In Soviet Russia, We build 10,000 tractor! If 9,999 of them don't work, oh well! We build them again! And Again! And Again! Until they All WORK! Is stupid?! Nonsense!; this way, we can employ 1000 comrades! Behold our Wisdom you capitalist pigs!
They are complaing of competition. Let them complain; OSS has created more jobs than it's destroyed, that's for sure. I consider the squealing and thrashing of my enemy the siren of victory.
(and for those who take em' seriously, for the 10,000th time) Wait for it. The banking institutions are going to want to do trade this way. It starts with a night clib in Baja, then goes to something else. It then becomes a fad, people go for it, then BAM, it's manditory at work for some people. Afterall, you want to be team playa, don't you? Overtime, the technology advances, and now it can store encrypted data and is difficult as fsck to hack.
Then all of a sudden, the banking institutions begin associating the data with you. Now instead of carrying around a wallet, you carry around a chip which a central database in some goverment or business institution. The chip stores your info, and all they've got to do to enforce it is put in advanced versions of credit card readers that read chips and correlate that data over the intarweb.
That isn't the end though. There'll still be a few people reeling and screaming to the rest of the sheeple that what they're doing is wrong. The real end, is when someone comes before congress complaining about the incredible cost of keeping a cashier at the front desk. They'll talk about making a law stating businesses won't have to take money anymore for trade. Of course, by then everything will be pretty much monopolised by profiteering corperations. Then, when the terrorists begin trading with people, good ol' barter, they'll outlaw that too.
And then the banking institutions have all the power they ever wanted.
There's a critical distinction you failed to make; filesharing networks were made to share files. They are used to trade copyrighted material.
It's akin to the VCR. The VCR has the capability to play and copy video casettes; this is what it was made to do. It's users tend to tape copyrighted video off of the television.
The point here is relitivally simple, and anyone can see the correlation. You don't ban computers to solve the problem of malicious hacking. Banning computers would do that most certainly, however it'd have other effects such as taking down most of the business on the planet. Whenever you ban something loosly correlated with something else, you take something else out with it.
The point here is, if you ban P2P networks to take out copyright violation, you also take out other things as well. Ever try typing in "Occult" into a search engine? How about "lead beater" or "blavatsky" or "1984" or "calculus" or "bible" or "SKTFM"? Ever set it for movies and type in "UFO"?
I take it you haven't, and thusly, I heartily reccomend you promptly pull your head out of your ass, wipe it off and begin using it. Those uses far outweigh your porn and warez needs.
And finally, if p2p networks were anything like shoplifting, i'd be able to walk into a store and replicate clothing at will from the air that surrounds us for next to nothing.
"On 17-18th of May, there will be a real vote by the Council of Ministers. If they vote against software patents - we win."
Until, of course, it comes up again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, until finally some group of people who are stupid/corrupt/bribed vote to pass it. That's how these intrests work; they continuously try to get laws passed year after year after year hoping one time it'll work, and when it does people suffer. Makes me sick, and angry, really.
All they'll accomplish without the ability to enforce this law is a bunch of prisons filled with innocent people, a bunch of megacorps with monopolies like Microsoft, and finally, they'll make things like linux illegal, and therefore the people who use them. If your "ministers" is anything like our "republicans", they'll push for harder and harder punishments, like the american drug war.
And what if one was to get a reader and mod it so the output frequency power was 10 or 20x the magnitude it should be, then walk around a mall sending off bursts of radation every 10 or 15 seconds?
I could rant and rave about the privacy conserns, about them wanting to have control over you when you're in your own home, then rant and rave about the legislation, chipping, insane bullcrap, etc.
Instead, I'm going to say this; just so long as us computer repair techies get the free flying cars and lots and lots of free condoms!:D
So, Inotherwords, they took the entirty of the word "internet" and comrpessed it down to IRC.
Have they tried typing porn into google, or are they just so dumb they can't see the obvious? Or is it, just mabye, NYT has an intrest in making the rest of the internet seem like the dumping ground of the corrupt side of human kind so they can keep their buisness of lieing and making a profit going as usual?:O
Nah. Notice how the RIAA is indirectly selling their music via these services? They're engauging in price fixing on the web as well; notice how all the services have the same exact or more expensive price than $.99 a song? The idea is to break the market up into mostly loyal sections through the use of proprietary DRM'd devices or get everyone on a single, protected platform so they can't go for a compeditor. They might also try something particularily evil; getting people to sign non-compete agreements to get big discounts and then lobbing congress to give them a monopoly on all of the media since so many people have signed it.
