True, they don't need any evidence of anything to drag your ass to court and waste a lot of your money, anyway. At what point, however, does it become an issue for authorities to get involved? Sometimes they send legal notices to someone and drag them to court. Other times, they sick the FBI on the person. I'm not sure what the deciding factor is there, other than level of alleged infringement or degree of potential conspiracy on behalf of the defendants? It would be really interesting if someone were ever not only taken to court in a civil suit, but actually arrested by the police or FBI and pulled up on charges that turned out to be nothing more than the RIAA spying on your computer and finding that you had ripped your own collection to your network for your own use.
To be fair, there are no 30 minute shows that are any good. A thirty minute show is almost certainly a sit-com and... well... I think we can all admit that sit-coms are for mouth-breathing morons. Who really sits around and finds Everybody Loves Raymond or King of Queens or any of that crap funny?
It also depends on the content. Personally, I consume a lot of content and while I may suck down a bunch of sci-fi and horror movies by jumping through the film at 30 seconds at a time (except for the interesting parts), I'm certainly going to sit and watch the entire movie through if it's something worthy of some consideration. Unfortunately, most content does not fall into the "worth my undivided and full attention".
It also depends on the value of the minutia. The minutia in Schindler's List is certainly going to be more interesting than the minutia of Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean or Tokyo Drift.
I'm sure laws like this will change over time. After all in an increasingly global market, you can't afford for your trademark to be diluted by having a different name in each of six different geographical regions. I'm sure that someday the WTO will have something arranged so that the guy producing the most benefit from the trademark will win. If you came up with the trademark (or a copyrighted idea) twenty years ago and are using it to generate a million dollars in business per year, you have to surrender it to the bigger company who comes along and is making a billion dollars per year off of it.
I would think that would fall into the whole imminent domain concept that they use to justify taking part of your property to build a strip mall or expand a road. Likewise, a billion dollars of business in your economy is more important to society than some piddly million dollar business using the same concept or trademark.
Sad, but . . . I think that might be in our future.
IANAL but I'm not sure you could call this entrapment. If the client does not actually attempt to download copyrighted material, but simply seeks out material on the computer, then the person has already committed the crime. How so? If you've ever seen sting videos, they don't arrest you for driving down a street known to be a big prostitute hangout. They don't arrest you for talking to a drug dealer about doing a deal or talking to a hooker about having sex. They only do so after money has been handed over.
All the MPAA is attempting to do is get your computer to snitch you out. Their attempt is completely invalid. All they can do is prove that you have copyrighted content on your computer. As I mentioned in another post, I rip all of my CD and DVD collections to my fileserver. I have almost six full terabytes of copyrighted content between my music and movie collections. All of it is content I have purchased and legally own. So the only thing they can try to take me to court over (or threaten me with, unless I hand over money to their mob tactics) is for doing something they don't like with their content that I own (ie, converting it into a format I prefer to consume it as).
As for P2P... really, there's nothing risky about P2P. P2P isn't evil spyware bent on corrupting your computer. Some of the content can, sure.. but... well.. that's what you scan files for with an anti-virus app before running them (if you're on a Windows system, of course).
As for people respecting the rights of artists and copyright owners? I think people tend to feel less obligated to organizations that themselves have no respect for the consumer or the artist. Personally, I gladly hand over $10 for artists that I love to listen to. I'm glad to help them out and pay for some great material. But I'm not going to give $20 to Sony or Universal or BMG. Even if their artists were something I wanted to listen to. Frankly, I'd rather do without. But a lot of people see copyright infringement as an underhanded thing to do to the corporations just like the way the corporations treat artists and consumers and fans is often underhanded. They get away with as much as they possibly can under the law or even despite the law. The only difference is, what they do is acceptable and they can get away with it, because they have billions with which to lobby lawmakers and politicians and fund court campaigns while the consumer does not.
