While it may be true that the source was obtained by the Templars and brought back to Europe, it wasn't until the 20th Century that Aliester Crowley made the source available to all. Combined with the efforts of Alan Bennet and a few others, he published 777, making it possible for anyone to access the wealth of information that the Qabala (Qernala???) presents.
Actually, coup is the French word that means, roughly, "to strike, or to hit". Coup d'etat is the most commonly seen use of it for most Americans, and so a coup is just that to most. But there is also a coup de main, a blow of the hand (punch), coup de pied, a blow from the foot (kick), etc, etc, etc.
Policeman dying in the US may be a common occurance, when one considers the vast SIZE of the US, but when you view individual areas of the US, you get a whole different story.
The area where I live is not a bustling population center, but it has a fairly large population, and as such, a fairly large police population. In the past, I'd say, six or eight years, five officers have been killed in the line of duty. Two were gunned down while serving a warrant on a drug lab and three shot to death while investigating a car that turned out to have been involved in a robbery.
Not only did these killings make the front page of all the papers, and become the primary stories on the evening news, but they STAYED front page/top story material for about three days, and even after were not far from the spotlight as the killers were found and brought into custody. The community mourned the loss, and even helped to search for the suspects, helped to provide money to one of the widows, etc.
Similarly (sp?), in the same six or eight years, there have been, all told, perhaps 10 homicides, and only about 12 very violent assaults. Violent crime simply does not occur with all that frequency. I live less than three hours drive from several major East Coast cities, and there's plenty of traffic from all of them through my area, so it's not as though we're isolated here, and free from criminal activity; drugs, theft and vandalism are big problems, particularly drugs, as the location makes the area a crossroads for transporting things all through the area.
When taken as a whole, yes, the United States is rife with violent crime, but when considered per capita, I highly doubt that it's as severe a problem as you seem to think.
Say they pay $300 per unit, and are selling it at $150.
WHEN, O Great Minds of Slashdot, will one of these posts be made by someone who has a clue about retail? Microsoft is not selling these Xboxes to you for $150. Wal-mart, Best Buy, EB, Gamestop, and all the other retail outlets are the ones selling them to you for $150.
Microsoft is selling the boxes to the retail outlets for as little as $75, perhaps as much as $100, and the retailers are selling them to you at a (Microsoft mandated) mark up. One that is probably between 50 and 100%. This is the way that licensed merchandise is handled, and the way that it has been handled for A Great Many Years: Corporation X creates a Widget that everyone wants to own. Storefront Y sees this demand and wants to get in on the action, so enquires with Corp X about purchasing the Widget. Meanwhile, Stores Z, A, B, etc have all also enquired; Corp X looks at all this interest and knows they stand to make a bundle, if they can get the Widget into the hands of the public. Corp X forces Stores Y, Z, etc, to sign an agreement to sell the Widget for "at or about" a given pricepoint, and to display it in a certain fashion in the store, to stand on one leg when receiving shipments and send a Bagel Basket to Corp X every fourth Tuesday. The Stores, wanting to profit, sign the agreements and receive the Widget, sell it in accordance with the agreement, and profit.
THAT is what Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and all the others are doing. They are not personally selling you a damn thing; moreover, the Store has to BUY the Widget/Xbox before they can SELL it. When you see an Xbox sitting on the shelf, that's not money that you can steal from MS by buying the Box, it's money that you can give to the retailer, so that they can afford to bring more schtuff for you to buy later. The only Xboxes that MS is losing any great deal of money on are the ones that are still sitting in warehouses that haven't been ordered and paid for yet.
From the side of the Xbox packaging: License: Software in and with the Xbox console is licensed to you, not sold. You are licensed to use the software only with your Xbox and you may not reverse engineer it, except as expressly permitted by applicable law not withstanding this limitation. [Emphasis mine]
You own your Xbox, but you only own the hardware. There are additional references to this in the Owner's Manual. You are, simply put, NOT PERMITTED to alter the software, and even if you do, MS reserves the right to make any changes to it that they want because it is theirs. Not yours.
