[blockquote]On a side note, my wife is in the military and we have to go through "random" security screenings for our cars. Somehow my Saturn gets nailed 10 to 1 over my wife's car every month. There are times when I just want to run the damn guards over.[/blockquote]
I can't really say much of anything regarding the 'randomness' of airline searches aside from the fact that I've never been searched to that extent. I am, however, qualified to comment on the randomness of gate searches on military installations. I'm AD enlisted, USAF, and outside of my regular position as a computer programmer(3C0X2) I'm a SF augmentee. Gate searches are random, however the methodology is based on certain procedures, which I'm not at liberty to disclose. I can, however, assure you that stopping a vehicle for a RAM search isn't based on any criteria of race, religion, creed or even the type of vehicle you're driving.
Is not playing really the only way to beat WoW?
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Can Anyone Beat WoW?
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I've seen a lot of people saying this, or something that's a slight variant on that. Personally, I believe it's bunk. I'm not going to deny that there are individuals who play WoW to excess. However, that doesn't mean that not playing WoW will prevent them from participating in some other activity, also to excess.
I know plenty of people who would think absolutely nothing of watching TV for 40, 50 or 60 hours a week. How many people spend their entire weekends watching football all weekend, baseball all weekend, NASCAR, etc during their respective season? Plenty, and I'd wager 10x the number that are willing to sit on their computer playing WoW. This doesn't preclude them from taking care of what needs to be done around the house, the same is true of people who play MMOs.
Ultimately, I look at this as being a horribly stereotypical response, kneejerking at least, and a horribly constructed straw man arguement at best. If an individual can't excercise self control, then that's a personal issue. It's certainly not one confined to players of MMOs.
As to another company 'beating WoW' in terms of marketshare, I don't see it happening any time soon. Blizzard did an outstanding job putting the game together, and all of the supposed WoW killers miss the boat on what makes WoW so good. Guild Wars got a few things right, but going for the 'Free MMO!' kick did them no justice, as it's been shown that it's rather difficult to put together a quality MMO when your revenue stream is so limited. D&D Online tried as well, and IMO that shipped very incomplete. Between the low level cap and forced grouping, I think they really missed the boat. From what I've seen of Vanguard, they appear to be headed in that direction.
People decry WoW as not being casual friendly, but I really have to wonder if they know what they mean by that. I see WoW as being exceedingly casual friendly, but only if you have the proper expectations. People who expect to be able to be on the same level as those willing to dedicate a great deal of time to learn higher end encounters, or put insane amounts of time in to PvP to advance that way will, and rightfully so, be ahead of someone who isn't, or can't, make that same sacrifice. Overall, this is what really makes WoW a success among the mainstream. It's not like it was in EQ, where you needed a group to level, or in FFXI, where if you didn't fit the mold of what everyone else thought you should play as a class you could barely advance past 60. You can make it as far as you want solo, and if you want to go farther you can find a group to do that with.
Once companies start figuring that out, and can make an enjoyable MMO, with a reasonably rich backstory, then you'll have an MMO that can compete with WoW on marketshare. Until that happens, anything touting itself as a WoW killer can be looked at in the same manner as iPod killers and Gameboy killers.
The funny thing is, this has already been done. Guild Wars runs on pretty much the exact same premise that you propose, however its success has been on a level far below WoW. Would it be plausible on that scale? I don't really know, but I personally don't see it as being probable. MMOs use a much larger amount of horsepower than Gnutella/LimeWire et al.
On a different note, MMO servers do very little aside from math work now anyway. Dice rolls and storage of character info is about it, most other things are handled on the client.
Anyway, it's a good thought, I just see it as not being practical.
As a previous poster mentioned, this is quite untrue. Additionally, you don't have to have a TSA approved lock, either. When you're checking a locked bag, you simply open it up for inspection, then relock it afterwards. Having recently traveled with a security item that needed to be locked and not accessible, I know this to be true.
Oh? I'm 25, can't hear it, and i didn't 'abuse my hearing' as you put it. People who use firearms with any frequency will lose that portion of their hearing much faster than most people. It's quite likely that any officer won't be able to hear it due to the frequency required on weapons qualifications.
For the record, I'm in the USAF, and I fire two weapons once a year each, the M-16A2 and the M9. In all likelyhood, I probably wouldn't have been able to hear it at 22 or 23. We're also required to use hearing protection during all shooting phases of qualification.
I know you're trolling; the mac whining makes that obvious. However, you do server as a nice stepping stone for a point I'd like to make.
