What happened to trust? It's an uncertainty. Even if you can trust me now, I promise you that when Your Competitor comes by and shows me a paycheck with my name on it that's about $5000 over what you're paying me, and all I have to do is give them a folder of files off my laptop, fuck trust, I'm getting MONEY.
Anyway... It's really a straightforward problem where you'd need seriously good proof to even suggest sabotage. This recovery was a chain of events that had to go off flawlessly, or this would happen. First, the reentry had to be spot-on. Second, the parachute had to work. Third, the recovery aircraft had to snatch it in mid air with a hook. The reentry, parachute, aircraft, pilot, hook, and any one of dozens of instruments used to get them all into the right alignment had to work right, or it the whole show would end with a dull thud.
Even if it were, it's not a blow to our scientific credibility (unless we go the way of the joke below, and announce that the sun is in fact composed mostly of sand and broken glass), just a minor commentary on our engineering credibility. So we failed to get a sequence of time-critical events to go off within obsecnely narrow margins of error. Big deal, Europe MISSED MARS two times out of four.
The thing is, they don't have the rights to any games that they can verify yet. So far, they've claimed that Starcraft: Ghost, Fallout BOS, UT2k4, Doom 3, Diablo 2, and probably a dozen other games were to be in their launch lineup. The catch is, you send an email to id, Interplay (when it was still around), or Blizzard, and they say they don't have plans to release their games on the Phantom (usually with the "at this time" qualification attached).
I registered to reserve the opportunity to preorder about a year ago. They asked a lot of funny questions, though. I had to list all the games I'd bought in the last year, how much money I make, my social security number, credit report, father's maiden name, and it had a section at the bottom with a check box and a line saying, "I hereby certify that I ceremoniously killed a domestic companion animal at some time after beginning to fill out this form," and wouldn't let me continue until I checked it. I sure hope I get mine in time for Duke Nukem Forever.
The difference is that Saying "Compare to Advil" is not the same thing as using the box art from Advil, and putting the actual Advil logo on it, but putting bargain bin aspirin in the bottle. Microsoft isn't saying, "Compare this music lineup to WIOG/Citadel, they're actually saying, "Hey, look, we have WIOG's music lineup.
I've listened to a couple local stations that are on this. They go an extra step. In one case, they have the special hourly shows matched even. They play mostply pop in the mornings while the morning show is running, they play 90's music from 12 to 12:30 PM, they play dance remixes from 7 PM to midnight Friday and Saturday, and they play mostly rap Monday through Firday from 7PM to 10, when the "Party House" guys are on. When they have the top 5 requests at 12:35 PM, the "Fab 5" at 8 PM, and the top 30 on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, they match the track order. This isn't just making St. Tom's Aspirin and telling people it's just like St. John's or Advil. They're picking up St. John's for free, sanding off the markings on the pill, putting it back in the SAME bottle, and selling it in the same package.
They're not a dying genre by any means, just a very small one that never was all that big compared to action or RPG titles. There've been a few big name adventure games like Myst, but not enough for me to say the genre's on a decline now.
They don't even need that, since the console is subscription based. So you can get that $500, plus money every month, and I guarantee it'll be an excessive fee, since they're delivering "30000" games accross it, so they can just say, "Games are expensive. Imagine how much you'd have to pay to buy 30,000 games in the store. $75 a month is a bargain for you people!"
Suddenly, those suckers are worth a lot less money, and you need a lot less of them. Worried you can't keep the suckers? Don't worry, make the hardware part of the service package, so they can't buy it without signing a one year contract or something.
As for their 30,000 games, I'm still thinking the phantom will turn out to be nothing more than an overhyped bittorrent client or something, and I'm waiting for some manner of legal issues to pop up the instant the real thing gets picked over.
This raises an interesting point. This has been around for a while now, as well as a simmilar project (see below), and only now gotten smacked. Makes me wonder if they might be planning a re-remake of Chrono Trigger on the GBA or other platform(s), which a lot of fans have been pining for (Personally, I'd rather have a new Chrono game, or better yet, a new original game, than a third or fourth iteration to a game I pretty much mastered in middle school).
As I said above, there was another simmilar project called "Chrono Master" being worked on by Demiforce, which wasn't a 3D remake, but a true-to-the-original remake with full modding tools and editors included. Simmilar projects have been done with the original Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda games, and have been pretty interesting. I doubt this is still in the works, though, since the project page for it has been a broken link for nearly a year, and Demiforce's website hasn't been updated in over eight months, and that was a very minor fix to an unrelated project. Even if it was, this would be bad news for it, most likely.
