We all know Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Sun) is using SCO as a proxy combatant against Linux supporters in order to discredit Linux and the GPL. Now enter SGI with SCO's threats to revoke their Unix license and use them as a prime example of IP violations within the Linux regime. As one poster has stated, SGI's stock is in the toilet and it is facing declining revenues. Enter IBM. IBM should make an *investment* in SGI to fund a legal challenge against SCO. SGI really needs to enjoin the SCO v. IBM and Redhat v. SCO cases on the side of the "good guys." With SCO publically threatening to revoke the IRIX license, this is proof positive that SCO intends to cripple SGI's attempts at conducting business, not to mention the Linux threats. IBM could really use another party joining the anti-SCO alliance and an investment could secure this. C'mon, IBM, make your move.
I myself have my fingers crossed SCO will rant against Apple, because Apple won't put up with that one bit... I would love to see a brawl with SCO on one side, and IBM, Redhat, SGI, Novell, SuSE and Apple on the other. The criminal charges would fly, and you'd see McBride confess it was all a scheme cooked up by Steve Balmer afterall... And glory be, the Consent Agreement violated again...
No, not quite. Unix systems like AIX, HP-UX, "and Solaris adhere to *Open-Standards*, as long as a companiy adheres to systems the conform to Open-Standards then they are *not* locked into a "proprietary" choice."
Okay, I accept that analysis. Would you accept that AIX is an IBM *branded* version of Unix that operates best on IBM branded hardware then?
"Whoa. I hope you googled for this. . . because the possibility that someone can just rattle this off the top of his head is just too scary to contemplate."
Why thank you, I think.:) It came from being a teenager and buying the Atari 7800 thinking the latest Atari arcade games would appear on it. Then some company named "Tengen" pops up and starts porting those games over to the NES instead of the 7800. I then read in Analog Magazine (an Atari computer mag) that Atari Games Corp. is a subsidiary of Namco. I then start writing letters (as a young teen, about 12 or 13 if I recall) directly to Jack Tramiel and everyone else at Atari Corp. about the need for getting the rights to the Atari Games Corp. arcade titles and that the whole name game is mixing up Joe Consumer. To no avail. Then I read in Electronic Gaming Monthly that Atari Corp. picked up the rights to Epyx's "Handy" game system and renames it the Lynx. I again write a letter directly to Jack Tramiel telling him the system will be a failure without any of the current Atari Games Corp. arcade titles (Atari Corp. did have the home rights to all pre-1984 Atari coin-op games and there were great ports on the 7800 of them). Shortly thereafter, the deal is struck. Probably moreso because of Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp. cooperating ever so slightly with their various lawsuits against never-convicted-monopolist Nintendo of America. I later became an Atari Corp. shareholder and really enjoyed drilling the board of directors at the annual shareholders meetings before the implosion of that company in 1996 (now the name brand for Infogrames)...
Finally Palm has ditched the legacy Motorola 68000 chip for modern variants. That's one less boat anchor they have to worry about in terms of successfully competing with Microsoft's offerings. Eh, maybe I should've looked at their website before I posted that; the original Zire model is still in production and it still is ARM-less. But then who is going to buy the Zire when the Zire21 is only $20 more? 6 more megs and a modern OS.
Now, with this current lineup, the best thing Palm can do is start adding Bluetooth and WiFi to the lower models within the next product cycle. Maybe even a camera since you can get the Sony Ericsson T616 phone with Bluetooth and a camera for $199 before special rebates kick in. This will keep PocketPC from further entrenching into the low-end, thereby adding confidence in PalmOS as a solid platform in order to drive more higher-end sales (coupled with more enterprise robustness of course)...
>why would anyone want to pay more than 0 cent to download Atari's Tetris to play on an emulator >if it's for hardcore Atari fans, they SHOULD still have a real Atari at home.
