Fetuses are not children, they are potential children--like eggs and sperm, which get flushed down the toilet by the millions every day. Between that potential and the actuality lay several months in the womb of a woman. Whether that happens is up to her, not you. It's not your womb.
I can certainly see where you are coming from -- up to a certain point. If a woman is only 2 months along, and the baby is just a blob of cells, then I can say that you certainly have a point.
However, my daugher was born about three weeks early - and she was a baby at that time. She cried, she breathed, she felt pain. It is disgusting that somebody could even think of killing a baby of the same level of development that my daughter was when she was born. And yet, if I were to stick a tube in my daughter's head and suck her brains after she was born, I would be a murderer. If I were to do it 1/2 hour before, I would be an abortion doctor. The only difference between the two cases is moving location two feet, and 30 minutes.
So, in short, you can say anything that you want. I have held a newborn child, and the thought of depriving anybody of their life because of somebodies inconvenience is sickening.
And my signature is there to make you THINK. I was honestly surprised when people started posting on it. It was not intended to be a troll.
I think that the death penalty is OK. But show me how an unborn child can commit a crime. If the baby is guilty of murder, then it should be killed. Otherwise, it is entitled to life.
You think that it is OK to kill an unborn person who has never commited a crime, yet you should not be able to carry out a legal punishment on a murderer.
Yes, They can remove some "jaggies" if used properly. It is very good at removing periodic noise, which is exacly the sort of noise that you get when you up-sample. But the image will stll be blurry, just not blocky. Makes it look better, but you don't get any extra info. Fourier transforms are NOT some sort of magic bullet.
Just FYI: A discrete fourier transform is VERY closely related to the Cosine transform (you can implement a consine transform using a DFT and some data shuffling). The cosine transform is the key ingredient of the JPEG algorithm. More useless trivia.
Not only that, but it gives the impression that police departments have the manpower to assign two people to spend 40 Hrs/week on one case, and the budget to be able to do any desired test.
I am not a cop, but I would imagine that in the real world, investigators cannot spend that much time or money on each case. But I admit that I could be wrong.
Yes, you are probably right, but are you willing to bet your LIFE on it?
[Eastwood voice] Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya? [/Eastwood voice]
This also assumes that the person:
1) Has some good analog knowledge. How do you know which part to replace? Testing pars while they are still on the board is even more difficult.
2) Can look up replacement parts for any blown semis. Some transistors are marked with "house numbers," which makes replacing them very difficult, since you cannot even tell if they are NPN, PNP, N-channel, P-Channel, etc.
In short, a person with some experience can fix a PSU, and it is definately not rocket science. But if you have never cracked open a PSU, it can be imtimidating.
The computer got 5 seconds in to loading Windows before getting a BSOD (which lasted less than a second) before rebooting again.
And again. And again.
My situation exactly.
I kind of expected a BSOD or two. But the BSOD should at least stay on the screen long enough to read what the freakin' error is!
I even resorted to pointing a camcorder at the CRT in the hopes of recording what the offending.dll or.exe was. But, of course, the auto-iris of the camcorder turned the gain way up when pointed at a black screen, and then the image bloomed when the screen went all blue.
In short, SP2 sucks because I never even had the opportunity to debug it!
I have also heard stories of SP2 breaking the VPN at my job, but I have not even been able to use SP2 yet, so I cannot confirm or deny this.
Wrong. The Department of Labor enforces things like overtime laws. The problem is that it only works if you are not "exempt."
Typically, "Exempt" refers to "professions" such as lawyer, doctor, and engineer. It can also apply to "management." A software coder without the word "engineer" in their title might be able to be considered non-exempt. The only way to know for sure is to contact the department of labor: http://www.dol.gov/.
They may be a bit slow to answer their phones, but keep trying!
As you work more hours, the mistakes rise. A company would be better off getting 40 or 50 great hours instead of 80 or 90 mediocre to poor hours.
This also may burn out the people who have been there longer, so a lot of the team might be younger and more inexperienced.