You're completely right. I'm sure a man worth 7% of his country's economy has little or no impact on said country, society and economy. And no, I may not know all of the citizens who are well off in Mexico, but I do know that a full one percent of their population flees the country at all costs every year, so while things may be dandy for a lot of the population, there is clearly an enormous segment of the population that is being completely disregarded and falling apart. Further, it's not a lack of education -- it's the severity of the government and commercial corruption in the country.
"hide in gutted tires and engine compartments" I've no idea what the fuck you're talking about and I've lived here 24 years. You just perpetuate the "stupid american" stereotype that's oblivious to the rest of the world. People aren't literally dying of starvation here and move to the How ignorant and naive are you?
I'm not perpetuating a "stupid American" stereotype so much as you're just completely fucking ignorant and can't be bothered to pick up a newspaper.
First of all, to clarify -- the examples I gave are legitimate and documented. Here is an article from a week ago regarding the engine attempt:
Undocumented Immigrants Found In Truck Engine Compartment From the article: Officers said they discovered three undocumented immigrants from Mexico -- two women and a man -- hiding under the hood as the truck attempted to cross into the Otay Mesa port of entry. . . . . A woman found in the engine sustained burns to her right arm, abdominal area and left leg during the trip, officials said. She was transported to medical facility for medical care.
So, please explain to me how Mexico is just fine and dandy and not suffering at the hands of corrupt politicians and aristocrats like this Slim guy who is worth 7% of the entire economy, yet these people are jamming themselves between an engine and the engine hood and suffering severe burns just to get here?
I didn't miss anything from Stewart's book by speeding through the audio version at an increased tempo. Listening to audio faster than normal is definitely not the same thing as "speed reading", in which you lose a great deal of the actual content (because that's essentially how speed-reading works).
And I can both agree and disagree with an hour long show being cut down to six minutes and retaining its story.
For one thing, an hour long television show is actually only about 40 minutes after commercials and credits. Second, a lot of content in entertainment is fluff. Think of all the great works of fiction that can easily be condensed into a paragraph. Some can even be condensed into a sentence. You only enjoy the nuance and particulars of a story by reading through every page and word of it, but you don't remember all of it either.
Think back on a book you read a year ago. How much of the story do you actually recall? Probably only the main points of it. In the long run, do I need to read six pages of Tolkein describing the kind of shirt someone is wearing? No. It contributes to the current experience a great deal, but in the long run it is not very significant.
I'm not saying that reading is a waste of time or any form of entertainment is a waste of time if consumed at the pace of the author or director... but really... think about how many countless hours, days, weeks and even months of your life might be spent consuming the fluff between the events.
I can dedicate eight hours to a stack of RFCs, but I definitely can't spare eight hours to pour through a chunk of Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders. Yes, it's a judgement call on an individual basis. I have to decide that a stack of data related to my field of interest is of greater long-term value than a fantasy novel. This might not have been such a problem forty years ago, when things moved at a slower pace. When you didn't communicate with someone instantly by cell phone or email, but dashed off a letter, stuck a stamp on it and had two weeks to wait for a reply to it. More downtime. More leisure.
I would be surprised if there were many movies that you could *not* condense into six minutes and not still convey the plot, characters and events relatively in-full.
First, my understanding was that uploading was probably illegal, but that the verdict had not come down on downloading. In other words, it is infringement to provide a copy of copyrighted material that you do not own, but it is not illegal to _receive_ a copy.
Second, what is the point of an application searching my computer to see what copyrighted material I have on it? I ripped my entire CD collection and most of my DVD collection to my file server in the last few years. They would see almost six terabytes of copyrighted material on my machine - ALL of it legitimately owned and purchased by me. What are they going to do, see the enormous number of hits from their software and send the police after me for owning too much content?
I don't see a problem with it. Personally, I'm a busy person. A lot of professionals have very busy careers, then they may have personal projects that they hope to turn into a business some day. Then they have hefty hobbies of some sort. Some also have family to deal with. The last thing they want to waste time on is a three hour movie or an hour long television show with twenty-two minutes of commercials.
