It's the business of business to make profit. If you want to save the world, join a non-profit and put your money and energy behind a cause. It's the job of a CEO to make money in any legal way he can. Period. While it'd be nice for them not to exploit workers and political situations in China (or in America for that matter), it's not his obligation to do it.
Shareholders trying to force the company they own stock in to be socially concious is like a police officer being concerned with observing rights under the Bill of Rights. It would be wonderful, but that isn't his job, either.
How about the Shareholders of American companies maybe take just as much involvement in things when employees of said owned companies are screwing employees out of their pensions or laying them off by the thousands to ship their jobs over to China or somewhere else and THEN suddenly become concerned about THEIR situation after the jobs have been sent there?
And, most of all, who the hell are we to be concerned about Chinese censorship and such when we can't even avoid it in our own country?!
These are all seriously misplaced priorities - and the priorities aren't really even the responsibility of the shareholders in the first place. This is the problem with hippyies growing up and trying to start investing.
Actually, that's why I walked away from ATI in the first place. I believe the last time I had an ATI card was in 1998 or 2000. They released this attrocious videocard and it took forever to release ANY udpated drivers. A number of games (including Vampire: The Masquarade) were completley unplayable because of it. Their released driver (which only came after about six months) brought more problems.
After that, I've been NVIDIA ever since.
But they do seem to have cleaned up their act at ATI and I would not hesitate to buy another desktop card of theirs if the performance and price was comparable to NVIDIA (which it usually is - sometimes better). But, of course, that's on Windows and I haven't used Windows in eons.
I might try the flg drivers like the other poster mentioned. I got frustrated after a bit because there is no clear solution to getting the laptop ATI cards to work under linux (from what I could find at least) and it was driving me nuts. The laptop is just for my friend to use in college and she wanted me to put linux on it (I used Ubuntu) instead of Windows.
And yeah... I know - that's hot. A cute chick who WANTS you to install linux on her laptop... *drool*
On a laptop, the state is that you go to ATI's website, dig around for a bit, find a page for downloading the drivers, get a note saying that there are no laptop drivers and that you should contact your laptop OEM (and exactly how many of them are distributing LINUX drivers for their system even for OS-less laptops like my own?), search the web, find a websit with a guy who says he modified the ATI linux drivers to operate on a number of cards, including the Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB, take the guy at his word and trust that they're fine, download and recompile your laptop's kernel, download the source for the ATI driver, download another source bundle, compile the two along with your new kernel, say a prayer and hope that everything works.
For the life of me, I don't know why everyone isn't running linux already. Hmm...!
Kegbot... and people wonder why nobody respects whether or not you have a fucking degree or are attending college. "Hi, I'm delaying adulthood and responsibility for another four to eight years. Worship me."
Please to be explaining how patenting RSS advertising is any different than patenting advertising in the newspaper or magazines or television or radio or billboards or taxi cab placards or sides of busses or sides of light rail or putting flyers on cars in a parking lot or wearing a sandwich board?
This is America. How dare anyone presume to step into the shoes of God by improving the conditions of or completely healing those who are sick or disabled. Man has no right dictate and change what God has obviously deemed his will by employing ridiculous and sinful medical practices.
Unless you live in the midwest and you're trying to knock your wife with the funky teeth up with nine babies. That's totally fine.
And even if it was a huge brain, unless you're the CEO of said company - who really gives a shit? This is good for everyone else who can now step up to fill those voids.
I don't see what the big deal is. This is exactly like how painters get a cut of the profits when someone sells a house that the painter was previously contracted to paint.
Oh wait - that's right, that doesn't happen anywhere but Hollywood. Get a real job and quit crying you little voice-acting pussies. Really, I don't care if a completely unknown person does the voice acting. It's actually preferred and they'll probably do a more believable job.
I don't know . . . As a still 20-something who remembers being a little kid, I don't think kids have the difficulty of grasping things that we think they do. Sure, when you're ten years old, you might not realize the lack of reality with regard to certain elements - but children know right from wrong. They know know when something is obviously dangerous or deadly or flat-out wrong. We're not talking about kids misunderstanding rocket-science or astronomy here.
If kids were really that stupid and impressionable (as we seem to claim they are), then you would have far more kids immitating that stupid "tate" punk in Florida who killed a (six year old?) girl by bodyslamming her or whatever with his stupid fat ass because he was immitating pro wrestling (but I guess sports and entertainment sports are okay to watch - just not sex or fake violence). If kids were so impressionable little kids would be killing each other with nunchucks and bodyslamming each other to death all over the place.
