Hmm, a student shows a lack of respect for his principal... I can see where this would bring down the entire education system of America. When I was in high school, no one called teachers funny names behind their backs. No one ever mouthed off in class, either. Teachers have never had to have a thick skin, because it used to be that all students loved and respected teachers just because of the simple fact that they were teachers.
Seriously, the only thing really new about this case is that the cartoon was put up on a website, instead of being passed around on a xeroxed piece of paper. You can't make a rule that says kids have to respect their teachers. Parents can teach kids to respect them, society can show respect to teachers by paying them what they are worth, etc, and that will filter down to more respect from the kids. If the value of the education system is being degraded day by day, it isn't because kids make fun of their teachers after class at their own homes.
I think what Yamauchi meant was, if the games don't differentiate the system, then the only thing left is price. If you have three systems with the exact same games available for each, then why would you choose one over the other? The only thing left is price.
Porting is best for game development companies, but not for console makers. That's why Nintendo has a bunch of 1st and 2nd party developers making exclusive games for Nintendo's platforms. It's one of the ways they differentiate their hardware. Nintendo is the only place to get Mario or Pokemon games.
He's got some good points, especially about how much time and money it takes to make a game today. That is killing the PS2. If a developer doesn't have a blockbuster with a PS2 game, they lose money. That's one thing that Nintendo is doing with the GameCube, making it easy to program for. Maybe XBox will be easy too, since it's basically a PC.
I also like his comments about ports of games to other platforms. While this makes a lot of sense to developers, in the end, if all games are out on every platform, there is really nothing to differentiate them. Nintendo has always had strong 1st and 2nd party developers who can assure exclusive games. Microsoft is trying to do that by buying lots of companies, but how much of the stuff that they do will be exclusive to the XBox? Won't most of it get ported to the PC as well? Sony has had a great relationship with Square, but most of the games for PlayStation are made by 3rd party developers, and are usually ported to other platforms.
The article kinda lacked details on the court ruling, but I guess that's not surprising since it was 150 pages and confusing to most patent attorneys.
From the articles comments, however, it looks like this is good: stronger requirements for prior art searches and restrictions against overly broad patents. The article makes it sound like this is bad because it makes the patent process more expensive for small businesses. But after the excesses we've been seeing, a change of tide is certainly welcome.
There is a description of the scene here. Apparently this scene takes place right after Spock leaves the enterprise to go inside V'ger. Kirk follows, and they find this wall of crystals that contain V'gers "memories" or patterns of things V'ger has assimilated or something. Then Spock goes on to explore V'ger and Kirk goes back to the enterprise.
It's not the first time that a technologically superior console has lost out. All the hype of the PS2 killed the DC. So far, the PS2 games haven't delivered. Heck, Sony hasn't even delivered all that many consoles. DreamCast has more and, with a couple exceptions, better games than the PS2. But PS2 had the hype. Everyone was excited about it. A lot of media recommended against buying a DreamCast until the PS2 came out. They said it was a question mark whether Sega could deliver, and Sony might crush them and drive them out of business and there would be no games for the DC.
Well, it has become a self-fullfilling prophecy. Nobody buys the DreamCast because they are worried that the console won't make it, and since nobody buys it, it doesn't make it.
Okay, Nintendo paid the artists that made the computer graphics and the Pokemon logo and all that stuff. They sued over a book that is being sold for a profit that makes extensive use of those logos and images. Nintendo does bless this kind of thing, if it is handled by the publishers properly. I figure that probably means some sort of compensation for the use of the copyrighted images.
Daily Radar's rant (it's generous to refer to it as an article) is whiny and juvinile. Daily Radar has never been sued for any news story or feature on its website, but they are taking their ball and going home. If they had published the guide on the website, and not charged for it, I doubt there would be any trouble.
