Now it is physically possible to attempt to keep details of a purchased product secret from its rightful owner, with a high barrier to discovery; though this is clearly at odds with common law property rights.
Furthermore, our Gubbernment in action have passed laws making it illegal to try and find out its secrets. Joy!
Aren't they already royally f*cked for using Windows?
Perhaps, but this also affects the Apple Software Update as well, as the lawsuit indicates. Red Hat's and other Linux update services are also probably affected as well, even if they aren't included in the lawsuit. (Deep pockets principle.) So what does that leave? Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and other crap that doesn't have automatic update mechanisms?
Oh, and most anti-virus products are probably affected, too....
Re:whatever happaned to persistence?
on
Birth of the iPod
·
· Score: 1
I found this particularly interesting:
Knauss said at one of the first meetings with PortalPlayer, Fadell said, "This is the project that's going to remold Apple and 10 years from now, it's going to be a music business, not a computer business."
When buying an MP3 player, there are a number of features you look at, and the relative importance for different people may vary, but the list is fairly standard.
Player size in centimeters, grams, and gigabytes.
The quality of the user Interface.
The aesthetics of the exterior appearance.
File transfer speed to your computer.
The battery life.
The durability.
The price.
For almost all of these attributes, the iPod is highly competive with other models. In the case of the user interface, volume/weight, and especially aesthetics it is notably superior to almost everything out there. The only real drawback has been that the pricetag matches the quality-- ya gets what ya pays for, but ya pays for what ya gets.
As a comparison, when I was shopping around, I settled about a year and a half ago on the Archos Jukebox 20. It is modestly larger and heftier, enough so that it won't fit in a pocket, but is still comfortable in the (supplied) belt look case. It was substantially cheaper (by about a factor of 2 for the same drive space) and felt more drop resistant. I didn't fall in love with the UI on the iPod; the Archos is servicable enough. It provides me a couple hours run time with normal use. And, while I didn't realize the immense advantage at the time, the Archos is powered by (essentially) four utterly boring AA Nickel-Metal Hydride rechargables-- which, when they die, are only marginally harder to replace than on a walkman. (Ya like apples?How ya like them apples?)
Seriously, however, for those with the disposable income to afford the additional quality an iPod offers, it's a nice player. Since I had a modest-paying helldesk support jobs, I was better off spending the money on something cheaper.
At this point, however, the new iPod 20s are dropping to about where the Archos was when I bought it. Looking at current models, were I shopping today I'd probably go with the iPod 20 rather than (say) the current Archos Gmini model.
This strikes me as another case of the [Christian] church re-explaining history to put themselves at the center - after all, isn't chess originally from India?
The orient, anyway-- there's also some evidence China may have been a source. A website which discusses the origins can be found here, and at least sounds plausible, but whose accuracy I am unqualified to judge. However, notable (and something I remember from may days with the SCA as being accurate) is that the exact pieces, moves, and board played on have varied over the ages. The game we commonly call chess today looks notably different from the Indian original (enough to send Deep Blue into a fit if you set it up for a match), and is a composite from several influences, having changed markedly over the centuries. (There still are a lot of obscure variants out there.)
So, while you're correct that this may have been the church altering history, it may be that life imitates art. This alteration of history might be why the CURRENT European style pieces have the CURRENT moves. You'd really want to ask an expert about it-- or at least, to recommend a good book on the subject. But more likely, it's unprovable at this point.
Here's a link to the full text of the so called, Confidential Settlement Agreement
From the link:
Except for the Exhibit G joint press release referenced herein, and
except for the filing of this Settlement Agreement as an exhibit to Lindows'
initial public offering registration statement and other required filings with
the Securities and Exchange Commission (along with a description of the terms of
this Settlement Agreement in such filings)
IE, "Despite telling the press the agreement exists so they know to look for it, and despite the fact we are legally required to give a copy of it to a government agency who will hand it out to any Joe-on-the-web with the brains to look for it, we're still saying this thing is confidential."
This thing is as confidential as Windows is non-generic -- IE, only under the letter of the law. These lawyers have been swallowing too many camels and strained at too many gnats. It's more amusing than Bush trying to have previously public documents declared classified.
So when a mail like this hits Bush's email account, that would be a threat to him.
Yaas! Based on traffic to a couple of my older accounts, several of the 419 team are using the standard "10,000,000 VAL1D E-MA1LZ!!!" CD of addresses snarfed from UseNet and the WWW. Which, I believe, included "president@whitehouse.gov" in the list of... er... targets?
