Well, the way people *should* drive in those situations is, rightmost lane is for merging and preparing to exit, the lane to the immediate left of that is for the slowest traffic, with people moving to the left in order to pass.
The problem isn't the people using that middle(-ish) lane for cruising. It's the people who get on the freeway, slam it all the way over into the left lane going about 80, and then try to make their exit a half mile from where they got on. If they'd just had an ounce of patience and simply merged into the slow traffic, they wouldn't be stuck over there with their blinker on, trying to make a 90-degree turn from the third lane onto the exit ramp.
Well, the relevant part of that case is the downloader's side of the story. Is the downloader committing a crime by downloading the file if s/he has already purchased the CD/DVD, regardless of the source?
I'm not saying it's legal to trash someone else's machine at all. But what I *am* saying is that it's akin to this situation:
Suppose your cousin is a VP of a major pharmaceuticals company, and you find out from him that his company is about to issue a recall on one of the world's most prescribed drugs. Before this happens, you sell their stock as far short as your broker will let you go.
A week later, somebody calls you up and tells you that you're going to prison unless you fork over $250k. Your choices: one, pay the blackmailer to keep silent; or two, refuse to pay and report them to the cops, so that you can live in satisfaction of their punishment while your cellmate gets in touch with your feminine side.
Obviously, the extortion is just as illegal as your insider trading, but the extortionist is banking his safety on the fact that you don't want to risk being punished yourself for your own wrongdoings.
The problem is that the only people with standing to make a legal complaint about this practice (i.e., sue them) are people who have downloaded the files and had damages caused to them from the spyware being installed.
However, at the same time, said people are admitting in court that they downloaded (or attempted to download) media for which they didn't hold the copyright.
One possible way around this is if someone already has purchased the CD/DVD and wanted to download a copy so they could archive the original (because they have CD/DVD hardware that couldn't rip the original to disk). Of course, this idea has not been tested in court, and would probably be a protracted and expensive battle to fight.
You could be more on the money than you realize. The article linked by the previous poster indicated that lane etiquette was far more prevalent when there was no posted speed limit, even though the *average* speed driven didn't increase by that much. This is similar to the behavior on the Autobahn, where the most important law is "slower traffic to the right". When people actually *obey* that law, the risk of traffic accidents is far lower, and the thought of an M3 coming up behind you at 110 mph is enough to make a lot of us keep right;)
In the past, I've figured that the things that go on in GTA are so severe that rational kids won't do them. Carjacking, murder... if a kid is involved in these things, they were probably a bad seed from the start.
But with vandalism...... Well, let's just say that in my old (28) age, I was shocked and appalled by the inclusion of vandalism as a central (read: featured prominently in TV ads) theme of Tony Hawk's Underground 2. Teenagers might have enough sense not to go bust a cap in the ass of some old guy driving a land barge, but then again they might just tag a shop window or slash somebody's tires, figuring that - since it's the most basic motivator of what to do or not do - they won't get caught.
In the process, THUG2's creators worsen the public's perception of skateboarders, console gamers, and game developers.
Now, does this let kids off the hook, saying that they were told to break the windows out of somebody's car because of GTA3 or THUG2? No, of course not. They're just as guilty as they would be in the absence of those games. But in the context of games marketed towards teens - THUG2 is in fact rated T - game designers need to understand that there really may be societal impacts to the things they release. They have a moral imperative to voluntarily limit themselves in order to protect society.
And the ESRB has a moral imperative to make sure that games which prominently feature property crimes - not just violent crimes or drug crimes - are given the M rating they deserve.
Well, sounds pretty fair to me. If I "claim" I have heroin for sale, I am likely to get busted even if it is just baking soda. I may not go to jail for selling fake heroin, but I am going to spend a lot of time and money with cops and lawyers. Seems to me that you got your reward for selling fake heroin.... er, movies.
Actually, in some jurisdictions, selling a fake version of a controlled substance is still illegal - there are specific laws prohibiting this, and they don't fall under the umbrella of fraud, but rather under the auspices of anti-drug statutes.
On the other hand, the DMCA doesn't make it illegal to sell (access to) fake versions of movies/trailers (assuming that's what Rossi was doing, which, not having visited his site before the MPAA complaint to his ISP, I can't confirm or deny). However, the DMCA does permit complainants to effectively censor people via filing complaints (with legal ramifications if the complaints are not addressed by the ISP) whether or not those people are actually infringing on the complainants' copyrights. One argument, then, might be that the standard of "good faith" is insufficient to protect the free speech rights of website operators.