Jet Li pulled out of the Matrix sequel a while ago. Michelle Yeoh was set to replace him, but now she has pulled out, too. Unlike Michelle Yeoh, Li's beef seems to have been the money. Yeun Woo Ping, the awesome Hong Kong kung fu choreographer who did the wire work for both the original Matrix, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, also might not be back for The Matrix II. Rumor has it that the American stars are sucking up all the money from the production, leaving Woo Ping out in the cold with Jet Li. If they want to get world class Hong Kong people, they should pay them what they're worth. Hell, The Matrix was really just an appropriation of the Hong Kong action movie, with a bigger budget and better special effects. First they rip of the concept, then they won't pay the originators of the idea what they are worth.
I was wondering how good a tuition-free "university" that compared its curiculum to MIT and Carnegie-Mellon could really be. But this is certainly evidence of world-class lectures going on there. It was said in this thread that RMS's speaking fees are pretty reasonable, so maybe that was a factor. Even so, if ArsDigita can put together lectures like these consistently, for no cost to the students, it is a very impressive accomplishment.
Pictures of Keauneau with a cast on here. Also, at the same place are some rumors that Yeun Woo Ping, the awesome Hong Kong kung fu choreographer who did the wire work for both the original Matrix, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, might not work on the Matrix sequels.
Rumor has it that the American stars are sucking up all the money from the production, leaving Woo Ping out in the cold. That is also rumored to be the reason that Jet Li bowed out of the movie, to be replaced by Michelle Yeoh, who is now bowing out. If they want to get a world class kung fu actor, they should pay him what he's worth. Hell, The Matrix was really just an appropriation of the Hong Kong action movie, with a bigger budget and better special effects. First they rip of the concept, then they won't pay the originators of the idea what they are worth.
1.Anime is pretty big in Japan, its country of origin. That is mainstream popularity, not just among otaku.
2.It is well known that geeks are more scared of reality than other subcultures I have a problem with that statement. Enjoying fantasy != being afraid of reality.
3.I don't believe that anime is more removed from reality than, say, professional wrestling.
They seem to have taken down their list of affiliates. Perhaps too many people were complaining to their customers. Another bold security step by Creditcards.com.
If nobody knows who the original merchant is responsible for leaking their credit card, nobody can complain (except to creditcards.com, who doesn't do business with the individual customer anyway). Of course, no one can check to see if they did business with on of Creditcard.com's customers and therefore might have a compromised number.
Not only were they careless with the data and refused to notify people after their info was compromised, they are actively trying to prevent people from finding out if they were victimised by Creditcard.com's incompetence. How slimy can they get?
Okay, I said one of the reasons fandom was founded was for the good of the small time fan site. Another reason obviously was to make a profit. The Salon article pointed out that, despite the CEO's portrayal of fandom.com as a grassroots, "little guy" orginazation, it has both corporate roots and corporate funding.
My point was simply that that idea, small fansites sharing resources to become more powerful as a group, is still a good one, and might be very successful if executed properly. I'm curious if it could be pulled off, and if so, how.
Although, the Animal Farm comment might have something. Perhaps any kind of power corrupts, and any organization of fan sites would be subject to the same power trips and politicking of the corporate world. (man, my use of the word corporate is becoming positively Katz-esque. I should get out the damn thesaurus).
The irony here is incredible. One of the reasons fandom.com was founded was as a way for fansites to band together, to share resources to fight off corporate bullies. Now they have become a corporate bully themselves.
Still, their idea is a very good one. A union of fan sites would have more power. Affiliate sites could spread the news of impending lawsuits or cease and desist orders much further and more quickly than a lone site. Publicity is often all it takes to curtail a corporation's bad behaviour. Information could be shared, about the little guy's rights, about what legal steps to cover your ass, etc. The knowledge gained in one skirmish could be used by all.
The bottom line is, fan sites are created by fans. When corporations bully the fan sites, they are bullying their customers. And if enough of their customers get angry about that kind of behavior, change can be effected. Fans do have a lot of power in the relationship, if we can find an effective way to use it.