As a kid, I grew up with violence and porn and everything else and I turned out alright. Sure, I have a disgusting sense of humor, but I've never commited a violent crime or done jail time or gotten a speeding or parking ticket or failed to pay a debt on time.
I think wise parents would let their kids watch or read or play whatever they wanted. As long as you observe your children, you will pick up on whether or not they understand things, what needs to be explained - and be available to answer questions they might have. But if you just go out and say "I want to be a GOOD parent, so I will not let my child play anything not rated E or watch anything not rated G or read anything other than the Bible", you're just taking the cheap way out. Strict parenting is just as bad as no parenting at all, because it doesn't take involvement or intelligence to just lay down a flat rule and say "OBEY ME". It's another thing to let children be curious and experience everything and explain where necessary. That's where the "Guidance" part of, say, PG movies comes in. But a lot of parents just don't want to bother.
And sure, I probably wouldn't let my kid watch hardcore porn - but I wouldn't disallow them from watching a movie just because there was a boob or an ass or even some genitals on the screen. Actually, I'd be far more concerned that my kid would watch The Grinch or something and have their sense of humor completely dumbed down from that and MTV/FOX to the point that they think fart noises are the funniest thing in the world and the only thing you need for intellectual guffaws is crusty sperm on some part of the body in public to put the protagonist in an akward position.
Younger children have a harder time distinguishing reality from fantasy.
Are you like... 80 years old or something?! Unless you're letting your two year old play Singles, nobody is going to be confused about what is reality. Do you seriously know any kids who are old enough to speak full sentences who can't distringuish a cartoon from a movie from the news from reality?!
I mean, really - before we start going around talking about how it's so impossible for kids to differentiate what is real and what isn't, how about we find out if that's actually true? I absolutely doubt the claim that it is.
So parents should assume responsibility for the entertainment their kids consume? Duh.
Really, worrying about videogames should be the bottom of your list. Your kids will encounter far worse influences and situations and threats just going to school every day. Kids aren't stupid. I remember being a kid and tits never warped me or turned me into a sadistic sex fiend (something else is to blame for that). Violent games and television didn't turn me into Manson or a highway sniper. Have some common sense and realize that your kids understand media far better than you ever will and your fears are baseless and stupid.
Seriously, what videogame out there has or could turn any normal kid into a sadistic killer or something, unless he's a fucking deranged ass from a totally dysfunctional and useless family in the first place? Getting a divorce or smacking your spouse around does a million times the damage to a kid that every ounce of television and videogame violence and sex combined could ever do.
What an ironic post, considering Australia was more or less founded by a bunch of convicts.
And what idiot comes up with a 15+ rating, anyway? So any game that a 20, 30, 40 or 50 year old gamer plays has to also be appropriate for a freshman in highschool?!
Simple solution: Create an adult rating (17+ like in the states), print out a bunch of stickers with the new rating, retailers can slap them on their boxes of GTA. Duh.
Rich cross-platform web-apps? Are you talking about AJAX? That also is on the way out. It's only a matter of time before Colgate-Palmolive puts the breaks on its popularity with a series of trademark lawsuits.
Most companies send a cease and disist. So if they have to use the wayback machine to find infringements (because people are not CURRENTLY infringing), then there's no order to cease and disist to be sent, yes? Or are they going to drag your ass to court and sue you for something that you stopped doing already, even though the Internet Archive is CURRENTLY doing it (with your material AND the infringed party's material).
Don't be stupid. TCP/IP is on the way out. It's ancient, outmoded, outclassed and doesn't serve much of a purpose anymore. With the popularity of consoles these days, they will begin to have more control and influence over our networking subsystems in the coming years and it's only a matter of time before XBOX or Nintendo force us to do away with the horrible crap we've tolerated from TCP/IP and adopt their own standard network protocols universally.
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Hi. Meet reality.
It's the business of business to make profit. If you want to save the world, join a non-profit and put your money and energy behind a cause. It's the job of a CEO to make money in any legal way he can. Period. While it'd be nice for them not to exploit workers and political situations in China (or in America for that matter), it's not his obligation to do it.
Shareholders trying to force the company they own stock in to be socially concious is like a police officer being concerned with observing rights under the Bill of Rights. It would be wonderful, but that isn't his job, either.
How about the Shareholders of American companies maybe take just as much involvement in things when employees of said owned companies are screwing employees out of their pensions or laying them off by the thousands to ship their jobs over to China or somewhere else and THEN suddenly become concerned about THEIR situation after the jobs have been sent there?
And, most of all, who the hell are we to be concerned about Chinese censorship and such when we can't even avoid it in our own country?!