Then you should stop doing business with just about every compnay out there. They are all in it for $$$.
Ultimately, everyone, business or not is in it for the money. You are, I am, everyone is in it for the money. That doesn't mean shut yourself up in a closet for the rest of your life. However, when a company engages in unconscionable business practices, as Sony has proven themselves quite willing to do, following the 'Rootkit Incident' as well as their patent on locking discs down to a single player, it is at that point a great deal of informed individuals will make the decision to boycott their products.
Generally, this doesn't stop at the level of the product affected by the bad decision. It generally effects every market they're involved with. Personally, I can speak the truth of this. Not only do I have no plans to buy a PS3, but the Sony monitors I was planning on picking up will likely be from someone else.
Cheers!
While you jest at your parent post, an incident like that has actually happened in Iraq. A young, foolish man in a toyota corolla hatchback with several mortar rounds, bombs and other explosives all wired up slammed into a M1A2 Abrams. I'll leave what happened next to your imaginations;-p
Offtopic note on that first image; The incident in question there happend at Bagram Airfield about a week before I got here. The driver of the crane was a Contractor for KBR, and the vehicle that was run over was also owned by that same contractor. So, basically, while that's listed on the navy safety center site, and came from the 455 AEW safety office, the only involvment the military had in the incident is that it happened in Afghanistan on an Air Base.
While World of Starcraft isn't really workable due to lore issues, there is another option to that.
Warhammer 40k Online. It would allow for plenty of race choice, options for hand to hand combat, ranged combat, plenty of vehicles and whatnot, and more PvP than you could shake a stick at. Overall, I think that if done well, it would be outstanding. I suppose, however, that it largely depends on how the Warhammer Fantasy MMO comes out. If that's at all decent, then adapting it to 40k should be a breeze.
I wouldn't mind it, however, if the Horde Paladin, being Blood Elf specific, was given an extra word in the name, such as Crimson Paladin... But that's beside the point.
On this point, they are referring to the Blood Elf Paladins in a different manner from the Alliance's Paladins; They're the Blood Knights.
As to the points on the horde not being evil, I wholeheartedly agree on that. They're evil from the perspective of the Alliance, most certainly; but a lot of the actions of the Alliance are evil from the perspective of those belonging to the Horde.
As to Class specific skills, priests are the only class with those; according to Blizzard it's going to remain that way, as well. I can't find the post atm, but it's on the general WoW forums if you'd care to dig it up; IIRC, Tseric posted the comment I'm thinking of. The reasoning behind that decision is that giving all race/class combos specific spell(s) adds a lot more complexity to balance. I couldn't tell you the reason priests get them, however.
When I saw this, the first thing that came to my mind is the online only, just over a year old Escapist. It reminds me a great deal of NextGen, with very intellectual articles and outstanding writing throughout. They cover things from consoles to PC, with some very interesting takes on gaming that I thoroughly enjoy.
Seeing as you've been picked apart for everything but Nuku Nuku, I guess I'll take care of that one. The japanese title was 'Banno Bunka Nekomusume', or 'All Purpose Cultural Catgirl'. So, long story short: Yea, the title is inane, in a way. But is it an accurate translation? Yes, most certainly, although I wouldn't put much behind the 'cultural' bit in the title, seeing as the series deals with a curvy catgirl cyborg created from the brain of a kitten transplanted into a super cyborg after it gets hit by a truck.
I've already moderated here, but as I feel this really deserves a reply, sayonara mod points.
While I can certainly understand where you come from in saying that slashdot editing has gotten worse, I don't feel that this story is necesarrily one of those. It's a bit overstated, yes, but I don't think that detracts from the fact that the article simply states 'unauthorized downloading, even for personal use'. To me, that implies heavily that the article states a bit more clearly that the ban on p2p transfers reaches much further than a simple ban on transfers that infringe on copyright, and reaches into the domain of banning any and all.
Ultimately, I think that without being able to read the text of the law, noone can really say based simply on the article. All you can really do is take it at face value, which to many is in agreement with the/. article text. Personally, I wouldn't put it past the MPAA or the RIAA to do whatever they can to ban p2p transfers across the board, simply for the fact that a portion of it is used for infringment.
Finally, on a more offtopic note, get off your horse man. Having a 4 digit UID doesn't mean shit; I'm sure there's plenty of people with 6 digit UIDs who read and enjoyed slashdot for ages before finally registering. I know for a fact that there are people who had accounts and forgot passwords to email accounts used for registration, then forgot the account info for slashdot as well. Who knows, maybe it happened in a different order? Long story short, they made another account. I'm sure there were other considerations too, I'm not going into depth.