This is not about online access to medical records, it's just access to medical records in general, so why is this in the YRO section?
Obviously, though, this is freaky. I don't know which is worse, having no laws in place to protect your privacy, or having really bad laws in place to protect your privacy. On the one hand, there are no rules to protect you. On the other, it is specifically spelled out how your privacy can be legally violated.
Yeah, but if you look at this graph, you see that they went from $30 to $6 in less than a year and a half. That's a lot smaller drop. The skyrocketing value a month or so after IPO was insane, and probably due more to speculation (gambling), rather than any correlation between stock price and reality.
I don't understand the popularity of Akira. How did it get to be considered the grand-daddy of all anime? It is not nearly as popular in Japan as it is in America. Yes, it is gorgeous. The art is amazing. But the "plot" is incomprehensible. If you like fascinating images that don't make sense, check it out. For me, there is plenty of great anime out there that not only looks great, but has a plot that makes sense, and maybe even explores some interesting ideas or themes.
Well, I'm not so sure this site is easily definable as a company. A company owns it, that's true. They make money off of advertising. But it's really just a place for conversation within the geek community. There isn't a product sold by/. Yes, they have links to fatbrain and copyleft, but that is not the main focus.
I would argue that the site is pretty much run in the same spirit that it always has been (old-timer's bitching to the contrary). It's still just people posting their opinions on Linux, tech, and star wars topics. So while some behind the scenes stuff has changed, the site really hasn't. Does that warrant a change in the address?
Also, before it was bought by Andover,/. developed a following and some "brand recognition" with slashdot.org. At what point does it become neccesary to lose that recognition to better conform with the naming standard.
Don't get me wrong, I think the current.com,.net,.org system is broken. There are a lot of egregious abuses out there, like the 600+ domain names owned by Verizon. If there were any actual standards for the TLD's in place, where should the line be drawn? Is/. really abusing its TLD, or should any of the issues I mentioned have any mitigating effect?
One could argue that the NES, SuperNES, Nintendo 64, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, and the Playstation are Japanese consoles. In most cases, the only difference is a plastic tab that changes the form factor of the cartridges. What game Japanese game consoles would you include?
About the.org comment... When it was just Taco and Hemos working out of their dorm room, it was properly registered as a.org. Is it really practical to change the TLD because they got bought out? How do you deal with sites that evolve into something new?
I was wondering why the new TLD's were so odd. It seemed like there would not be a huge demand for.museum or.aero. These new ones wouldn't really relieve namespace overcrowding. Apparently, ICAAN wants to see the catagories used appropriately, and not have the chaos of.com,.net, and.org. If they can police these narrow new TLD's, then they will approve more.
It's an interesting idea, and a worthy one. But it seems messed up to me that ICAAN is worried about being unable to police the use or misuse of TLD's. Isn't that one of the main reasons they were created? If they can't control it, then perhaps a new administrative body is needed.
And where is the Atari 2600? You can't call a video game collection complete without the grandaddy of them all, the 2600.
All in all, this is an impressive collection, but how many of these games are crap? Quite a few. I would prefer a smaller collection with a focus on quality games.
Ideal systems would include: Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, DreamCast, and Playstation.
For interesting historical notes, include the Vectrex, Nintendo Virtual Boy, 3DO, Atari 5200, and Atari Jaguar.
Throw in some of the best, classic games for the above systems and that would do it for me. You can build such a collection on ebay for a hell of a lot less than 16 grand, if you are willing to spend a little time. Did I forget anything important
There is an article on Japanese ZDNet here with pictures of the robot actually kicking the soccer ball, and then doing the "GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLL" pose. But it doesn't drop to its knees and take off its shirt. The CCD can differentiate the colors of the ball, and kick the one you tell it to. Pretty cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, a student shows a lack of respect for his principal... I can see where this would bring down the entire education system of America. When I was in high school, no one called teachers funny names behind their backs. No one ever mouthed off in class, either. Teachers have never had to have a thick skin, because it used to be that all students loved and respected teachers just because of the simple fact that they were teachers.