Explain your statement, please. The *real* Atari version of Tetris is a port of the Atari Games Corp. arcade edition. It was marketed by Tengen, the subsidiary of Atari Games Corp. The game never appeared on any "Atari" branded console because the consols were marketed by Atari Corp. which was a separate company. Atari Inc. was split up in 1984 by Warner Communications (the owners since 1976) with the consumer videogame and computer division being sold off to ex-Commodore founder Jack Tramiel & Co. with a 75% stake, and the arcade division was labelled as Atari Games Corp. and the majority stake sold off to Namco of Japan until Time Warner regained control ala 1991. The home division became known as Atari Corp., Atari Computer Corp., and Atari Entertainment Electronics Corp through various stages. Atari Corp. had exclusive rights to the name "Atari" for the home market. Atari Games Corp. had the rights to "Atari" for the arcades. Thus when Atari Games decided to get a piece of the home videogame industry, they created the brand "Tengen." Thus you must be speaking of the infamous Tengen Tetris edition for the NES which was later yanked from the market when Nintendo proved nobody but them owned the actual rights to the game. The Nintendo version was inferior and was the reason why dealers were able to charge $90 and more for the contraband Tengen edition.
The one similar Tetris game made in the arcade by Atari Games that did appear on Atari Corp.'s Lynx game system was "Klax." This was because Time Warner forced Atari Games and Atari Corp. to make up with each other and sign a cross-licensing deal to port post-1984 Atari Games arcade titles over to Atari Corp. game consoles. And for an Atari fan, it was a great time since the 1984 Atari Schism/Diaspora (sic)...
"Public schools lack funding to buy a bunch of these things, unless they get a killer discount."
I know how to solve that. Ditch textbooks. They are such a waste in terms of budgeted monies. Get a license to purchase the text books on PDF and require the license allow for students to print their own copies without running into copyright issues. But of course the publishers will never allow that. Look for some type of rebellion at the universities first before it spreads down to K-12 education.
"Post Amiga 1000 which had "Kickstart" on floppy! (later machines had "Kickstart" on Rom, You had to load "Workbench" from floppy). The core machine could be booted with an empty disk formatted as "Bootable" "
I can see why the Commodore Amiga holds the distinction of having been the world's first personal computer that suffered from computer viruses.
"I mean, is it possible that IBM can believe that they could make more dough owning linux as opposed to keeping it open-sourced? And, if they decided the former, could their fire-breathing lawyers win it in court?"
That would be counter to IBM's whole Linux strategy. IBM is making money off of services related to Linux because businesses want Linux so they aren't locked into a proprietary software choice. IBM owning Linux would make it proprietary and aside from stability, not a very convincing argument from the other champion of proprietary solutions, that being Microsoft. IBM already has a proprietary (version of Unix)solution of their own, and that is AIX.
"Go to Mcdonalds, buy a Whopper, it has 279g of fat, pay an "extra" 27.9c or something."
A Whopper at McDonald's? Pigs must be flying right now...:)
But seriously, I wouldn't mind a very lite-fat tax if the money was set aside to provide lipo-suction for the truly obese. I'd rather government pay to alleviate their troubles versus labeling them disabled and get to sit home, not work, and collect a check. That and it would alleviate the violations of personal space on public transportation and in airline seats too...
One of Microsoft's big aims with Longhorn was to offer VoIP support to every office cubicle via the operating system. Will Microsoft's DRM come into play to enable this?
Not about the technology. Here, take more of my money, my kids don't need to eat so much crap from McDonald's anyway. I'm waiting for the "fat tax". Can it be that far off?
Try the early 90s in California under Governor Pete Wilson. The Governor and the Legislature tried just about every conceivable way of coming up with revenue to fix the budget deficit then. And one of them was the "snack tax." What later killed the snack tax was the crazy system of defining what constituted a snack in the case of things like muffins. It was even more ridiculous than the *standards* of judging voter intent with the hanging chads in Florida during the 2000 Presidential Election fiasco. So I guess it goes to show you are behind the times by a good ten years!
Oh, and back in early 2002, a State Senator here in California tried to slap a tax on soft drinks in order to increase revenue but also to discourage children from drinking so much soda, especially from vending machines located in and/or near schools. They also tried to apply a sin tax on magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, etc. No word on if Maxim, FHM, or any of the others would've received the same treatment (getting "Wal-Mart'ed")...
...And the Golden State definitely needs some more revenues, excuse me, "licenses" to help fix our ongoing fiscal problems. Perhaps those companies should send some campaign contributions to some of the candidates going into October 7th... They better not call though...
If you want a dedicated 64 bit $3000 console to play this edition on, where's the port for the G5? I'd think the G5 would be the most uniform platform to work with on simplifying what needed to be supported via the stripped down Linux. Is the lack of a 64-bit Yellow Dog distribution the culprit behind this, or did the powers-that-be simply want to make some brownie points with the AMD fans first (not to mention that AMD and Nvidia kicked down development cash and perhaps Apple didn't?)?