If there were any time for a few buisnesses to come along and begin selling garage band songs at a lower price and begin directly competing with the RIAA, now'd be a good time. I'd bet it'd make some big bucks and win the buisness of quite a few bands and disgrunteled customers if you campaigned right. Think of MP3.com on p2p, and you could download any song for $.20, no DRM in mp3 or ogg, and $.5 or $.10 of that went to the artist. You could also add in some kind of server-side lisencing system, so you'd have the music in any format for-ever and for a small fee, you could download it to any location (like a mp3 player at a wifi location, as an example).
Nah, we'd have to conquer the martians first. The martians are behind all these dangerous outcroppings. Just look at the pic! The geological thingy they want to look at is right smack dab center! They're rearranging the land around the rovers as the rovers find it to see how well we can build bots.
After spending $50 on the game and feeling ripped off, I pirated the other versions to get the patches, and it ran even slower. I basically uninstalled everything and shelved the game after that, deleted the pirated copies for space and gave it the finger. When I double the specs of my boxen in a year I might take it out and try it out again, mabye when it runs decent I might not feel so ripped off.
As for Win9x being faster, it really isn't. Win98 isn't faster than win2k, it's just more ancient, unstable, and has less overhead by default than win2k. However, after you strip off the overhead and extra processes from win2k things tend to run a bit faster on win2k rather than win9x simply because the API's are better.
The constitution is an extremly simple, extremly well written and extremly well thought out document. You should read it sometime. Infact, if the laws on the books weren't unconstitutional we wouldn't have the problems we have right now. Unfortunatly, a coup de tat has occured in this country that few people seem to be aware of although the population of people who get it is growing thanks to the internet. We've got them running with california's ruling against Diebold and that threatens to crack the whole thing wide open once the criminal charges get on the books.
Infact, if our constitution was fallowed by people, and our country was ruled by people as wise and benevolent as the writers, we wouldn't have many of the problems we've got today. Unfortunatly, we don't, and at times I think there's some dark god or someone who really doesn't like us.
No, infact, I think you're on crack. A lot of crack, actually.
I don't have ANY problem with copyright, infact I like copyright. I like being able to creat something and have a monopoly on it for awhile garounteed by some powerful body like the U.S. govermnent. I like copyright until it begins to be used to CAPTURE THE CULTURE instead of PROTECTING INVENTORS. You've got to be on crack to want that. I'm saying what congress has done is downright unconstitutional and P2P apps even that out quite well. The entire situation is pretty fucked right now; if p2p wins culture is free'd buy if everyone begins using it then the way media is delivered must evolve to something people can't pirate. If P2P looses we stagnate into something far worse than 1984.
You ever listen to tales from the afternow? www.theafternow.com . That what'll happen if they, the major coprs who want copyright to be something they use against us, win.
Yea, until you notice they tried it out on MICE first. MICE! Rodents regrow their teeth like nuts. Infact, mice teeth never stop growing, that's why they sell those little concrete blocks for the cage, so they can keep their teeth in check.
I also don't remember any part in the constitution that said congress could make copyright forever. I also think, if I remember properly, oh yea, the constitution explicitly denies that right.
Article I, Section 8
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
They also underfund the patent and copyright system so dangerously that now it's the courts who take on that responsability, and ultimately, the person with the most $$$ wins.
....
Ahh fuck it. Go read some books you Neo-con nazi-flag totin' motherfucka. Mabye if you actually activly educated yourself on a regular basis you wouldn't end up posting up such stupid remarks, and people like me wouldn't have to spend time correcting them. Unless of course, you want our country to degrade into the 7th circle of hell.
http://cyberlaw-temp.stanford.edu/freeculture.pdf
Start there.
And if ya wanna know where it's goin, go listen to some TFTA
http://www.theafternow.com/listen.php
Start from #1. The archeologies are particularily interesting.
Wow, 384k of memory? You must have some 1337 skillz or some hidden ram or somethin...or you're just a moron who doesn't know what they're talkin about. Morrowind runs slow because it doesn't do occlusion and has insane polygon counts. Then there's the loading times... Bethesda built their game on a lisenced engine that wasn't designed to do what they wanted it to do. Then, they decided not to update the engine in any way which essentially means as their games get bigger and bigger, the game gets more resource hungry. I suppose if you reduced the fog to the point where you can see like, 10 feet infront of you the game would be more playable, but not in my opinion. I still don't know how they use 300meg of ram up when it's set at the lowest settings, and then there's the loading times... Inotherwords, the engine is incredibly inefficient. Compair morrowind to, say, UT2K4 or Tribes2's huge maps and you can see this.
