Further, stuff like this provides additional evidence of God's existence.
No it doesn't. God is, according to all the priests and dead priests and the things they wrote, divine. If you don't believe what is written in the bible you're a heretic, so we will then assume you're either a heretic and can discount your point of view, or we assume you believe God is divine. The priests tell us that only God can create new species of life, and only God can create life from unliving material, although He was unable to create women without a rib.
One of the key points of this exercise which the religious types find so offensive is that it is yet another exercise in proof denying faith. The priests told us that the earth was flat. Wrong. The priests told us that the earth was the center of the universe. Wrong. The priests told us that only the divine can create life... wrong? Time will tell.
What I want to know is, just how much do we have to prove about our understanding of the universe before the religious types will pack it in and stop causing so much harm to the world?
Gamers as a whole are unlikely to approach someone's home and leave a PHYSICAL note. Most gamers have enough concept and paranoia of the real world law (just see what happens if one of their buddies mentions they got a 'cease and desist' type notice for pirating a game or movie) that they generally do not like doing things that might bring the real world authorities into play.
Well, there are stupid gamers in this world, just like there are stupid attorneys-general.
I don't think anyone is advocating the benefits of firewalling China. I don't think anyone thinks China having a bad human rights record is a good thing either. It's regrettable but for the immediate moment, unchangeable.
Australia attempting to do the same thing as China is something that remains possibly changeable. Open discussion on the subject can have a tremendous impact on the legislative process as ministers and senators and the political parties they belong to will vote on laws on a basis of what is perceived to be the greater good, or popular opinion, depending on how close it is to election time. I'm not saying the same thing is necessarily true for China, and perhaps that is why a different standard is applied, but again we are not here to try to change the government of China.
Nobody is letting anything "slide" here. Although it is off topic for this forum, we would welcome your suggestions for ways to encourage China to adopt more open internet policies.
It is not painful to call MS and get a new key, I did it under 10 minutes
I agree, it's not painful. It's horribly time wasting, arrogant of the vendor, and positively user hostile. Let's multiply 10 minutes by the number of Windows licensees out there. Actually I have no idea how many that is, but certainly in the hundreds of millions.
That's how much time wasting Microsoft is inflicting on the business world. Let's be hippies for a moment. How much carbon is emitted by the fossil fuels burned to power those PC's while people are hammering in their activation codes obediently for Microsoft? Say it's just 100,000,000 PCs. That's 1,902 years of power. Let's say your average PC uses about 160W of power during this time. At 0.7kg of carbon per kW, we get a comfortable 213 tonnes of carbon emissions directly caused by Microsoft.
I'm not sure how anyone can defend this kind of behavior.
As a matter of fact, the Australian judge presiding over this case examined safe-harbour provisions and similar cases from US law and he mentions those examinations in the judgement document.
This is common sense really, as ISP's are a carrier and not liable for the content that passes through their networks.
Unfortunately what will happen is Conroy, the Minister for Communications, who has already identified himself as being strongly pro-copyright, will now attempt to enact harsh laws to force ISPs to surrender private information to AFACT companies and allow direct attacks on the Australian population. Conroy is the same minister who was voted Internet Villain of the Year last year for his ongoing attempts to enact a hidden, government controlled blacklist censorship system to "protect the children" (although really it just blocks political, anti-abortion and euthanasia websites and a few local Australian businesses thrown in at random).
Huh, that's like saying "Well Microsoft bundled MSIE with Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP and Vista, so bundling MSIE with Windows 7 is therefore reasonable behaviour."
Or, reductio ad abdsurdum, "Nokia murdered every other member of my family, so I consider it reasonable to allow them to murder my little brother too."
Just because other companies were pushovers doesn't mean the one company that isn't a pushover is somehow in the wrong.
One or two more Exocet hits or a little less stupidity on the part of the Argentinians and 1982 would have ended very differently.
I doubt that Argentina would have managed to hold on once a much larger force from the UK arrived in that hypothetical case... the Argentinians had nothing to counter the nuclear sub in the area, which would have bought the UK enough time to field a stronger naval force with better air support than one carrier and it's harriers. The UK would also have been in a position to shift land based air forces into the area given more time. On the flipside, Argentina would have had more time to reinforce their position, so the war would have lasted much longer and had a far greater toll, but the final outcome would still be in favour of the UK.
