And each and every time there will be a karma whore, pretending to take a princpled stance against the mindless hordes of slashdotters. Yeah, speaking obvious truths like Microsoft is not always evil, Linux is not always best, piracy is not very good, etc., can get you upmoded, even though your message doesn't convey any deep or otherwise important meaning.
Just for the sake of fair representation of both sides, here is a link to Michael Moore responds to the "wacko attackos": How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about "Bowling for Columbine".
Markets are not so precise. You make a product, you only get one number as market feedback - total units sold (oversimplification, I know). Lucas made two films of questionable quality, but because they were still better than nothing, total sales were very healthy. I don't care about fighting games or arcades very much, but if others want to get their hands on this game, they will buy it now, even if they want an original version, because realistically, their chances of getting it are slim. People make rational decisions and the rational decision is to buy a less then perfect product, which sends a wrong (or, rather, not complete) message to the producer.
Since when just being the largest PC manufacturer is not enough to qualify as a MS friend? And I would think that if MS OS costs them so much, becoming acquanted with open source might be an even better business strategy...
not to mention that copyrights expire after 30 years here, so films like Godfather, or 2001, or Bambi are in public domain. Yes, you heard it right! Anyone is welcome to set up a 100% legit free or subscription-based server with pre-1970 movies here.
Corporate filesharing is not going to be popular, because it takes the soul out of it. When I use KaZaA, even mislabeled songs serve a purpose. I was dling some tracked by Benni Benassi (sounds crap to me ears) and one of track was by another crappy artist/band. And guess what, she liked it even more.:) How could that happen in a sterile corporate-neutered environment?
A few days ago it was an anniversary of an interesting event. In 1960s the American President and several governors came together to spend a day watching movies about drug users and listening to rock-n-roll in order to bridge the gap between the generations and understand the causes of the problems the country was facing at that time. What I don't understand is why this is not a routine practice today...
2)...GTA:VC... has sold millions of copies, and yet only had a couple of people claim that they were copying it. We'd be living in hell if there was true causality at work here. Totally agree! How about a law instead to place people unable to tell virtual world from reality into mental institutions? But for some reasons politicians see it easier to target the law at millions of healthy people to prevent one sick person from committing a crime...
But so is being able to buy Vice City if you're 13 years old. You have never been a 13 year old, right? Kids at this age are often much more cruel and violent than any video game character. Despite hundreds of millions of people playing tens of thousands of computer games there still have not been a single study that would clearly link games and violence. Notice how this Leland Y. Yee never gives us any references that would prove the link. Instead he cites 1000s of experiments that showed still images (you can have 1000000s of these experiments, but it says nothing about videogames) and one policy statement (not even a study, just someone's IMHO) that said "effects of [games] may be even more profound than... television". Mr. Yee has a Ph.D. in Child Psychology! If there was a single scientific study that supported his personal beliefs, he would surely cite it. The fact that he doesn't is a very strong indication that such a study doesn't exist, which in turn suggests that may be there is no evident link between games violence and real-life violent acts.
Some useful stats: Number of pedastrians I run over in GTA:VC: 15000+ Number of cops I shot in GTA:VC: 1500+ Number of people I burned in GTA:VC: 40+ Number of pedastrians I run over in Real Life: 0 (zero) Number of cops I shot in Real Life: 0 (zero) Number of people I burned in Real Life: 0 (zero)
We don't need stores to create separate sections for adult games, what we need is mainstream retail stores openly selling Adults Only games and mainstream theatres showing XXX porn. If that was so, game developers and movie studios would be more willing to honestly rate their titles.
P.S. I personally find this guy repugnant. If I had a chance to do it without repercussions, I would be content to kill him in the most graphic way possible.
Well... if all books have some ID on the spine, you just need to make photos of all the shelves, then feed the images to OCR program, then search for text fragments that look like IDs and voila! You can easily see where a particular book is. A relatively simple program could them generate a list of misplaced books.