FYI, the boxen is an AMD XP1800+ w/ 2 sticks totaling 512meg PC2100 with 2.5 cas latency on an Abit KR7A raid motherboard with a Geforce 4 Ti 4600/128 with the proper optimumizations to win2k to boost the speed about 5-10% (Standard PC instead of ACPI, service removal, uses about 70meg of ram on boot) and with proper resource allocation (Irq's, etc). Infact, the only thing I haven't tried to get morrowind to run properly is adding another 256 meg of ram and installing the hardware raid.
The vast, vast majority of cracks don't have viruses in them. I virus and malware scan them before and after installing and running them because I don't trust them. Many of the groups that make the cracks and hax take pride in being 1337 by doing it and don't put crap in their installers. Now if you're dumb and donwload from anyone and then proceed to install without scanning, good luck on keeping your box up. I also packetsniff my box when nothing's running every onceinawhile to make sure it isn't sending or recieving anything it shouldn't be.
Actually, all property taxes are bad. Thanks to them, I can't just move out and live a recluse life on some farm all by myself; the state decides it wants to get in my face about oweing it taxes when I just want to subsist farm, mabye sell some crops to buy a couple things here and there and be left well enough alone. It's kinda sad really.
In any case, copyright right now is indeed forever, so any improvement over that is good. What was happening is that patents and copyrights were being given out pretty much without any official approval. This is bad, because now all of the cases for patents and copyrights are given to the courts, meaning anyone with money to spend on good lawers wins.
Frankly, they need to fix copyright and fix the patenting system before they begin throwing in any more new socialistic bullshit; some of us would like to keep some form of individualism you know.
As a Pirate, I'll be honest so any corperate drones reading this can get a jist of what the pirates think.
Just today I went out and baught Battlefield Vietnam so I could play with my clan buddies. I pirated it first so that I knew I wouldn't be wasting the $40 it costs.
Why do I do this? Well, because I'm treated like a criminal by the stores and because I'v been shafted a number of times by really bad games. For example, awhile ago I blew $9.99 on the "special edition" of Deus ex, thinking it was the full version. In reality, it as a "specially labeled" demo of the game. I take it back to the store and they won't let me return it. I'v also been dissapointed by Morrowind(shitty engine), Dungeon seige (repeditive), and a slew of other games I'v baught that if I had baught them when they were new for a bunch of money, I'd probably feel real burned. So now, I pirate before I buy.
But, surely you say, I can trust those game reviews, and demo's, right? Goto Gamefaqs, pull up any new game, and then look at the user reviews and compair them to the reviews of the websites that make their money off of reviews. I'v also been misled by demo's being real nice then when you get to the game it sucks. Kinda like they put the best part of the game on the demo, promise more and then don't deliver. Sometimes, you see some in-game movies like the UT2k4 movies that rock and then demo just sucks ass.
Anyway, the reviews convince me look at movies, movies convince me to try the demo, the demo convinces me to pirate, and pirating convinces me to buy. Unfortunatly, however, I don't buy many single player games. Infact, now that I look at the shelf, I think I stopped buying them after Morrowind which was probably the 4th time I got ripped-off on. The box says 800mhz processor, 256 meg ram and a 3d-card with 32 meg ram if I read it right for reccomended requirements, and my system beats all those by 2 times. Infact, if you could run it on those requirements I'd be suprised. On my box it runs like a slideshow on even the low settings.
A big part of that is it's hard to pirate single player games and have some self control and go out and buy the game if you really like it. Most of them you don't know if you like it until you've played through the entire game and by then the point of buying is null.
Anything I play online, however, I make sure I have a legit copy of. Not so much out of fear of persecution, but more out of the fact that the game requires a key to play and if I'm going to be playing a game compeditivly I'd like to have a real copy of it (which is where the last shred of my non-pirating decency lies). I'd say about half of the games I'v played are pirated (which is common, I assure you). I really don't see myself buying a game for $50 without researching it. At $10 on the value-rack, it's an entirely different story (which is where about 2/3 of my non-pirated games that suck come from). Some of the best games I'v ever baught were on the $10 rack, like Tribes and Total Annihilation which I took off of a friends word for like $15 apiece. The one expensive game I baught that rocked was half-life platinum collection for $35. Hopefully Battlefield vietnam will be another good game.