Also, if this keeps up long enough, I wonder if the peons might consider unionizing. I have seen the abuse of unions, and it is not pretty. When a union gets too powerful, bad thing happen. But, obviously, in a case like this, a disposable work force means that management makes bad things happen.
But here are a couple of practical idea:
1) Contact the Department of Labor. They have investigators who look into such things. I know -- I have a relative who does this for a living.
2) Take a job coding a database, or become a sysadmin, or so anything else. Maybe a little less money, a little less glamor, but you actually get to know those people who live in your house. Then, you can code games in your spare time (spare time - what a concept), where you can enjoy it at your own pace.
The reason that companies work people 80 hours a week is that they CAN. If everybody refused to work these hours, it would hurt. You might get fired. But if EA had such a huge turnover of staff that they could not finish ANY project, they might change their ways.
Just my $0.02. From an engineer who works a fair amount of 40-hour-weeks.
Is today April 1st (please please). Winamp is my favorite player.
Can anybody recommend a good alternative? I am a Windows user (I can't get my nVidia chipset ethernet to work under Linux). The replacement should be capable, and free (no "register for only $39 for bonus features").
And before anybody mentions it, Real Player and Windows Media Plaer are NOT viable alternatives for me (but I think that Real's "Annabelle the sheep" is hilarious -- sheep are funny, just watch "A Close Shave").
I don't suppose that XMMS is available for Windows, is it?
Joe Sixpack will take a second, maybe two to send the e-mail. I doubt that he could type fast enough for this to be an issue...
Now, a zombie can only send one e-mail every second vs. the usual ten. Not perfect, but I would settle for 3 spams per day vs. my current 30.
Yes, it does require some changes to e-mail software, but the article points out that the changes can be slowly phased in. If an e-mail client includes the code and this idea never catches on, then the worst thing to happen is that there is a little coad-bloat in your client. No big deal!
I wonder how long before Mozilla incorporates this?
Wy wife would never accept any OS that did not have some sort of greeting card/sign/banner program. Think Print Master/Print Shop/Greeting Workshop/etc.
I suppose that I could use some combination of GIMP/Open Office to make do in a pinch, but my wife would never go through this trouble.
Also, it will be nice when Linux has enough mass to make GPS manufacturers (Garmin, Magellan) port their map-transfer software to Linux.
As a rule, *NO* medical images are ever stored using lossy compression. Lossy compression can create artifacts, and medical images are used to make life-or-death decisions. "Sorry Mrs. Smith. That brain tumor was actually a JPEG artifact."
So, medical images will either use lossless or no compression. There are some lossless compression schemes that can gain about a 50% reduction in picture size. Nothing compared to 90% or so using JPEG, but not too bad either.
Yeah, but try finding a modern mobo that supports MFM or RLL.
I know. IDE has been around that long. But admit it. It was funny.
However, there IS a point here. How much longer to you think that PATA is going to hang on. In 5 years, everything will be SATA. Then, all of those HDs are junk.
In another 10 years, SATA will be dead and buried, just to be replaced by something else which is completely incompatible.
Nope. Only one coaster each month. The company is being split up into four separate pieces:
1) Coaster distribution - responsible for loading landfills with non-biodegradable chunks of worthless platic. Of course, a lot of these discs should be distributed with PC magazines, which are read by people who should already know better than to use AOL.
2) Moron recruitment - Dedicated to finding the dumbest of the dumb and encouraging them to POST IN ALL CAPS on every forum imaginable. They also believe that they can enlarge their m3mb3r easily for only $19.95
3) Customer Leaking - Maintains all customer data on Windows 95 machines without a firewall. This benefits the consumer because they do not have to type in their credit card number -- it is already all over the web!
4) Browser development - This company will spend a lot of money developing browsers which AOL will never even use.
The whole "innovator's dilemma" is a load of bull anyways, at least as described in this article.