"The Amiga never had this issue since everything it needed was on Rom."
I thought you had to load AmigaOS by floppy. Now I do know that aside from the first few 520ST's from 1985, all the Atari ST, TT, and Falcon line of computer booted from ROM, unless they were loading up Unix Sys V. on the TT (or the early editions of Linux on the Falcon)...
Yes, games did bypass most of the OS work on both platforms. That's one reason why Microsoft (and Apple before them before they dumped the idea) created the DirectX API, to efficently allocate game resources under Windows without having to boot up into the less complicated DOS system.
"by the fact that your tax dollars (if you live in the US) are going to create a game which simulates basic training? it's one thing if a private company wants to do it, but don't do it with my money!"
Grow up. I don't want to pay for Social Security because GenX won't be getting anything lavish as that, but I still have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for murderers on death row for 20 years, but I have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for lazy people with fake disabilities robbing our safety net, but I pay for it. Maybe you should write Osama or some of the other people we pay our taxes to the military to protect us from for some generous health care options. I'm sure he'd truly respect your pacifist beliefs just as much as he professes his loathing of socialists and other so-called infidels. Or say Mr. Hussein who some people around the world claim we illegally removed from power. I'm sure he'd thank you by introducing you to one of his industrial sized plastic shredders as a token of appreciation.
As for America's Army, its a great way to train basics to people interested in the Army experience in the leisure of their own home. When our country was founded (and before that, with the colonies and the homeland aka the United Kingdom), every able bodied man and teen were expected to be trained to protect their homes via the militia experience. Would you prefer the States offer militia training? Switzerland does. Would that make you shut up? How about compulsory military service when you turn 18, like how Greece, Russia, and Israel all require? And what about the fact that America's Army is rated M for Mature, meaning it is meant for 17 year olds and up, which is the very age someone can be recruited into the U.S. Military? Compare that with television commercials for the military that any child can watch on television, monitored or unmonitored? Doesn't that bother you more?
Video games have a long history of being dual-use technology. Atari's "Battlezone" (the first arcade tank simulator) impressed the U.S. Army so much they asked Atari to make some modified versions of it for training purposes back in 1980. The game was designed to be fun; it was not meant to be a pro-military tool. Atari did jump at the contract, and they did make one of the creators of the game modify it for the Army's needs before he quit. But the history of man being inhuman to his fellow man long predates the arrival of movies, television, and videogames. U.S. soldiers shooting children on the Trail of Tears happened long before "Pong" hit the scene in 1972.
Columbine was the fermentation of years of bullying two intelligent misfits who finally cracked and unleashed their own personal demons upon their tormenters and others who failed to prevent their debasement amongst their peers. It is not related to them bowling or how they loved to play *Doom* or listen to Marilyn Manson. Do you want to ban Pac-Man because it might promote cannibalism?
"Great - they're at it again. There is absolutely no proven link between the minute RF field radiated by a handset and health problems."
That's really funny. I get splitting headaches from using a Nokia 3390 (2G) for more than a few minutes. The headaches got so bad that last year I went to my doctor and told him what was going on. The next thing I know, I'm scheduled for a CAT scan to see if I have any tumors and it is being paid for by an unmentioned source. While I didn't have any tumors, I stopped using that cell phone shortly thereafter. I don't develop any headaches from my 2.4Ghz Uniden cordless phone.
And continuing on with the "junk science" tirade, I guess you haven't read any of the lawsuits against the cell phone companies from the families of deceased people who used cell phones and developed tumors in exactly the spot pertaining to where the antenna was. Is that junk science? You know, for people who have used microwave ovens for 50 some years since their introduction, I haven't heard of one case of a person dying with a tumor shaped like a microwave oven...
Using your logic because studies paid for by the cell phone companies haven't proven a link with tumors, maybe we should nuke the planet just to see if it really would cause a nuclear winter because its only a theory currently and we need to prove something concretely to dissuade such behavior. Or, on the less dramatic side, how about some information from cigarette smoking studies paid for by the Tobacco Companies? I bet they'll tell you that smoking is good for you! Or, how about the fact that autism rates have jumped sky-high in California during the same time period that MTBE was introduced into our gasoline and subsequently contaminated water supplies throughout the State?