On the down side, while the Secret Service have no sense of humor ("We're paid not to", I was once told by a freind who's done Presidential detail), and while they keep a file of EVERY threats, they also don't investigate every threat in merionesianly proctological detail. Of course, they do check out a lot of them, but automated death threats sent to world+dog via e-mail would seem lower down the protective detail priority list than the crayon piece snail-mailed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Re:Games?
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Ever notice that bishops and knights don't move straight, and well the king and queen can swing both ways.
I recall once seeing the moves expressed in terms of the powers of state (row/column moves) and church (diagonals).
Foot soldiers/Pawns make progress through the authority of the state, but may only prevail in battle by the grace of God.
Rooks/Castles, as the embodiment of worldly authority, are immensely powerful in matters temporal, but impotent in matters spiritual. Bishops, as the representatives of the Church, are the other way around.
The King and Queen are, British style, empowered with the authority of both church and state, and may elect to act with either as they choose. If you wonder why the queen seems more powerful, look to Elizabeth and Victoria. =)
And Knights, due to their holy vows to defend the right, must always act simultaneously under mandate of both church and state, thereby transcending any obstacles in their path.
Any resemblance this has to why the rules are the way they are is, no doubt, purely coincidental-- but it's a servicable means to explain the moves to new players.
Why exactly is sex deemed to be worse than violence? Why are violent portrayals protected but sexual portrayals not?
Because American society is bloody fucking crazy. More exactly, because obscenity is currenly based on community standards, which currenly are more bothered by sex than violence.
I blame it on the witch-hanging Puritan influence, which in turn I blame on Martin Luther's failure to deal with Saint Augustine's idiocies along with the rest of the stupid shit in the RC Church.
(Yeah, I'm a Yank, and Catholic. Got a problem with that?)
But NOT for The Three Laws. Asimov was not a fan of the "Frankenstein Complex" horror/SF stories that ruled the genre when he was starting out.... which is what this latest piece of celuloid off Wil's backside looks to be.
To be fair, most of the Good Doctor's stories deal with subtle pitfalls in the Laws, to brilliant effect. "Liar!", where a telepathic robot takes actions that cause harm due to its imperative to prevent harm-- a paradox that eventually destroys it. "Little Lost Robot", which shows the danger of having a robot with a first law that allows it to passively permit harm, even if it cannot directly cause harm. "That Thou Art Mindful of Him", which deals with the fuzzy question of how DOES a robot define "human". "Lenny', which points out the three laws are limited by the robot's ability to understand the concept of harm. "Robots and Empire", in which two robots realize that there must be a law Zero-- that to protect humanity as a whole, there may be exceptional circumstances would not only permit, but require a robot to harm an individual human being. And, yeah, "Evidence" even provides a loophole that could almost justify that frigging chase scene in the movie trailer (if they take a cheesy out).
But on the whole, the Robots are the Good Guys, and human prejudice and unthinking stupidity (eg, "Runaround") are the villians... which is NOT how this movie looks to be shaping up. This looks like a case of "oh my god, we screwed up and made a billion robots without the three laws!" Bleah.
I plan to finally go get a peer-to-peer app for the sole purpose of being able to find and watch a pirate copy of this movie, just so I can trash it properly without having to pay money to the evil slime who are responsible for this crud. (And if my preconceptions are wrong, I'll even buy two tickets on my way in to the theatre.)
On the bright side, if we just hook a generator up to Asimov's coffin, he's now probably rolling in his grave hard enough to solve the energy crisis.
VeriSign has defended Site Finder by saying it offers a better way to handle nonexistent or misspelled domain names than the unhelpful error messages that some Web browsers currently provide.
The advantage of having the browser deal with it is that I can turn it on or off (or even customise it) and that it doesn't affect anyone else. The higher up the chain you make the changes, the more people and things you affect.
More to the point, fixing problems with browsers is NOT THEIR JOB. It is the jobs of Microsoft, Apple, Netscape Communications Corporation, The Mozilla Organization and Mozilla Foundation, Opera Software, the KDE dev team, the Omni Group, Anderson Che, and just possibly Michael Grobe of the University of Kansas, along with doubtless a few others I've missed. Even if (for the sake of arguement) all these folk I've listed are incompetent nitwits, that is not Verisign's problem.