The robot can also make a photo every time it places the book on a shelf. If the book can't be found where it should be, a human librarian can check the photo, find the book and place it where it belongs.
On a side note, this is extremely important development. Just think how much work is in warehousing and retail for such robots!
...that has not been shown to be in the best interests of the select few citizens of the U.S. That would be more correct. Do you honestly think that Bush and alike think about your interests? And the question no longer is whether the US government wants a regulated Internet, the question is - are they OK with an international body regulating it. Even if they don't sign the UN treaty, they will still do everything they can to control the Net. But they might actually do sign the treaty, as long as it allows each government to be as opressive as they want and to set their own standards of crime-think, err. I mean objectively hateful websites.
In retrospect, it seems the original poster was saying the same thing I was trying to get at. Which is that people should behave in a civilized manner. What you posted seems to be saying that there should be no such thing as intellectual property... Is that a fair analysis?
Well, I even said that I am one of the people who do not respect copyrights at all. If you are ok with simplifications, yes, I think there should be no such thing as intellectual property. I believe that the available evidence suggests there is a net negative effect from copyright/patent/trademarks system. While these can be applied successfully in some areas, overall they have outlived their usefulness. Personally I am fine with everyone using all my ideas and intellectual creations in any way possible. I might hate the final result, but I recognise people's right to use my ideas freely.
But what about a totally different story, like a story about a soldier in the Civil War, but with a few interface points, where he briefly meets characters from GWTW? This would be a better analogy, I suppose.
In any case, I think those people who do not respect copyrights at all (I am one of them) don't need to worry about these kind of details. Whatever GPL says, if I want to use the code in a commercial product, I have as much right to do it as the person who will pirate my product after that.:)
Re:You already have several robots in your home
on
The Robots are Coming
·
· Score: 1
Look up on the Net what head of IBM said about computers in the past. Hint: he was talking about 5 computers.
Some of these are copies of the screeners, some are copies of the retail DVDs, some are leaked at the post-production or distribution stage, some are telecines and some are cam versions (although they obviously are a minority). And still, the point about them being of US origin remains.
As for the ROTK, it was premiered in New Zealand (one screning, I think), not released.
If I start pointing the gun in your general direction you can leave, or you can choose not to enter a place that doesn't have no-smoking signs. Do you see the similarity now? Personally, I fail to see the difference.
Since most of the movies (at least most of the popular Hollywood movies that MPAA cares about) are released in the US first (except for those that have a simultaneous worldwide release) you need to get them there. And abroad the films are usually either dubbed or subtitled in a foreign language. So the pirated copies sold in Hong Kong or Vancouver are often of US origin.
Physics humour was very popular in Soviet Union, since the physicists were considered the purebreds of science at some point. There was a well-known book called "Physicists joking" published in USSR in 1966. The online text can be found here (in Russian, but you might ask any of your Russian friends/colleagues for help)
in Japan 20Mb/s download is the norm for approximately $20-30 a month
We get 1.5 and we're supposed to be *grateful*? Yes, because the best I can get (2nd largest city of Russia) is 64Kbit/sec for 60$ a month. Indeed, you are supposed to be grateful.
Between all eight of their backbone providers they have over 200 MBps of bandwidth. That was unheard of even ten years ago. And this is +3 100% Insightful? Wake up, Captain Obvious! 10 years ago it was 1993. By late 1993 there were over 500 known web servers! (even though the Web was only 1% of the total traffic)
I prefer to pay a fair price for the service, not some special or promotion or undercut-to-kill-the-competition price. By fair I mean marginal costs, my share of fixed costs (total/number of users) plus a compensation for the initial investment, sufficient to give a normal ROI.
I don't like both when the provider tries to suck me dry and when the provider gives me low promotion prices which he has no intent of maintaining later.
Brifly put, I hate modern capitalism and its perversions.
P.S. And personally I prefer 60$/month ADSL (64/16). What a bargain!