You have to remember, countries are very slow to respond to surprise wars, but once they do the results can be impressive. Think about the capabilities of the US Navy immediately after Pearl Harbour. It was nothing but luck that had the carrier fleet on maneuvers at the time. Even then the attack was still crippling. But over time, the US navy became far more powerful than it was at the start of the war.
You're all blithely ignoring the fact that if Intel doesn't alter their behavior to satisfy the EU's requirments for a more fairly competitive marketplace, Intel gets another fine, probably much bigger than 1 billion.. and another, and another, and another.
Why doesn't it occur to them that they'd attract a heck of a lot more customers by making them happy instead of miserable?
There's more profit in running a horrible, punitive service and spending the bucks to haul in customers, who really don't have any choice about it anyway, because all the other providers are doing exactly the same thing. And the providers are all perfectly happy with that, because margins are high, expectations are low, and the board members are all getting fat bags of cash.
Dog: These humans, they feed me, they pet me, give me everything I need, they are gods to me! Cat: These humans, they feed me, they pet me, give me everything I need, I must be a god!
WoW has always been easy. Blizzard has just changed the "easiness" scale significantly. Leveling from 1-80 now takes about as long as it used to take leveling from 1-60. This is a commendable decision as it means new players won't be frustrated that they can't play with their friends at the end game, but at the same time they still see a lot of the content that leads players to that end game. Smart business move, as it means they'll attract and retain new players, as well as keeping the old ones.
As for "easiness", is WoW really that easy? You say it is, so, you've clearly "beaten" the game... so you must be able to link your armory with full Ulduar heroic and hard mode achievements.. right? Ok... maybe you're a PvP'er then... what's your personal Arena ranking? Got the 310% drake? No?
Didn't think so... maybe it's harder than you think, and you're just not willing to put in the effort to prove yourself to a guild and use teamwork and skill at the end game.
I commend blizzard for making the game content easy enough to be accessible for all kinds of players, no matter how casual, but for adding challenges that even mighty Slashdot posters are happy to dismiss as "too easy, absolutely no challenge and filled with emo kids and arrogant wankers who play all day." (Despite never even reaching level 80 so they can attempt them...)
The reason the barrens suck so much is because for some reason Alliance players who roll Horde can only ever manage to get as far as the barrens. Then I guess they stop there because they think they're in Stormwind or something and must therefore be at max level.
It's entirely possible that the reason many independent "artists" don't sell a lot of records or get listed on popular charts is, amazingly... because they actually aren't very good?
If they are very good, well, more often that not in the case of artists who are good who are independent, they will be offered lucrative deals by the industry and they'll sign up. Here's 5 million dollars. You can have it, you just have to compromise your ideals slightly.
You're running without A/V protection? That's like wandering around in Afghanistan and assuming you won't be shot because you're not a US soldier. Just because your system doesn't look like everyone else's doesn't mean you can't be attacked.
Well, to some extent what the parent has written is true, however, he's declined to note a couple of key facts that are vital in understanding the issues at hand.
1) Telstra didn't submit a legally compliant bid. No matter what else is going on, if the government had accepted it, they would be immediately sued by the other bidders, and they would lose. The government had "public servants" look at the situation, but the parent declines to mention that those public servants include such individuals as the Solicitor General. If Telstra is so arrogant or incompetent they can't follow a pretty basic set of rules when tendering, they should not be trusted with even a loan of taxpayers money.
2) Telstra's manifest failure at driving forward the growth of internet infrastructure in Australia is the whole reason we need an NBN in the first place.
3) If Telstra is somehow empowered to prevent the growth of a fair and competitive broadband infrastructure, ostensibly through leveraging their monopoly stranglehold on Australian telecommunications infrastructure, then the problem again is not one of the Australian government but one of Telstra causing harm to the people of Australia. This can be remedied by seperating the monopoly part of Telstra from the part of Telstra which is motivated to abuse that monopoly, creating a neutral infrastructure wholesaler and a large retailer, thus encouraging competition and enriching the quality of Australian telecommunications.
While the situation is currently dismal and has been for some time, mostly due to Telstra's significant damage to Australia's telco industry, this is exactly the medicine that Australia needs to cut away the cancer and move into a more progressive market.
The government had 5 very serious legal consultations on the process including the Solicitor General. The RFP must be answered adequately and correctly from a legal perspective. Every bidder except for Telstra managed to do so. Because Telstra did not meet the requirements of the RFP, the government had no legal choice but to remove them from the process. You cannot suggest with any reasonable degree of sanity that the Australian Solicitor General's interpretation of Australian Law is not at least adequate in this case.