Wow. I really don't know where to begin. It's all so... wrong. Well, this seems like a good a place as any:
Currently in the US of A, being a terrorist means you have no rights. You can be a US citizen, arrested on US soil, for alleged acts committed in the US, and have none of the ordinary rights 'guaranteed' to someone in that situation.
You can be put in civilian prison, or a military prison, or sent to Gitmo, or sent overseas. You have no rights. You don't get a lawyer; you don't get a phone call. You don't even get a trial. You can be held for YEARS without the government even admitting you are being held.
This is completely and totally baseless. Being accused of any crime, even of being a known terrorist, will NOT automatically land you at Guantanimo Bay. Individuals held there are foreign nationals who remained in this country illegally held as Prisoners of War due to known or suspected ties to foreign guerilla military cells, such as the Taliban or Al Qaida in Afghanistan, or Al Qaida in Iraq.
You can be tortured. No interrogation technique is off limits.
You won't get to question witnesses or review the evidence against you. If you do happen to get a trial or hearing, the government can submit 'classified' evidence you won't know about. And the judges will assume all government evidence is true until you can prove otherwise. (How do you prove something you don't even know about is untrue? Well, that's your problem.)
And if that's how the US treats its own citizens--registered voters even!--think what we might do to the rest of the world.
Yes, there have been more than a few incidents of soldiers/sailors/airmen/marines taking out their aggression on foreign nationals, and they are being punished for it. However, incidents such as those are NOT the norm, and are completely contradictory to the Rules of War, the Law of Armed Conflict, and the local Rules of Engagement. Furthermore, there are definitely limits on what you can and cannot do as a military interrogator(the Army still maintains that MOS). Being a terrorist(POW) actually grants you a great deal of protection from whatever you've imagined up, I assure you.
So, all in all, that was a baseless, accusatory crock with absolutely no grounding in fact whatsoever. I don't know where, or how you managed to gain any of those impressions; only that they absolutely sicken me.
Now, with all of that said, does that make Barlow's comparison of individuals who find ways to circumvent copy protection to preserve fair use to members of one of the most sought after terrorist organizations in the world any better? Certainly not; it's every bit as ridiculous as saying people who watch movies on linux are like pedophiles that rape children as pointed out by another poster.
Nintendo has a reputation from the SNES days when they took the blood out of the first "Mortal Kombat," but after the outcry that caused they let up on that for MKII.
I recall playing the original MK game on both SNES and the Genesis. I also recall there being no blood in either version by default. However, The option for blood was easily reveresed on the SNES, whereas for Genesis you had to turn it on via cheat code. To this day, I still don't recall a backlash against Sega for that one.
There's been a lot of people replying to you and others in this so far about how you're overly concerned on the matter; I'd have to say I agree, and that's as an American.
A little background on myself; I grew up military, and as such I spent 20 years of my life having a 'mandatory' ID card. Since then, I've gone on to enlist myself, and as a military member, I am mandated to keep my DoD ID card on me at all times. If I am found without it, and need to produce it, I can be arrested for failure to ID myself. So, in that sense, my DoD ID is to me, 'papers'. Am I greatly concerned about it? No, not really. It's the size of my driver's license, which, by the way is another card I have to have with me at any time I want to drive my car.
I think, as many others seem to, that you're being overly paranoid about this. You're not going to get arrested for not having it; but if you're out stumbling drunk and a cop stops you and you don't have it or another form of ID, he or she is simply that much less likely to let you off with a warning and an admonition to be careful on your way home. Realistically, think of it as driving without your license. You wouldn't go out driving without that, would you?
If you buy RHEL you get software _and_ support for a certain amount of cash
Actually, in this case, you're really only paying for support. If you wanted a copy of RHEL, IIRC you can get the binaries from RH free of charge. However, there is a disclaimer saying that you agree to expect no support from RH should something go wrong.
GW is a very different beast from WoW. You're better off comparing it to Diablo 2.
Both of them saw various improvements in the game engine, and while Diablo 2 never saw much in the way of additional content, It was also shipped in a far more complete form.
Ultimately, I suppose I'm just tired of the insistance that GW is an MMO; it's not. Towns are nothing more than a graphical chatroom, and most of the instances are produced on your local machine, a la Diablo 2. With WoW, everything is done on their servers.