I read here (on/.) constantly about how MS doesn't make you sign an EULA, or how if it's printed in the Manuals it's not binding, because you have no way of being informed, and that there is nothing about it on the box warning you that anything inside is under specific license. I've had my Xbox since shortly after Christmas, and it took me all of about 25 seconds to locate where on the original packaging the license notification was. Now, either all these paranoid fools do not own an Xbox, or never took the time to thoroughly inspect the package before opening it, but it doesn't matter, because they're still fools.
If you hate Microsoft so much in the first place, you shouldn't be out there buying one of their consoles anyway. If you're so damn paranoid about them creating an Evil Empire to take over the world, you shouldn't be buying an Xbox anyway. If you don't trust the company, you should examine the packaging before opening it. And if you don't own an Xbox, you shouldn't be talking about whether or not there is a license printed on, in, across, or wrapped all around the box, manuals or console.
In short: It's their goddamn software, and they're going to do what they want to it, regardless of what you want them to do. If you want to install Linux on your box, don't connect it to the network and just stop your bitching already; you knew it was going to happen.
Do you mean the function of running Linux? The Xbox was never intended to run Linux, which would make Linux the impairment. I'm writing this from a Linux box, so please don't assume that I dislike it in any way shape or form, just attempting to view things from the designers' point of view.
So, if Linux is the impariment, the patch is actually repairing it, that is to say, restoring original operating capability and intent.
In an even bigger stretch than yours, if Microsoft didn't patch the system, and Joe Gamer did have an Xbox with Linux installed and was trying to play a game or use some other form of standard Xboxness and the Box didn't function properly, Joe Gamer could very well sue Microsoft for NOT patching his system automagically! After all, they knew that there were flaws, and that people were taking advantage of them, and they 'did nothing'...Some lawyer would take the case, and Joe Gamer would probably get rich.
In my opinion, Morrowind was too long, too devoid of anything original in storyline, and too inconclusive in its finish. I have not purchased, nor will I purchase the expansions.
You've got two choices in Morrowind: Do what you want, join guilds and all that rot and take on silly little Find and Fetch missions or Play the Story, which is composed of more than a few Find and Fetch missions. The combat was shite and the story wholly predictable; the gameplay stank.
The whole time I was playing, I was able to predict further down the storyline that this, and then this, then the other would happen. The only thing that kep me playing was the hope that I would be able to slay more gods than just Dagoth Ur. Little did I suspect that after I beat the baddie, I would be confronted with Ms Glowiness and told to 'Go forth and plant potatoes, for I have no more need of you!'
The whole idea of having a story arc in the first place is to HAVE a conclusion. This wasn't even a 'To Be Continued...', it was just nothing.
The world lived and breathed alright, the same way the coma wing of the hospital does. No one took any interest in the world outside of their own part in either (A) Bartering with you, (B) Assigning you more FedEx Quests or (C) Trying to make you dead. Four am and 'JimBo' is standing stock still behind his counter; 10am, still there; 3pm, still there. 24 hours a day, every day! No holidays, not even taking time off to go to bed. Of course, with a little Alchemy skill, you didn't have to go to bed, either, only rest when you level up.
Morrowind was a shite game because of the great lengths that the designers went to in trying to artifically inject 'Open-ness' into it. If it had had some more restrictions on it, it might have actually been fun, instead it was more boring than real life.
As I said, I was only commenting for the sake of accuracy. PA labels itself a Commenwealth in official documents, and has referred to itself for a long, long time. There isn't any actual difference insofar as Federal recognition is concerned--it's treated as a State--the difference has more to do with the philosophies under which it was orginally founded.
If a distro calls itself GNU/Linux, everyone is quick enough to correct the writer who only calls it Linux.
Pennsylvania is actually a Commenwealth, not a State. Not that anyone pays attention or anything, but PA and VA (and probably a few others that I'm not thinking of at the moment) are not states...