I have a habit of listening to podcasts or books on audio or even radio talk shows like Rick Emerson at as much as double speed. I listened to John Stewart's American History book in this fashion and ran through it very quickly, without missing the actual content.
Do I wish there were enough time to sit back and watch a three hour hour movie in real time, spend twelve hours reading a huge tome of fiction or listen to music while staring into a black night room? I sure do. But I don't have that kind of time. Sorry.
Is it a sad reflection of today's culture? I can't really comment on that. Perhaps as a country that spends more days and hours working than any other nation on the planet and takes the least vacations, we have less and less available time for other things. Leisurely entertainment falls to the wayside. I just know that every time I sit down to read a lengthy non-technical, non-career related book, I am constantly thinking "I should be writing code on my personal project. I should be finishing some stuff at work. I should be building a new computer for my little sister away at college.".
I'm not saying people should "suck it up", but negative experiences, memories and emotions have just as much value and importance as positive or neutral ones. If you're molested by your creepy uncle or priest or you're shoved in lockers and poked with hot tongs in highschool, doesn't your resulting emotion and reactions and memories and stress and trauma related to recalling those things contribute to forming who you are?
I really do not like the idea of a world where only positive and neutral experiences, emotions and attitudes are valued and anything else needs to be extracted. I've had plenty of bad experiences and while I would certainly have preferred they never existed, those events as a child and my recollection of them to this day are a large part of who I am, what drives me, my accomplishments and how I treat people in this world.
I can see how there may be a certain degree after which a person may need this sort of thing done, but where is that line? And how certain are we that it's not going to have an ill effect? I strongly believe that there is a natural order of things (I believe that couples who can't have children may not be able to have them for a particular biological reason imperative to the long-term health of the species, for example) and while I don't necessarily have any problem with man intervening, that doesn't mean it can't contradict or interfere with something that has a natural benefit in some way. I have to be curious about whether or not trauma that is so sever that it prevents you from being a productive member of society or from making it through each day without tremendous difficulty may impact the individual that way for a reason?
I'm not trying to be heartless. I'm just posing questions. I surely don't want people to suffer, but if there weren't a reason for it why would we not have evolved to the point where we are not so emotionally fragile already?
Because, posting articles like this is no different than posting an article every time some hick claims they saw a UFO or were abducted by aliens. It's really not news and it's just promoting a total nut-job (or alternately, sham-meister).
Or maybe I'm just overly tired of that Alex Chiu douchebag and his special life ring or whatever that Slashdot blathered on about for a solid four years.
Here is how you know when a perpetual energy machine is fake (aside from the fact that it is supposedly a perpetual energy machine):
If you invented something like that, you would be in secret negotiations with governments, militaries and major corporations. You wouldn't be wasting your time with youtube demonstrations and internet articles. You'd be involved in secret demonstrations with signed NDAs all around and massive bidding wars.
People seem to be overlooking this drug. I don't see how this is such an amazing new discovery. It does NOT erase memories. It only lessens the trauma and stress involved in recalling those memories. Sort of a selective prozac. Wake me up when you can actually do something USEFUL. Like ERASE memories. What's the point of reducing the pain associated with a memory if you still have the memory itself?
Not to mention, things should hurt. I'm sorry if something terrible happens in a person's life, but events and situations help build us for better or worse and it seems ridiculous to only let your mind experience the neutral and positive memories.
Even the original LiveScience article had this terribly wrong -- suggesting that this allows a CIA agent to have his memory erased, so that he only remembers vaguely caring about the CIA and security, but nothing else. They seem to have removed that completely wrong statement in the current version, though.
I don't doubt that Mexico might have seemed nice to you. That doesn't chance the fact that approximately 1.7 million Mexican citizens come to America for employment every year. That accounts for one full percent of Mexico's population. Every year. And they do so in creative, unfortunate and clearly desperate ways such as sewing themselves into a bus seat or jamming themselves on top of a truck's engine, suffering severe burns in the process.