Seriously, the only thing really new about this case is that the cartoon was put up on a website, instead of being passed around on a xeroxed piece of paper. You can't make a rule that says kids have to respect their teachers. Parents can teach kids to respect them, society can show respect to teachers by paying them what they are worth, etc, and that will filter down to more respect from the kids. If the value of the education system is being degraded day by day, it isn't because kids make fun of their teachers after class at their own homes.
I think what Yamauchi meant was, if the games don't differentiate the system, then the only thing left is price. If you have three systems with the exact same games available for each, then why would you choose one over the other? The only thing left is price.
Porting is best for game development companies, but not for console makers. That's why Nintendo has a bunch of 1st and 2nd party developers making exclusive games for Nintendo's platforms. It's one of the ways they differentiate their hardware. Nintendo is the only place to get Mario or Pokemon games.
He's got some good points, especially about how much time and money it takes to make a game today. That is killing the PS2. If a developer doesn't have a blockbuster with a PS2 game, they lose money. That's one thing that Nintendo is doing with the GameCube, making it easy to program for. Maybe XBox will be easy too, since it's basically a PC.
I also like his comments about ports of games to other platforms. While this makes a lot of sense to developers, in the end, if all games are out on every platform, there is really nothing to differentiate them. Nintendo has always had strong 1st and 2nd party developers who can assure exclusive games. Microsoft is trying to do that by buying lots of companies, but how much of the stuff that they do will be exclusive to the XBox? Won't most of it get ported to the PC as well? Sony has had a great relationship with Square, but most of the games for PlayStation are made by 3rd party developers, and are usually ported to other platforms.
The article kinda lacked details on the court ruling, but I guess that's not surprising since it was 150 pages and confusing to most patent attorneys.
From the articles comments, however, it looks like this is good: stronger requirements for prior art searches and restrictions against overly broad patents. The article makes it sound like this is bad because it makes the patent process more expensive for small businesses. But after the excesses we've been seeing, a change of tide is certainly welcome.
There is a description of the scene here. Apparently this scene takes place right after Spock leaves the enterprise to go inside V'ger. Kirk follows, and they find this wall of crystals that contain V'gers "memories" or patterns of things V'ger has assimilated or something. Then Spock goes on to explore V'ger and Kirk goes back to the enterprise.
It's not the first time that a technologically superior console has lost out. All the hype of the PS2 killed the DC. So far, the PS2 games haven't delivered. Heck, Sony hasn't even delivered all that many consoles. DreamCast has more and, with a couple exceptions, better games than the PS2. But PS2 had the hype. Everyone was excited about it. A lot of media recommended against buying a DreamCast until the PS2 came out. They said it was a question mark whether Sega could deliver, and Sony might crush them and drive them out of business and there would be no games for the DC.
Well, it has become a self-fullfilling prophecy. Nobody buys the DreamCast because they are worried that the console won't make it, and since nobody buys it, it doesn't make it.
There aren't a million Playstation2 owners. Sony hasn't made that many consoles.
Okay, Nintendo paid the artists that made the computer graphics and the Pokemon logo and all that stuff. They sued over a book that is being sold for a profit that makes extensive use of those logos and images. Nintendo does bless this kind of thing, if it is handled by the publishers properly. I figure that probably means some sort of compensation for the use of the copyrighted images.
Daily Radar's rant (it's generous to refer to it as an article) is whiny and juvinile. Daily Radar has never been sued for any news story or feature on its website, but they are taking their ball and going home. If they had published the guide on the website, and not charged for it, I doubt there would be any trouble.
Nobody saw it the last time I posted it because it was number 250 or something. I thought it was a something that more people should see.