While you make a really good point about the target demo for video games being 25-35, you're a bit off the mark as to why. It has little to do with the existance of an obviously larger disposable income, and more to do with the fact that these are the people who grew up playing video games. Think about it: if you're 35 today, then you were 13 when the original Famicom came out in 1983, and 15 when it was released in the US in 1985. Personally, I was 6 or 7 when my folks bought me mine, and got my SNES shortly after its launch in 1989. By the time N64 came out, I had my own incomes, which were split between movies, music, insurance and video games.
So yea, 25-35 is the target demo, but because these are the same people Nintendo has been targeting since the mid 1980s. They know what they like, by and large, so they keep selling it to them.
If you think Bleach or One Piece is truly that far removed from Naruto or Pokemon, then you are highly deluded. Currenlty, One Piece has been running roughly two years longer than Naruto, at over 200 aired episodes, and 5 or 6 Theatrical releases. Bleach, while certainly a new series, has more than enough potential to turn into the same long running series.
As to Elfen Lied not being released, the thinpak box will be available inside of 6 months; ADV released the last DVD a month or so ago. Blood+, which is a serial version of the Blood: The Last Vampire, just started airing, and has been on air for slightly longer than a month; That's not nearly long enough to expect to see a DVD over here. IIRC, the shortest completed in Japan to US release was Narue no Sekai(World of Narue), and that was still almost 10 months. As to Air, that's renai, which is anime based on ever popular Dating Sim games. Air happens to be based off an 'H' game, so I highly doubt we'll ever see that. However, TRSI is releasing To Heart, and Geneon released Shingetsutan Tsukihime, so I could certainly be wrong about that.
Overall, you make a point about quality, but you should be saying quantity. You're judging quality based on your tastes, and having watched anime for 15 odd years myself, fans today are thouroughly spoiled when it comes to series quality. They make the mistake of judging quality based on their indiviual tastes, as opposed to the worth of the show within its' particular genre, be it Shounen Action(Bleach, One Piece, Naruto), Shoujou(Marmalade Boy, Kareshi Kanoujou no Jijou), Comedy(Sexy Commando, Hare+Guu, FLCL), Shounen-Ai(Gravitation), or Drama Adventurish(Wolf's Rain, Juuni Kokki, WHR). There's more than that.
Yup, quite positive. By steeping the beans, regardless of temperature, you extract more from them. It's why people so rarely drink straight espresso; it's generally very thin and flavorless, moreso than any other coffee brewed in the italian style.
I highly doubt you'll ever see anything like that, except in an MMO that can afford to cater solely to casual players. To those who want to advance a character and have something to show for it, It wouldn't work. For example, EQ. When the Planes of Power xpac came out, it took ages of grinding to get access, then even more time grinding to get loot, etc. I was talking to my roomate, who had talked about it with his brother, who still plays. Recently, they added a bunch of 'Monster Missions'. They take around 20 minutes to run, and the loot you wind up with from them is the equivalent to Planes of Power loot, which took months to get.
This is a classic example of how MMOs work. You spend a great deal of time early on as one of the 'power gamer' achievers, and you feel good for it. Or, you can wait a while till additions to the game, which, when well done, are less noticeable to a casual gamer. The only real issue you have in this respect is a game where PvP is prevalent or major in some way, as the skilled, well equipped characters will generally do better than the casual gamers, for whom a large investment of time to gain that level of skill is simply unappealing.
Now, if you're the type of person to whom that model of game doesn't appeal, then it's almost certain that this genre of games isn't for you.
Ultimately, it works like this. Darker Roast = Less caffeine. After that, the caffeine content of the beverage is dependant on the brewing process. Actual brewed coffee has more caffeine than an espresso. Reason being for that is that the grounds are actually soaked when brewing for coffee; with espresso steam is just forced through some very fine grounds.
As an aside to that, this makes me wonder why people are so big on Starbucks. Between being overroasted, since that's really all Seattle coffees are is overroasted, as well as the large amount of espresso drinks they sell, you'd probably find more caffeine in a can of soda than your triple shot caramel latte, not to mention the soda is cheaper.
I was in the people's republic working near downtown during the DNC, trust me Free Speech Zones were real. If you criticised kerry in the wrong place you were in deep shit.
That's an issue involving mob rule, not governmental repression of free speech. The fact is that voicing an opinion in a group of opposite minded individuals exhibiting mob behavior is done at your on great personal risk.