While I have made studies of the occult, I'm certainly neither Satanic, nor suicidal. Just curious.
Of course, it was reading the Bible and other Classical mythology (into which I include Norse and Egyptian mythology) that caused me to become curious about the occult, and reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy that prevented me from taking it too seriously.
The rental stores pay a larger fee for each title that they intend to rent. Legally, they have to because they are profitting off the distribution of the game/film.
For example, you or I can go to the store and buy Daredevil on DVD for about $20US. But Blockbuster or Joe's Movies, pays something more like $125US for each copy that they intend to rent. The copies that they intend to sell, they pay something more along the lines of $10US.
Nobody seems to understand that when a store offers an Xbox for sale, or any other merchandise, it is already paid for. The RETAILER purchases the item from a WHOLESALER or DISTRIBUTOR, often for half of what the retailer intends to sell the item for. In the case of clothing and luxury items, the markup (keystone) can be as much as 800%. In the area of groceries, wines, spirits, etc, the markup is often as low as 20%.
Moreover, some companies, Microsoft included, stipulate in their contracts with the Retailer, that the Retailer will sell the item in question within a set price range. Xbox, in the US, $180. Retailers would never get into this if they weren't making the profit they desire, and the keystone that many retailers follow is simply to double what they paid for it, so, at the going rate, most retailers are paying $90-100 for each Xbox that is sitting on the shelf. It probably costs Microsoft about $200 to make each Box, so they're not getting paid full value, but for every console sitting on the shelf, MS has been paid or the retailer has entered into a credit agreement stipulating the terms of payment (usually 30, 60 or 90 day terms).
When will people understand that, in REALITY, stores don't just magically get stuff from places because they promise to pay them Someday? Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Game Stop, EB, all of them have to PAY for the things that are in the store, cash up front or pretty strict credit terms.
"Why's that so hard to understand?"
...page ii where it says "Note And changes or modifications made on the system not expressly approved by the manufacturer could (emphasis mine) void the user's authority to operate the equipment."? And then page 18, Limited Warranty, section G, paragraph one: "The software (again, emphasis mine) included in the Xbox Product is licensed to you, not sold."
Now, it is my opinion that MS is kindly letting you know that you can do whatever you want to the hardware, and as long as you don't try to use your modified hardware to interface with unmoddified hardware, they won't bother you. If you alter the software, though, and attempt to use the altered Box on Live or some other connected service, MS is kindly letting you know that they reserve the right to come to your house and take your Xbox away.
Not that I think it's right, but what I think doesn't count for much in Redmond.
Slashdot Mirror
While it may be true that the source was obtained by the Templars and brought back to Europe, it wasn't until the 20th Century that Aliester Crowley made the source available to all. Combined with the efforts of Alan Bennet and a few others, he published 777, making it possible for anyone to access the wealth of information that the Qabala (Qernala???) presents.
Actually, coup is the French word that means, roughly, "to strike, or to hit". Coup d'etat is the most commonly seen use of it for most Americans, and so a coup is just that to most. But there is also a coup de main, a blow of the hand (punch), coup de pied, a blow from the foot (kick), etc, etc, etc.
Policeman dying in the US may be a common occurance, when one considers the vast SIZE of the US, but when you view individual areas of the US, you get a whole different story.
The area where I live is not a bustling population center, but it has a fairly large population, and as such, a fairly large police population. In the past, I'd say, six or eight years, five officers have been killed in the line of duty. Two were gunned down while serving a warrant on a drug lab and three shot to death while investigating a car that turned out to have been involved in a robbery.
Not only did these killings make the front page of all the papers, and become the primary stories on the evening news, but they STAYED front page/top story material for about three days, and even after were not far from the spotlight as the killers were found and brought into custody. The community mourned the loss, and even helped to search for the suspects, helped to provide money to one of the widows, etc.