A few years ago, a fellow was running an antique steam engine at the county fair. The steam tank ruptured, and one person was killed.
This is obviously a tragic event for the person who was killed and his family, but it's also an interesting and important engineering problem. So much so, in fact, that the following year's PhD qualifier in our mechanical engineering department consisted of an analysis and redesign of the steam engine, so as to prevent such an explosion from happening again.
It's a *good* thing to study problems like these, even in an academic sense, because academia is the very first step in the production of usable goods. If people aren't learning from these mistakes, then problems like the stranding of thousands of passengers in airports or the accidental death of a poor fellow at the county fair will happen again.
because their far to expensive M$ "soloution" "melted"
In case you forgot to read the first half of the comments to this thread, it's already been revealed that ComAir's system runs on AIX, a product of IBM, and that the software was developed by a subsidiary of Boeing. When you flame Microsoft for something, at least make sure they're *involved* first.
It seems to me that this challenge wouldn't strike the entire DMCA, but rather just the smallest portion of it - namely, the ability of copyright holders to make DMCA shutdown requests to ISPs, and then only in cases where no good-faith effort has been made to determine whether or not a violation actually exists.
Still, any successful attack, even a small one like this, against the DMCA is a good thing. (I also wouldn't mind having the Supremes put another feather in their cap for overturning one more 9th Circus opinion.)
Even when stories are passed by word of mouth they get changed a little.
The problem with Jackson's LotR is that, yes, while there are numerous occasions where some minor detail gets changed for dramatic purposes, there are several points where a character does the exact opposite of what they did in the books. Examples: Faramir trying to take Frodo and the Ring back to Gondor (in the movie) versus immediately realizing that the ring is unvarnished evil that must be destroyed (in the book). Treebeard and the other Ents understanding that they must take action against Saruman now, because eventually the destruction will reach them as well (in the book) versus saying the concerns of men are not their concerns (in the movie). Even Aragorn allowing the Mouth of Sauron to pass back through the gates because the rules of honor demand that an emissary be left unharmed (in the book) versus the completely unnecessary, dishonorable, and out-of-character beheading (in the movie).
What's amazing is that Jackson (though I have a sneaking suspicion that Walsh and Boyens are at least as much to blame as Jackson, if not more) spends so much time trying to develop certain characters, but by doing so changes them to be the polar opposite of what they're supposed to be!
In the behind-the-scenes footage for RotK, they mention that when they used Tolkien's troop numbers, the Pelennor Fields looked practically empty, so they beefed 'em up a bit. I don't recall them mentioning doing this at Helm's Deep, so the number was probably more on-target.
You must have missed the sixth ending, which was that Frodo and Sam were marooned on the big rock in the midst of the lava pouring forth from Mount Doom. Fade to black, cue swelling music.... and fade back in to them still sitting there on the same damn rock!
I'm going to have to ask for clarification on your statement, because our "national system" is pretty much controlled on a state-by-state basis, even for the Presidential election. The only truly federally-controlled part of the election is the tabulation of electoral votes and the declaration of the winner based on those votes, and I don't think anybody has said that any shenanigans have ruined that part of the process, regardless of what people think of the electoral college itself.
Well, that quote gives a horrible explanation of why selling items/accounts is bad. Why is it bad?
One, people who sell items or accounts tend to try to farm them incessantly. This leads to perpetually-camped spawns dominated by one person, along with unfair play tactics against others who want to come in and take their turn. Now, this is much reduced in WoW because of the way loot occurs in the game, but in many other games (EQ, for example) it can be a pretty severe problem.
Two, there is a great potential for fraud when items/accounts are sold, because there is no secure transaction between the exchange of money and the exchange of the account, and because the seller can usually keep themselves anonymous. Admittedly, this lends some support for these transactions taking place at large sites like eBay or IGE, where their reputation is at stake whenever a fraudulent transaction takes place, but "for-sale-by-owner" accounts are still not uncommon.
Three, inexperienced players driving experienced characters leads to grief and annoyance within the high-level community. The level and gear of a character are supposed to be a reflection on a person's experience at playing the game, not just some number which affects the character's abilities. Sometimes, eBayed characters stick out like sore thumbs as they ask stupid questions (e.g., 57th level night elf druid yells, 'omg how do i get 2 teh boat in darnasuss!!!'), but in other cases, it takes several bad play experiences for the eBayed character to build up a reputation as being played by an inexperienced player and thus get blacklisted.