Just suppose for a minute that this WAS a feasible way to do things. I can just imaging Western Digital or Seagate jumping all over this if they thought that it has promise. Those companies are in the business of providing storage. Please explain to me why they would not want this, assuming that they were the ones to develop it. The deliver a box that stores a lot of bits at low cost. Why should they care if it shakes or spins. If there is anything that can give them an advantage over the competition, they should do it.
What would be totally innovative is an invention that would eliminate the need for mass storage entirely. This is NOT that type of invention. This is just the possibility of a hard drive with a different shape/speed. BFD.
Too bad the idea is a complete load of bull. I would imagine that it would be easier to make a few billion transistors than a few billion heads. This just substitutes one type of fabrication for another. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Seriously, there are a LOT of things that can consume the rest. Just off of the top of my head (in order from my guess of highest to lowest bandwidth): * eMail * FTP * Other P2P * VOIP and other voice/video chat application. * VPN * VNC * IM Clients * Telnet
You know what? You're absolutly right. Of course we dont deserve the right to other people labor. But people dont deserve most of what they get in life. Be it good or bad, lifes not fair that way. But that doesnt mean that its wrong to take advantage of the situation and get ahead while you can. If ive got a means to gain somthing, be it knowledge, entertainment, or anythign else, if it doesnt take away from or harm someone esle, im going to go for it.
But the point is that people ARE being harmed. If you spent your hard-earned money to make the next indie film, and sales were dissapointing, but people were pirating like crazy, then you would be mad as hell, and rightfully so! People would be enjoying the movie that you poured yourself into, but you would have no help paying off the 3rd mortgage that you had to take out in order to finance the film.
A lot of people seem to have a "Robin Hood" mentality. It is OK to steal from the rich (big comanies) and give to the poor (themselves). As long as it is a faceless organization with a four-letter-acronym, then they do not care.
I think that the DMCA is the biggest load of malarky that I have seen in a long time, but can you blame the RIAA/MPAA?
Let me throw out a scenario from an alternate reality. It is far-fetched, but stick with me here:
The world: very much like our own, but all citizens were honest. There is no such thing as piracy, and the word "piracy" does not even exist. Everybody pays for everything that they use. Now, the MPAA/RIAA does not even need more than a token lawyer. There is no DMCA, because it would solve a problem that nobody even thought of. There is no CSS on a DVD player, because it is not needed. Playing a DVD on Linux is trivial, and the player is included in every distro (there is no "we can't give you this RPM in America" bull). You can use Alcohol 120% all you want, because the game companies know that you will use it for convenience, not piracy, and they do not care. P2P can be used freely because it is used for legal purposes. You can copy MP3s on and off of you iPod all you want! There is to DRM on any software or media. All of your music can be played on your PC without having to buy dry-erase markers! A DVD can be copies to a VHS tape, because it is fair use, and is only a media change. The word "Macrovision" does not even exist. Windows would NOT even have WPA, and games would not need a "play disc," but would instead run right off of the hard drive.
This sounds like geek utopia. And I would rather be part of the solution than part of the problem. So, if I want to watch a movie at home, I rent or buy it. I do not download games unless they are free/shareware. If I wanted Doom 3, I would shell out the $50 that they ask for it.
I do agree that the MPAA/RIAA have used lawyers when the SHOULD have been using geeks. The recording studios are like dinosaurs: they should be able to see the changing environment and either adapt or die. They should have opened up the first on-line music distribution well before Napster came out. Their bad. But two wrongs do NOT make a right - and never will.
First, this would eat away at the sales of their other more profitable products. Second, they only own the rights to their own games, and could not include ones from Namco, Konami, and all of the others without getting a legion of lawyers involved.
Too bad, though, Getting the old nintendo classics legally for around $40 or so would be awesome.
Yup. It is not exactly a terrible idea. There is some sense in doing this. In fact, if the only trouble is privacy, I predict new "passport holders" made entirely of metal. Stick the thing in a faraday cage, and it becomes completely harmless. Then, just take it out at border crossings and such.
In fact, one of those little black bags that hard drives and mobos come packed in might just work.