Going by what you've said as well as the short, uninformative blurb there, the iPod is rating last. However, if you actually look at how the players are rated, the iPod is ahead of everyone. If the player is truly that bad, then why is it alwasy rated so highly by reviewers? User reviews put it lower, fourth of those five, but if you read through them it's either an issue with the Photo, or something unintelligible written by someone clearly trolling to bring the rating down.
As to the article, I found myself wondering where the rest of it was.
Slashdot Mirror
[blockquote]On a side note, my wife is in the military and we have to go through "random" security screenings for our cars. Somehow my Saturn gets nailed 10 to 1 over my wife's car every month. There are times when I just want to run the damn guards over.[/blockquote]
I can't really say much of anything regarding the 'randomness' of airline searches aside from the fact that I've never been searched to that extent. I am, however, qualified to comment on the randomness of gate searches on military installations. I'm AD enlisted, USAF, and outside of my regular position as a computer programmer(3C0X2) I'm a SF augmentee. Gate searches are random, however the methodology is based on certain procedures, which I'm not at liberty to disclose. I can, however, assure you that stopping a vehicle for a RAM search isn't based on any criteria of race, religion, creed or even the type of vehicle you're driving.
I've seen a lot of people saying this, or something that's a slight variant on that. Personally, I believe it's bunk. I'm not going to deny that there are individuals who play WoW to excess. However, that doesn't mean that not playing WoW will prevent them from participating in some other activity, also to excess.
I know plenty of people who would think absolutely nothing of watching TV for 40, 50 or 60 hours a week. How many people spend their entire weekends watching football all weekend, baseball all weekend, NASCAR, etc during their respective season? Plenty, and I'd wager 10x the number that are willing to sit on their computer playing WoW. This doesn't preclude them from taking care of what needs to be done around the house, the same is true of people who play MMOs.
Ultimately, I look at this as being a horribly stereotypical response, kneejerking at least, and a horribly constructed straw man arguement at best. If an individual can't excercise self control, then that's a personal issue. It's certainly not one confined to players of MMOs.
As to another company 'beating WoW' in terms of marketshare, I don't see it happening any time soon. Blizzard did an outstanding job putting the game together, and all of the supposed WoW killers miss the boat on what makes WoW so good. Guild Wars got a few things right, but going for the 'Free MMO!' kick did them no justice, as it's been shown that it's rather difficult to put together a quality MMO when your revenue stream is so limited. D&D Online tried as well, and IMO that shipped very incomplete. Between the low level cap and forced grouping, I think they really missed the boat. From what I've seen of Vanguard, they appear to be headed in that direction.
People decry WoW as not being casual friendly, but I really have to wonder if they know what they mean by that. I see WoW as being exceedingly casual friendly, but only if you have the proper expectations. People who expect to be able to be on the same level as those willing to dedicate a great deal of time to learn higher end encounters, or put insane amounts of time in to PvP to advance that way will, and rightfully so, be ahead of someone who isn't, or can't, make that same sacrifice. Overall, this is what really makes WoW a success among the mainstream. It's not like it was in EQ, where you needed a group to level, or in FFXI, where if you didn't fit the mold of what everyone else thought you should play as a class you could barely advance past 60. You can make it as far as you want solo, and if you want to go farther you can find a group to do that with.
Once companies start figuring that out, and can make an enjoyable MMO, with a reasonably rich backstory, then you'll have an MMO that can compete with WoW on marketshare. Until that happens, anything touting itself as a WoW killer can be looked at in the same manner as iPod killers and Gameboy killers.
The funny thing is, this has already been done. Guild Wars runs on pretty much the exact same premise that you propose, however its success has been on a level far below WoW. Would it be plausible on that scale? I don't really know, but I personally don't see it as being probable. MMOs use a much larger amount of horsepower than Gnutella/LimeWire et al.
On a different note, MMO servers do very little aside from math work now anyway. Dice rolls and storage of character info is about it, most other things are handled on the client.
Anyway, it's a good thought, I just see it as not being practical.
As a previous poster mentioned, this is quite untrue. Additionally, you don't have to have a TSA approved lock, either. When you're checking a locked bag, you simply open it up for inspection, then relock it afterwards. Having recently traveled with a security item that needed to be locked and not accessible, I know this to be true.
Cheers!
Oh? I'm 25, can't hear it, and i didn't 'abuse my hearing' as you put it. People who use firearms with any frequency will lose that portion of their hearing much faster than most people. It's quite likely that any officer won't be able to hear it due to the frequency required on weapons qualifications.