If the government allowed Telstra into the bidding process despite the fact that everyone new their response to the RFP wasn't legally sound, every single other bidder could have sued the government and won on solid legal grounds.
Whether you believe Telstra is a hard working, competitive company with a good track record of quality infrastructure and excellent employee conditions, or a violent aggressive monopoliser deliberately holding back Australian internet infrastructure to prevent widespread adoption of VoIP and to preserve the stranglehold on the copper network is up to the individual (although evidence should help people make up their own minds), the legalities of this present circumstance are plain and simple.
Strange, because I know people who play Bejewelled for longer than I play WoW. Sure, it's a bit cheaper, but they don't even have a virtual L70 dude with virtual "purple" items to show for it.
Although, we do have one thing in common, we spent our time doing a repetitive but enjoyable activity.
Other enjoyable yet potentially repetitive activities that humans perform for pleasure are as follows:
- Sex - Fishing - Sport - Boardgames - Card games - Eating - Reading - Walking - Running - Cycling - Preparing food - Going to the local pub - Waking up in the morning - Going to sleep at night - Gambling - Playing CCG's - Swimming
I could go on... if you aren't enjoying the repetitive activity that is the human experience, you're quite free to stop.
Huh? No new and interesting way to get around such filtering is needed. Any VPN, proxy, anonymiser, tunnel etc will do it in moments. High school kids bypassed it in less than 2 minutes when it was demo'd at a local school.
Although you could have been sarcastic and I missed it.
"They have painted a yellow line around the doorway. We must now try to investigate new methods to bypass this yellow barrier. Perhaps we will step over it and see how that goes."
Sadly, the mandatory filtering is bypassed in moments, simply doesn't work, and adds a layer of overhead to our already woeful internet connectivity.
From what I've seen under WinXP, it will most likely crash some apps, panic slightly, throw the user overboard, then create a pagefile on some random disk and go back to sucking it's thumb.
Slashdot Mirror
Further, stuff like this provides additional evidence of God's existence.
No it doesn't. God is, according to all the priests and dead priests and the things they wrote, divine. If you don't believe what is written in the bible you're a heretic, so we will then assume you're either a heretic and can discount your point of view, or we assume you believe God is divine. The priests tell us that only God can create new species of life, and only God can create life from unliving material, although He was unable to create women without a rib.
One of the key points of this exercise which the religious types find so offensive is that it is yet another exercise in proof denying faith. The priests told us that the earth was flat. Wrong. The priests told us that the earth was the center of the universe. Wrong. The priests told us that only the divine can create life... wrong? Time will tell.
What I want to know is, just how much do we have to prove about our understanding of the universe before the religious types will pack it in and stop causing so much harm to the world?
Minitrue instructed - malquoted. Rectify fullwise.
Gamers as a whole are unlikely to approach someone's home and leave a PHYSICAL note. Most gamers have enough concept and paranoia of the real world law (just see what happens if one of their buddies mentions they got a 'cease and desist' type notice for pirating a game or movie) that they generally do not like doing things that might bring the real world authorities into play.
Well, there are stupid gamers in this world, just like there are stupid attorneys-general.
I don't think anyone is advocating the benefits of firewalling China. I don't think anyone thinks China having a bad human rights record is a good thing either. It's regrettable but for the immediate moment, unchangeable.
Australia attempting to do the same thing as China is something that remains possibly changeable. Open discussion on the subject can have a tremendous impact on the legislative process as ministers and senators and the political parties they belong to will vote on laws on a basis of what is perceived to be the greater good, or popular opinion, depending on how close it is to election time. I'm not saying the same thing is necessarily true for China, and perhaps that is why a different standard is applied, but again we are not here to try to change the government of China.
Nobody is letting anything "slide" here. Although it is off topic for this forum, we would welcome your suggestions for ways to encourage China to adopt more open internet policies.
It is not painful to call MS and get a new key, I did it under 10 minutes
I agree, it's not painful. It's horribly time wasting, arrogant of the vendor, and positively user hostile. Let's multiply 10 minutes by the number of Windows licensees out there. Actually I have no idea how many that is, but certainly in the hundreds of millions.
That's how much time wasting Microsoft is inflicting on the business world. Let's be hippies for a moment. How much carbon is emitted by the fossil fuels burned to power those PC's while people are hammering in their activation codes obediently for Microsoft? Say it's just 100,000,000 PCs. That's 1,902 years of power. Let's say your average PC uses about 160W of power during this time. At 0.7kg of carbon per kW, we get a comfortable 213 tonnes of carbon emissions directly caused by Microsoft.