Jet Li pulled out of the Matrix sequel a while ago. Michelle Yeoh was set to replace him, but now she has pulled out, too. Unlike Michelle Yeoh, Li's beef seems to have been the money. Yeun Woo Ping, the awesome Hong Kong kung fu choreographer who did the wire work for both the original Matrix, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, also might not be back for The Matrix II. Rumor has it that the American stars are sucking up all the money from the production, leaving Woo Ping out in the cold with Jet Li. If they want to get world class Hong Kong people, they should pay them what they're worth. Hell, The Matrix was really just an appropriation of the Hong Kong action movie, with a bigger budget and better special effects. First they rip of the concept, then they won't pay the originators of the idea what they are worth.
I was wondering how good a tuition-free "university" that compared its curiculum to MIT and Carnegie-Mellon could really be. But this is certainly evidence of world-class lectures going on there. It was said in this thread that RMS's speaking fees are pretty reasonable, so maybe that was a factor. Even so, if ArsDigita can put together lectures like these consistently, for no cost to the students, it is a very impressive accomplishment.
Pictures of Keauneau with a cast on here. Also, at the same place are some rumors that Yeun Woo Ping, the awesome Hong Kong kung fu choreographer who did the wire work for both the original Matrix, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, might not work on the Matrix sequels.
Rumor has it that the American stars are sucking up all the money from the production, leaving Woo Ping out in the cold. That is also rumored to be the reason that Jet Li bowed out of the movie, to be replaced by Michelle Yeoh, who is now bowing out. If they want to get a world class kung fu actor, they should pay him what he's worth. Hell, The Matrix was really just an appropriation of the Hong Kong action movie, with a bigger budget and better special effects. First they rip of the concept, then they won't pay the originators of the idea what they are worth.
Some points:
1.Anime is pretty big in Japan, its country of origin. That is mainstream popularity, not just among otaku.
2.It is well known that geeks are more scared of reality than other subcultures
I have a problem with that statement. Enjoying fantasy != being afraid of reality.
3.I don't believe that anime is more removed from reality than, say, professional wrestling.
They seem to have taken down their list of affiliates. Perhaps too many people were complaining to their customers. Another bold security step by Creditcards.com.
If nobody knows who the original merchant is responsible for leaking their credit card, nobody can complain (except to creditcards.com, who doesn't do business with the individual customer anyway). Of course, no one can check to see if they did business with on of Creditcard.com's customers and therefore might have a compromised number.
Not only were they careless with the data and refused to notify people after their info was compromised, they are actively trying to prevent people from finding out if they were victimised by Creditcard.com's incompetence. How slimy can they get?
Okay, I said one of the reasons fandom was founded was for the good of the small time fan site. Another reason obviously was to make a profit. The Salon article pointed out that, despite the CEO's portrayal of fandom.com as a grassroots, "little guy" orginazation, it has both corporate roots and corporate funding.
My point was simply that that idea, small fansites sharing resources to become more powerful as a group, is still a good one, and might be very successful if executed properly. I'm curious if it could be pulled off, and if so, how.
Although, the Animal Farm comment might have something. Perhaps any kind of power corrupts, and any organization of fan sites would be subject to the same power trips and politicking of the corporate world. (man, my use of the word corporate is becoming positively Katz-esque. I should get out the damn thesaurus).
The irony here is incredible. One of the reasons fandom.com was founded was as a way for fansites to band together, to share resources to fight off corporate bullies. Now they have become a corporate bully themselves.
Still, their idea is a very good one. A union of fan sites would have more power. Affiliate sites could spread the news of impending lawsuits or cease and desist orders much further and more quickly than a lone site. Publicity is often all it takes to curtail a corporation's bad behaviour. Information could be shared, about the little guy's rights, about what legal steps to cover your ass, etc. The knowledge gained in one skirmish could be used by all.