For the record, I'm in the USAF, and I fire two weapons once a year each, the M-16A2 and the M9. In all likelyhood, I probably wouldn't have been able to hear it at 22 or 23. We're also required to use hearing protection during all shooting phases of qualification.
Generally, this doesn't stop at the level of the product affected by the bad decision. It generally effects every market they're involved with. Personally, I can speak the truth of this. Not only do I have no plans to buy a PS3, but the Sony monitors I was planning on picking up will likely be from someone else. Cheers!
While you jest at your parent post, an incident like that has actually happened in Iraq. A young, foolish man in a toyota corolla hatchback with several mortar rounds, bombs and other explosives all wired up slammed into a M1A2 Abrams. I'll leave what happened next to your imaginations ;-p
Offtopic note on that first image; The incident in question there happend at Bagram Airfield about a week before I got here. The driver of the crane was a Contractor for KBR, and the vehicle that was run over was also owned by that same contractor. So, basically, while that's listed on the navy safety center site, and came from the 455 AEW safety office, the only involvment the military had in the incident is that it happened in Afghanistan on an Air Base.
While World of Starcraft isn't really workable due to lore issues, there is another option to that.
.02c
Warhammer 40k Online. It would allow for plenty of race choice, options for hand to hand combat, ranged combat, plenty of vehicles and whatnot, and more PvP than you could shake a stick at. Overall, I think that if done well, it would be outstanding. I suppose, however, that it largely depends on how the Warhammer Fantasy MMO comes out. If that's at all decent, then adapting it to 40k should be a breeze.
My
On this point, they are referring to the Blood Elf Paladins in a different manner from the Alliance's Paladins; They're the Blood Knights.
As to the points on the horde not being evil, I wholeheartedly agree on that. They're evil from the perspective of the Alliance, most certainly; but a lot of the actions of the Alliance are evil from the perspective of those belonging to the Horde.
As to Class specific skills, priests are the only class with those; according to Blizzard it's going to remain that way, as well. I can't find the post atm, but it's on the general WoW forums if you'd care to dig it up; IIRC, Tseric posted the comment I'm thinking of. The reasoning behind that decision is that giving all race/class combos specific spell(s) adds a lot more complexity to balance. I couldn't tell you the reason priests get them, however.
Cheers!
When I saw this, the first thing that came to my mind is the online only, just over a year old Escapist. It reminds me a great deal of NextGen, with very intellectual articles and outstanding writing throughout. They cover things from consoles to PC, with some very interesting takes on gaming that I thoroughly enjoy.
The Escapist
Seeing as you've been picked apart for everything but Nuku Nuku, I guess I'll take care of that one. The japanese title was 'Banno Bunka Nekomusume', or 'All Purpose Cultural Catgirl'. So, long story short: Yea, the title is inane, in a way. But is it an accurate translation? Yes, most certainly, although I wouldn't put much behind the 'cultural' bit in the title, seeing as the series deals with a curvy catgirl cyborg created from the brain of a kitten transplanted into a super cyborg after it gets hit by a truck.
Cheers.
I've already moderated here, but as I feel this really deserves a reply, sayonara mod points.
/. article text. Personally, I wouldn't put it past the MPAA or the RIAA to do whatever they can to ban p2p transfers across the board, simply for the fact that a portion of it is used for infringment.
While I can certainly understand where you come from in saying that slashdot editing has gotten worse, I don't feel that this story is necesarrily one of those. It's a bit overstated, yes, but I don't think that detracts from the fact that the article simply states 'unauthorized downloading, even for personal use'. To me, that implies heavily that the article states a bit more clearly that the ban on p2p transfers reaches much further than a simple ban on transfers that infringe on copyright, and reaches into the domain of banning any and all.
Ultimately, I think that without being able to read the text of the law, noone can really say based simply on the article. All you can really do is take it at face value, which to many is in agreement with the
Finally, on a more offtopic note, get off your horse man. Having a 4 digit UID doesn't mean shit; I'm sure there's plenty of people with 6 digit UIDs who read and enjoyed slashdot for ages before finally registering. I know for a fact that there are people who had accounts and forgot passwords to email accounts used for registration, then forgot the account info for slashdot as well. Who knows, maybe it happened in a different order? Long story short, they made another account. I'm sure there were other considerations too, I'm not going into depth.
All in all, just my 2 cents. Cheers.