I don't know about you, but I am on a limited income. I make good money, but between supporting a wife and two kids, paying off student loans, mortgates, etc., I do not find a lot of money left over for buying games.
Sooo, if a larger variety of less expensive games suddenly came out, I would not be able to sudddenly double the amount of money that I spend. People on a limited income find it difficult to spend more. People with lots of disposable income will probably buy Doom 3 if it is $55 or $45.
You are correct, but there is more to the picture.
Game development is a *business*. That means that they are in this *to make money*. They have employees, rent, etc.
So, if piracy costs them sales, then they have to raise the price to compensate. Or perhaps they decide NOT to make that cool new experimental game which might be a big hit or it might flop. "Let's just stick to making another FPS. Not too original, but it will sell like hotcakes."
So, if there were no piracy, you might find slightly less expensive games, as well as a larger variety.
One thing to consider, however, is how many of those pirated copies represent lost sales. I bet that many people will pirate to get it now, and then buy it when it is on a shelf. Many other might pirate it, but would not have purchased it any event. Since it is difficult to do a survey of people downloading warez, we will never really know how many downloaded copies actually represent lost sales (my guess is about 1/4 or so).
A gheto version if this would be to take apart an existing remote control, and snip off the IR-LED. Instead, wire this to the base (or gate) of a transistor, which controls a chain of IR-LEDs powered from a separate source. Then, add a lens for focusing, and you have a remote-control-cannon. This would be capable of controlling a TV from a block away! The only problem is that you would have to program the remote to match the make/model of the TV being controlled.
Wire the power of the relay coil through the relay NC contacts. If you apply power, the relay opens, which cuts off power to the relay. Of course, the spring closes the relay contact again, which applies power, which cuts off power.
Now, the contacts of the relay will spark, as there is no snubbing diode. This is rich with all sorts of RF. And maybe adding a long wire as an antenna might belp.
Of course, this will probably not affect any TV which uses cable, but should affect antennas.
Slashdot Mirror
I can certainly see where you are coming from -- up to a certain point. If a woman is only 2 months along, and the baby is just a blob of cells, then I can say that you certainly have a point.
However, my daugher was born about three weeks early - and she was a baby at that time. She cried, she breathed, she felt pain. It is disgusting that somebody could even think of killing a baby of the same level of development that my daughter was when she was born. And yet, if I were to stick a tube in my daughter's head and suck her brains after she was born, I would be a murderer. If I were to do it 1/2 hour before, I would be an abortion doctor. The only difference between the two cases is moving location two feet, and 30 minutes.
So, in short, you can say anything that you want. I have held a newborn child, and the thought of depriving anybody of their life because of somebodies inconvenience is sickening.
And my signature is there to make you THINK. I was honestly surprised when people started posting on it. It was not intended to be a troll.
I think that the death penalty is OK. But show me how an unborn child can commit a crime. If the baby is guilty of murder, then it should be killed. Otherwise, it is entitled to life.
You think that it is OK to kill an unborn person who has never commited a crime, yet you should not be able to carry out a legal punishment on a murderer.
You disgust me.
PS: It is a sig. Don't get so worked up!
Yes, They can remove some "jaggies" if used properly. It is very good at removing periodic noise, which is exacly the sort of noise that you get when you up-sample. But the image will stll be blurry, just not blocky. Makes it look better, but you don't get any extra info. Fourier transforms are NOT some sort of magic bullet.
Just FYI: A discrete fourier transform is VERY closely related to the Cosine transform (you can implement a consine transform using a DFT and some data shuffling). The cosine transform is the key ingredient of the JPEG algorithm. More useless trivia.
Not only that, but it gives the impression that police departments have the manpower to assign two people to spend 40 Hrs/week on one case, and the budget to be able to do any desired test.
I am not a cop, but I would imagine that in the real world, investigators cannot spend that much time or money on each case. But I admit that I could be wrong.
Yes, you are probably right, but are you willing to bet your LIFE on it?