If gaming companies want to stop the pirating and general disrespect their customers give them, they've got to stomp out the bad games, bad advertising, and ripping people off. Inotherwords, show some respect to your customers. They've also got to update their buisness model some. A good game with a single player campaign and decent multiplayer means your average joe is going to buy the game for the SP and multiplayer, and your pirate is going to consider the SP the demo, and the multiplayer the real deal.
The industries real enemies aren't me. Their real enemies are the people who pirate everything regardless of where it came from and then go ahead and sell it for $5, or the people who are the occasional gamer who download the games without paying for th
You miss the point; anyone who can say "Donkey" or "Elephant" can insert their drivers lisence, press a button with associated picture on a touchscreen, and vote. It doesn't matter how technologically retarded or just plain dumb they are or weither or not they can read or write.
Personally, if you can't fill out a scantron form or write your own name in english or some language, you shouldn't be voting. Older people are the exception, since all this tech is so new to them that telling them they have to figure out some electronic box is cruel. Of course, keep the paper ballot handy and required by law. This way, people have the option of using paper if they don't trust the machines.
If they're as peel-offable as UPC codes, then we won't have a problem. As soon as the stories start appearing saying they're going to weave them into the clothing, people get paranoid, and rightfully so. At the heart of a corperation is power centrilisation through monentary gain for it's shareholders; the whole idea of the corperation is that the buisness become more of a public holding rather than a private one, and therefore, is subject to more control by the public. Until of course someone comes along with tons of money and begins an empire or until corperations get too big (which is why limits on how much money a person can have and how much net worth a corperation can own such that the goverment never has to compete with a corperations for power is a good idea). It isn't actually that far off to say corperations want to enslave us all, look at what nike and gap is doing in Africa to turn a profit.
As it stands right now, they have to take cash and they can't give you insentives to use a special credit card (like establishing a monopoly then bumping everything in the store up by 300%, then offering a 1/3 price deal on a credit card). Although that'll probably change soon if that's where this is going.
Actually, the guys in congress aren't conservative; they're Neo-Conservative. Meaning, compaired to regular conservatives and democrats, they're actually probably the most radical group to ever get into power in America. (aside from say, the whigs or old skool democrats).
What does that mean? It means the people who normally consider themselves conservative are appauled by the neo-conservatives. I, personally, am a realist so I am more into how things work and if they'll work rather than lala-land ideals, so I study these guys' actions and ideals. They stand for good ol' american traditions such as
A: Censoring the media through deregulating the media and establishing monopolies, then taking on competition by whatever means they can short of going in and shooting them.
B: Reinstating the Nazi Rhetoric that man is god by seperating "religion and state" to further political goals. The 10 commandments may be an old document, and moreso christian, but it was what our country was based upon and if we forget the morals the bible (as well as many other religions. Not everyone in power is christian) teaches, our country will fall apart.
C: They are for globalisation of economies, rights, and corperations. Meaning, outsourcing, forcing people to compete against eachother for jobs, giving power to corperations through money and property, and of course, defining human rights through the U.N, allowing it to become a body higher and more powerful than our goverment. Infact, that one has already begun quite frankly. Our soveirgnty is slowly being drained away to the UN and pretty soon we'll see our constitution being used against the american people by corperations.
D: They are for lots and lots of goverment and they pay for it by stealing money out of funds for other things then claiming it'll be there later.
E: Finally, the biggest mark of the Neo-Con is that any program they creat, any law they pass, or any idea they support ultamatly benefits them somehow. For example; the slow and methodical destruction of american social fabric by campaign through such programs as forcing parents to get college educations before being able to home-school their own kids. Forcing unruly school children to take drugs, throwing anyone with a sense of what's going on into mental institutions and fucking them up on therapy. ETC.
Ever wonder why it takes your system 10 minutes to boot? Kuz your hosts file is hundreds of entries long, that's why. It's better to use Proxomitron;
http://www.proxomitron.info/
Custom filters, etc. Also, use spybot search and destroy's immunize option. It roxors.
Also, do note that any attempt to force advertising on users will ultamatly fail so long as the computer lives on as a free medium and those advertisements annoy people enough that they want to be rid of them.
Slashdot Mirror
True, 10% of 0 is 0. But if you're hired to make custom software, and that cost increases, they might go for something else less custom...
Might be a good way to encourage and efficient economy, or monopolies.