"More than 350 Linux boxes were deployed during Episode II," says ILM production engineering manager Ken Beyer. Six hundred Linux desktops will be used for Star Wars: Episode III to be released summer 2005.
So if ILM were to increase the number of Linux boxes devoted to Episode III from 600 to 800 or 1,000 boxes, would their rendering power be enough to improve Natalie Portman's (so-far) cardboard performance(s)?
What would the Doctor be without his jelly babies? Oh no, we can't have the Sonic Screwdriver return because it might be a veiled product placement for Mac or Snap-On Tools! No K-9 because he's really a Sony Aibo! And the TARDIS is really product placement for AT&T!
I can understand American fear of China as a "vaguely understood communist threat", but eastern Europe???? Has it not yet sickered through to mainstream USA that the cold war is over?
Never count on any nation being your friend for long. Witness what France and Germany did to us at the UN Security Council. Perhaps the US should guard against so-called European friends, lest we allow the European Union to become a strong less-than-friendly regime to US interests outside of economics. Although I will go out of my way to say that the U.K. will always be an ally of the U.S., our one and only true-friend and motherland.
"that was a GOOD thing, saving thousands of human lives who otherwise could not afford medicine. withholding a lifesaving medicine for your own profit is not a very nice thing to do."
That's definitely not the cynical viewpoint. The cynical viewpoint is now those drugs will prolong the lives of many people who would've died from say AIDS. Now, they will live longer and that might allow each of them to spread the disease to others. Or, more money will be spent on medicines for the dying when it could be spend on education in preventing future generations from suffering the same fate. Its kinda like how the British took over India, built railroads and a modern bureaucracy, and brought modern Western medicine to the country. The life expectancy increased, and the population boomed, and then there were famine issues because of such humanitarian deeds. As the saying goes, one good deed does not go unpunished.
Slashdot Mirror
We all know Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Sun) is using SCO as a proxy combatant against Linux supporters in order to discredit Linux and the GPL. Now enter SGI with SCO's threats to revoke their Unix license and use them as a prime example of IP violations within the Linux regime. As one poster has stated, SGI's stock is in the toilet and it is facing declining revenues. Enter IBM. IBM should make an *investment* in SGI to fund a legal challenge against SCO. SGI really needs to enjoin the SCO v. IBM and Redhat v. SCO cases on the side of the "good guys." With SCO publically threatening to revoke the IRIX license, this is proof positive that SCO intends to cripple SGI's attempts at conducting business, not to mention the Linux threats. IBM could really use another party joining the anti-SCO alliance and an investment could secure this. C'mon, IBM, make your move.
I myself have my fingers crossed SCO will rant against Apple, because Apple won't put up with that one bit... I would love to see a brawl with SCO on one side, and IBM, Redhat, SGI, Novell, SuSE and Apple on the other. The criminal charges would fly, and you'd see McBride confess it was all a scheme cooked up by Steve Balmer afterall... And glory be, the Consent Agreement violated again...
No, not quite. Unix systems like AIX, HP-UX,
"and Solaris adhere to *Open-Standards*, as
long as a companiy adheres to systems the
conform to Open-Standards then they are *not*
locked into a "proprietary" choice."
Okay, I accept that analysis. Would you accept that AIX is an IBM *branded* version of Unix that operates best on IBM branded hardware then?
"Whoa. I hope you googled for this. . . because the possibility that someone can just rattle this off the top of his head is just too scary to contemplate."
:) It came from being a teenager and buying the Atari 7800 thinking the latest Atari arcade games would appear on it. Then some company named "Tengen" pops up and starts porting those games over to the NES instead of the 7800. I then read in Analog Magazine (an Atari computer mag) that Atari Games Corp. is a subsidiary of Namco. I then start writing letters (as a young teen, about 12 or 13 if I recall) directly to Jack Tramiel and everyone else at Atari Corp. about the need for getting the rights to the Atari Games Corp. arcade titles and that the whole name game is mixing up Joe Consumer. To no avail. Then I read in Electronic Gaming Monthly that Atari Corp. picked up the rights to Epyx's "Handy" game system and renames it the Lynx. I again write a letter directly to Jack Tramiel telling him the system will be a failure without any of the current Atari Games Corp. arcade titles (Atari Corp. did have the home rights to all pre-1984 Atari coin-op games and there were great ports on the 7800 of them). Shortly thereafter, the deal is struck. Probably moreso because of Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp. cooperating ever so slightly with their various lawsuits against never-convicted-monopolist Nintendo of America. I later became an Atari Corp. shareholder and really enjoyed drilling the board of directors at the annual shareholders meetings before the implosion of that company in 1996 (now the name brand for Infogrames)...