[Eastwood voice] Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya? [/Eastwood voice]
This also assumes that the person:
1) Has some good analog knowledge. How do you know which part to replace? Testing pars while they are still on the board is even more difficult.
2) Can look up replacement parts for any blown semis. Some transistors are marked with "house numbers," which makes replacing them very difficult, since you cannot even tell if they are NPN, PNP, N-channel, P-Channel, etc.
In short, a person with some experience can fix a PSU, and it is definately not rocket science. But if you have never cracked open a PSU, it can be imtimidating.
My situation exactly.
I kind of expected a BSOD or two. But the BSOD should at least stay on the screen long enough to read what the freakin' error is!
I even resorted to pointing a camcorder at the CRT in the hopes of recording what the offending
In short, SP2 sucks because I never even had the opportunity to debug it!
I have also heard stories of SP2 breaking the VPN at my job, but I have not even been able to use SP2 yet, so I cannot confirm or deny this.
PS: I also have an Athlon-64.
Wrong. The Department of Labor enforces things like overtime laws. The problem is that it only works if you are not "exempt."
Typically, "Exempt" refers to "professions" such as lawyer, doctor, and engineer. It can also apply to "management." A software coder without the word "engineer" in their title might be able to be considered non-exempt. The only way to know for sure is to contact the department of labor: http://www.dol.gov/.
They may be a bit slow to answer their phones, but keep trying!
Not really!
As you work more hours, the mistakes rise. A company would be better off getting 40 or 50 great hours instead of 80 or 90 mediocre to poor hours.
This also may burn out the people who have been there longer, so a lot of the team might be younger and more inexperienced.
Also, if this keeps up long enough, I wonder if the peons might consider unionizing. I have seen the abuse of unions, and it is not pretty. When a union gets too powerful, bad thing happen. But, obviously, in a case like this, a disposable work force means that management makes bad things happen.
But here are a couple of practical idea:
1) Contact the Department of Labor. They have investigators who look into such things. I know -- I have a relative who does this for a living.
2) Take a job coding a database, or become a sysadmin, or so anything else. Maybe a little less money, a little less glamor, but you actually get to know those people who live in your house. Then, you can code games in your spare time (spare time - what a concept), where you can enjoy it at your own pace.
The reason that companies work people 80 hours a week is that they CAN. If everybody refused to work these hours, it would hurt. You might get fired. But if EA had such a huge turnover of staff that they could not finish ANY project, they might change their ways.
Just my $0.02. From an engineer who works a fair amount of 40-hour-weeks.
Is today April 1st (please please). Winamp is my favorite player.
Can anybody recommend a good alternative? I am a Windows user (I can't get my nVidia chipset ethernet to work under Linux). The replacement should be capable, and free (no "register for only $39 for bonus features").
And before anybody mentions it, Real Player and Windows Media Plaer are NOT viable alternatives for me (but I think that Real's "Annabelle the sheep" is hilarious -- sheep are funny, just watch "A Close Shave").
I don't suppose that XMMS is available for Windows, is it?
RTFA.
Joe Sixpack will take a second, maybe two to send the e-mail. I doubt that he could type fast enough for this to be an issue...
Now, a zombie can only send one e-mail every second vs. the usual ten. Not perfect, but I would settle for 3 spams per day vs. my current 30.
Yes, it does require some changes to e-mail software, but the article points out that the changes can be slowly phased in. If an e-mail client includes the code and this idea never catches on, then the worst thing to happen is that there is a little coad-bloat in your client. No big deal!
I wonder how long before Mozilla incorporates this?
Wy wife would never accept any OS that did not have some sort of greeting card/sign/banner program. Think Print Master/Print Shop/Greeting Workshop/etc.
I suppose that I could use some combination of GIMP/Open Office to make do in a pinch, but my wife would never go through this trouble.
Also, it will be nice when Linux has enough mass to make GPS manufacturers (Garmin, Magellan) port their map-transfer software to Linux.