Reminds me of an old saying:
In Soviet Russia, We build 10,000 tractor! If 9,999 of them don't work, oh well! We build them again! And Again! And Again! Until they All WORK! Is stupid?! Nonsense!; this way, we can employ 1000 comrades! Behold our Wisdom you capitalist pigs!
They are complaing of competition. Let them complain; OSS has created more jobs than it's destroyed, that's for sure. I consider the squealing and thrashing of my enemy the siren of victory.
(and for those who take em' seriously, for the 10,000th time) Wait for it. The banking institutions are going to want to do trade this way. It starts with a night clib in Baja, then goes to something else. It then becomes a fad, people go for it, then BAM, it's manditory at work for some people. Afterall, you want to be team playa, don't you? Overtime, the technology advances, and now it can store encrypted data and is difficult as fsck to hack.
Then all of a sudden, the banking institutions begin associating the data with you. Now instead of carrying around a wallet, you carry around a chip which a central database in some goverment or business institution. The chip stores your info, and all they've got to do to enforce it is put in advanced versions of credit card readers that read chips and correlate that data over the intarweb.
That isn't the end though. There'll still be a few people reeling and screaming to the rest of the sheeple that what they're doing is wrong. The real end, is when someone comes before congress complaining about the incredible cost of keeping a cashier at the front desk. They'll talk about making a law stating businesses won't have to take money anymore for trade. Of course, by then everything will be pretty much monopolised by profiteering corperations. Then, when the terrorists begin trading with people, good ol' barter, they'll outlaw that too.
And then the banking institutions have all the power they ever wanted.
There's a critical distinction you failed to make; filesharing networks were made to share files. They are used to trade copyrighted material.
It's akin to the VCR. The VCR has the capability to play and copy video casettes; this is what it was made to do. It's users tend to tape copyrighted video off of the television.
The point here is relitivally simple, and anyone can see the correlation. You don't ban computers to solve the problem of malicious hacking. Banning computers would do that most certainly, however it'd have other effects such as taking down most of the business on the planet. Whenever you ban something loosly correlated with something else, you take something else out with it.
The point here is, if you ban P2P networks to take out copyright violation, you also take out other things as well. Ever try typing in "Occult" into a search engine? How about "lead beater" or "blavatsky" or "1984" or "calculus" or "bible" or "SKTFM"? Ever set it for movies and type in "UFO"?
I take it you haven't, and thusly, I heartily reccomend you promptly pull your head out of your ass, wipe it off and begin using it. Those uses far outweigh your porn and warez needs.
And finally, if p2p networks were anything like shoplifting, i'd be able to walk into a store and replicate clothing at will from the air that surrounds us for next to nothing.
Thank you for pissing me off and wasting my time.
"On 17-18th of May, there will be a real vote by the Council of Ministers. If they vote against software patents - we win."
Until, of course, it comes up again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, until finally some group of people who are stupid/corrupt/bribed vote to pass it. That's how these intrests work; they continuously try to get laws passed year after year after year hoping one time it'll work, and when it does people suffer. Makes me sick, and angry, really.
All they'll accomplish without the ability to enforce this law is a bunch of prisons filled with innocent people, a bunch of megacorps with monopolies like Microsoft, and finally, they'll make things like linux illegal, and therefore the people who use them. If your "ministers" is anything like our "republicans", they'll push for harder and harder punishments, like the american drug war.
And what if one was to get a reader and mod it so the output frequency power was 10 or 20x the magnitude it should be, then walk around a mall sending off bursts of radation every 10 or 15 seconds?
I could rant and rave about the privacy conserns, about them wanting to have control over you when you're in your own home, then rant and rave about the legislation, chipping, insane bullcrap, etc.
:D
Instead, I'm going to say this; just so long as us computer repair techies get the free flying cars and lots and lots of free condoms!
And have realtime "STOP" Errors. :-D
So, Inotherwords, they took the entirty of the word "internet" and comrpessed it down to IRC.
:O
Have they tried typing porn into google, or are they just so dumb they can't see the obvious? Or is it, just mabye, NYT has an intrest in making the rest of the internet seem like the dumping ground of the corrupt side of human kind so they can keep their buisness of lieing and making a profit going as usual?
Nah. Notice how the RIAA is indirectly selling their music via these services? They're engauging in price fixing on the web as well; notice how all the services have the same exact or more expensive price than $.99 a song? The idea is to break the market up into mostly loyal sections through the use of proprietary DRM'd devices or get everyone on a single, protected platform so they can't go for a compeditor. They might also try something particularily evil; getting people to sign non-compete agreements to get big discounts and then lobbing congress to give them a monopoly on all of the media since so many people have signed it.