The job of Verisign is to help keep things working on port 53, not to deal with the underhelpful responses of most client software that works on port 80 (thereby breaking every $%^&* port at once). Trying to help someone else with their job is all very well and good; I do it all the time with other local techs, as it's usually a learning opporunity... but I have to make sure I'm doing MY job right, first, or I'll get fired.
Now, if they want to expand the DNS error message from "not found", to "not found, do you want this instead?", they should propose the modification of RFC 1035 part 4, instead of just rewriting it on their own. (Or, they can write their own browser (or modify a few bits of GPLed code) and distribute it... at which point, they've undertaken another job do do at the same time. Either way, I'm happy.)
If the data format is clearly documentented, then it doesn't matter whether the application that generated it is open or closed.
So, you also need to define a format and design requirements for Universal Format Documentation, which is itself clearly documented in that format and meets its design specs, and is universally distributed. Hmmm... well, we seem to have gottenstarted... no wonder the Internet has done so well.
The fundamental difference being bridges cost more to alter than software does.
Which is directly correlated to the degree to which people care when one or the other comes crashing down.If a state, federal, or international root-cause investigating committee with subpoena powers was impanelled every time a piece of software crashed (like they often do for a bridge crashing down), Red Hat would be out of business in three weeks, Apple in two weeks, Sun in under a week, and Microsoft inside thirty-eight minutes.
Dan Bricklin is proposing a class of software with a substantially different attitude. IE, software that the company maintaining it says: "As long as you pay this fixed-cost support contract, we will guaranty to support this exact software package for up to 200 years, will let you shift between and use your licenses on any and all hardware/OS combination no matter how different they may be from what you have now, will make sure it remains completely usuable by any C-average high school graduate after six hours training, will be liable in a civil suit if it should ever crash, and will help you migrate your data to any product from any comptetor you may decide to use instead... although we suggest you get matching terms." (Try asking your favorite software vendor for that and see how long it takes them to stop laughing.)
With software requirements like that, the cost of making changes to the software becomes very comparable to changing the bridge. In fact, the bridge is probably a lot cheaper.
[T]he capabilities of hardware allows more freedom in software, to which there is no correlation in bridges.
One of the most fun parts of playing through Fallout and Fallout 2 was you didn't have to be a hero. You could be an asshole, join the bad guys, kill the hostages, and pick kids' pockets for their lunch money, and become the biggest menace to civilization imaginable. Fallout 2 allowed for even more depraved options (such as sleeping with both the farmer's son and daughter). The moral decisions, with consequences (in reputation, NPC reactions, and the occasional ammusingly fatal lesson), gave the game more depth than the usual run-of-the-mill RPG, and was one of its major features/attractions.
On the other hand, one of the biggest problems with most MMOs is the number of assholes you run into while playing. It might be possible to find a way to allow the assholes be assholes, and the heroes to be heroes, still have the choices have consequences. But unless you START with this brilliant idea, and THEN build a Fallout genre framework around it, a Fallout MMO sounds like a major disaster waiting to happen.
As opposed to merely shooting through it, as with Fallout Tactics (especially in Mardin)?
So we may need to start calling it the "Fallthrough" series.
The law is an ass, but lawyers are reptiles
on
419 Scammer Gets Scammed
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I know the governments in the U.S. and UK might actually prosecute
True. However, at least in the US, the Bill of Rights, Article 6 says we have the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against" us. Which means not only do you have to find a prosecutor asinine enough to press charges against the counterscammer, but the original scammer has to SHOW UP in court to testify... and risk being arrested and charged in turn.
Furthermore, I suspect (though IANAL) that $80 would not be enough to bring you to the felony level, but that the attempt at scamming $18,000 by the 419 fellow would be. And most prosecutors are quite willing to make deals with small time crooks in exchange for testimony to catch bigger ones.
Plus, of course, "No jury would ever convict me!"
No, the real risk here is that the big 419 crook finds the counterscammer's real name and address, and has connections enough to do something dreadfully violent.
First off, there is a major distinction between "comic books" in general, and "graphic novels" specifically. So, while "hardly anybody reads comics", sales of SOME of the better graphic novels are edging the half-million mark-- enough that (as the author noted) publishers are at least vaguely interested. Publishers don't care if no-one reads what they print.. as long as they buy the damn stuff. =)
You also evidently missed the comparison at the very begining to the Novel-- which went from "considered entertainment suitable only for idle ladies of uncertain morals" to the standard staple of the bookstore today. While the Graphic Novel is not yet a full blown phenomenon of mainstream media, it is GROWING.