The bottom line is, fan sites are created by fans. When corporations bully the fan sites, they are bullying their customers. And if enough of their customers get angry about that kind of behavior, change can be effected. Fans do have a lot of power in the relationship, if we can find an effective way to use it.
This is not about online access to medical records, it's just access to medical records in general, so why is this in the YRO section?
Obviously, though, this is freaky. I don't know which is worse, having no laws in place to protect your privacy, or having really bad laws in place to protect your privacy. On the one hand, there are no rules to protect you. On the other, it is specifically spelled out how your privacy can be legally violated.
Yeah, but if you look at this graph, you see that they went from $30 to $6 in less than a year and a half. That's a lot smaller drop. The skyrocketing value a month or so after IPO was insane, and probably due more to speculation (gambling), rather than any correlation between stock price and reality.
I don't understand the popularity of Akira. How did it get to be considered the grand-daddy of all anime? It is not nearly as popular in Japan as it is in America. Yes, it is gorgeous. The art is amazing. But the "plot" is incomprehensible. If you like fascinating images that don't make sense, check it out. For me, there is plenty of great anime out there that not only looks great, but has a plot that makes sense, and maybe even explores some interesting ideas or themes.
Well, I'm not so sure this site is easily definable as a company. A company owns it, that's true. They make money off of advertising. But it's really just a place for conversation within the geek community. There isn't a product sold by /. Yes, they have links to fatbrain and copyleft, but that is not the main focus.
/. developed a following and some "brand recognition" with slashdot.org. At what point does it become neccesary to lose that recognition to better conform with the naming standard.
.com, .net, .org system is broken. There are a lot of egregious abuses out there, like the 600+ domain names owned by Verizon. If there were any actual standards for the TLD's in place, where should the line be drawn? Is /. really abusing its TLD, or should any of the issues I mentioned have any mitigating effect?
I would argue that the site is pretty much run in the same spirit that it always has been (old-timer's bitching to the contrary). It's still just people posting their opinions on Linux, tech, and star wars topics. So while some behind the scenes stuff has changed, the site really hasn't. Does that warrant a change in the address?
Also, before it was bought by Andover,
Don't get me wrong, I think the current
One could argue that the NES, SuperNES, Nintendo 64, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, and the Playstation are Japanese consoles. In most cases, the only difference is a plastic tab that changes the form factor of the cartridges. What game Japanese game consoles would you include?
About the .org comment... When it was just Taco and Hemos working out of their dorm room, it was properly registered as a .org. Is it really practical to change the TLD because they got bought out? How do you deal with sites that evolve into something new?
I was wondering why the new TLD's were so odd. It seemed like there would not be a huge demand for .museum or .aero. These new ones wouldn't really relieve namespace overcrowding. Apparently, ICAAN wants to see the catagories used appropriately, and not have the chaos of .com, .net, and .org. If they can police these narrow new TLD's, then they will approve more.
It's an interesting idea, and a worthy one. But it seems messed up to me that ICAAN is worried about being unable to police the use or misuse of TLD's. Isn't that one of the main reasons they were created? If they can't control it, then perhaps a new administrative body is needed.
And where is the Atari 2600? You can't call a video game collection complete without the grandaddy of them all, the 2600.
All in all, this is an impressive collection, but how many of these games are crap? Quite a few. I would prefer a smaller collection with a focus on quality games.
Ideal systems would include: Atari 2600, NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, DreamCast, and Playstation.
For interesting historical notes, include the Vectrex, Nintendo Virtual Boy, 3DO, Atari 5200, and Atari Jaguar.
Throw in some of the best, classic games for the above systems and that would do it for me. You can build such a collection on ebay for a hell of a lot less than 16 grand, if you are willing to spend a little time. Did I forget anything important
There is an article on Japanese ZDNet here with pictures of the robot actually kicking the soccer ball, and then doing the "GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLL" pose. But it doesn't drop to its knees and take off its shirt. The CCD can differentiate the colors of the ball, and kick the one you tell it to. Pretty cool.