Similarly (sp?), in the same six or eight years, there have been, all told, perhaps 10 homicides, and only about 12 very violent assaults. Violent crime simply does not occur with all that frequency. I live less than three hours drive from several major East Coast cities, and there's plenty of traffic from all of them through my area, so it's not as though we're isolated here, and free from criminal activity; drugs, theft and vandalism are big problems, particularly drugs, as the location makes the area a crossroads for transporting things all through the area.
When taken as a whole, yes, the United States is rife with violent crime, but when considered per capita, I highly doubt that it's as severe a problem as you seem to think.
In Microsoft future, Xbox plays you!
Say they pay $300 per unit, and are selling it at $150.
WHEN, O Great Minds of Slashdot, will one of these posts be made by someone who has a clue about retail? Microsoft is not selling these Xboxes to you for $150. Wal-mart, Best Buy, EB, Gamestop, and all the other retail outlets are the ones selling them to you for $150.
Microsoft is selling the boxes to the retail outlets for as little as $75, perhaps as much as $100, and the retailers are selling them to you at a (Microsoft mandated) mark up. One that is probably between 50 and 100%. This is the way that licensed merchandise is handled, and the way that it has been handled for A Great Many Years: Corporation X creates a Widget that everyone wants to own. Storefront Y sees this demand and wants to get in on the action, so enquires with Corp X about purchasing the Widget. Meanwhile, Stores Z, A, B, etc have all also enquired; Corp X looks at all this interest and knows they stand to make a bundle, if they can get the Widget into the hands of the public. Corp X forces Stores Y, Z, etc, to sign an agreement to sell the Widget for "at or about" a given pricepoint, and to display it in a certain fashion in the store, to stand on one leg when receiving shipments and send a Bagel Basket to Corp X every fourth Tuesday. The Stores, wanting to profit, sign the agreements and receive the Widget, sell it in accordance with the agreement, and profit.
THAT is what Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and all the others are doing. They are not personally selling you a damn thing; moreover, the Store has to BUY the Widget/Xbox before they can SELL it. When you see an Xbox sitting on the shelf, that's not money that you can steal from MS by buying the Box, it's money that you can give to the retailer, so that they can afford to bring more schtuff for you to buy later. The only Xboxes that MS is losing any great deal of money on are the ones that are still sitting in warehouses that haven't been ordered and paid for yet.
It's not that hard to figure out, people.
You own your Xbox, but you only own the hardware. There are additional references to this in the Owner's Manual. You are, simply put, NOT PERMITTED to alter the software, and even if you do, MS reserves the right to make any changes to it that they want because it is theirs. Not yours.
I read here (on /.) constantly about how MS doesn't make you sign an EULA, or how if it's printed in the Manuals it's not binding, because you have no way of being informed, and that there is nothing about it on the box warning you that anything inside is under specific license. I've had my Xbox since shortly after Christmas, and it took me all of about 25 seconds to locate where on the original packaging the license notification was. Now, either all these paranoid fools do not own an Xbox, or never took the time to thoroughly inspect the package before opening it, but it doesn't matter, because they're still fools.
If you hate Microsoft so much in the first place, you shouldn't be out there buying one of their consoles anyway. If you're so damn paranoid about them creating an Evil Empire to take over the world, you shouldn't be buying an Xbox anyway. If you don't trust the company, you should examine the packaging before opening it. And if you don't own an Xbox, you shouldn't be talking about whether or not there is a license printed on, in, across, or wrapped all around the box, manuals or console.
In short: It's their goddamn software, and they're going to do what they want to it, regardless of what you want them to do. If you want to install Linux on your box, don't connect it to the network and just stop your bitching already; you knew it was going to happen.
Do you mean the function of running Linux? The Xbox was never intended to run Linux, which would make Linux the impairment. I'm writing this from a Linux box, so please don't assume that I dislike it in any way shape or form, just attempting to view things from the designers' point of view.
So, if Linux is the impariment, the patch is actually repairing it, that is to say, restoring original operating capability and intent.