The slogan is one thing. There's a station here in Michigan that has, "Light rock, no talk," which is effectively the same thing. But the letters are a different matter. The four letter callsign is supposed to be unique for all television/radio broadcast stations, and is usually trademarked as a matter of course when starting the station. Add together three things:
1. They're using the station's (un-unique) slogan.
2. They're using the station's unique callsign.
3. They're playing the exact same tracks as that station.
Things aren't nearly as funny.
Make a copy that has the DJ chatter, and strip out the music instead?
With all due respect to WIOG, they have shitty music. If it weren't for the fact that their DJ/intern chatter is hilarious (most of the time), I sure wouldn't listen.
The very old rule with extradition is that the crime falls under the jurisdiction of where the victim is. This gets sticky with some crimes, when there's no clear victim, but in this case the victim is a US-based corporation. Like it or not, corporations can be victims (governments sure like it).
If you stand in Canada and I'm just over the border in the US, and I shoot you, the crime falls into Canadian jusisdiction. If Bob in New Jersy runs a kiddie porn site, and the children portrayed live in Japan, then it falls under Japanese law. If Mike in Italy steals from a US bank, he gets shipped to the US.
Sticky things come with money and goods counterfeiting, which is usually international, and it's hard to decide who the victim is. The way it usually works, whoever legitamately makes what is being counterfeited is the key victim. Warez is effectively software counterfeiting, and precidents from Chinese companies producing fake Nokia phone batteries or something simmilar could be applied, although the end result would ideally be a new precident, since warez isn't usually a for-profit business.
An aborted landing from Hawaii could land in the shuttle backup field in the western US (I can't remember just where it was. Is it Edwards Air Force Base?), or, earlier than that, the launch vehicle could be designed to ditch in the water. The pre-shuttle launch systems would do this in the Atlantic, and I think the shuttle was redesigned for crew (if not orbiter) survivability in a water landing after the Challenger disaster.
Planetary rotation. The speed at the surface is higher the closer you are to the equator. At the equator, you get the first 1000 mph of your final speed for free from the earth's spin. At the pole, you have to get the whole velocity yourself (and are also limited in your orbital trajectory choices). The closer to the equator you are, the more free velocity you get, and the more orbital choices you have (as I understand it, the "highest" lattitude of the orbit has to be at least as high as the launch point, or else you need to do fuel-costly orbital corrections after launch)
The applicable law isn't even the thing to worry about. The Hague deals with high crimes: War crimes, crimes against humanity, etc. These are the really BIG problems, and they generally WON'T be tried (at least not fairly) by their own coutnry, because they're usually being committed by the government itself, and they often don't have laws against it, or make laws supporting it (example: Apartheid). Because of this, the constitutional issues are pretty much moot with the crimes the Hague deals with - you usually have to remove the government before you can bring them to trial.
There are lots of international crimes every day. Drugs, counterfieting, warez, smuggling, illegal immigration, some guy in Texas shooting a hooker and running to Tiajuana, etc. If even a fraction of it went to the Hague, they'd have a hell of a lot to do. This sort of court load belongs under its own jurisdiction.
Good, because that's going to be what you are. It'll be very much like the original series, too. You can beam down to a planet, explore, get killed gruesomely and morned by a captain who doesn't know and probably can't pronounce your name, and then you'll respawn back in the ship in time for the next episode.
Seriously, though, this is the complaint that SWG got. Players in MMO games aren't "main characters," they're lots of supporting characters. There were 1000 people on the Enterprize in TNG. About 20 of them were named in the series. The other 980 are the roles that would be filled by players in a Star Trek MMORPG.
I liked Shattered Universe (I think that was the title). It wasn't very Trek-ish, but it was interesting in that it was based in the alternate universe where the Federation is the big bad guy going around kicking everybody's ass (featured in one episode of the original series, and several of DS9). Since it's a much less explored aspect of the Star Trek universe, it leaves more room for new (and fun) things that don't fit in the main universe.
What I'm wondering is, will this even be different? I can think of a few different things, in order of how likely I think they are:
1. Same thing as the old DirectX, but it includes a nifty remote function call that leads to a swarm of new worms. 2. Same thing as the old DirectX, but every game and driver released before will stop working. 3. Same thing as the old DirectX, but even the new games won't work anymore. 4. Same thing as the old DirectX, just with a new name. Everything works the same.