Wow. I really don't know where to begin. It's all so... wrong. Well, this seems like a good a place as any:
Currently in the US of A, being a terrorist means you have no rights. You can be a US citizen, arrested on US soil, for alleged acts committed in the US, and have none of the ordinary rights 'guaranteed' to someone in that situation.
You can be put in civilian prison, or a military prison, or sent to Gitmo, or sent overseas. You have no rights. You don't get a lawyer; you don't get a phone call. You don't even get a trial. You can be held for YEARS without the government even admitting you are being held.
This is completely and totally baseless. Being accused of any crime, even of being a known terrorist, will NOT automatically land you at Guantanimo Bay. Individuals held there are foreign nationals who remained in this country illegally held as Prisoners of War due to known or suspected ties to foreign guerilla military cells, such as the Taliban or Al Qaida in Afghanistan, or Al Qaida in Iraq.
You can be tortured. No interrogation technique is off limits.
You won't get to question witnesses or review the evidence against you. If you do happen to get a trial or hearing, the government can submit 'classified' evidence you won't know about. And the judges will assume all government evidence is true until you can prove otherwise. (How do you prove something you don't even know about is untrue? Well, that's your problem.)
And if that's how the US treats its own citizens--registered voters even!--think what we might do to the rest of the world.
Yes, there have been more than a few incidents of soldiers/sailors/airmen/marines taking out their aggression on foreign nationals, and they are being punished for it. However, incidents such as those are NOT the norm, and are completely contradictory to the Rules of War, the Law of Armed Conflict, and the local Rules of Engagement. Furthermore, there are definitely limits on what you can and cannot do as a military interrogator(the Army still maintains that MOS). Being a terrorist(POW) actually grants you a great deal of protection from whatever you've imagined up, I assure you.
So, all in all, that was a baseless, accusatory crock with absolutely no grounding in fact whatsoever. I don't know where, or how you managed to gain any of those impressions; only that they absolutely sicken me.
Now, with all of that said, does that make Barlow's comparison of individuals who find ways to circumvent copy protection to preserve fair use to members of one of the most sought after terrorist organizations in the world any better? Certainly not; it's every bit as ridiculous as saying people who watch movies on linux are like pedophiles that rape children as pointed out by another poster.
Nintendo has a reputation from the SNES days when they took the blood out of the first "Mortal Kombat," but after the outcry that caused they let up on that for MKII.
I recall playing the original MK game on both SNES and the Genesis. I also recall there being no blood in either version by default. However, The option for blood was easily reveresed on the SNES, whereas for Genesis you had to turn it on via cheat code. To this day, I still don't recall a backlash against Sega for that one.
There's been a lot of people replying to you and others in this so far about how you're overly concerned on the matter; I'd have to say I agree, and that's as an American.
A little background on myself; I grew up military, and as such I spent 20 years of my life having a 'mandatory' ID card. Since then, I've gone on to enlist myself, and as a military member, I am mandated to keep my DoD ID card on me at all times. If I am found without it, and need to produce it, I can be arrested for failure to ID myself. So, in that sense, my DoD ID is to me, 'papers'. Am I greatly concerned about it? No, not really. It's the size of my driver's license, which, by the way is another card I have to have with me at any time I want to drive my car.
I think, as many others seem to, that you're being overly paranoid about this. You're not going to get arrested for not having it; but if you're out stumbling drunk and a cop stops you and you don't have it or another form of ID, he or she is simply that much less likely to let you off with a warning and an admonition to be careful on your way home. Realistically, think of it as driving without your license. You wouldn't go out driving without that, would you?
If you buy RHEL you get software _and_ support for a certain amount of cash
Actually, in this case, you're really only paying for support. If you wanted a copy of RHEL, IIRC you can get the binaries from RH free of charge. However, there is a disclaimer saying that you agree to expect no support from RH should something go wrong.
GW is a very different beast from WoW. You're better off comparing it to Diablo 2.
Both of them saw various improvements in the game engine, and while Diablo 2 never saw much in the way of additional content, It was also shipped in a far more complete form.
Ultimately, I suppose I'm just tired of the insistance that GW is an MMO; it's not. Towns are nothing more than a graphical chatroom, and most of the instances are produced on your local machine, a la Diablo 2. With WoW, everything is done on their servers.