These are all seriously misplaced priorities - and the priorities aren't really even the responsibility of the shareholders in the first place. This is the problem with hippyies growing up and trying to start investing.
Actually, that's why I walked away from ATI in the first place. I believe the last time I had an ATI card was in 1998 or 2000. They released this attrocious videocard and it took forever to release ANY udpated drivers. A number of games (including Vampire: The Masquarade) were completley unplayable because of it. Their released driver (which only came after about six months) brought more problems.
After that, I've been NVIDIA ever since.
But they do seem to have cleaned up their act at ATI and I would not hesitate to buy another desktop card of theirs if the performance and price was comparable to NVIDIA (which it usually is - sometimes better). But, of course, that's on Windows and I haven't used Windows in eons.
I might try the flg drivers like the other poster mentioned. I got frustrated after a bit because there is no clear solution to getting the laptop ATI cards to work under linux (from what I could find at least) and it was driving me nuts. The laptop is just for my friend to use in college and she wanted me to put linux on it (I used Ubuntu) instead of Windows.
And yeah... I know - that's hot. A cute chick who WANTS you to install linux on her laptop... *drool*
On a laptop, the state is that you go to ATI's website, dig around for a bit, find a page for downloading the drivers, get a note saying that there are no laptop drivers and that you should contact your laptop OEM (and exactly how many of them are distributing LINUX drivers for their system even for OS-less laptops like my own?), search the web, find a websit with a guy who says he modified the ATI linux drivers to operate on a number of cards, including the Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB, take the guy at his word and trust that they're fine, download and recompile your laptop's kernel, download the source for the ATI driver, download another source bundle, compile the two along with your new kernel, say a prayer and hope that everything works.
For the life of me, I don't know why everyone isn't running linux already. Hmm...!
Maybe I'm missing something here but why do SHAREHOLDERS care about human rights? Human rights have NOTHING to do with PROFIT.
Kegbot... and people wonder why nobody respects whether or not you have a fucking degree or are attending college. "Hi, I'm delaying adulthood and responsibility for another four to eight years. Worship me."
Are you suggesting the USPTO isn't clueless?
Please to be explaining how patenting RSS advertising is any different than patenting advertising in the newspaper or magazines or television or radio or billboards or taxi cab placards or sides of busses or sides of light rail or putting flyers on cars in a parking lot or wearing a sandwich board?
How dare you.
This is America. How dare anyone presume to step into the shoes of God by improving the conditions of or completely healing those who are sick or disabled. Man has no right dictate and change what God has obviously deemed his will by employing ridiculous and sinful medical practices.
Unless you live in the midwest and you're trying to knock your wife with the funky teeth up with nine babies. That's totally fine.
And even if it was a huge brain, unless you're the CEO of said company - who really gives a shit? This is good for everyone else who can now step up to fill those voids.
While we are wishing, I want a money tree in the back yard that sheds $100 bills.
Your wife charges you $100?!
Who bought GTA because of the voice acting?
Who bought GTA because of the particular actors doing the voice acting?
Who can really even recall who the people were?
Who would have cared if they had replaced $100k/day hollywood actors doing voice actors with $2,000/day reasonable lesser known talent?
Hi. You must be new here. NOBODY CARES ABOUT PROFESSIONAL VOICE ACTORS>
NOBODY CARES ABOUT VOICE ACTORS, PERIOD.
At best, they dont' ruin a game.
At worst, they ruin a game.
With incredibly rare exception has any voice acting actually propelled a game and enhanced its quality.
I don't see what the big deal is. This is exactly like how painters get a cut of the profits when someone sells a house that the painter was previously contracted to paint.
Oh wait - that's right, that doesn't happen anywhere but Hollywood. Get a real job and quit crying you little voice-acting pussies. Really, I don't care if a completely unknown person does the voice acting. It's actually preferred and they'll probably do a more believable job.
I confess, I don't remember anything about The Rundown except Rosario Dawson.
Mmmmm.....
If fantasies affect your real life, I think they're called delusions or hallucinations.
I don't know . . . As a still 20-something who remembers being a little kid, I don't think kids have the difficulty of grasping things that we think they do. Sure, when you're ten years old, you might not realize the lack of reality with regard to certain elements - but children know right from wrong. They know know when something is obviously dangerous or deadly or flat-out wrong. We're not talking about kids misunderstanding rocket-science or astronomy here.