The file and the material in question are two different things. The file is the X File program, the material is the X Files TV show. Just because their claim that the file in question contains the material in question is purjory, they're still acting on behalf of the owner of the SHOW, not the FILE.
They ARE authorized to act on behalf of the rightholders to X Files TV show, and they were acting on their behalf, so they didn't purjor themselves on this point. They were acting wrongly, negligently, and stupidly, but they were authorized to act.
The fanboys on GameFAQs.com say it's "going to be teh worst game ever" "it's not even an rpg" (From the same group that say Planescape, Morrowind, and Baldur's Gate aren't RPGs) "my friend already has it and it doesn't even run" (popular troll method against upcomming games, like the guy who claimed to have Half Life 2 already and said it prevents the use of mods), and "the graphics don't look anything like a good REAL rpg like Final Fantasy VII (PS SPEHIRATH PWNZ U IN T3H BUN) so it suks."
I've bought a number of games that got this level of GameFAQs trollage, and so far, every single one of them has been aboslutely stellar (Fallout, Knights of the Old Republic, Planescape Torment, Golden Sun, Morrowind, Valkyrie Profile, and Tales of Symphonia come to mind). It's been such a good indicator so far, I consider the trollage level a better indicator of how good will probably be than any preview.
If too many GameFAQs users seem to think it'll be good, however, I won't touch it with a ten foot pole until a source I greatly respect gives it a thumbs up.
Hydrogen is safer than gasoline if it catches fire. It rises rapidly, and burns rapidly, so if you do light off your gas tank, you won't be exposed to fire for very long. With gasoline, however, it can burn for an extended period of time.
Most of the death on the Hindenburg was actually the structural material of the airship collapsing on the passenger compartments on its underside, not burning.
"If [the aliens] are so smart, they'll adjust their signal for their planet's motion."
Only one thing I always say about this: It's a very naive to assume aliens are smart. We're not all that bright by the standards we seem to expect of aliens, and we used to be a lot dumber. We're just as likely to detect an early industrial civlization by their sitcom broadcasts as we are to detect some hyperadvanced godlike race beaming lasers at us accross the galaxy.
You can have coherent radiation that isn't in a beam, but broadcast the same way radio is. However, since that sort of signal would also weaken with distance, it would be the same issue to detect that we have with radio. A laser beam would certainly reach us with much higher power from much larger distances, but it means it has to be aimed (quite precisely) at us, meaning they know/suspect/hope somebody is here listening, or they missed a reciever and we got a one-in-a-trillion lucky shot. The second is very unlikely, and the first means they're probably fairly close by and have detected us (meaning we could probably detect them by radio as well), and that they're advanced enough to have detected us and attempted to signal us with an interstellar laser beam. It's too Hollywood to assume that aliens are more advanced than us. It's just as likely that we end up detecting an industrial civilization no more advanced than ours as a hyper advanced civilization.
It was probably somebody looking at results who overreacted. SETI's site has a list of their "hopefuls" and such, most of which are nothing like this. I suspect somebody looked at the latest batch of data and saw a "hopeful" signal and didn't realize that those aren't that rare and usually pan out to be nothing.
They may get here easier, but there's a catch there: It'd have to be pointed at us. That means one of several things:
1. They know we're here and are making a concerted effort to attempt contact us. This means they can't be more than a few light years away, and have already picked up OUR radio waves, meaning odds are we can hear their radio too.
2. They had to know that there was a habitable world here long enough ago to send a signal here on the random chance that there's somebody here to notice. (i.e. they live far enough away that when they sent the laser message, they couldn't know wether or not anybody was here to pick it up)
3. They missed a reciever and hit us by blind luck.
This would also limit us to detecting civilizations advanced enough to have already detected us, and have lasers with narrow enough beams that it's still coherent and good enough aim to still hit us accross great distances.
Non-coherent broadcasts like radio, on the other hand, travels in all directions, and would be expected to be used by civilizations less advanced than us, so we could detect nearly any industrial or better society (assuming we could resolve the signal and recognize it as a signal). Looking for this, we can detect any civilzation, wether they're looking for us or not.
Lasers are easier to detect if they get to us, but radio is much more likely to get to us.
Have we been so primed by TV and movies to expect fantastical aliens that we don't think that we may end up finding the technological equivalent to ourselves fifty or a hundred years ago?