In an even bigger stretch than yours, if Microsoft didn't patch the system, and Joe Gamer did have an Xbox with Linux installed and was trying to play a game or use some other form of standard Xboxness and the Box didn't function properly, Joe Gamer could very well sue Microsoft for NOT patching his system automagically! After all, they knew that there were flaws, and that people were taking advantage of them, and they 'did nothing'...Some lawyer would take the case, and Joe Gamer would probably get rich.
You've got two choices in Morrowind: Do what you want, join guilds and all that rot and take on silly little Find and Fetch missions or Play the Story, which is composed of more than a few Find and Fetch missions. The combat was shite and the story wholly predictable; the gameplay stank.
The whole time I was playing, I was able to predict further down the storyline that this, and then this, then the other would happen. The only thing that kep me playing was the hope that I would be able to slay more gods than just Dagoth Ur. Little did I suspect that after I beat the baddie, I would be confronted with Ms Glowiness and told to 'Go forth and plant potatoes, for I have no more need of you!'
The whole idea of having a story arc in the first place is to HAVE a conclusion. This wasn't even a 'To Be Continued...', it was just nothing.
The world lived and breathed alright, the same way the coma wing of the hospital does. No one took any interest in the world outside of their own part in either (A) Bartering with you, (B) Assigning you more FedEx Quests or (C) Trying to make you dead. Four am and 'JimBo' is standing stock still behind his counter; 10am, still there; 3pm, still there. 24 hours a day, every day! No holidays, not even taking time off to go to bed. Of course, with a little Alchemy skill, you didn't have to go to bed, either, only rest when you level up.
Morrowind was a shite game because of the great lengths that the designers went to in trying to artifically inject 'Open-ness' into it. If it had had some more restrictions on it, it might have actually been fun, instead it was more boring than real life.
If a distro calls itself GNU/Linux, everyone is quick enough to correct the writer who only calls it Linux.
Pennsylvania is actually a Commenwealth, not a State. Not that anyone pays attention or anything, but PA and VA (and probably a few others that I'm not thinking of at the moment) are not states...
Of course, it was reading the Bible and other Classical mythology (into which I include Norse and Egyptian mythology) that caused me to become curious about the occult, and reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy that prevented me from taking it too seriously.
For example, you or I can go to the store and buy Daredevil on DVD for about $20US. But Blockbuster or Joe's Movies, pays something more like $125US for each copy that they intend to rent. The copies that they intend to sell, they pay something more along the lines of $10US.
Nobody seems to understand that when a store offers an Xbox for sale, or any other merchandise, it is already paid for. The RETAILER purchases the item from a WHOLESALER or DISTRIBUTOR, often for half of what the retailer intends to sell the item for. In the case of clothing and luxury items, the markup (keystone) can be as much as 800%. In the area of groceries, wines, spirits, etc, the markup is often as low as 20%. Moreover, some companies, Microsoft included, stipulate in their contracts with the Retailer, that the Retailer will sell the item in question within a set price range. Xbox, in the US, $180. Retailers would never get into this if they weren't making the profit they desire, and the keystone that many retailers follow is simply to double what they paid for it, so, at the going rate, most retailers are paying $90-100 for each Xbox that is sitting on the shelf. It probably costs Microsoft about $200 to make each Box, so they're not getting paid full value, but for every console sitting on the shelf, MS has been paid or the retailer has entered into a credit agreement stipulating the terms of payment (usually 30, 60 or 90 day terms). When will people understand that, in REALITY, stores don't just magically get stuff from places because they promise to pay them Someday? Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Game Stop, EB, all of them have to PAY for the things that are in the store, cash up front or pretty strict credit terms. "Why's that so hard to understand?"
Now, it is my opinion that MS is kindly letting you know that you can do whatever you want to the hardware, and as long as you don't try to use your modified hardware to interface with unmoddified hardware, they won't bother you. If you alter the software, though, and attempt to use the altered Box on Live or some other connected service, MS is kindly letting you know that they reserve the right to come to your house and take your Xbox away.
Not that I think it's right, but what I think doesn't count for much in Redmond.