As for the shelf space in bookstores, it is not "just starting"-- it is just starting to rise rapidly. Five years ago, Barnes and Noble hit our community (killing two beloved locally owned shops and one despised chain outlet). Four years ago, I was delighted to be able to pick up reprints of Watchmen and Dark Knight, since they had added one shelf row (36") in by the SF, just above the myriad ST books. There are now five such shelf rows of assorted graphic novels, with Manga adding five more and overflowing into a spinner display off to the side -- far less than, say, the 60 shelf rows for general SF, but comparable to the 10 for Star Drek novels.
Which raises your casual dismissal of the Japanese Manga series. Even though I'm an official Goddamn Yankee*, I find your attitude horribly provincial. Even with the Novel, an english-dominated literary form, some of the greatest classics are originally in other languages-- Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Flaubert spring to mind. While the Graphic Novel hasn't gotten out of the literary gutter yet, the Japanese have been working on it for a time comparable to the Americans. It should come as no suprise that some of what they've created isn't crap. Manga may be conforming to Sturgeon's law, but not all of it is... crud.
The Graphic Novel may still be in the literary gutter, but the whole point of the article is that it's starting to crawl out, so the mundanes might want to take a look at it.
( * : According to an amicable redneck neighbor of mine, a Yankee is someone from above the Mason Dixon line, especially from the New York/New England area. A Damn Yankee is one who comes down below the Mason Dixon line, and a Goddamn Yankee is one who comes down to stay.)
NUKES! BIG FRIGGIN' NUKES! There's only one way to fight a space war before phasers and photons, and that's with Gigawatt lasers/masers and BIG ASS NUKES!
You have obviously not learned the Kzinti Lesson, studied Operation Hard Rock, nor considered the weapons implications of antimatter, which we know the proto-federation has at its disposal in at least modest quantities, or the weapons possibilities of a teleporter. (NB: "Given the assumptions in (I) and (II) you don't really get a society. You get a short war.")
Nor, for that matter, realized that some SF implications of 9/11 were considered at least back in 1998, over three years before the plane hit the Pentagon.
SF wars have been considered for for a long time now, and there's many other promising possibilites besides nukes. (And if you think the military doesn't pay attention, think again. They have been giving at least half an ear to what the SF guys are babbling about for a long time now.)
That said, I'm also one of those hoping this temporal cold war thing will end with one last change wiping it out of history, even though they've done that trick before.
Slashdot Mirror
Furthermore, our Gubbernment in action have passed laws making it illegal to try and find out its secrets. Joy!
Perhaps, but this also affects the Apple Software Update as well, as the lawsuit indicates. Red Hat's and other Linux update services are also probably affected as well, even if they aren't included in the lawsuit. (Deep pockets principle.) So what does that leave? Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and other crap that doesn't have automatic update mechanisms?
Oh, and most anti-virus products are probably affected, too....
They wouldn't be the only ones.
- Player size in centimeters, grams, and gigabytes.
For almost all of these attributes, the iPod is highly competive with other models. In the case of the user interface, volume/weight, and especially aesthetics it is notably superior to almost everything out there. The only real drawback has been that the pricetag matches the quality-- ya gets what ya pays for, but ya pays for what ya gets.The quality of the user Interface.
The aesthetics of the exterior appearance.
File transfer speed to your computer.
The battery life.
The durability.
The price.
As a comparison, when I was shopping around, I settled about a year and a half ago on the Archos Jukebox 20. It is modestly larger and heftier, enough so that it won't fit in a pocket, but is still comfortable in the (supplied) belt look case. It was substantially cheaper (by about a factor of 2 for the same drive space) and felt more drop resistant. I didn't fall in love with the UI on the iPod; the Archos is servicable enough. It provides me a couple hours run time with normal use. And, while I didn't realize the immense advantage at the time, the Archos is powered by (essentially) four utterly boring AA Nickel-Metal Hydride rechargables-- which, when they die, are only marginally harder to replace than on a walkman. (Ya like apples? How ya like them apples? )
Seriously, however, for those with the disposable income to afford the additional quality an iPod offers, it's a nice player. Since I had a modest-paying helldesk support jobs, I was better off spending the money on something cheaper. At this point, however, the new iPod 20s are dropping to about where the Archos was when I bought it. Looking at current models, were I shopping today I'd probably go with the iPod 20 rather than (say) the current Archos Gmini model.
