Oh, whoops. My bad. There were more than 6 episodes. In fact, the series lasted for an entire three months!
Still, it was just Andromeda with dusters and without the muscles. The captain guy wasn't even interesting. He was as exciting as the detective on Twin Peaks, but none of the quirky behavior that made him at least entertaining.
I'm not saying it probably wasn't one of the better science fiction-ish shows on television in the last decade - but that isn't really saying much considering there hasn't really been any science fiction-ish shows on television in the last decade.
Gee, a movie based on a four year old television series that itself only lasted four to six episodes? Oh, that must be absolutely amazing.
And yes, that's sarcasm.
Sorry, I'm just not a Gaiman/Whedon fanboy. Then again, I also don't collect anime and get wood arguing over which X-Men character would win in a fight. Mark me a troll or flamebait, though. It's the way we deal with people who don't agree with our slathering of praise and respect on every aspect of geek culture that crops up, around here.
I could be wrong, but I thought the Bush administration had said we would hit the moon by 2010 and Mars by 2020?
How is it that Kennedy says we'll do the (at the time) completely impossible within 10 years and they do it 9 years later, and today we can't even decide if we'll do the completely possible (and redundant) within 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years - or ever?
Currently, I think the greatest use of $250bn would be to educate people so that we don't have the majority of the population believing in the "creation myth" as scientific explanation. As long as the majority of the population is so dense and ignorant that they actually think the female sex came from a man's rib and there was a snake in an evil tree and 800 year old men, we really can't afford to explore space.
Anyway, when we come to meet an off-earth civilization, I'd rather we have evolved a bit as a society. We still have large religious groups and quasi-political figures blaming hurricanes on homosexuals incurring "god's" wrath upon us (a lot like ancient people used to think an eclipse was the anger of their gods). Are we really ready to explore? Are we currently in a societal state in which we would wan to be introduced to possible other peoples?
I don't know about everyone else, but I would be embarrassed and ashamed, much like having to introduce backwards neanderthal-type family members to your friends (or worse, your significant other).
You'd be amazed at the technological advances that have come by way of our United States Military originally just trying to devise better ways to kill people.
As the article mentioned, these are smart students.
A smart person recognizes that any sort of intellectual-based career is up for grabs in a world economy and that no matter how great you are, you're not as great as the deal an employer can potentially get for 10% of your salary outside of the country. Who would willingly put themselves into such a position?
And before you say "Oh, well, only lazy stupid people get outsourced", take a look around at the people who are dumped in favor of outsourcing. I've seen some remarkable talent lost because the business felt that nobody's talent was worth ten or fifteen times the going rate in Russia or China. And while talented people can still find jobs and do well, it's more of a hassle than it used to be and the field overall has lost its luster.
I think young people are starting to realize that the only sure thing is that which requires your presence. Massage therapy, janitorial work, pscyhology, teaching, retail store clerk, cashier.
Anyway, as the global economy roars and marginalizes, it isn't really going to matter what it is you do. Everything short of sports star or entertainer will be mediocre.
They have (or are soon going to according to an interview by the CEO on television) something like 1500 games.
Aside from the legal aspects, if I can't acquire the various emulators and all the ROMs for less than 10 minutes worth of work per month, then the convenience is worth $15. I could also hunt and kill bison for food with a bow and arrow, but the $3/lb for meat at the store is worth the convenience.
As for the controllers - you can make your own with a simple conversion. There are instructions online for this around the net. Of course, you'd have to have a set of classic NES controllers in the first place to do this and be willing to forever alter them.
To justify and promote blogs (by the companies that have a specific promotional or monetary interest in such things), a lot of people will convince you that anything accepting comments and providing updated contents over time is a "blog" and not just a "website". By that yardstick, most online news outlets (including the corporate broadcasters and print news groups) are a "blog", since they fit the updates bill as well as accepting comments in one way or another, usually related to the contents -- and even offer RSS feeds.
A better definition is:
Blog: A website by me. About me and things I have to say. Intended not just to present myself and share information, but to generate a "community" around my every words and regular updates. Frequently mimics the current content of a million others blogs and frequently engaging in deep-level navel-gazing (trackbacks - a blog linking to a blog linking to a blog linking to a website linking to a story).
Indeed, the word "blog" comes from "web log". Log, as in journal.