Slashdot Mirror
What happened to trust? It's an uncertainty. Even if you can trust me now, I promise you that when Your Competitor comes by and shows me a paycheck with my name on it that's about $5000 over what you're paying me, and all I have to do is give them a folder of files off my laptop, fuck trust, I'm getting MONEY.
Yeah, yeah, replying to flaimbait, I know.
Anyway... It's really a straightforward problem where you'd need seriously good proof to even suggest sabotage. This recovery was a chain of events that had to go off flawlessly, or this would happen. First, the reentry had to be spot-on. Second, the parachute had to work. Third, the recovery aircraft had to snatch it in mid air with a hook. The reentry, parachute, aircraft, pilot, hook, and any one of dozens of instruments used to get them all into the right alignment had to work right, or it the whole show would end with a dull thud.
Even if it were, it's not a blow to our scientific credibility (unless we go the way of the joke below, and announce that the sun is in fact composed mostly of sand and broken glass), just a minor commentary on our engineering credibility. So we failed to get a sequence of time-critical events to go off within obsecnely narrow margins of error. Big deal, Europe MISSED MARS two times out of four.
The thing is, they don't have the rights to any games that they can verify yet. So far, they've claimed that Starcraft: Ghost, Fallout BOS, UT2k4, Doom 3, Diablo 2, and probably a dozen other games were to be in their launch lineup. The catch is, you send an email to id, Interplay (when it was still around), or Blizzard, and they say they don't have plans to release their games on the Phantom (usually with the "at this time" qualification attached).
I registered to reserve the opportunity to preorder about a year ago. They asked a lot of funny questions, though. I had to list all the games I'd bought in the last year, how much money I make, my social security number, credit report, father's maiden name, and it had a section at the bottom with a check box and a line saying, "I hereby certify that I ceremoniously killed a domestic companion animal at some time after beginning to fill out this form," and wouldn't let me continue until I checked it. I sure hope I get mine in time for Duke Nukem Forever.
The difference is that Saying "Compare to Advil" is not the same thing as using the box art from Advil, and putting the actual Advil logo on it, but putting bargain bin aspirin in the bottle. Microsoft isn't saying, "Compare this music lineup to WIOG/Citadel, they're actually saying, "Hey, look, we have WIOG's music lineup. I've listened to a couple local stations that are on this. They go an extra step. In one case, they have the special hourly shows matched even. They play mostply pop in the mornings while the morning show is running, they play 90's music from 12 to 12:30 PM, they play dance remixes from 7 PM to midnight Friday and Saturday, and they play mostly rap Monday through Firday from 7PM to 10, when the "Party House" guys are on. When they have the top 5 requests at 12:35 PM, the "Fab 5" at 8 PM, and the top 30 on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, they match the track order. This isn't just making St. Tom's Aspirin and telling people it's just like St. John's or Advil. They're picking up St. John's for free, sanding off the markings on the pill, putting it back in the SAME bottle, and selling it in the same package.
They're not a dying genre by any means, just a very small one that never was all that big compared to action or RPG titles. There've been a few big name adventure games like Myst, but not enough for me to say the genre's on a decline now.
They don't even need that, since the console is subscription based. So you can get that $500, plus money every month, and I guarantee it'll be an excessive fee, since they're delivering "30000" games accross it, so they can just say, "Games are expensive. Imagine how much you'd have to pay to buy 30,000 games in the store. $75 a month is a bargain for you people!"
Suddenly, those suckers are worth a lot less money, and you need a lot less of them. Worried you can't keep the suckers? Don't worry, make the hardware part of the service package, so they can't buy it without signing a one year contract or something.
As for their 30,000 games, I'm still thinking the phantom will turn out to be nothing more than an overhyped bittorrent client or something, and I'm waiting for some manner of legal issues to pop up the instant the real thing gets picked over.
This raises an interesting point. This has been around for a while now, as well as a simmilar project (see below), and only now gotten smacked. Makes me wonder if they might be planning a re-remake of Chrono Trigger on the GBA or other platform(s), which a lot of fans have been pining for (Personally, I'd rather have a new Chrono game, or better yet, a new original game, than a third or fourth iteration to a game I pretty much mastered in middle school).
As I said above, there was another simmilar project called "Chrono Master" being worked on by Demiforce, which wasn't a 3D remake, but a true-to-the-original remake with full modding tools and editors included. Simmilar projects have been done with the original Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda games, and have been pretty interesting. I doubt this is still in the works, though, since the project page for it has been a broken link for nearly a year, and Demiforce's website hasn't been updated in over eight months, and that was a very minor fix to an unrelated project. Even if it was, this would be bad news for it, most likely.