If there were any time for a few buisnesses to come along and begin selling garage band songs at a lower price and begin directly competing with the RIAA, now'd be a good time. I'd bet it'd make some big bucks and win the buisness of quite a few bands and disgrunteled customers if you campaigned right. Think of MP3.com on p2p, and you could download any song for $.20, no DRM in mp3 or ogg, and $.5 or $.10 of that went to the artist. You could also add in some kind of server-side lisencing system, so you'd have the music in any format for-ever and for a small fee, you could download it to any location (like a mp3 player at a wifi location, as an example).
Nah, we'd have to conquer the martians first. The martians are behind all these dangerous outcroppings. Just look at the pic! The geological thingy they want to look at is right smack dab center! They're rearranging the land around the rovers as the rovers find it to see how well we can build bots.
After spending $50 on the game and feeling ripped off, I pirated the other versions to get the patches, and it ran even slower. I basically uninstalled everything and shelved the game after that, deleted the pirated copies for space and gave it the finger. When I double the specs of my boxen in a year I might take it out and try it out again, mabye when it runs decent I might not feel so ripped off.
As for Win9x being faster, it really isn't. Win98 isn't faster than win2k, it's just more ancient, unstable, and has less overhead by default than win2k. However, after you strip off the overhead and extra processes from win2k things tend to run a bit faster on win2k rather than win9x simply because the API's are better.
Yea! They should hire me! The allknowing lord humungous of the universe! I could tell them a few common sense things first...the fuckin' morons.
;)
What'll they think up next? Cells to rejuvinate the brains in a plant? Wow, now there's some science. Plants don't even have brains STUPID!
The constitution is an extremly simple, extremly well written and extremly well thought out document. You should read it sometime. Infact, if the laws on the books weren't unconstitutional we wouldn't have the problems we have right now. Unfortunatly, a coup de tat has occured in this country that few people seem to be aware of although the population of people who get it is growing thanks to the internet. We've got them running with california's ruling against Diebold and that threatens to crack the whole thing wide open once the criminal charges get on the books.
Infact, if our constitution was fallowed by people, and our country was ruled by people as wise and benevolent as the writers, we wouldn't have many of the problems we've got today. Unfortunatly, we don't, and at times I think there's some dark god or someone who really doesn't like us.
No, infact, I think you're on crack. A lot of crack, actually.
I don't have ANY problem with copyright, infact I like copyright. I like being able to creat something and have a monopoly on it for awhile garounteed by some powerful body like the U.S. govermnent. I like copyright until it begins to be used to CAPTURE THE CULTURE instead of PROTECTING INVENTORS. You've got to be on crack to want that. I'm saying what congress has done is downright unconstitutional and P2P apps even that out quite well. The entire situation is pretty fucked right now; if p2p wins culture is free'd buy if everyone begins using it then the way media is delivered must evolve to something people can't pirate. If P2P looses we stagnate into something far worse than 1984.
You ever listen to tales from the afternow? www.theafternow.com . That what'll happen if they, the major coprs who want copyright to be something they use against us, win.
Yea, until you notice they tried it out on MICE first. MICE! Rodents regrow their teeth like nuts. Infact, mice teeth never stop growing, that's why they sell those little concrete blocks for the cage, so they can keep their teeth in check.
Stupid scientists.
I also don't remember any part in the constitution that said congress could make copyright forever. I also think, if I remember properly, oh yea, the constitution explicitly denies that right.
....
Article I, Section 8
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
They also underfund the patent and copyright system so dangerously that now it's the courts who take on that responsability, and ultimately, the person with the most $$$ wins.
Ahh fuck it. Go read some books you Neo-con nazi-flag totin' motherfucka. Mabye if you actually activly educated yourself on a regular basis you wouldn't end up posting up such stupid remarks, and people like me wouldn't have to spend time correcting them. Unless of course, you want our country to degrade into the 7th circle of hell.
http://cyberlaw-temp.stanford.edu/freeculture.pdf
Start there.
And if ya wanna know where it's goin, go listen to some TFTA
http://www.theafternow.com/listen.php
Start from #1. The archeologies are particularily interesting.