Websites: Everything else.
Or, as an example:
JWZ has a blog (livejournal, actually). Slashdot has a geek oriented news site that accepts user comments.
JWZ's site is about himself, his business, his thoughts, his interesting link finds, his takes on news stories and people wanting to participate in his blog because he's him. Or him's he. Or whatever.
Slashdot is about content and people commenting on that content. The stories are about real stories or products or technologies - not about Hemos or Nate or Taco. The comments are by users, not Hemos or Nate or Taco. At most, the editor who approves a story may add a somewhat biased personal comment to a story, but it is still about the story and not that individual.
I don't know how much clearer the contrast can be.
Here's another example. Wil Wheaton has a blog. Debian planet has a website. Wil Wheaton's blog is about him, his life, his career, his thoughts and people commenting in relation. Debianplanet.org is about Debian news, updates and howtos, with user comments and a community. But not about an individual or an individual's thoughts or life.
Just because you have thoughts doesn't mean they need to be shared. The average blogger reminds me of the average loudmouthed kid who has to make every single thing that goes through his mind every second of the day known to the world.
Okay, you hate George Bush. Wow. That's unique. Great, you hate pinko commie liberal hippies. Good for you. What a unique perspective. You're said about Brad and Jennifer breaking up. Oh, dear - I'm so glad you took the time to communicate that with the world. Your head hurts and your boyfriend dumped you - hurrah. We're so glad to be kept up to date on this. You found an interesting site to link to... wonderful for you.
Every person on the face of the earth does not need a public diary and soap box in the same way that we don't need 800,000,000 television stations so that every single individual can have their own television station to broadcast their drivel on.
And what it still comes down to is that almost all blogs are nothing but a giant ego stroke. People trying to post things that present themselves in such a way as to gain "friends" and attention and make people like them. It's all about "look how neat I am. look at how interesting my thoughts are - don't you want to know me and post on my blog and link to me?"
If you're Seamus - the xbox designer - you might have some great stuff to say on your blog. If you're Seumas, the software engineer who runs a massive free niche auction site but are an otherwise normal person with nothing groundbreaking to say that hasn't already been said a million times in this world through every medium - why should you create a "blog" and throw your every stupid observation, commentary and rundown of your daily personal life out there on the net for six billion potential people to view? Who gives a fuck? You're nobody and you're not unique or interesting.
THE PROBLEM WITH BLOGGING IS THE SELF DELUSION THAT YOU BELIEVE YOU MATTER OR THAT PEOPLE GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU SAY.
And what is the difference between someone posting a message on Slashdot and running their own blog? A blog is about me me me with frequent updates about me me me in some way. Posting to slashdot is offering a one-time statement in a community of voices regarding the current subject.
And I don't care if people think "slashdot was the first big blog". Slashdot is no more a blog than CNN or FOXNEWS or BBC.COM is. It's just another site with news - except that you can comment on the news items (just like you can at Yahoo! news and elsewhere). Since when does everything that isn't static and has an update on some variably frequent or infrequent basis become a "blog"? If you put up a website and never change it, it's a website? But if you put up a website and you update it over the years, it's a blog?
I differentiate blogs from websites based on the criteria of "things I have to say and a place for you to discuss what I have to say with me". Websites may be about you. But blogs are about desperate attempts to build a community around *YOU*. Though occasionally put to good use by certain worthy individuals, often exploited to a useless degree by the self-important blog-cliques.
And for fuck's sake, if you're going to have a "blog", please at least call it a website anyway. When someone tells me to "check out my blog" or "take a look at my livejournal" or I see that it's just a blog from a cookie cutter domain that spits them out with the difficulty of signing in with an email address (instead of having to install drupal or something), it makes me *not* want to go to your site. And chances are, I never will because of it. Just like I would never want to go sit in your bedroom and read y our stupid journal.
The point is, do you think Microsoft just started throwing resources at this project in the last year? Or since the xbox had been out awhile? Or since the Xbox was released? Of course not. They had a complete team working on the 360 since before the original xbox was released.
Two or more generations of a product are often developed simultaneously. The idea that 'oh my god, they are releasing almost a year before Sony - so it must be missing something!" is just silly. That's the same kind of logic behind "we should call it Slackware 9.0 so it can compete with Red Hat's versioning system!"