I'm sure it's a wonderful country when you're the one man who is worth 7% of your entire country, but I doubt a full percent of the country is fleeing to America under terrible conditions, because their homeland is wonderful.
I'm not for forcing people to give their money away, but clearly there is a severe problem in that country and this guy only further illustrates that.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Outside of certain tech circles, a lot of people love Bill Gates. And outside of the tech world altogether, most people have extremely favorable opinions of Gates.
Personally, I don't care much for the guy. His whole charitable foundation and generosity does get a great deal of favor from me, though.
He is worth more than 7% of his country's entire economy and not only could he take every citizen to McDonald's, but he could give every single family $3,500. That's just crazy.
Not that I'm against capitalism. Hell, no. But something is wrong in a country where a man can have almost a tenth of its entire wealth while the rest of the country wants to flea to America for crappy jobs and wages. Especially when most of that wealth originated not from capitalism, but rigged corporate welfare.
I don't care as long as the advertising is in sports games. After all, if you're driving around a car plastered with Home Depot and Exxon Mobile ads in NASCAR'08, I don't think you're going to give a damn about sponsored achievements.
In fact, I don't think anyone should care in any sports game. Even without "advertisements" in sports games, the entire game is a giant advertisement. The NFL and the NBA are corporations. They are businesses. They are not public utilities. If you're dumb enough to cheer for the local company (team) and you pin your hopes and wishes and self-worth on the success of this business which just happens to be based in your particular city, then you probably don't care if Dodge is sponsoring an achievement or sticking a banner or one of those long drawn out "in game commercials" in it.
Now, if you're going to stick these in my game of Bioshock, then screw you bastards.
So the richest man in the world comes from the country where people hide in gutted tires and engine compartments and risk life and limb to flee, so they can find a job where they can make a buck a day picking green-beans?
Oh, by the way, this guy is worth 7% of the entire country.
Joe Camel never sold cigarettes. Store clerks sell cigarettes. They're not allowed to sell cigarettes *or* beer to children, so I really don't see the point. Not to mention, they drink beer on The Simpsons, so it's ridiculous for anyone to suggest that poor, impressionable, mushy snot-rags are going to be corrupted by adults being able to buy a Simpson's beer in the beer aisle.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm definitely not suggesting it as a wise idea -- merely prognosticating.
Thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't even noticed the typo!
True, they don't need any evidence of anything to drag your ass to court and waste a lot of your money, anyway. At what point, however, does it become an issue for authorities to get involved? Sometimes they send legal notices to someone and drag them to court. Other times, they sick the FBI on the person. I'm not sure what the deciding factor is there, other than level of alleged infringement or degree of potential conspiracy on behalf of the defendants? It would be really interesting if someone were ever not only taken to court in a civil suit, but actually arrested by the police or FBI and pulled up on charges that turned out to be nothing more than the RIAA spying on your computer and finding that you had ripped your own collection to your network for your own use.
To be fair, there are no 30 minute shows that are any good. A thirty minute show is almost certainly a sit-com and... well... I think we can all admit that sit-coms are for mouth-breathing morons. Who really sits around and finds Everybody Loves Raymond or King of Queens or any of that crap funny?
It also depends on the content. Personally, I consume a lot of content and while I may suck down a bunch of sci-fi and horror movies by jumping through the film at 30 seconds at a time (except for the interesting parts), I'm certainly going to sit and watch the entire movie through if it's something worthy of some consideration. Unfortunately, most content does not fall into the "worth my undivided and full attention".
It also depends on the value of the minutia. The minutia in Schindler's List is certainly going to be more interesting than the minutia of Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean or Tokyo Drift.
I'm sure laws like this will change over time. After all in an increasingly global market, you can't afford for your trademark to be diluted by having a different name in each of six different geographical regions. I'm sure that someday the WTO will have something arranged so that the guy producing the most benefit from the trademark will win. If you came up with the trademark (or a copyrighted idea) twenty years ago and are using it to generate a million dollars in business per year, you have to surrender it to the bigger company who comes along and is making a billion dollars per year off of it.