Four, some eBayed characters already *have* a reputation as a bad apple. Somebody with no consideration for other people - but with some skill at the game mechanics - levels up a character, but then can't get a group in the high-level instances to save their life. So, they sell the account and start over, pocketing some money in the process. The problem is, the unsuspecting buyer logs in for the first time and is greeted by rude tells and harassment because the character has a reputation of being a complete ass. What's more, nobody will believe them when they say they bought the character (choosing instead to think it's the original owner trying to lie his way out of the situation), and the admission of being eBayed brings down one's reputation further.
By the way, there are other reasons related more to fairness that I'm not really going into detail on here (such as the concept that every player should put equivalent effort into the game, or that success should not be based on one's RL means, since this is a game).
There was a game called Echelon that was released for the C-64 which included a headset microphone. Whenever you shouted something into it (and an outdoor voice was indeed required), it effectively pushed the button on the second joystick.
Yes, it is, because the rules for acquiring the virtual items (in the case of World of Warcraft, anyway) specify that you aren't allowed to use your hard-earned cash to purchase those items. You're supposed to put effort into the game itself in order to reap the rewards, and it certainly does qualify as "instant gratification" to use external means to acquire the rewards without the requisite effort.
Besides, it doesn't make any sense to say that it's not instant gratification for somebody with a job to buy in-game items, but if they inherited or won their money and spend it on the exact same thing, then it is instant gratification. Winning or inheriting your wealth by itself may be instant gratification, but there's no difference between that and earned money when it comes to spending it.
to Atlantis to replace the weakly casted commander
I thought the woman who originally played Dr. Weir in her SG-1 appearance was far more convincing, and was disappointed that they didn't get her to take on the role on Atlantis.
But as long as Rachel Luttrell is on the show, I don't mind *that* much;)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the way people *should* drive in those situations is, rightmost lane is for merging and preparing to exit, the lane to the immediate left of that is for the slowest traffic, with people moving to the left in order to pass.
The problem isn't the people using that middle(-ish) lane for cruising. It's the people who get on the freeway, slam it all the way over into the left lane going about 80, and then try to make their exit a half mile from where they got on. If they'd just had an ounce of patience and simply merged into the slow traffic, they wouldn't be stuck over there with their blinker on, trying to make a 90-degree turn from the third lane onto the exit ramp.
Well, the relevant part of that case is the downloader's side of the story. Is the downloader committing a crime by downloading the file if s/he has already purchased the CD/DVD, regardless of the source?
I'm not saying it's legal to trash someone else's machine at all. But what I *am* saying is that it's akin to this situation:
Suppose your cousin is a VP of a major pharmaceuticals company, and you find out from him that his company is about to issue a recall on one of the world's most prescribed drugs. Before this happens, you sell their stock as far short as your broker will let you go.
A week later, somebody calls you up and tells you that you're going to prison unless you fork over $250k. Your choices: one, pay the blackmailer to keep silent; or two, refuse to pay and report them to the cops, so that you can live in satisfaction of their punishment while your cellmate gets in touch with your feminine side.
Obviously, the extortion is just as illegal as your insider trading, but the extortionist is banking his safety on the fact that you don't want to risk being punished yourself for your own wrongdoings.
The problem is that the only people with standing to make a legal complaint about this practice (i.e., sue them) are people who have downloaded the files and had damages caused to them from the spyware being installed.
However, at the same time, said people are admitting in court that they downloaded (or attempted to download) media for which they didn't hold the copyright.
One possible way around this is if someone already has purchased the CD/DVD and wanted to download a copy so they could archive the original (because they have CD/DVD hardware that couldn't rip the original to disk). Of course, this idea has not been tested in court, and would probably be a protracted and expensive battle to fight.
You could be more on the money than you realize. The article linked by the previous poster indicated that lane etiquette was far more prevalent when there was no posted speed limit, even though the *average* speed driven didn't increase by that much. This is similar to the behavior on the Autobahn, where the most important law is "slower traffic to the right". When people actually *obey* that law, the risk of traffic accidents is far lower, and the thought of an M3 coming up behind you at 110 mph is enough to make a lot of us keep right ;)
In the past, I've figured that the things that go on in GTA are so severe that rational kids won't do them. Carjacking, murder... if a kid is involved in these things, they were probably a bad seed from the start.