Being released early or first doesn't mean a thing. Being Microsoft means two things: First, that you could create, design and release a new fully featured and functional product in a few weeks if you really truly put the force of your entire company behind it and second that whether they spent five years or fifty developing it, it would still be microsoft quality - and standard microsoft experience. Take that how you like.
Whatever we like to think of microsoft, they have the resources (funding, connections, employees, engineering) to do just about whatever they want whenever they want. And so far, it's still the best choice for people who like to play games online.
As for people thinking the origen site might be launching a new bit of news about the Halo 3 release... um... no.... why would they?! The Halo 3 release is going to happen in 2006/2007 - whatever week the PS3 comes out.
I ordered one of the $900+ bundles from Gamestop the moment the 11/22 release date was announced. It was one of the only places I could find that didn't say they were already sold out. I would have gotten the $2,000 bundle, but it would be $118 cheaper to buy each item separately. Even with the $900 bundle, it would be $18 cheaper to order everything separately. But, of course, you can't - if you want the premium system, you have to buy the bundles.
I just hope that I don't find out, come 11/22, that they oversold and that mine along with many others will be on back order. That would be a cheap ass thing to do, since if a company told you up-front "we're not going to be able to fill your order on time", you could have just gone somewhere else.
Also, I'm pretty sure you can get your system on 11/22 in stores, but if you ordered yours - even if you ordered it with overnight shipping - you will not get it on Thanksgiving week. It comes out on 11/22, would probably ship 11/23 - then 11/24 and 11/25 are holidays. 11/26 and 11/27 are weekends. So those who have ordered can expect theirs some time around 11/29 at the earliest (if you have overnight shipping) or some time in december if you didn't.
I'm tempted to drive to our local gamestop and a few other stores on 11/22 just to take photos of the crowds.
That's because it's a Slashdot advertisement. If they bothered to say "The new OQO model (insert what it's a model OF here)", nobody would go to the place's website and Slashdot couldn't justify whatever prices they're charging for the advertising.:)
I don't know much about this, but how would someone go about making their music licensed, but still distributable? That is - how can they differentiate my part-time starving-artist band's MP3s that we gladly put up on all places that we can get mass distribution for people to download and share with absolutely no strings attached from, say, som RIAA riddled garbage?
How will they differentiate between The Hunchback of Notre Dame and something that is not public domain and restrictive? How will they differentiate between a short story from a nobody author who is gladly sharing his work with the latest crappy Anne Rice eBook?
And further, why should anyone have to? You should have to go out of your way to say "THIS IS MY WORK - IT HAS THESE CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS ON IT" versus "THIS IS MY WORK - DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH IT". I know this isn't how it legally goes, but come on. And if you're not the original author, how do you make available such a license and choose it? The dude who wrote Cinderella isn't alive anymore, so the story of cinderella can't be shared, since there's not necessarily a license on any work from it I might use?
Is this where the future is headed? Everyone must license every single thing they ever play, write, direct, say - whatever? Every creative work MUST have a license or it will become unusable and unsharable? Shoudn't the onus be on the person who wants to leverage the restrictive licenses on their works to do so? Why should I have to go through the trouble of using some digital licensing scheme just to put out something for free that a billion dollar industry has to go through to make money? It seems the hard work should be theirs - not mine.
Oh - and how much is it going to cost to implement some sort of digital scannable license, I wonder?
So you're suggesting that, in a country where you can be DNA-catalogued, arrested, detained and imprisoned without trial without evidence or judicial review of your situation, you should vocally dissent and make yourself a mark? Screw that. That didn't work so well for people in Germany, Russia or China and since we're following suit in practice, it won't work here.
As much as I appreciate the advanced concepts of true freedom and autonomy, I prefer the reality of not being disappeared more.
Again, community standards have no relevance to what occurs in the privacy of your own home.
of community standards is to make it so that you can live in SF or LA or NYC or Mpls and be part of that community and live with the culture of your community.
Oh, now I get it. You were talking about the kind of community standards where you can keep "those people" from moving into your neighborhood. You know, the kind with dark skin, different religion or different sexuality than everyone else in your pristine little community.
Again, sorry, I don't care what city you live in, nobody has the right to dictate what you do within your home as long as it doesn't violate existing laws (for instance, sure smoking pot at home is illegal, but watching porn is nobody's business).