The orient, anyway-- there's also some evidence China may have been a source. A website which discusses the origins can be found here, and at least sounds plausible, but whose accuracy I am unqualified to judge. However, notable (and something I remember from may days with the SCA as being accurate) is that the exact pieces, moves, and board played on have varied over the ages. The game we commonly call chess today looks notably different from the Indian original (enough to send Deep Blue into a fit if you set it up for a match), and is a composite from several influences, having changed markedly over the centuries. (There still are a lot of obscure variants out there.)
So, while you're correct that this may have been the church altering history, it may be that life imitates art. This alteration of history might be why the CURRENT European style pieces have the CURRENT moves. You'd really want to ask an expert about it-- or at least, to recommend a good book on the subject. But more likely, it's unprovable at this point.
From the link:
IE, "Despite telling the press the agreement exists so they know to look for it, and despite the fact we are legally required to give a copy of it to a government agency who will hand it out to any Joe-on-the-web with the brains to look for it, we're still saying this thing is confidential."This thing is as confidential as Windows is non-generic -- IE, only under the letter of the law. These lawyers have been swallowing too many camels and strained at too many gnats. It's more amusing than Bush trying to have previously public documents declared classified.
So when a mail like this hits Bush's email account, that would be a threat to him.
Yaas! Based on traffic to a couple of my older accounts, several of the 419 team are using the standard "10,000,000 VAL1D E-MA1LZ!!!" CD of addresses snarfed from UseNet and the WWW. Which, I believe, included "president@whitehouse.gov" in the list of... er... targets?
On the down side, while the Secret Service have no sense of humor ("We're paid not to", I was once told by a freind who's done Presidential detail), and while they keep a file of EVERY threats, they also don't investigate every threat in merionesianly proctological detail. Of course, they do check out a lot of them, but automated death threats sent to world+dog via e-mail would seem lower down the protective detail priority list than the crayon piece snail-mailed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
I recall once seeing the moves expressed in terms of the powers of state (row/column moves) and church (diagonals).
- Foot soldiers/Pawns make progress through the authority of the state, but may only prevail in battle by the grace of God.
Any resemblance this has to why the rules are the way they are is, no doubt, purely coincidental-- but it's a servicable means to explain the moves to new players.Rooks/Castles, as the embodiment of worldly authority, are immensely powerful in matters temporal, but impotent in matters spiritual. Bishops, as the representatives of the Church, are the other way around.
The King and Queen are, British style, empowered with the authority of both church and state, and may elect to act with either as they choose. If you wonder why the queen seems more powerful, look to Elizabeth and Victoria. =)
And Knights, due to their holy vows to defend the right, must always act simultaneously under mandate of both church and state, thereby transcending any obstacles in their path.
...if it was, at least there would be ONE sport where steroid abuse wasn't rampant.
...Everyone knows that pot just makes you stupid...
No, no... pot has three main side effects. Decreased short term memory, decreased long term memory, and... I forgot the third.
Why exactly is sex deemed to be worse than violence? Why are violent portrayals protected but sexual portrayals not?
Because American society is bloody fucking crazy. More exactly, because obscenity is currenly based on community standards, which currenly are more bothered by sex than violence.
I blame it on the witch-hanging Puritan influence, which in turn I blame on Martin Luther's failure to deal with Saint Augustine's idiocies along with the rest of the stupid shit in the RC Church.
(Yeah, I'm a Yank, and Catholic. Got a problem with that?)
But NOT for The Three Laws. Asimov was not a fan of the "Frankenstein Complex" horror/SF stories that ruled the genre when he was starting out.... which is what this latest piece of celuloid off Wil's backside looks to be.
To be fair, most of the Good Doctor's stories deal with subtle pitfalls in the Laws, to brilliant effect. "Liar!", where a telepathic robot takes actions that cause harm due to its imperative to prevent harm-- a paradox that eventually destroys it. "Little Lost Robot", which shows the danger of having a robot with a first law that allows it to passively permit harm, even if it cannot directly cause harm. "That Thou Art Mindful of Him", which deals with the fuzzy question of how DOES a robot define "human". "Lenny', which points out the three laws are limited by the robot's ability to understand the concept of harm. "Robots and Empire", in which two robots realize that there must be a law Zero-- that to protect humanity as a whole, there may be exceptional circumstances would not only permit, but require a robot to harm an individual human being. And, yeah, "Evidence" even provides a loophole that could almost justify that frigging chase scene in the movie trailer (if they take a cheesy out).