Wow, 384k of memory? You must have some 1337 skillz or some hidden ram or somethin...or you're just a moron who doesn't know what they're talkin about. Morrowind runs slow because it doesn't do occlusion and has insane polygon counts. Then there's the loading times... Bethesda built their game on a lisenced engine that wasn't designed to do what they wanted it to do. Then, they decided not to update the engine in any way which essentially means as their games get bigger and bigger, the game gets more resource hungry. I suppose if you reduced the fog to the point where you can see like, 10 feet infront of you the game would be more playable, but not in my opinion. I still don't know how they use 300meg of ram up when it's set at the lowest settings, and then there's the loading times... Inotherwords, the engine is incredibly inefficient. Compair morrowind to, say, UT2K4 or Tribes2's huge maps and you can see this.
FYI, the boxen is an AMD XP1800+ w/ 2 sticks totaling 512meg PC2100 with 2.5 cas latency on an Abit KR7A raid motherboard with a Geforce 4 Ti 4600/128 with the proper optimumizations to win2k to boost the speed about 5-10% (Standard PC instead of ACPI, service removal, uses about 70meg of ram on boot) and with proper resource allocation (Irq's, etc). Infact, the only thing I haven't tried to get morrowind to run properly is adding another 256 meg of ram and installing the hardware raid.
The vast, vast majority of cracks don't have viruses in them. I virus and malware scan them before and after installing and running them because I don't trust them. Many of the groups that make the cracks and hax take pride in being 1337 by doing it and don't put crap in their installers. Now if you're dumb and donwload from anyone and then proceed to install without scanning, good luck on keeping your box up. I also packetsniff my box when nothing's running every onceinawhile to make sure it isn't sending or recieving anything it shouldn't be.
Actually, all property taxes are bad. Thanks to them, I can't just move out and live a recluse life on some farm all by myself; the state decides it wants to get in my face about oweing it taxes when I just want to subsist farm, mabye sell some crops to buy a couple things here and there and be left well enough alone. It's kinda sad really.
In any case, copyright right now is indeed forever, so any improvement over that is good. What was happening is that patents and copyrights were being given out pretty much without any official approval. This is bad, because now all of the cases for patents and copyrights are given to the courts, meaning anyone with money to spend on good lawers wins.
Frankly, they need to fix copyright and fix the patenting system before they begin throwing in any more new socialistic bullshit; some of us would like to keep some form of individualism you know.
As a Pirate, I'll be honest so any corperate drones reading this can get a jist of what the pirates think.
Just today I went out and baught Battlefield Vietnam so I could play with my clan buddies. I pirated it first so that I knew I wouldn't be wasting the $40 it costs.
Why do I do this? Well, because I'm treated like a criminal by the stores and because I'v been shafted a number of times by really bad games. For example, awhile ago I blew $9.99 on the "special edition" of Deus ex, thinking it was the full version. In reality, it as a "specially labeled" demo of the game. I take it back to the store and they won't let me return it. I'v also been dissapointed by Morrowind(shitty engine), Dungeon seige (repeditive), and a slew of other games I'v baught that if I had baught them when they were new for a bunch of money, I'd probably feel real burned. So now, I pirate before I buy.
But, surely you say, I can trust those game reviews, and demo's, right? Goto Gamefaqs, pull up any new game, and then look at the user reviews and compair them to the reviews of the websites that make their money off of reviews. I'v also been misled by demo's being real nice then when you get to the game it sucks. Kinda like they put the best part of the game on the demo, promise more and then don't deliver. Sometimes, you see some in-game movies like the UT2k4 movies that rock and then demo just sucks ass.
Anyway, the reviews convince me look at movies, movies convince me to try the demo, the demo convinces me to pirate, and pirating convinces me to buy. Unfortunatly, however, I don't buy many single player games. Infact, now that I look at the shelf, I think I stopped buying them after Morrowind which was probably the 4th time I got ripped-off on. The box says 800mhz processor, 256 meg ram and a 3d-card with 32 meg ram if I read it right for reccomended requirements, and my system beats all those by 2 times. Infact, if you could run it on those requirements I'd be suprised. On my box it runs like a slideshow on even the low settings.
A big part of that is it's hard to pirate single player games and have some self control and go out and buy the game if you really like it. Most of them you don't know if you like it until you've played through the entire game and by then the point of buying is null.
Anything I play online, however, I make sure I have a legit copy of. Not so much out of fear of persecution, but more out of the fact that the game requires a key to play and if I'm going to be playing a game compeditivly I'd like to have a real copy of it (which is where the last shred of my non-pirating decency lies). I'd say about half of the games I'v played are pirated (which is common, I assure you). I really don't see myself buying a game for $50 without researching it. At $10 on the value-rack, it's an entirely different story (which is where about 2/3 of my non-pirated games that suck come from). Some of the best games I'v ever baught were on the $10 rack, like Tribes and Total Annihilation which I took off of a friends word for like $15 apiece. The one expensive game I baught that rocked was half-life platinum collection for $35. Hopefully Battlefield vietnam will be another good game.