But hey, if you want to live in an ultra segregated world, that's fine with me. You won't be seeing me come through town.
The worst part is that this isn't about convicted criminals. This is about anyone ARRESTED or even simply DETAINED by federal authorities. It doesn't take much to be arrested and it takes absolutely NOTHING to be detained by federal authorities other than someone, oh say like the president, calling you a threat or a risk of some sort or implying that you have some sort of involvement with those who are.
Fortunately, we're still a free country aside from the whole arrested, detainment, imprisonment without trial, genetic material databasing (hm, 4th amendment much?) at the whim of a public official part.
There are a lot of religions and bibles out there. Why should they particularly choose to read "the bible"? Hell, i'd rather they put down "the bible" and pick up a fucking science or history book for once. What do I care what one character in this or that fable had to say about one thing or another? Completely irrelevant. It's like arguing criminal law based on your having read and interpreted every episode of Hillstreet Blues.
Except religion. It's okay to be one of those addicted religious nuts who can't stop praising jesus for every random daily event (or blaming homosexuals for every catastrophe from hurricanes and earthquakes to terrorist attacks and gas prices).
Ironically, who are the people that seem to become the most crazy, gung-ho religious freaks? Why, former drug addicts, convicted criminals and alcoholics. Interesting how people who desperately have to cling on to substances to keep going in life have to desperately cling on to some random theology to keep going in life as a replacement addiction.
I guess being wiccan, jewish or bhudist makes you a deviant, too - since most people are Christian. Would'nt want to do anything different from the rest of society, lest you be singled out and targeted as a deviant of one sort or another.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, whoops. My bad. There were more than 6 episodes. In fact, the series lasted for an entire three months!
Still, it was just Andromeda with dusters and without the muscles. The captain guy wasn't even interesting. He was as exciting as the detective on Twin Peaks, but none of the quirky behavior that made him at least entertaining.
I'm not saying it probably wasn't one of the better science fiction-ish shows on television in the last decade - but that isn't really saying much considering there hasn't really been any science fiction-ish shows on television in the last decade.
I'd rather watch Brisco County Jr. re-runs.
Gee, a movie based on a four year old television series that itself only lasted four to six episodes? Oh, that must be absolutely amazing.
And yes, that's sarcasm.
Sorry, I'm just not a Gaiman/Whedon fanboy. Then again, I also don't collect anime and get wood arguing over which X-Men character would win in a fight. Mark me a troll or flamebait, though. It's the way we deal with people who don't agree with our slathering of praise and respect on every aspect of geek culture that crops up, around here.
I could be wrong, but I thought the Bush administration had said we would hit the moon by 2010 and Mars by 2020?
How is it that Kennedy says we'll do the (at the time) completely impossible within 10 years and they do it 9 years later, and today we can't even decide if we'll do the completely possible (and redundant) within 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years - or ever?
Currently, I think the greatest use of $250bn would be to educate people so that we don't have the majority of the population believing in the "creation myth" as scientific explanation. As long as the majority of the population is so dense and ignorant that they actually think the female sex came from a man's rib and there was a snake in an evil tree and 800 year old men, we really can't afford to explore space.
Anyway, when we come to meet an off-earth civilization, I'd rather we have evolved a bit as a society. We still have large religious groups and quasi-political figures blaming hurricanes on homosexuals incurring "god's" wrath upon us (a lot like ancient people used to think an eclipse was the anger of their gods). Are we really ready to explore? Are we currently in a societal state in which we would wan to be introduced to possible other peoples?
I don't know about everyone else, but I would be embarrassed and ashamed, much like having to introduce backwards neanderthal-type family members to your friends (or worse, your significant other).
In Soviet Russia, Russians tilt orbit to come on you!
Bringing people freedom while preserving national security is certainly not a waste of money in my book.
Oh, is that what we were supposed to have spent it on?
When do we get it?
I think we've been robbed.
You'd be amazed at the technological advances that have come by way of our United States Military originally just trying to devise better ways to kill people.
$250 Billion, you have to wonder what other useful things could have been developed using the same resources. Griffin
... say... defense companies to make a killing from.
Yes... Other things indeed. A... war... perhaps. Say... a war for oil and
Or . . . welfare...
Or.. even... rebuilding a flooded city that could have been fortified for $20bn ahead of time.