Why thank you, I think.
Finally Palm has ditched the legacy Motorola 68000 chip for modern variants. That's one less boat anchor they have to worry about in terms of successfully competing with Microsoft's offerings. Eh, maybe I should've looked at their website before I posted that; the original Zire model is still in production and it still is ARM-less. But then who is going to buy the Zire when the Zire21 is only $20 more? 6 more megs and a modern OS.
Now, with this current lineup, the best thing Palm can do is start adding Bluetooth and WiFi to the lower models within the next product cycle. Maybe even a camera since you can get the Sony Ericsson T616 phone with Bluetooth and a camera for $199 before special rebates kick in. This will keep PocketPC from further entrenching into the low-end, thereby adding confidence in PalmOS as a solid platform in order to drive more higher-end sales (coupled with more enterprise robustness of course)...
...and a 360 degree joystick....that was quite a game...one of the best non-Atari arcade games from the early 80s...
>why would anyone want to pay more than 0 cent to download Atari's Tetris to play on an emulator
>if it's for hardcore Atari fans, they SHOULD still have a real Atari at home.
Explain your statement, please. The *real* Atari version of Tetris is a port of the Atari Games Corp. arcade edition. It was marketed by Tengen, the subsidiary of Atari Games Corp. The game never appeared on any "Atari" branded console because the consols were marketed by Atari Corp. which was a separate company. Atari Inc. was split up in 1984 by Warner Communications (the owners since 1976) with the consumer videogame and computer division being sold off to ex-Commodore founder Jack Tramiel & Co. with a 75% stake, and the arcade division was labelled as Atari Games Corp. and the majority stake sold off to Namco of Japan until Time Warner regained control ala 1991. The home division became known as Atari Corp., Atari Computer Corp., and Atari Entertainment Electronics Corp through various stages. Atari Corp. had exclusive rights to the name "Atari" for the home market. Atari Games Corp. had the rights to "Atari" for the arcades. Thus when Atari Games decided to get a piece of the home videogame industry, they created the brand "Tengen." Thus you must be speaking of the infamous Tengen Tetris edition for the NES which was later yanked from the market when Nintendo proved nobody but them owned the actual rights to the game. The Nintendo version was inferior and was the reason why dealers were able to charge $90 and more for the contraband Tengen edition.
The one similar Tetris game made in the arcade by Atari Games that did appear on Atari Corp.'s Lynx game system was "Klax." This was because Time Warner forced Atari Games and Atari Corp. to make up with each other and sign a cross-licensing deal to port post-1984 Atari Games arcade titles over to Atari Corp. game consoles. And for an Atari fan, it was a great time since the 1984 Atari Schism/Diaspora (sic)...
"Public schools lack funding to buy a bunch of these things, unless they get a killer discount."
I know how to solve that. Ditch textbooks. They are such a waste in terms of budgeted monies. Get a license to purchase the text books on PDF and require the license allow for students to print their own copies without running into copyright issues. But of course the publishers will never allow that. Look for some type of rebellion at the universities first before it spreads down to K-12 education.
"Post Amiga 1000 which had "Kickstart" on floppy! (later machines had "Kickstart" on Rom, You had to load "Workbench" from floppy). The core machine could be booted with an empty disk formatted as "Bootable" "
I can see why the Commodore Amiga holds the distinction of having been the world's first personal computer that suffered from computer viruses.
...watching two senior citizens pummel each other with legacy computer equipment; one using a Commodore PET computer and the other a Trash-80...
Then again, people do buy those *Bum Fights* DVDs...
"The way I see it, an attack on one member of the Open Source community is an attack on all of us."
:)
What's this? The Open Source community emulating NATO's mutual defense treaty clause? Someone, get me the Supreme Allied Commander on the phone!
"Obsession with money leads to destruction."
Heh heh. You sound like Yoda lecturing Anakin Skywalker.
"I mean, is it possible that IBM can believe that they could make more dough owning linux as opposed to keeping it open-sourced? And, if they decided the former, could their fire-breathing lawyers win it in court?"