Slashdot Mirror
And each and every time there will be a karma whore, pretending to take a princpled stance against the mindless hordes of slashdotters. Yeah, speaking obvious truths like Microsoft is not always evil, Linux is not always best, piracy is not very good, etc., can get you upmoded, even though your message doesn't convey any deep or otherwise important meaning.
Just for the sake of fair representation of both sides, here is a link to Michael Moore responds to the "wacko attackos":
How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about "Bowling for Columbine".
Markets are not so precise. You make a product, you only get one number as market feedback - total units sold (oversimplification, I know). Lucas made two films of questionable quality, but because they were still better than nothing, total sales were very healthy. I don't care about fighting games or arcades very much, but if others want to get their hands on this game, they will buy it now, even if they want an original version, because realistically, their chances of getting it are slim. People make rational decisions and the rational decision is to buy a less then perfect product, which sends a wrong (or, rather, not complete) message to the producer.
Here is a more helpful link to the table of contents, not to the introduction.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/
Since when just being the largest PC manufacturer is not enough to qualify as a MS friend? And I would think that if MS OS costs them so much, becoming acquanted with open source might be an even better business strategy...
not to mention that copyrights expire after 30 years here, so films like Godfather, or 2001, or Bambi are in public domain. Yes, you heard it right! Anyone is welcome to set up a 100% legit free or subscription-based server with pre-1970 movies here.
Corporate filesharing is not going to be popular, because it takes the soul out of it. When I use KaZaA, even mislabeled songs serve a purpose. I was dling some tracked by Benni Benassi (sounds crap to me ears) and one of track was by another crappy artist/band. And guess what, she liked it even more. :) How could that happen in a sterile corporate-neutered environment?
For a nice account of a life of a rich hack (made quite lovable, because of what happens in the 2nd half of the film) see About a Boy
A few days ago it was an anniversary of an interesting event. In 1960s the American President and several governors came together to spend a day watching movies about drug users and listening to rock-n-roll in order to bridge the gap between the generations and understand the causes of the problems the country was facing at that time. What I don't understand is why this is not a routine practice today...
2) ...GTA:VC... has sold millions of copies, and yet only had a couple of people claim that they were copying it. We'd be living in hell if there was true causality at work here.
Totally agree! How about a law instead to place people unable to tell virtual world from reality into mental institutions? But for some reasons politicians see it easier to target the law at millions of healthy people to prevent one sick person from committing a crime...
But so is being able to buy Vice City if you're 13 years old.
You have never been a 13 year old, right? Kids at this age are often much more cruel and violent than any video game character. Despite hundreds of millions of people playing tens of thousands of computer games there still have not been a single study that would clearly link games and violence. Notice how this Leland Y. Yee never gives us any references that would prove the link. Instead he cites 1000s of experiments that showed still images (you can have 1000000s of these experiments, but it says nothing about videogames) and one policy statement (not even a study, just someone's IMHO) that said "effects of [games] may be even more profound than... television". Mr. Yee has a Ph.D. in Child Psychology! If there was a single scientific study that supported his personal beliefs, he would surely cite it. The fact that he doesn't is a very strong indication that such a study doesn't exist, which in turn suggests that may be there is no evident link between games violence and real-life violent acts.
Some useful stats:
Number of pedastrians I run over in GTA:VC: 15000+
Number of cops I shot in GTA:VC: 1500+
Number of people I burned in GTA:VC: 40+
Number of pedastrians I run over in Real Life: 0 (zero)
Number of cops I shot in Real Life: 0 (zero)
Number of people I burned in Real Life: 0 (zero)
We don't need stores to create separate sections for adult games, what we need is mainstream retail stores openly selling Adults Only games and mainstream theatres showing XXX porn. If that was so, game developers and movie studios would be more willing to honestly rate their titles.
P.S. I personally find this guy repugnant. If I had a chance to do it without repercussions, I would be content to kill him in the most graphic way possible.
Well... if all books have some ID on the spine, you just need to make photos of all the shelves, then feed the images to OCR program, then search for text fragments that look like IDs and voila! You can easily see where a particular book is. A relatively simple program could them generate a list of misplaced books.