Or hell, even paying off a whole 5% of the debt!
Don't you mean PPS? :D
As the article mentioned, these are smart students.
A smart person recognizes that any sort of intellectual-based career is up for grabs in a world economy and that no matter how great you are, you're not as great as the deal an employer can potentially get for 10% of your salary outside of the country. Who would willingly put themselves into such a position?
And before you say "Oh, well, only lazy stupid people get outsourced", take a look around at the people who are dumped in favor of outsourcing. I've seen some remarkable talent lost because the business felt that nobody's talent was worth ten or fifteen times the going rate in Russia or China. And while talented people can still find jobs and do well, it's more of a hassle than it used to be and the field overall has lost its luster.
I think young people are starting to realize that the only sure thing is that which requires your presence. Massage therapy, janitorial work, pscyhology, teaching, retail store clerk, cashier.
Anyway, as the global economy roars and marginalizes, it isn't really going to matter what it is you do. Everything short of sports star or entertainer will be mediocre.
Smallish list?!
They have (or are soon going to according to an interview by the CEO on television) something like 1500 games.
Aside from the legal aspects, if I can't acquire the various emulators and all the ROMs for less than 10 minutes worth of work per month, then the convenience is worth $15. I could also hunt and kill bison for food with a bow and arrow, but the $3/lb for meat at the store is worth the convenience.
As for the controllers - you can make your own with a simple conversion. There are instructions online for this around the net. Of course, you'd have to have a set of classic NES controllers in the first place to do this and be willing to forever alter them.
Nothing to see here, then. Move along.
*Yawn*
Here's the thing.
To justify and promote blogs (by the companies that have a specific promotional or monetary interest in such things), a lot of people will convince you that anything accepting comments and providing updated contents over time is a "blog" and not just a "website". By that yardstick, most online news outlets (including the corporate broadcasters and print news groups) are a "blog", since they fit the updates bill as well as accepting comments in one way or another, usually related to the contents -- and even offer RSS feeds.
A better definition is:
Blog: A website by me. About me and things I have to say. Intended not just to present myself and share information, but to generate a "community" around my every words and regular updates. Frequently mimics the current content of a million others blogs and frequently engaging in deep-level navel-gazing (trackbacks - a blog linking to a blog linking to a blog linking to a website linking to a story).
Indeed, the word "blog" comes from "web log". Log, as in journal.
Websites: Everything else.
Or, as an example:
JWZ has a blog (livejournal, actually). Slashdot has a geek oriented news site that accepts user comments.
JWZ's site is about himself, his business, his thoughts, his interesting link finds, his takes on news stories and people wanting to participate in his blog because he's him. Or him's he. Or whatever.
Slashdot is about content and people commenting on that content. The stories are about real stories or products or technologies - not about Hemos or Nate or Taco. The comments are by users, not Hemos or Nate or Taco. At most, the editor who approves a story may add a somewhat biased personal comment to a story, but it is still about the story and not that individual.
I don't know how much clearer the contrast can be.
Here's another example. Wil Wheaton has a blog. Debian planet has a website. Wil Wheaton's blog is about him, his life, his career, his thoughts and people commenting in relation. Debianplanet.org is about Debian news, updates and howtos, with user comments and a community. But not about an individual or an individual's thoughts or life.
Just because you have thoughts doesn't mean they need to be shared. The average blogger reminds me of the average loudmouthed kid who has to make every single thing that goes through his mind every second of the day known to the world.
Okay, you hate George Bush. Wow. That's unique. Great, you hate pinko commie liberal hippies. Good for you. What a unique perspective. You're said about Brad and Jennifer breaking up. Oh, dear - I'm so glad you took the time to communicate that with the world. Your head hurts and your boyfriend dumped you - hurrah. We're so glad to be kept up to date on this. You found an interesting site to link to... wonderful for you.
Every person on the face of the earth does not need a public diary and soap box in the same way that we don't need 800,000,000 television stations so that every single individual can have their own television station to broadcast their drivel on.
And what it still comes down to is that almost all blogs are nothing but a giant ego stroke. People trying to post things that present themselves in such a way as to gain "friends" and attention and make people like them. It's all about "look how neat I am. look at how interesting my thoughts are - don't you want to know me and post on my blog and link to me?"