But with vandalism...... Well, let's just say that in my old (28) age, I was shocked and appalled by the inclusion of vandalism as a central (read: featured prominently in TV ads) theme of Tony Hawk's Underground 2. Teenagers might have enough sense not to go bust a cap in the ass of some old guy driving a land barge, but then again they might just tag a shop window or slash somebody's tires, figuring that - since it's the most basic motivator of what to do or not do - they won't get caught.
In the process, THUG2's creators worsen the public's perception of skateboarders, console gamers, and game developers.
Now, does this let kids off the hook, saying that they were told to break the windows out of somebody's car because of GTA3 or THUG2? No, of course not. They're just as guilty as they would be in the absence of those games. But in the context of games marketed towards teens - THUG2 is in fact rated T - game designers need to understand that there really may be societal impacts to the things they release. They have a moral imperative to voluntarily limit themselves in order to protect society.
And the ESRB has a moral imperative to make sure that games which prominently feature property crimes - not just violent crimes or drug crimes - are given the M rating they deserve.
I was a bit more disturbed by "I've played this on my cell phone" coming from a 10-year-old.
I'd get lunch *and* go for a walk. I've got time enough to do both of those.
Your link points to a company that sells magnets. A better word than `program' would probably be `product'.
Tell that to India.
talking about video games, per their mandate
http://www.callofcthulhu.com/
...to doom us all by fscking up trying to prevent the asteroid hitting the Earth.
Well, sounds pretty fair to me. If I "claim" I have heroin for sale, I am likely to get busted even if it is just baking soda. I may not go to jail for selling fake heroin, but I am going to spend a lot of time and money with cops and lawyers. Seems to me that you got your reward for selling fake heroin .... er, movies.
Actually, in some jurisdictions, selling a fake version of a controlled substance is still illegal - there are specific laws prohibiting this, and they don't fall under the umbrella of fraud, but rather under the auspices of anti-drug statutes.
On the other hand, the DMCA doesn't make it illegal to sell (access to) fake versions of movies/trailers (assuming that's what Rossi was doing, which, not having visited his site before the MPAA complaint to his ISP, I can't confirm or deny). However, the DMCA does permit complainants to effectively censor people via filing complaints (with legal ramifications if the complaints are not addressed by the ISP) whether or not those people are actually infringing on the complainants' copyrights. One argument, then, might be that the standard of "good faith" is insufficient to protect the free speech rights of website operators.
A few years ago, a fellow was running an antique steam engine at the county fair. The steam tank ruptured, and one person was killed.
This is obviously a tragic event for the person who was killed and his family, but it's also an interesting and important engineering problem. So much so, in fact, that the following year's PhD qualifier in our mechanical engineering department consisted of an analysis and redesign of the steam engine, so as to prevent such an explosion from happening again.
It's a *good* thing to study problems like these, even in an academic sense, because academia is the very first step in the production of usable goods. If people aren't learning from these mistakes, then problems like the stranding of thousands of passengers in airports or the accidental death of a poor fellow at the county fair will happen again.
because their far to expensive M$ "soloution" "melted"
In case you forgot to read the first half of the comments to this thread, it's already been revealed that ComAir's system runs on AIX, a product of IBM, and that the software was developed by a subsidiary of Boeing. When you flame Microsoft for something, at least make sure they're *involved* first.
As long as you're here, I have to ask - are those gigantic image watermarks in the center of your images really, really necessary?
It seems to me that this challenge wouldn't strike the entire DMCA, but rather just the smallest portion of it - namely, the ability of copyright holders to make DMCA shutdown requests to ISPs, and then only in cases where no good-faith effort has been made to determine whether or not a violation actually exists.
Still, any successful attack, even a small one like this, against the DMCA is a good thing. (I also wouldn't mind having the Supremes put another feather in their cap for overturning one more 9th Circus opinion.)
Even when stories are passed by word of mouth they get changed a little.
The problem with Jackson's LotR is that, yes, while there are numerous occasions where some minor detail gets changed for dramatic purposes, there are several points where a character does the exact opposite of what they did in the books. Examples: Faramir trying to take Frodo and the Ring back to Gondor (in the movie) versus immediately realizing that the ring is unvarnished evil that must be destroyed (in the book). Treebeard and the other Ents understanding that they must take action against Saruman now, because eventually the destruction will reach them as well (in the book) versus saying the concerns of men are not their concerns (in the movie). Even Aragorn allowing the Mouth of Sauron to pass back through the gates because the rules of honor demand that an emissary be left unharmed (in the book) versus the completely unnecessary, dishonorable, and out-of-character beheading (in the movie).