Every time I make a joke, it gets modded insightful or informative? This has happened before, see?
The slogan is one thing. There's a station here in Michigan that has, "Light rock, no talk," which is effectively the same thing. But the letters are a different matter. The four letter callsign is supposed to be unique for all television/radio broadcast stations, and is usually trademarked as a matter of course when starting the station. Add together three things: 1. They're using the station's (un-unique) slogan. 2. They're using the station's unique callsign. 3. They're playing the exact same tracks as that station. Things aren't nearly as funny.
Make a copy that has the DJ chatter, and strip out the music instead?
With all due respect to WIOG, they have shitty music. If it weren't for the fact that their DJ/intern chatter is hilarious (most of the time), I sure wouldn't listen.
The very old rule with extradition is that the crime falls under the jurisdiction of where the victim is. This gets sticky with some crimes, when there's no clear victim, but in this case the victim is a US-based corporation. Like it or not, corporations can be victims (governments sure like it). If you stand in Canada and I'm just over the border in the US, and I shoot you, the crime falls into Canadian jusisdiction. If Bob in New Jersy runs a kiddie porn site, and the children portrayed live in Japan, then it falls under Japanese law. If Mike in Italy steals from a US bank, he gets shipped to the US. Sticky things come with money and goods counterfeiting, which is usually international, and it's hard to decide who the victim is. The way it usually works, whoever legitamately makes what is being counterfeited is the key victim. Warez is effectively software counterfeiting, and precidents from Chinese companies producing fake Nokia phone batteries or something simmilar could be applied, although the end result would ideally be a new precident, since warez isn't usually a for-profit business.
An aborted landing from Hawaii could land in the shuttle backup field in the western US (I can't remember just where it was. Is it Edwards Air Force Base?), or, earlier than that, the launch vehicle could be designed to ditch in the water. The pre-shuttle launch systems would do this in the Atlantic, and I think the shuttle was redesigned for crew (if not orbiter) survivability in a water landing after the Challenger disaster.
Planetary rotation. The speed at the surface is higher the closer you are to the equator. At the equator, you get the first 1000 mph of your final speed for free from the earth's spin. At the pole, you have to get the whole velocity yourself (and are also limited in your orbital trajectory choices). The closer to the equator you are, the more free velocity you get, and the more orbital choices you have (as I understand it, the "highest" lattitude of the orbit has to be at least as high as the launch point, or else you need to do fuel-costly orbital corrections after launch)
The applicable law isn't even the thing to worry about. The Hague deals with high crimes: War crimes, crimes against humanity, etc. These are the really BIG problems, and they generally WON'T be tried (at least not fairly) by their own coutnry, because they're usually being committed by the government itself, and they often don't have laws against it, or make laws supporting it (example: Apartheid). Because of this, the constitutional issues are pretty much moot with the crimes the Hague deals with - you usually have to remove the government before you can bring them to trial.
There are lots of international crimes every day. Drugs, counterfieting, warez, smuggling, illegal immigration, some guy in Texas shooting a hooker and running to Tiajuana, etc. If even a fraction of it went to the Hague, they'd have a hell of a lot to do. This sort of court load belongs under its own jurisdiction.
Good, because that's going to be what you are. It'll be very much like the original series, too. You can beam down to a planet, explore, get killed gruesomely and morned by a captain who doesn't know and probably can't pronounce your name, and then you'll respawn back in the ship in time for the next episode.
Seriously, though, this is the complaint that SWG got. Players in MMO games aren't "main characters," they're lots of supporting characters. There were 1000 people on the Enterprize in TNG. About 20 of them were named in the series. The other 980 are the roles that would be filled by players in a Star Trek MMORPG.
I liked Shattered Universe (I think that was the title). It wasn't very Trek-ish, but it was interesting in that it was based in the alternate universe where the Federation is the big bad guy going around kicking everybody's ass (featured in one episode of the original series, and several of DS9). Since it's a much less explored aspect of the Star Trek universe, it leaves more room for new (and fun) things that don't fit in the main universe.