While you make a really good point about the target demo for video games being 25-35, you're a bit off the mark as to why. It has little to do with the existance of an obviously larger disposable income, and more to do with the fact that these are the people who grew up playing video games. Think about it: if you're 35 today, then you were 13 when the original Famicom came out in 1983, and 15 when it was released in the US in 1985. Personally, I was 6 or 7 when my folks bought me mine, and got my SNES shortly after its launch in 1989. By the time N64 came out, I had my own incomes, which were split between movies, music, insurance and video games.
So yea, 25-35 is the target demo, but because these are the same people Nintendo has been targeting since the mid 1980s. They know what they like, by and large, so they keep selling it to them.
If you think Bleach or One Piece is truly that far removed from Naruto or Pokemon, then you are highly deluded. Currenlty, One Piece has been running roughly two years longer than Naruto, at over 200 aired episodes, and 5 or 6 Theatrical releases. Bleach, while certainly a new series, has more than enough potential to turn into the same long running series.
As to Elfen Lied not being released, the thinpak box will be available inside of 6 months; ADV released the last DVD a month or so ago. Blood+, which is a serial version of the Blood: The Last Vampire, just started airing, and has been on air for slightly longer than a month; That's not nearly long enough to expect to see a DVD over here. IIRC, the shortest completed in Japan to US release was Narue no Sekai(World of Narue), and that was still almost 10 months. As to Air, that's renai, which is anime based on ever popular Dating Sim games. Air happens to be based off an 'H' game, so I highly doubt we'll ever see that. However, TRSI is releasing To Heart, and Geneon released Shingetsutan Tsukihime, so I could certainly be wrong about that.
Overall, you make a point about quality, but you should be saying quantity. You're judging quality based on your tastes, and having watched anime for 15 odd years myself, fans today are thouroughly spoiled when it comes to series quality. They make the mistake of judging quality based on their indiviual tastes, as opposed to the worth of the show within its' particular genre, be it Shounen Action(Bleach, One Piece, Naruto), Shoujou(Marmalade Boy, Kareshi Kanoujou no Jijou), Comedy(Sexy Commando, Hare+Guu, FLCL), Shounen-Ai(Gravitation), or Drama Adventurish(Wolf's Rain, Juuni Kokki, WHR). There's more than that.
Cheers.
Yup, quite positive. By steeping the beans, regardless of temperature, you extract more from them. It's why people so rarely drink straight espresso; it's generally very thin and flavorless, moreso than any other coffee brewed in the italian style.
I highly doubt you'll ever see anything like that, except in an MMO that can afford to cater solely to casual players. To those who want to advance a character and have something to show for it, It wouldn't work. For example, EQ. When the Planes of Power xpac came out, it took ages of grinding to get access, then even more time grinding to get loot, etc. I was talking to my roomate, who had talked about it with his brother, who still plays. Recently, they added a bunch of 'Monster Missions'. They take around 20 minutes to run, and the loot you wind up with from them is the equivalent to Planes of Power loot, which took months to get.
This is a classic example of how MMOs work. You spend a great deal of time early on as one of the 'power gamer' achievers, and you feel good for it. Or, you can wait a while till additions to the game, which, when well done, are less noticeable to a casual gamer. The only real issue you have in this respect is a game where PvP is prevalent or major in some way, as the skilled, well equipped characters will generally do better than the casual gamers, for whom a large investment of time to gain that level of skill is simply unappealing.
Now, if you're the type of person to whom that model of game doesn't appeal, then it's almost certain that this genre of games isn't for you.
Ultimately, it works like this. Darker Roast = Less caffeine. After that, the caffeine content of the beverage is dependant on the brewing process. Actual brewed coffee has more caffeine than an espresso. Reason being for that is that the grounds are actually soaked when brewing for coffee; with espresso steam is just forced through some very fine grounds.
As an aside to that, this makes me wonder why people are so big on Starbucks. Between being overroasted, since that's really all Seattle coffees are is overroasted, as well as the large amount of espresso drinks they sell, you'd probably find more caffeine in a can of soda than your triple shot caramel latte, not to mention the soda is cheaper.
That's an issue involving mob rule, not governmental repression of free speech. The fact is that voicing an opinion in a group of opposite minded individuals exhibiting mob behavior is done at your on great personal risk.
Going by what you've said as well as the short, uninformative blurb there, the iPod is rating last. However, if you actually look at how the players are rated, the iPod is ahead of everyone. If the player is truly that bad, then why is it alwasy rated so highly by reviewers? User reviews put it lower, fourth of those five, but if you read through them it's either an issue with the Photo, or something unintelligible written by someone clearly trolling to bring the rating down.
As to the article, I found myself wondering where the rest of it was.