The robot can also make a photo every time it places the book on a shelf. If the book can't be found where it should be, a human librarian can check the photo, find the book and place it where it belongs.
On a side note, this is extremely important development. Just think how much work is in warehousing and retail for such robots!
...that has not been shown to be in the best interests of the select few citizens of the U.S.
That would be more correct. Do you honestly think that Bush and alike think about your interests? And the question no longer is whether the US government wants a regulated Internet, the question is - are they OK with an international body regulating it. Even if they don't sign the UN treaty, they will still do everything they can to control the Net. But they might actually do sign the treaty, as long as it allows each government to be as opressive as they want and to set their own standards of crime-think, err. I mean objectively hateful websites.
In retrospect, it seems the original poster was saying the same thing I was trying to get at. Which is that people should behave in a civilized manner. What you posted seems to be saying that there should be no such thing as intellectual property... Is that a fair analysis?
Well, I even said that I am one of the people who do not respect copyrights at all. If you are ok with simplifications, yes, I think there should be no such thing as intellectual property. I believe that the available evidence suggests there is a net negative effect from copyright/patent/trademarks system. While these can be applied successfully in some areas, overall they have outlived their usefulness. Personally I am fine with everyone using all my ideas and intellectual creations in any way possible. I might hate the final result, but I recognise people's right to use my ideas freely.
But what about a totally different story, like a story about a soldier in the Civil War, but with a few interface points, where he briefly meets characters from GWTW? This would be a better analogy, I suppose.
:)
In any case, I think those people who do not respect copyrights at all (I am one of them) don't need to worry about these kind of details. Whatever GPL says, if I want to use the code in a commercial product, I have as much right to do it as the person who will pirate my product after that.
Look up on the Net what head of IBM said about computers in the past. Hint: he was talking about 5 computers.
Some of these are copies of the screeners, some are copies of the retail DVDs, some are leaked at the post-production or distribution stage, some are telecines and some are cam versions (although they obviously are a minority). And still, the point about them being of US origin remains.
As for the ROTK, it was premiered in New Zealand (one screning, I think), not released.
If I start pointing the gun in your general direction you can leave, or you can choose not to enter a place that doesn't have no-smoking signs. Do you see the similarity now? Personally, I fail to see the difference.
Since most of the movies (at least most of the popular Hollywood movies that MPAA cares about) are released in the US first (except for those that have a simultaneous worldwide release) you need to get them there. And abroad the films are usually either dubbed or subtitled in a foreign language. So the pirated copies sold in Hong Kong or Vancouver are often of US origin.
Physics humour was very popular in Soviet Union, since the physicists were considered the purebreds of science at some point. There was a well-known book called "Physicists joking" published in USSR in 1966. The online text can be found here (in Russian, but you might ask any of your Russian friends/colleagues for help)
Z IKI/
http://n-t.ru/ri/fz/
http://lib.ru/ANEKDOTY/FI
It consists of translations from Western sources to a large extent, though.
We get 1.5 and we're supposed to be *grateful*?
Yes, because the best I can get (2nd largest city of Russia) is 64Kbit/sec for 60$ a month. Indeed, you are supposed to be grateful.
Between all eight of their backbone providers they have over 200 MBps of bandwidth. That was unheard of even ten years ago.
And this is +3 100% Insightful? Wake up, Captain Obvious! 10 years ago it was 1993. By late 1993 there were over 500 known web servers! (even though the Web was only 1% of the total traffic)
I prefer to pay a fair price for the service, not some special or promotion or undercut-to-kill-the-competition price. By fair I mean marginal costs, my share of fixed costs (total/number of users) plus a compensation for the initial investment, sufficient to give a normal ROI.
I don't like both when the provider tries to suck me dry and when the provider gives me low promotion prices which he has no intent of maintaining later.
Brifly put, I hate modern capitalism and its perversions.
P.S. And personally I prefer 60$/month ADSL (64/16). What a bargain!