But on the whole, the Robots are the Good Guys, and human prejudice and unthinking stupidity (eg, "Runaround") are the villians... which is NOT how this movie looks to be shaping up. This looks like a case of "oh my god, we screwed up and made a billion robots without the three laws!" Bleah.
I plan to finally go get a peer-to-peer app for the sole purpose of being able to find and watch a pirate copy of this movie, just so I can trash it properly without having to pay money to the evil slime who are responsible for this crud. (And if my preconceptions are wrong, I'll even buy two tickets on my way in to the theatre.)
On the bright side, if we just hook a generator up to Asimov's coffin, he's now probably rolling in his grave hard enough to solve the energy crisis.
More to the point, fixing problems with browsers is NOT THEIR JOB. It is the jobs of Microsoft, Apple, Netscape Communications Corporation, The Mozilla Organization and Mozilla Foundation, Opera Software, the KDE dev team, the Omni Group, Anderson Che, and just possibly Michael Grobe of the University of Kansas, along with doubtless a few others I've missed. Even if (for the sake of arguement) all these folk I've listed are incompetent nitwits, that is not Verisign's problem.
The job of Verisign is to help keep things working on port 53, not to deal with the underhelpful responses of most client software that works on port 80 (thereby breaking every $%^&* port at once). Trying to help someone else with their job is all very well and good; I do it all the time with other local techs, as it's usually a learning opporunity... but I have to make sure I'm doing MY job right, first, or I'll get fired.
Now, if they want to expand the DNS error message from "not found", to "not found, do you want this instead?", they should propose the modification of RFC 1035 part 4, instead of just rewriting it on their own. (Or, they can write their own browser (or modify a few bits of GPLed code) and distribute it... at which point, they've undertaken another job do do at the same time. Either way, I'm happy.)
Um. Welsh?
Latin? True, there are corrupted, debased forms around, but there's still the real thing too.
If the data format is clearly documentented, then it doesn't matter whether the application that generated it is open or closed.
So, you also need to define a format and design requirements for Universal Format Documentation, which is itself clearly documented in that format and meets its design specs, and is universally distributed. Hmmm... well, we seem to have gotten started... no wonder the Internet has done so well.
The fundamental difference being bridges cost more to alter than software does.
Which is directly correlated to the degree to which people care when one or the other comes crashing down.If a state, federal, or international root-cause investigating committee with subpoena powers was impanelled every time a piece of software crashed (like they often do for a bridge crashing down), Red Hat would be out of business in three weeks, Apple in two weeks, Sun in under a week, and Microsoft inside thirty-eight minutes.
Dan Bricklin is proposing a class of software with a substantially different attitude. IE, software that the company maintaining it says: "As long as you pay this fixed-cost support contract, we will guaranty to support this exact software package for up to 200 years, will let you shift between and use your licenses on any and all hardware/OS combination no matter how different they may be from what you have now, will make sure it remains completely usuable by any C-average high school graduate after six hours training, will be liable in a civil suit if it should ever crash, and will help you migrate your data to any product from any comptetor you may decide to use instead... although we suggest you get matching terms." (Try asking your favorite software vendor for that and see how long it takes them to stop laughing.)
With software requirements like that, the cost of making changes to the software becomes very comparable to changing the bridge. In fact, the bridge is probably a lot cheaper.
[T]he capabilities of hardware allows more freedom in software, to which there is no correlation in bridges.
Sure there is! Oh, wait, you care about whether your bridge won't come crashing down under use. Oops. Well, then....
One of the most fun parts of playing through Fallout and Fallout 2 was you didn't have to be a hero. You could be an asshole, join the bad guys, kill the hostages, and pick kids' pockets for their lunch money, and become the biggest menace to civilization imaginable. Fallout 2 allowed for even more depraved options (such as sleeping with both the farmer's son and daughter). The moral decisions, with consequences (in reputation, NPC reactions, and the occasional ammusingly fatal lesson), gave the game more depth than the usual run-of-the-mill RPG, and was one of its major features/attractions.