That would be counter to IBM's whole Linux strategy. IBM is making money off of services related to Linux because businesses want Linux so they aren't locked into a proprietary software choice. IBM owning Linux would make it proprietary and aside from stability, not a very convincing argument from the other champion of proprietary solutions, that being Microsoft. IBM already has a proprietary (version of Unix)solution of their own, and that is AIX.
"Go to Mcdonalds, buy a Whopper, it has 279g of fat, pay an "extra" 27.9c or something."
:)
A Whopper at McDonald's? Pigs must be flying right now...
But seriously, I wouldn't mind a very lite-fat tax if the money was set aside to provide lipo-suction for the truly obese. I'd rather government pay to alleviate their troubles versus labeling them disabled and get to sit home, not work, and collect a check. That and it would alleviate the violations of personal space on public transportation and in airline seats too...
One of Microsoft's big aims with Longhorn was to offer VoIP support to every office cubicle via the operating system. Will Microsoft's DRM come into play to enable this?
Not about the technology. Here, take more of my money, my kids don't need to eat so much crap from McDonald's anyway. I'm waiting for the "fat tax". Can it be that far off?
Try the early 90s in California under Governor Pete Wilson. The Governor and the Legislature tried just about every conceivable way of coming up with revenue to fix the budget deficit then. And one of them was the "snack tax." What later killed the snack tax was the crazy system of defining what constituted a snack in the case of things like muffins. It was even more ridiculous than the *standards* of judging voter intent with the hanging chads in Florida during the 2000 Presidential Election fiasco. So I guess it goes to show you are behind the times by a good ten years!
Oh, and back in early 2002, a State Senator here in California tried to slap a tax on soft drinks in order to increase revenue but also to discourage children from drinking so much soda, especially from vending machines located in and/or near schools. They also tried to apply a sin tax on magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, etc. No word on if Maxim, FHM, or any of the others would've received the same treatment (getting "Wal-Mart'ed")...
...And the Golden State definitely needs some more revenues, excuse me, "licenses" to help fix our ongoing fiscal problems. Perhaps those companies should send some campaign contributions to some of the candidates going into October 7th... They better not call though...
If you want a dedicated 64 bit $3000 console to play this edition on, where's the port for the G5? I'd think the G5 would be the most uniform platform to work with on simplifying what needed to be supported via the stripped down Linux. Is the lack of a 64-bit Yellow Dog distribution the culprit behind this, or did the powers-that-be simply want to make some brownie points with the AMD fans first (not to mention that AMD and Nvidia kicked down development cash and perhaps Apple didn't?)?
"The Amiga never had this issue since everything it needed was on Rom."
I thought you had to load AmigaOS by floppy. Now I do know that aside from the first few 520ST's from 1985, all the Atari ST, TT, and Falcon line of computer booted from ROM, unless they were loading up Unix Sys V. on the TT (or the early editions of Linux on the Falcon)...
Yes, games did bypass most of the OS work on both platforms. That's one reason why Microsoft (and Apple before them before they dumped the idea) created the DirectX API, to efficently allocate game resources under Windows without having to boot up into the less complicated DOS system.
"by the fact that your tax dollars (if you live in the US) are going to create a game which simulates basic training? it's one thing if a private company wants to do it, but don't do it with my money!"
Grow up. I don't want to pay for Social Security because GenX won't be getting anything lavish as that, but I still have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for murderers on death row for 20 years, but I have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for lazy people with fake disabilities robbing our safety net, but I pay for it. Maybe you should write Osama or some of the other people we pay our taxes to the military to protect us from for some generous health care options. I'm sure he'd truly respect your pacifist beliefs just as much as he professes his loathing of socialists and other so-called infidels. Or say Mr. Hussein who some people around the world claim we illegally removed from power. I'm sure he'd thank you by introducing you to one of his industrial sized plastic shredders as a token of appreciation.
As for America's Army, its a great way to train basics to people interested in the Army experience in the leisure of their own home. When our country was founded (and before that, with the colonies and the homeland aka the United Kingdom), every able bodied man and teen were expected to be trained to protect their homes via the militia experience. Would you prefer the States offer militia training? Switzerland does. Would that make you shut up? How about compulsory military service when you turn 18, like how Greece, Russia, and Israel all require? And what about the fact that America's Army is rated M for Mature, meaning it is meant for 17 year olds and up, which is the very age someone can be recruited into the U.S. Military? Compare that with television commercials for the military that any child can watch on television, monitored or unmonitored? Doesn't that bother you more?