I would think that would fall into the whole imminent domain concept that they use to justify taking part of your property to build a strip mall or expand a road. Likewise, a billion dollars of business in your economy is more important to society than some piddly million dollar business using the same concept or trademark.
Sad, but . . . I think that might be in our future.
As for P2P... really, there's nothing risky about P2P. P2P isn't evil spyware bent on corrupting your computer. Some of the content can, sure.. but... well.. that's what you scan files for with an anti-virus app before running them (if you're on a Windows system, of course).
As for people respecting the rights of artists and copyright owners? I think people tend to feel less obligated to organizations that themselves have no respect for the consumer or the artist. Personally, I gladly hand over $10 for artists that I love to listen to. I'm glad to help them out and pay for some great material. But I'm not going to give $20 to Sony or Universal or BMG. Even if their artists were something I wanted to listen to. Frankly, I'd rather do without. But a lot of people see copyright infringement as an underhanded thing to do to the corporations just like the way the corporations treat artists and consumers and fans is often underhanded. They get away with as much as they possibly can under the law or even despite the law. The only difference is, what they do is acceptable and they can get away with it, because they have billions with which to lobby lawmakers and politicians and fund court campaigns while the consumer does not.
You're completely right. I'm sure a man worth 7% of his country's economy has little or no impact on said country, society and economy. And no, I may not know all of the citizens who are well off in Mexico, but I do know that a full one percent of their population flees the country at all costs every year, so while things may be dandy for a lot of the population, there is clearly an enormous segment of the population that is being completely disregarded and falling apart. Further, it's not a lack of education -- it's the severity of the government and commercial corruption in the country.
I'm not perpetuating a "stupid American" stereotype so much as you're just completely fucking ignorant and can't be bothered to pick up a newspaper.
First of all, to clarify -- the examples I gave are legitimate and documented. Here is an article from a week ago regarding the engine attempt:
Undocumented Immigrants Found In Truck Engine Compartment
From the article: Officers said they discovered three undocumented immigrants from Mexico -- two women and a man -- hiding under the hood as the truck attempted to cross into the Otay Mesa port of entry. . . . . A woman found in the engine sustained burns to her right arm, abdominal area and left leg during the trip, officials said. She was transported to medical facility for medical care.
So, please explain to me how Mexico is just fine and dandy and not suffering at the hands of corrupt politicians and aristocrats like this Slim guy who is worth 7% of the entire economy, yet these people are jamming themselves between an engine and the engine hood and suffering severe burns just to get here?
Troll? Really, people? Come on now. Your bias is showing. My comments are completely reasonable and legitimate. Not to mention, factual.
I didn't miss anything from Stewart's book by speeding through the audio version at an increased tempo. Listening to audio faster than normal is definitely not the same thing as "speed reading", in which you lose a great deal of the actual content (because that's essentially how speed-reading works).
And I can both agree and disagree with an hour long show being cut down to six minutes and retaining its story.
For one thing, an hour long television show is actually only about 40 minutes after commercials and credits. Second, a lot of content in entertainment is fluff. Think of all the great works of fiction that can easily be condensed into a paragraph. Some can even be condensed into a sentence. You only enjoy the nuance and particulars of a story by reading through every page and word of it, but you don't remember all of it either.
Think back on a book you read a year ago. How much of the story do you actually recall? Probably only the main points of it. In the long run, do I need to read six pages of Tolkein describing the kind of shirt someone is wearing? No. It contributes to the current experience a great deal, but in the long run it is not very significant.
I'm not saying that reading is a waste of time or any form of entertainment is a waste of time if consumed at the pace of the author or director... but really... think about how many countless hours, days, weeks and even months of your life might be spent consuming the fluff between the events.