What's amazing is that Jackson (though I have a sneaking suspicion that Walsh and Boyens are at least as much to blame as Jackson, if not more) spends so much time trying to develop certain characters, but by doing so changes them to be the polar opposite of what they're supposed to be!
In the behind-the-scenes footage for RotK, they mention that when they used Tolkien's troop numbers, the Pelennor Fields looked practically empty, so they beefed 'em up a bit. I don't recall them mentioning doing this at Helm's Deep, so the number was probably more on-target.
Ugh. I don't think I want to see *any* scene that includes both "extended" and "CowboyNeal".
You must have missed the sixth ending, which was that Frodo and Sam were marooned on the big rock in the midst of the lava pouring forth from Mount Doom. Fade to black, cue swelling music.... and fade back in to them still sitting there on the same damn rock!
I'm going to have to ask for clarification on your statement, because our "national system" is pretty much controlled on a state-by-state basis, even for the Presidential election. The only truly federally-controlled part of the election is the tabulation of electoral votes and the declaration of the winner based on those votes, and I don't think anybody has said that any shenanigans have ruined that part of the process, regardless of what people think of the electoral college itself.
Well, that quote gives a horrible explanation of why selling items/accounts is bad. Why is it bad?
One, people who sell items or accounts tend to try to farm them incessantly. This leads to perpetually-camped spawns dominated by one person, along with unfair play tactics against others who want to come in and take their turn. Now, this is much reduced in WoW because of the way loot occurs in the game, but in many other games (EQ, for example) it can be a pretty severe problem.
Two, there is a great potential for fraud when items/accounts are sold, because there is no secure transaction between the exchange of money and the exchange of the account, and because the seller can usually keep themselves anonymous. Admittedly, this lends some support for these transactions taking place at large sites like eBay or IGE, where their reputation is at stake whenever a fraudulent transaction takes place, but "for-sale-by-owner" accounts are still not uncommon.
Three, inexperienced players driving experienced characters leads to grief and annoyance within the high-level community. The level and gear of a character are supposed to be a reflection on a person's experience at playing the game, not just some number which affects the character's abilities. Sometimes, eBayed characters stick out like sore thumbs as they ask stupid questions (e.g., 57th level night elf druid yells, 'omg how do i get 2 teh boat in darnasuss!!!'), but in other cases, it takes several bad play experiences for the eBayed character to build up a reputation as being played by an inexperienced player and thus get blacklisted.
Four, some eBayed characters already *have* a reputation as a bad apple. Somebody with no consideration for other people - but with some skill at the game mechanics - levels up a character, but then can't get a group in the high-level instances to save their life. So, they sell the account and start over, pocketing some money in the process. The problem is, the unsuspecting buyer logs in for the first time and is greeted by rude tells and harassment because the character has a reputation of being a complete ass. What's more, nobody will believe them when they say they bought the character (choosing instead to think it's the original owner trying to lie his way out of the situation), and the admission of being eBayed brings down one's reputation further.
By the way, there are other reasons related more to fairness that I'm not really going into detail on here (such as the concept that every player should put equivalent effort into the game, or that success should not be based on one's RL means, since this is a game).
There was a game called Echelon that was released for the C-64 which included a headset microphone. Whenever you shouted something into it (and an outdoor voice was indeed required), it effectively pushed the button on the second joystick.
Now *that's* innovation.
Yes, it is, because the rules for acquiring the virtual items (in the case of World of Warcraft, anyway) specify that you aren't allowed to use your hard-earned cash to purchase those items. You're supposed to put effort into the game itself in order to reap the rewards, and it certainly does qualify as "instant gratification" to use external means to acquire the rewards without the requisite effort.
Besides, it doesn't make any sense to say that it's not instant gratification for somebody with a job to buy in-game items, but if they inherited or won their money and spend it on the exact same thing, then it is instant gratification. Winning or inheriting your wealth by itself may be instant gratification, but there's no difference between that and earned money when it comes to spending it.
Typical fucking slashdotter - post a gigantic flame full of profanity and namecalling, and do it all while posting as an AC.
to Atlantis to replace the weakly casted commander
;)
I thought the woman who originally played Dr. Weir in her SG-1 appearance was far more convincing, and was disappointed that they didn't get her to take on the role on Atlantis.
But as long as Rachel Luttrell is on the show, I don't mind *that* much