If gaming companies want to stop the pirating and general disrespect their customers give them, they've got to stomp out the bad games, bad advertising, and ripping people off. Inotherwords, show some respect to your customers. They've also got to update their buisness model some. A good game with a single player campaign and decent multiplayer means your average joe is going to buy the game for the SP and multiplayer, and your pirate is going to consider the SP the demo, and the multiplayer the real deal.
The industries real enemies aren't me. Their real enemies are the people who pirate everything regardless of where it came from and then go ahead and sell it for $5, or the people who are the occasional gamer who download the games without paying for th
You miss the point; anyone who can say "Donkey" or "Elephant" can insert their drivers lisence, press a button with associated picture on a touchscreen, and vote. It doesn't matter how technologically retarded or just plain dumb they are or weither or not they can read or write.
Personally, if you can't fill out a scantron form or write your own name in english or some language, you shouldn't be voting. Older people are the exception, since all this tech is so new to them that telling them they have to figure out some electronic box is cruel. Of course, keep the paper ballot handy and required by law. This way, people have the option of using paper if they don't trust the machines.
If they're as peel-offable as UPC codes, then we won't have a problem. As soon as the stories start appearing saying they're going to weave them into the clothing, people get paranoid, and rightfully so. At the heart of a corperation is power centrilisation through monentary gain for it's shareholders; the whole idea of the corperation is that the buisness become more of a public holding rather than a private one, and therefore, is subject to more control by the public. Until of course someone comes along with tons of money and begins an empire or until corperations get too big (which is why limits on how much money a person can have and how much net worth a corperation can own such that the goverment never has to compete with a corperations for power is a good idea). It isn't actually that far off to say corperations want to enslave us all, look at what nike and gap is doing in Africa to turn a profit.
As it stands right now, they have to take cash and they can't give you insentives to use a special credit card (like establishing a monopoly then bumping everything in the store up by 300%, then offering a 1/3 price deal on a credit card). Although that'll probably change soon if that's where this is going.
Actually, the guys in congress aren't conservative; they're Neo-Conservative. Meaning, compaired to regular conservatives and democrats, they're actually probably the most radical group to ever get into power in America. (aside from say, the whigs or old skool democrats).
What does that mean? It means the people who normally consider themselves conservative are appauled by the neo-conservatives. I, personally, am a realist so I am more into how things work and if they'll work rather than lala-land ideals, so I study these guys' actions and ideals. They stand for good ol' american traditions such as
A: Censoring the media through deregulating the media and establishing monopolies, then taking on competition by whatever means they can short of going in and shooting them.
B: Reinstating the Nazi Rhetoric that man is god by seperating "religion and state" to further political goals. The 10 commandments may be an old document, and moreso christian, but it was what our country was based upon and if we forget the morals the bible (as well as many other religions. Not everyone in power is christian) teaches, our country will fall apart.
C: They are for globalisation of economies, rights, and corperations. Meaning, outsourcing, forcing people to compete against eachother for jobs, giving power to corperations through money and property, and of course, defining human rights through the U.N, allowing it to become a body higher and more powerful than our goverment. Infact, that one has already begun quite frankly. Our soveirgnty is slowly being drained away to the UN and pretty soon we'll see our constitution being used against the american people by corperations.
D: They are for lots and lots of goverment and they pay for it by stealing money out of funds for other things then claiming it'll be there later.
E: Finally, the biggest mark of the Neo-Con is that any program they creat, any law they pass, or any idea they support ultamatly benefits them somehow. For example; the slow and methodical destruction of american social fabric by campaign through such programs as forcing parents to get college educations before being able to home-school their own kids. Forcing unruly school children to take drugs, throwing anyone with a sense of what's going on into mental institutions and fucking them up on therapy. ETC.
Ever wonder why it takes your system 10 minutes to boot? Kuz your hosts file is hundreds of entries long, that's why. It's better to use Proxomitron;
http://www.proxomitron.info/
Custom filters, etc. Also, use spybot search and destroy's immunize option. It roxors.
Also, do note that any attempt to force advertising on users will ultamatly fail so long as the computer lives on as a free medium and those advertisements annoy people enough that they want to be rid of them.
Or mabye, oh I dunno, absolving the goverment and education institutions from copyright?