Video games have a long history of being dual-use technology. Atari's "Battlezone" (the first arcade tank simulator) impressed the U.S. Army so much they asked Atari to make some modified versions of it for training purposes back in 1980. The game was designed to be fun; it was not meant to be a pro-military tool. Atari did jump at the contract, and they did make one of the creators of the game modify it for the Army's needs before he quit. But the history of man being inhuman to his fellow man long predates the arrival of movies, television, and videogames. U.S. soldiers shooting children on the Trail of Tears happened long before "Pong" hit the scene in 1972.
Columbine was the fermentation of years of bullying two intelligent misfits who finally cracked and unleashed their own personal demons upon their tormenters and others who failed to prevent their debasement amongst their peers. It is not related to them bowling or how they loved to play *Doom* or listen to Marilyn Manson. Do you want to ban Pac-Man because it might promote cannibalism?
Ergo, your argument is null and void.
"Great - they're at it again. There is absolutely no proven link between the minute RF field radiated by a handset and health problems."
That's really funny. I get splitting headaches from using a Nokia 3390 (2G) for more than a few minutes. The headaches got so bad that last year I went to my doctor and told him what was going on. The next thing I know, I'm scheduled for a CAT scan to see if I have any tumors and it is being paid for by an unmentioned source. While I didn't have any tumors, I stopped using that cell phone shortly thereafter. I don't develop any headaches from my 2.4Ghz Uniden cordless phone.
And continuing on with the "junk science" tirade, I guess you haven't read any of the lawsuits against the cell phone companies from the families of deceased people who used cell phones and developed tumors in exactly the spot pertaining to where the antenna was. Is that junk science? You know, for people who have used microwave ovens for 50 some years since their introduction, I haven't heard of one case of a person dying with a tumor shaped like a microwave oven...
Using your logic because studies paid for by the cell phone companies haven't proven a link with tumors, maybe we should nuke the planet just to see if it really would cause a nuclear winter because its only a theory currently and we need to prove something concretely to dissuade such behavior. Or, on the less dramatic side, how about some information from cigarette smoking studies paid for by the Tobacco Companies? I bet they'll tell you that smoking is good for you! Or, how about the fact that autism rates have jumped sky-high in California during the same time period that MTBE was introduced into our gasoline and subsequently contaminated water supplies throughout the State?
"Heating the brain a little is how it does it. Some of the body's subsystems work more efficiently when warmer than normal operating temperature"
:)
Leave it to a Slashdot reader to suggest overclocking the human brain for better performance...
"More than 350 Linux boxes were deployed during Episode II," says ILM production engineering manager Ken Beyer. Six hundred Linux desktops will be used for Star Wars: Episode III to be released summer 2005.
So if ILM were to increase the number of Linux boxes devoted to Episode III from 600 to 800 or 1,000 boxes, would their rendering power be enough to improve Natalie Portman's (so-far) cardboard performance(s)?
What would the Doctor be without his jelly babies? Oh no, we can't have the Sonic Screwdriver return because it might be a veiled product placement for Mac or Snap-On Tools! No K-9 because he's really a Sony Aibo! And the TARDIS is really product placement for AT&T!
I can understand American fear of China as a "vaguely understood communist threat", but eastern Europe???? Has it not yet sickered through to mainstream USA that the cold war is over?
Never count on any nation being your friend for long. Witness what France and Germany did to us at the UN Security Council. Perhaps the US should guard against so-called European friends, lest we allow the European Union to become a strong less-than-friendly regime to US interests outside of economics. Although I will go out of my way to say that the U.K. will always be an ally of the U.S., our one and only true-friend and motherland.
"that was a GOOD thing, saving thousands of human lives who otherwise could not afford medicine. withholding a lifesaving medicine for your own profit is not a very nice thing to do."
That's definitely not the cynical viewpoint. The cynical viewpoint is now those drugs will prolong the lives of many people who would've died from say AIDS. Now, they will live longer and that might allow each of them to spread the disease to others. Or, more money will be spent on medicines for the dying when it could be spend on education in preventing future generations from suffering the same fate. Its kinda like how the British took over India, built railroads and a modern bureaucracy, and brought modern Western medicine to the country. The life expectancy increased, and the population boomed, and then there were famine issues because of such humanitarian deeds. As the saying goes, one good deed does not go unpunished.