If kids were really that stupid and impressionable (as we seem to claim they are), then you would have far more kids immitating that stupid "tate" punk in Florida who killed a (six year old?) girl by bodyslamming her or whatever with his stupid fat ass because he was immitating pro wrestling (but I guess sports and entertainment sports are okay to watch - just not sex or fake violence). If kids were so impressionable little kids would be killing each other with nunchucks and bodyslamming each other to death all over the place.
As a kid, I grew up with violence and porn and everything else and I turned out alright. Sure, I have a disgusting sense of humor, but I've never commited a violent crime or done jail time or gotten a speeding or parking ticket or failed to pay a debt on time.
I think wise parents would let their kids watch or read or play whatever they wanted. As long as you observe your children, you will pick up on whether or not they understand things, what needs to be explained - and be available to answer questions they might have. But if you just go out and say "I want to be a GOOD parent, so I will not let my child play anything not rated E or watch anything not rated G or read anything other than the Bible", you're just taking the cheap way out. Strict parenting is just as bad as no parenting at all, because it doesn't take involvement or intelligence to just lay down a flat rule and say "OBEY ME". It's another thing to let children be curious and experience everything and explain where necessary. That's where the "Guidance" part of, say, PG movies comes in. But a lot of parents just don't want to bother.
And sure, I probably wouldn't let my kid watch hardcore porn - but I wouldn't disallow them from watching a movie just because there was a boob or an ass or even some genitals on the screen. Actually, I'd be far more concerned that my kid would watch The Grinch or something and have their sense of humor completely dumbed down from that and MTV/FOX to the point that they think fart noises are the funniest thing in the world and the only thing you need for intellectual guffaws is crusty sperm on some part of the body in public to put the protagonist in an akward position.
Younger children have a harder time distinguishing reality from fantasy.
Are you like... 80 years old or something?! Unless you're letting your two year old play Singles, nobody is going to be confused about what is reality. Do you seriously know any kids who are old enough to speak full sentences who can't distringuish a cartoon from a movie from the news from reality?!
I mean, really - before we start going around talking about how it's so impossible for kids to differentiate what is real and what isn't, how about we find out if that's actually true? I absolutely doubt the claim that it is.
So parents should assume responsibility for the entertainment their kids consume? Duh.
Really, worrying about videogames should be the bottom of your list. Your kids will encounter far worse influences and situations and threats just going to school every day. Kids aren't stupid. I remember being a kid and tits never warped me or turned me into a sadistic sex fiend (something else is to blame for that). Violent games and television didn't turn me into Manson or a highway sniper. Have some common sense and realize that your kids understand media far better than you ever will and your fears are baseless and stupid.
Seriously, what videogame out there has or could turn any normal kid into a sadistic killer or something, unless he's a fucking deranged ass from a totally dysfunctional and useless family in the first place? Getting a divorce or smacking your spouse around does a million times the damage to a kid that every ounce of television and videogame violence and sex combined could ever do.
I'm pretty sure, from what I've read, some people claim AJAX to do everything in the world, including wash your dishes...
What an ironic post, considering Australia was more or less founded by a bunch of convicts.
And what idiot comes up with a 15+ rating, anyway? So any game that a 20, 30, 40 or 50 year old gamer plays has to also be appropriate for a freshman in highschool?!
Simple solution: Create an adult rating (17+ like in the states), print out a bunch of stickers with the new rating, retailers can slap them on their boxes of GTA. Duh.
Rich cross-platform web-apps? Are you talking about AJAX? That also is on the way out. It's only a matter of time before Colgate-Palmolive puts the breaks on its popularity with a series of trademark lawsuits.
Most companies send a cease and disist. So if they have to use the wayback machine to find infringements (because people are not CURRENTLY infringing), then there's no order to cease and disist to be sent, yes? Or are they going to drag your ass to court and sue you for something that you stopped doing already, even though the Internet Archive is CURRENTLY doing it (with your material AND the infringed party's material).
Don't be stupid. TCP/IP is on the way out. It's ancient, outmoded, outclassed and doesn't serve much of a purpose anymore. With the popularity of consoles these days, they will begin to have more control and influence over our networking subsystems in the coming years and it's only a matter of time before XBOX or Nintendo force us to do away with the horrible crap we've tolerated from TCP/IP and adopt their own standard network protocols universally.
Two things:
1) Isn't Pokemon for, like, toddlers?
2) "Diamond and Pearl"?! Is this the "Prince" Pokemon?
He talks about how he got his start in computer security, as part of the early warez scene, his work in the Air Force and the US Government,
So the government doesn't do background checks anymore?!?
"The black guy"? Do you mean "The Rock"?
As the main character, I would guess - the entire movie?