As a rule, *NO* medical images are ever stored using lossy compression. Lossy compression can create artifacts, and medical images are used to make life-or-death decisions. "Sorry Mrs. Smith. That brain tumor was actually a JPEG artifact."
So, medical images will either use lossless or no compression. There are some lossless compression schemes that can gain about a 50% reduction in picture size. Nothing compared to 90% or so using JPEG, but not too bad either.
Yeah, but try finding a modern mobo that supports MFM or RLL.
I know. IDE has been around that long. But admit it. It was funny.
However, there IS a point here. How much longer to you think that PATA is going to hang on. In 5 years, everything will be SATA. Then, all of those HDs are junk.
In another 10 years, SATA will be dead and buried, just to be replaced by something else which is completely incompatible.
Nope. Only one coaster each month. The company is being split up into four separate pieces:
1) Coaster distribution - responsible for loading landfills with non-biodegradable chunks of worthless platic. Of course, a lot of these discs should be distributed with PC magazines, which are read by people who should already know better than to use AOL.
2) Moron recruitment - Dedicated to finding the dumbest of the dumb and encouraging them to POST IN ALL CAPS on every forum imaginable. They also believe that they can enlarge their m3mb3r easily for only $19.95
3) Customer Leaking - Maintains all customer data on Windows 95 machines without a firewall. This benefits the consumer because they do not have to type in their credit card number -- it is already all over the web!
4) Browser development - This company will spend a lot of money developing browsers which AOL will never even use.
It makes perfect sense to me!
The whole "innovator's dilemma" is a load of bull anyways, at least as described in this article.
Just suppose for a minute that this WAS a feasible way to do things. I can just imaging Western Digital or Seagate jumping all over this if they thought that it has promise. Those companies are in the business of providing storage. Please explain to me why they would not want this, assuming that they were the ones to develop it. The deliver a box that stores a lot of bits at low cost. Why should they care if it shakes or spins. If there is anything that can give them an advantage over the competition, they should do it.
What would be totally innovative is an invention that would eliminate the need for mass storage entirely. This is NOT that type of invention. This is just the possibility of a hard drive with a different shape/speed. BFD.
Too bad the idea is a complete load of bull. I would imagine that it would be easier to make a few billion transistors than a few billion heads. This just substitutes one type of fabrication for another. Nothing to see here. Move along.
I bet that 65% is Gopher!
Seriously, there are a LOT of things that can consume the rest. Just off of the top of my head (in order from my guess of highest to lowest bandwidth):
* eMail
* FTP
* Other P2P
* VOIP and other voice/video chat application.
* VPN
* VNC
* IM Clients
* Telnet
But the point is that people ARE being harmed. If you spent your hard-earned money to make the next indie film, and sales were dissapointing, but people were pirating like crazy, then you would be mad as hell, and rightfully so! People would be enjoying the movie that you poured yourself into, but you would have no help paying off the 3rd mortgage that you had to take out in order to finance the film.
A lot of people seem to have a "Robin Hood" mentality. It is OK to steal from the rich (big comanies) and give to the poor (themselves). As long as it is a faceless organization with a four-letter-acronym, then they do not care.
I think that the DMCA is the biggest load of malarky that I have seen in a long time, but can you blame the RIAA/MPAA?
Let me throw out a scenario from an alternate reality. It is far-fetched, but stick with me here:
The world: very much like our own, but all citizens were honest. There is no such thing as piracy, and the word "piracy" does not even exist. Everybody pays for everything that they use. Now, the MPAA/RIAA does not even need more than a token lawyer. There is no DMCA, because it would solve a problem that nobody even thought of. There is no CSS on a DVD player, because it is not needed. Playing a DVD on Linux is trivial, and the player is included in every distro (there is no "we can't give you this RPM in America" bull). You can use Alcohol 120% all you want, because the game companies know that you will use it for convenience, not piracy, and they do not care. P2P can be used freely because it is used for legal purposes. You can copy MP3s on and off of you iPod all you want! There is to DRM on any software or media. All of your music can be played on your PC without having to buy dry-erase markers! A DVD can be copies to a VHS tape, because it is fair use, and is only a media change. The word "Macrovision" does not even exist. Windows would NOT even have WPA, and games would not need a "play disc," but would instead run right off of the hard drive.