What I'm wondering is, will this even be different? I can think of a few different things, in order of how likely I think they are:
1. Same thing as the old DirectX, but it includes a nifty remote function call that leads to a swarm of new worms.
2. Same thing as the old DirectX, but every game and driver released before will stop working.
3. Same thing as the old DirectX, but even the new games won't work anymore.
4. Same thing as the old DirectX, just with a new name. Everything works the same.
The file and the material in question are two different things. The file is the X File program, the material is the X Files TV show. Just because their claim that the file in question contains the material in question is purjory, they're still acting on behalf of the owner of the SHOW, not the FILE.
They ARE authorized to act on behalf of the rightholders to X Files TV show, and they were acting on their behalf, so they didn't purjor themselves on this point. They were acting wrongly, negligently, and stupidly, but they were authorized to act.
The fanboys on GameFAQs.com say it's "going to be teh worst game ever" "it's not even an rpg" (From the same group that say Planescape, Morrowind, and Baldur's Gate aren't RPGs) "my friend already has it and it doesn't even run" (popular troll method against upcomming games, like the guy who claimed to have Half Life 2 already and said it prevents the use of mods), and "the graphics don't look anything like a good REAL rpg like Final Fantasy VII (PS SPEHIRATH PWNZ U IN T3H BUN) so it suks."
I've bought a number of games that got this level of GameFAQs trollage, and so far, every single one of them has been aboslutely stellar (Fallout, Knights of the Old Republic, Planescape Torment, Golden Sun, Morrowind, Valkyrie Profile, and Tales of Symphonia come to mind). It's been such a good indicator so far, I consider the trollage level a better indicator of how good will probably be than any preview.
If too many GameFAQs users seem to think it'll be good, however, I won't touch it with a ten foot pole until a source I greatly respect gives it a thumbs up.
Hydrogen is safer than gasoline if it catches fire. It rises rapidly, and burns rapidly, so if you do light off your gas tank, you won't be exposed to fire for very long. With gasoline, however, it can burn for an extended period of time.
Most of the death on the Hindenburg was actually the structural material of the airship collapsing on the passenger compartments on its underside, not burning.
"If [the aliens] are so smart, they'll adjust their signal for their planet's motion."
Only one thing I always say about this: It's a very naive to assume aliens are smart. We're not all that bright by the standards we seem to expect of aliens, and we used to be a lot dumber. We're just as likely to detect an early industrial civlization by their sitcom broadcasts as we are to detect some hyperadvanced godlike race beaming lasers at us accross the galaxy.
You can have coherent radiation that isn't in a beam, but broadcast the same way radio is. However, since that sort of signal would also weaken with distance, it would be the same issue to detect that we have with radio. A laser beam would certainly reach us with much higher power from much larger distances, but it means it has to be aimed (quite precisely) at us, meaning they know/suspect/hope somebody is here listening, or they missed a reciever and we got a one-in-a-trillion lucky shot. The second is very unlikely, and the first means they're probably fairly close by and have detected us (meaning we could probably detect them by radio as well), and that they're advanced enough to have detected us and attempted to signal us with an interstellar laser beam. It's too Hollywood to assume that aliens are more advanced than us. It's just as likely that we end up detecting an industrial civilization no more advanced than ours as a hyper advanced civilization.
It was probably somebody looking at results who overreacted. SETI's site has a list of their "hopefuls" and such, most of which are nothing like this. I suspect somebody looked at the latest batch of data and saw a "hopeful" signal and didn't realize that those aren't that rare and usually pan out to be nothing.
They may get here easier, but there's a catch there: It'd have to be pointed at us. That means one of several things:
1. They know we're here and are making a concerted effort to attempt contact us. This means they can't be more than a few light years away, and have already picked up OUR radio waves, meaning odds are we can hear their radio too.
2. They had to know that there was a habitable world here long enough ago to send a signal here on the random chance that there's somebody here to notice. (i.e. they live far enough away that when they sent the laser message, they couldn't know wether or not anybody was here to pick it up)
3. They missed a reciever and hit us by blind luck.
This would also limit us to detecting civilizations advanced enough to have already detected us, and have lasers with narrow enough beams that it's still coherent and good enough aim to still hit us accross great distances.
Non-coherent broadcasts like radio, on the other hand, travels in all directions, and would be expected to be used by civilizations less advanced than us, so we could detect nearly any industrial or better society (assuming we could resolve the signal and recognize it as a signal). Looking for this, we can detect any civilzation, wether they're looking for us or not.
Lasers are easier to detect if they get to us, but radio is much more likely to get to us.
Have we been so primed by TV and movies to expect fantastical aliens that we don't think that we may end up finding the technological equivalent to ourselves fifty or a hundred years ago?