On the other hand, one of the biggest problems with most MMOs is the number of assholes you run into while playing. It might be possible to find a way to allow the assholes be assholes, and the heroes to be heroes, still have the choices have consequences. But unless you START with this brilliant idea, and THEN build a Fallout genre framework around it, a Fallout MMO sounds like a major disaster waiting to happen.
Fallout where you can fall through the floor!
As opposed to merely shooting through it, as with Fallout Tactics (especially in Mardin)?
So we may need to start calling it the "Fallthrough" series.
I know the governments in the U.S. and UK might actually prosecute
True. However, at least in the US, the Bill of Rights, Article 6 says we have the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against" us. Which means not only do you have to find a prosecutor asinine enough to press charges against the counterscammer, but the original scammer has to SHOW UP in court to testify... and risk being arrested and charged in turn.
Furthermore, I suspect (though IANAL) that $80 would not be enough to bring you to the felony level, but that the attempt at scamming $18,000 by the 419 fellow would be. And most prosecutors are quite willing to make deals with small time crooks in exchange for testimony to catch bigger ones.
Plus, of course, "No jury would ever convict me!"
No, the real risk here is that the big 419 crook finds the counterscammer's real name and address, and has connections enough to do something dreadfully violent.
First off, there is a major distinction between "comic books" in general, and "graphic novels" specifically. So, while "hardly anybody reads comics", sales of SOME of the better graphic novels are edging the half-million mark-- enough that (as the author noted) publishers are at least vaguely interested. Publishers don't care if no-one reads what they print.. as long as they buy the damn stuff. =)
You also evidently missed the comparison at the very begining to the Novel-- which went from "considered entertainment suitable only for idle ladies of uncertain morals" to the standard staple of the bookstore today. While the Graphic Novel is not yet a full blown phenomenon of mainstream media, it is GROWING.
As for the shelf space in bookstores, it is not "just starting"-- it is just starting to rise rapidly. Five years ago, Barnes and Noble hit our community (killing two beloved locally owned shops and one despised chain outlet). Four years ago, I was delighted to be able to pick up reprints of Watchmen and Dark Knight, since they had added one shelf row (36") in by the SF, just above the myriad ST books. There are now five such shelf rows of assorted graphic novels, with Manga adding five more and overflowing into a spinner display off to the side -- far less than, say, the 60 shelf rows for general SF, but comparable to the 10 for Star Drek novels.
Which raises your casual dismissal of the Japanese Manga series. Even though I'm an official Goddamn Yankee*, I find your attitude horribly provincial. Even with the Novel, an english-dominated literary form, some of the greatest classics are originally in other languages-- Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Flaubert spring to mind. While the Graphic Novel hasn't gotten out of the literary gutter yet, the Japanese have been working on it for a time comparable to the Americans. It should come as no suprise that some of what they've created isn't crap. Manga may be conforming to Sturgeon's law, but not all of it is... crud.
The Graphic Novel may still be in the literary gutter, but the whole point of the article is that it's starting to crawl out, so the mundanes might want to take a look at it.
( * : According to an amicable redneck neighbor of mine, a Yankee is someone from above the Mason Dixon line, especially from the New York/New England area. A Damn Yankee is one who comes down below the Mason Dixon line, and a Goddamn Yankee is one who comes down to stay.)
Oh yeah, and screw Kira
(Sigh.) Far too many fans would be far too delighted to do so... despite her being married (again) and in her late 40s.
NUKES! BIG FRIGGIN' NUKES! There's only one way to fight a space war before phasers and photons, and that's with Gigawatt lasers/masers and BIG ASS NUKES!
You have obviously not learned the Kzinti Lesson, studied Operation Hard Rock, nor considered the weapons implications of antimatter, which we know the proto-federation has at its disposal in at least modest quantities, or the weapons possibilities of a teleporter. (NB: "Given the assumptions in (I) and (II) you don't really get a society. You get a short war.") Nor, for that matter, realized that some SF implications of 9/11 were considered at least back in 1998, over three years before the plane hit the Pentagon.
SF wars have been considered for for a long time now, and there's many other promising possibilites besides nukes. (And if you think the military doesn't pay attention, think again. They have been giving at least half an ear to what the SF guys are babbling about for a long time now.)
That said, I'm also one of those hoping this temporal cold war thing will end with one last change wiping it out of history, even though they've done that trick before.