I can dedicate eight hours to a stack of RFCs, but I definitely can't spare eight hours to pour through a chunk of Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders. Yes, it's a judgement call on an individual basis. I have to decide that a stack of data related to my field of interest is of greater long-term value than a fantasy novel. This might not have been such a problem forty years ago, when things moved at a slower pace. When you didn't communicate with someone instantly by cell phone or email, but dashed off a letter, stuck a stamp on it and had two weeks to wait for a reply to it. More downtime. More leisure.
I would be surprised if there were many movies that you could *not* condense into six minutes and not still convey the plot, characters and events relatively in-full.
First, my understanding was that uploading was probably illegal, but that the verdict had not come down on downloading. In other words, it is infringement to provide a copy of copyrighted material that you do not own, but it is not illegal to _receive_ a copy.
Second, what is the point of an application searching my computer to see what copyrighted material I have on it? I ripped my entire CD collection and most of my DVD collection to my file server in the last few years. They would see almost six terabytes of copyrighted material on my machine - ALL of it legitimately owned and purchased by me. What are they going to do, see the enormous number of hits from their software and send the police after me for owning too much content?
I don't see a problem with it. Personally, I'm a busy person. A lot of professionals have very busy careers, then they may have personal projects that they hope to turn into a business some day. Then they have hefty hobbies of some sort. Some also have family to deal with. The last thing they want to waste time on is a three hour movie or an hour long television show with twenty-two minutes of commercials.
I have a habit of listening to podcasts or books on audio or even radio talk shows like Rick Emerson at as much as double speed. I listened to John Stewart's American History book in this fashion and ran through it very quickly, without missing the actual content.
Do I wish there were enough time to sit back and watch a three hour hour movie in real time, spend twelve hours reading a huge tome of fiction or listen to music while staring into a black night room? I sure do. But I don't have that kind of time. Sorry.
Is it a sad reflection of today's culture? I can't really comment on that. Perhaps as a country that spends more days and hours working than any other nation on the planet and takes the least vacations, we have less and less available time for other things. Leisurely entertainment falls to the wayside. I just know that every time I sit down to read a lengthy non-technical, non-career related book, I am constantly thinking "I should be writing code on my personal project. I should be finishing some stuff at work. I should be building a new computer for my little sister away at college.".
I'm not saying people should "suck it up", but negative experiences, memories and emotions have just as much value and importance as positive or neutral ones. If you're molested by your creepy uncle or priest or you're shoved in lockers and poked with hot tongs in highschool, doesn't your resulting emotion and reactions and memories and stress and trauma related to recalling those things contribute to forming who you are?
I really do not like the idea of a world where only positive and neutral experiences, emotions and attitudes are valued and anything else needs to be extracted. I've had plenty of bad experiences and while I would certainly have preferred they never existed, those events as a child and my recollection of them to this day are a large part of who I am, what drives me, my accomplishments and how I treat people in this world.
I can see how there may be a certain degree after which a person may need this sort of thing done, but where is that line? And how certain are we that it's not going to have an ill effect? I strongly believe that there is a natural order of things (I believe that couples who can't have children may not be able to have them for a particular biological reason imperative to the long-term health of the species, for example) and while I don't necessarily have any problem with man intervening, that doesn't mean it can't contradict or interfere with something that has a natural benefit in some way. I have to be curious about whether or not trauma that is so sever that it prevents you from being a productive member of society or from making it through each day without tremendous difficulty may impact the individual that way for a reason?
I'm not trying to be heartless. I'm just posing questions. I surely don't want people to suffer, but if there weren't a reason for it why would we not have evolved to the point where we are not so emotionally fragile already?
Because, posting articles like this is no different than posting an article every time some hick claims they saw a UFO or were abducted by aliens. It's really not news and it's just promoting a total nut-job (or alternately, sham-meister).
Or maybe I'm just overly tired of that Alex Chiu douchebag and his special life ring or whatever that Slashdot blathered on about for a solid four years.
