which is what happens nowadays, far too often.
when was the last time you saw an MTV video where the lead singer was ....what's the word.. UGLY ?
Snoop Dogg? Okay, not ugly, but not a pretty boy either. In fact, many popular rappers are not particularly attractive, I find that hip-hop is far better about rewarding the artists that are actually good rather than just good looking than pop music (although still far behind most other genres of music). I mean, just look at Missy Elliot. When's the last time you saw a female performer that looks like her on TRL? (I find female performers tend to be chosen on the basis of looks even more than men).
As an aside: I just went to a Ben Folds concert this weekend. Man, that guy looks like the biggest nerd ever... but he can sing. And play a mean piano. Of course, he would never be on TRL now, but that doesn't disprove the point I made above =)
Man does this semantic argument annoy me. I cringe every time I read some I really wish both camps would lay off and just use the general term "illegal". If you are about to say either "steal" or "violate copyright", just say "downloading illegally" or "copying illegally" instead.
If you think its stealing, then the downloading or copying is illegal because stealing is illegal. If you want to stick with the more legally correct term 'copyright violation', then "downloading or copying illegally" will satisfy you as well, because in the US violating copyrights is illegal, and downloading or copying copyrighted music (in the US) is violating the copyright.
Now, there are a number of people on these forums who will write back with silly "but it shouldn't be illegal" or "information wants to be free". Fine, be that way. The above advice is not for you anyway. It is for people who are about to use either "theft" or "copyright violation" in their posts, and therefore already imply belief that it is illegal and perhaps, not all information wants to be free.
Thank you, that is all.