If you're Seamus - the xbox designer - you might have some great stuff to say on your blog. If you're Seumas, the software engineer who runs a massive free niche auction site but are an otherwise normal person with nothing groundbreaking to say that hasn't already been said a million times in this world through every medium - why should you create a "blog" and throw your every stupid observation, commentary and rundown of your daily personal life out there on the net for six billion potential people to view? Who gives a fuck? You're nobody and you're not unique or interesting.
THE PROBLEM WITH BLOGGING IS THE SELF DELUSION THAT YOU BELIEVE YOU MATTER OR THAT PEOPLE GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU SAY.
And what is the difference between someone posting a message on Slashdot and running their own blog? A blog is about me me me with frequent updates about me me me in some way. Posting to slashdot is offering a one-time statement in a community of voices regarding the current subject.
And I don't care if people think "slashdot was the first big blog". Slashdot is no more a blog than CNN or FOXNEWS or BBC.COM is. It's just another site with news - except that you can comment on the news items (just like you can at Yahoo! news and elsewhere). Since when does everything that isn't static and has an update on some variably frequent or infrequent basis become a "blog"? If you put up a website and never change it, it's a website? But if you put up a website and you update it over the years, it's a blog?
I differentiate blogs from websites based on the criteria of "things I have to say and a place for you to discuss what I have to say with me". Websites may be about you. But blogs are about desperate attempts to build a community around *YOU*. Though occasionally put to good use by certain worthy individuals, often exploited to a useless degree by the self-important blog-cliques.
And for fuck's sake, if you're going to have a "blog", please at least call it a website anyway. When someone tells me to "check out my blog" or "take a look at my livejournal" or I see that it's just a blog from a cookie cutter domain that spits them out with the difficulty of signing in with an email address (instead of having to install drupal or something), it makes me *not* want to go to your site. And chances are, I never will because of it. Just like I would never want to go sit in your bedroom and read y our stupid journal.
I guess you don't do google searches for.... absolutely anything at all... very often, then.
Keep your diary private. The world doesn't need your fucking diary online. We don't care. Nobody cares.
If you have something worth saying or you think we should give a fuck about you MAKE A WEBSITE. Not a fucking blog.
The point is, do you think Microsoft just started throwing resources at this project in the last year? Or since the xbox had been out awhile? Or since the Xbox was released? Of course not. They had a complete team working on the 360 since before the original xbox was released.
Two or more generations of a product are often developed simultaneously. The idea that 'oh my god, they are releasing almost a year before Sony - so it must be missing something!" is just silly. That's the same kind of logic behind "we should call it Slackware 9.0 so it can compete with Red Hat's versioning system!"
Being released early or first doesn't mean a thing. Being Microsoft means two things: First, that you could create, design and release a new fully featured and functional product in a few weeks if you really truly put the force of your entire company behind it and second that whether they spent five years or fifty developing it, it would still be microsoft quality - and standard microsoft experience. Take that how you like.
Whatever we like to think of microsoft, they have the resources (funding, connections, employees, engineering) to do just about whatever they want whenever they want. And so far, it's still the best choice for people who like to play games online.
As for people thinking the origen site might be launching a new bit of news about the Halo 3 release... um... no.... why would they?! The Halo 3 release is going to happen in 2006/2007 - whatever week the PS3 comes out.
I ordered one of the $900+ bundles from Gamestop the moment the 11/22 release date was announced. It was one of the only places I could find that didn't say they were already sold out. I would have gotten the $2,000 bundle, but it would be $118 cheaper to buy each item separately. Even with the $900 bundle, it would be $18 cheaper to order everything separately. But, of course, you can't - if you want the premium system, you have to buy the bundles.
I just hope that I don't find out, come 11/22, that they oversold and that mine along with many others will be on back order. That would be a cheap ass thing to do, since if a company told you up-front "we're not going to be able to fill your order on time", you could have just gone somewhere else.
Also, I'm pretty sure you can get your system on 11/22 in stores, but if you ordered yours - even if you ordered it with overnight shipping - you will not get it on Thanksgiving week. It comes out on 11/22, would probably ship 11/23 - then 11/24 and 11/25 are holidays. 11/26 and 11/27 are weekends. So those who have ordered can expect theirs some time around 11/29 at the earliest (if you have overnight shipping) or some time in december if you didn't.