Here is how you know when a perpetual energy machine is fake (aside from the fact that it is supposedly a perpetual energy machine):
If you invented something like that, you would be in secret negotiations with governments, militaries and major corporations. You wouldn't be wasting your time with youtube demonstrations and internet articles. You'd be involved in secret demonstrations with signed NDAs all around and massive bidding wars.
At least they seem to have stopped posting things about that Alex Chiu time travel idiot.
People seem to be overlooking this drug. I don't see how this is such an amazing new discovery. It does NOT erase memories. It only lessens the trauma and stress involved in recalling those memories. Sort of a selective prozac. Wake me up when you can actually do something USEFUL. Like ERASE memories. What's the point of reducing the pain associated with a memory if you still have the memory itself?
Not to mention, things should hurt. I'm sorry if something terrible happens in a person's life, but events and situations help build us for better or worse and it seems ridiculous to only let your mind experience the neutral and positive memories.
Even the original LiveScience article had this terribly wrong -- suggesting that this allows a CIA agent to have his memory erased, so that he only remembers vaguely caring about the CIA and security, but nothing else. They seem to have removed that completely wrong statement in the current version, though.
There's a sucker born every minute.
Seriously, why is anyone outside of Art Bell and George Noorey even giving this guy the time of day?
I don't doubt that Mexico might have seemed nice to you. That doesn't chance the fact that approximately 1.7 million Mexican citizens come to America for employment every year. That accounts for one full percent of Mexico's population. Every year. And they do so in creative, unfortunate and clearly desperate ways such as sewing themselves into a bus seat or jamming themselves on top of a truck's engine, suffering severe burns in the process.
I'm sure it's a wonderful country when you're the one man who is worth 7% of your entire country, but I doubt a full percent of the country is fleeing to America under terrible conditions, because their homeland is wonderful.
I'm not for forcing people to give their money away, but clearly there is a severe problem in that country and this guy only further illustrates that.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Outside of certain tech circles, a lot of people love Bill Gates. And outside of the tech world altogether, most people have extremely favorable opinions of Gates.
Personally, I don't care much for the guy. His whole charitable foundation and generosity does get a great deal of favor from me, though.
You've got to be kidding me.. Ubuntu Dell versus . . . V.D.?
He is worth more than 7% of his country's entire economy and not only could he take every citizen to McDonald's, but he could give every single family $3,500. That's just crazy.
Not that I'm against capitalism. Hell, no. But something is wrong in a country where a man can have almost a tenth of its entire wealth while the rest of the country wants to flea to America for crappy jobs and wages. Especially when most of that wealth originated not from capitalism, but rigged corporate welfare.
I don't care as long as the advertising is in sports games. After all, if you're driving around a car plastered with Home Depot and Exxon Mobile ads in NASCAR'08, I don't think you're going to give a damn about sponsored achievements.
In fact, I don't think anyone should care in any sports game. Even without "advertisements" in sports games, the entire game is a giant advertisement. The NFL and the NBA are corporations. They are businesses. They are not public utilities. If you're dumb enough to cheer for the local company (team) and you pin your hopes and wishes and self-worth on the success of this business which just happens to be based in your particular city, then you probably don't care if Dodge is sponsoring an achievement or sticking a banner or one of those long drawn out "in game commercials" in it.
Now, if you're going to stick these in my game of Bioshock, then screw you bastards.
So the richest man in the world comes from the country where people hide in gutted tires and engine compartments and risk life and limb to flee, so they can find a job where they can make a buck a day picking green-beans?
Oh, by the way, this guy is worth 7% of the entire country.
Joe Camel never sold cigarettes. Store clerks sell cigarettes. They're not allowed to sell cigarettes *or* beer to children, so I really don't see the point. Not to mention, they drink beer on The Simpsons, so it's ridiculous for anyone to suggest that poor, impressionable, mushy snot-rags are going to be corrupted by adults being able to buy a Simpson's beer in the beer aisle.