This sounds like geek utopia. And I would rather be part of the solution than part of the problem. So, if I want to watch a movie at home, I rent or buy it. I do not download games unless they are free/shareware. If I wanted Doom 3, I would shell out the $50 that they ask for it.
I do agree that the MPAA/RIAA have used lawyers when the SHOULD have been using geeks. The recording studios are like dinosaurs: they should be able to see the changing environment and either adapt or die. They should have opened up the first on-line music distribution well before Napster came out. Their bad. But two wrongs do NOT make a right - and never will.
Nintendo is not likely to do this...
First, this would eat away at the sales of their other more profitable products. Second, they only own the rights to their own games, and could not include ones from Namco, Konami, and all of the others without getting a legion of lawyers involved.
Too bad, though, Getting the old nintendo classics legally for around $40 or so would be awesome.
Yup. It is not exactly a terrible idea. There is some sense in doing this. In fact, if the only trouble is privacy, I predict new "passport holders" made entirely of metal. Stick the thing in a faraday cage, and it becomes completely harmless. Then, just take it out at border crossings and such.
In fact, one of those little black bags that hard drives and mobos come packed in might just work.
I, for one, welcome our new hard-drive-monitoring overlords.
:P
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Not quite true.
I don't know about you, but I am on a limited income. I make good money, but between supporting a wife and two kids, paying off student loans, mortgates, etc., I do not find a lot of money left over for buying games.
Sooo, if a larger variety of less expensive games suddenly came out, I would not be able to sudddenly double the amount of money that I spend. People on a limited income find it difficult to spend more. People with lots of disposable income will probably buy Doom 3 if it is $55 or $45.
You are correct, but there is more to the picture.
Game development is a *business*. That means that they are in this *to make money*. They have employees, rent, etc.
So, if piracy costs them sales, then they have to raise the price to compensate. Or perhaps they decide NOT to make that cool new experimental game which might be a big hit or it might flop. "Let's just stick to making another FPS. Not too original, but it will sell like hotcakes."
So, if there were no piracy, you might find slightly less expensive games, as well as a larger variety.
One thing to consider, however, is how many of those pirated copies represent lost sales. I bet that many people will pirate to get it now, and then buy it when it is on a shelf. Many other might pirate it, but would not have purchased it any event. Since it is difficult to do a survey of people downloading warez, we will never really know how many downloaded copies actually represent lost sales (my guess is about 1/4 or so).
A gheto version if this would be to take apart an existing remote control, and snip off the IR-LED. Instead, wire this to the base (or gate) of a transistor, which controls a chain of IR-LEDs powered from a separate source. Then, add a lens for focusing, and you have a remote-control-cannon. This would be capable of controlling a TV from a block away! The only problem is that you would have to program the remote to match the make/model of the TV being controlled.
Simple.
One relay, one 9V battery, some wire.
Wire the power of the relay coil through the relay NC contacts. If you apply power, the relay opens, which cuts off power to the relay. Of course, the spring closes the relay contact again, which applies power, which cuts off power.
Now, the contacts of the relay will spark, as there is no snubbing diode. This is rich with all sorts of RF. And maybe adding a long wire as an antenna might belp.
Of course, this will probably not affect any TV which uses cable, but should affect antennas.
Here is a feature that a Creative Soundblaster has that most mobos do not: MIDI ports.
;)
I use an Audigy 2 mainly so that I can have MIDI ports to hook up a keyboard. The game bundle included was just icing on the cake
It used to be that mobos had MIDI ports on a header, and included a PCI-slot header if you needed it. Now, they don't even include MIDI as an option.
Yes, I know that they have USB-to-MIDI adapters, but I have no idea if those work under Linux or not.
Sorry. I just had to grumble. I am feeling better now, Nothing to see here. Move along.