I'm tempted to drive to our local gamestop and a few other stores on 11/22 just to take photos of the crowds.
That's because it's a Slashdot advertisement. If they bothered to say "The new OQO model (insert what it's a model OF here)", nobody would go to the place's website and Slashdot couldn't justify whatever prices they're charging for the advertising. :)
I don't know much about this, but how would someone go about making their music licensed, but still distributable? That is - how can they differentiate my part-time starving-artist band's MP3s that we gladly put up on all places that we can get mass distribution for people to download and share with absolutely no strings attached from, say, som RIAA riddled garbage?
How will they differentiate between The Hunchback of Notre Dame and something that is not public domain and restrictive? How will they differentiate between a short story from a nobody author who is gladly sharing his work with the latest crappy Anne Rice eBook?
And further, why should anyone have to? You should have to go out of your way to say "THIS IS MY WORK - IT HAS THESE CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS ON IT" versus "THIS IS MY WORK - DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH IT". I know this isn't how it legally goes, but come on. And if you're not the original author, how do you make available such a license and choose it? The dude who wrote Cinderella isn't alive anymore, so the story of cinderella can't be shared, since there's not necessarily a license on any work from it I might use?
Is this where the future is headed? Everyone must license every single thing they ever play, write, direct, say - whatever? Every creative work MUST have a license or it will become unusable and unsharable? Shoudn't the onus be on the person who wants to leverage the restrictive licenses on their works to do so? Why should I have to go through the trouble of using some digital licensing scheme just to put out something for free that a billion dollar industry has to go through to make money? It seems the hard work should be theirs - not mine.
Oh - and how much is it going to cost to implement some sort of digital scannable license, I wonder?
So you're suggesting that, in a country where you can be DNA-catalogued, arrested, detained and imprisoned without trial without evidence or judicial review of your situation, you should vocally dissent and make yourself a mark? Screw that. That didn't work so well for people in Germany, Russia or China and since we're following suit in practice, it won't work here.
As much as I appreciate the advanced concepts of true freedom and autonomy, I prefer the reality of not being disappeared more.
Again, community standards have no relevance to what occurs in the privacy of your own home.
of community standards is to make it so that you can live in SF or LA or NYC or Mpls and be part of that community and live with the culture of your community.
Oh, now I get it. You were talking about the kind of community standards where you can keep "those people" from moving into your neighborhood. You know, the kind with dark skin, different religion or different sexuality than everyone else in your pristine little community.
Again, sorry, I don't care what city you live in, nobody has the right to dictate what you do within your home as long as it doesn't violate existing laws (for instance, sure smoking pot at home is illegal, but watching porn is nobody's business).
But hey, if you want to live in an ultra segregated world, that's fine with me. You won't be seeing me come through town.
The worst part is that this isn't about convicted criminals. This is about anyone ARRESTED or even simply DETAINED by federal authorities. It doesn't take much to be arrested and it takes absolutely NOTHING to be detained by federal authorities other than someone, oh say like the president, calling you a threat or a risk of some sort or implying that you have some sort of involvement with those who are.
Fortunately, we're still a free country aside from the whole arrested, detainment, imprisonment without trial, genetic material databasing (hm, 4th amendment much?) at the whim of a public official part.
I'd love it if people actually read the Bible.
There are a lot of religions and bibles out there. Why should they particularly choose to read "the bible"? Hell, i'd rather they put down "the bible" and pick up a fucking science or history book for once. What do I care what one character in this or that fable had to say about one thing or another? Completely irrelevant. It's like arguing criminal law based on your having read and interpreted every episode of Hillstreet Blues.
Except religion. It's okay to be one of those addicted religious nuts who can't stop praising jesus for every random daily event (or blaming homosexuals for every catastrophe from hurricanes and earthquakes to terrorist attacks and gas prices).
Ironically, who are the people that seem to become the most crazy, gung-ho religious freaks? Why, former drug addicts, convicted criminals and alcoholics. Interesting how people who desperately have to cling on to substances to keep going in life have to desperately cling on to some random theology to keep going in life as a replacement addiction.
I guess being wiccan, jewish or bhudist makes you a deviant, too - since most people are Christian. Would'nt want to do anything different from the rest of society, lest you be singled out and targeted as a deviant of one sort or another.