I'm not sure how anyone can defend this kind of behavior.
Save the environment. Use an activation hack.
As a matter of fact, the Australian judge presiding over this case examined safe-harbour provisions and similar cases from US law and he mentions those examinations in the judgement document.
This is common sense really, as ISP's are a carrier and not liable for the content that passes through their networks.
Unfortunately what will happen is Conroy, the Minister for Communications, who has already identified himself as being strongly pro-copyright, will now attempt to enact harsh laws to force ISPs to surrender private information to AFACT companies and allow direct attacks on the Australian population. Conroy is the same minister who was voted Internet Villain of the Year last year for his ongoing attempts to enact a hidden, government controlled blacklist censorship system to "protect the children" (although really it just blocks political, anti-abortion and euthanasia websites and a few local Australian businesses thrown in at random).
Stay out of the sun or you'll get fat!
Huh, that's like saying "Well Microsoft bundled MSIE with Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP and Vista, so bundling MSIE with Windows 7 is therefore reasonable behaviour."
Or, reductio ad abdsurdum, "Nokia murdered every other member of my family, so I consider it reasonable to allow them to murder my little brother too."
Just because other companies were pushovers doesn't mean the one company that isn't a pushover is somehow in the wrong.
One or two more Exocet hits or a little less stupidity on the part of the Argentinians and 1982 would have ended very differently.
I doubt that Argentina would have managed to hold on once a much larger force from the UK arrived in that hypothetical case... the Argentinians had nothing to counter the nuclear sub in the area, which would have bought the UK enough time to field a stronger naval force with better air support than one carrier and it's harriers. The UK would also have been in a position to shift land based air forces into the area given more time. On the flipside, Argentina would have had more time to reinforce their position, so the war would have lasted much longer and had a far greater toll, but the final outcome would still be in favour of the UK.
You have to remember, countries are very slow to respond to surprise wars, but once they do the results can be impressive. Think about the capabilities of the US Navy immediately after Pearl Harbour. It was nothing but luck that had the carrier fleet on maneuvers at the time. Even then the attack was still crippling. But over time, the US navy became far more powerful than it was at the start of the war.
You're all blithely ignoring the fact that if Intel doesn't alter their behavior to satisfy the EU's requirments for a more fairly competitive marketplace, Intel gets another fine, probably much bigger than 1 billion.. and another, and another, and another.
Why doesn't it occur to them that they'd attract a heck of a lot more customers by making them happy instead of miserable?
There's more profit in running a horrible, punitive service and spending the bucks to haul in customers, who really don't have any choice about it anyway, because all the other providers are doing exactly the same thing. And the providers are all perfectly happy with that, because margins are high, expectations are low, and the board members are all getting fat bags of cash.
Why change something if it's not broken?
Imagine an animal that looked like a dog and behaved like a cat. We'd eat that fucker to extinction as a service to the world.
Those are called foxes. I presume considering there is no Kentucky Fried Fox restaurant near me that they are not yummy.
Dog: These humans, they feed me, they pet me, give me everything I need, they are gods to me!
Cat: These humans, they feed me, they pet me, give me everything I need, I must be a god!
WoW has always been easy. Blizzard has just changed the "easiness" scale significantly. Leveling from 1-80 now takes about as long as it used to take leveling from 1-60. This is a commendable decision as it means new players won't be frustrated that they can't play with their friends at the end game, but at the same time they still see a lot of the content that leads players to that end game. Smart business move, as it means they'll attract and retain new players, as well as keeping the old ones.
As for "easiness", is WoW really that easy? You say it is, so, you've clearly "beaten" the game... so you must be able to link your armory with full Ulduar heroic and hard mode achievements.. right? Ok... maybe you're a PvP'er then... what's your personal Arena ranking? Got the 310% drake? No?
Didn't think so... maybe it's harder than you think, and you're just not willing to put in the effort to prove yourself to a guild and use teamwork and skill at the end game.
I commend blizzard for making the game content easy enough to be accessible for all kinds of players, no matter how casual, but for adding challenges that even mighty Slashdot posters are happy to dismiss as "too easy, absolutely no challenge and filled with emo kids and arrogant wankers who play all day." (Despite never even reaching level 80 so they can attempt them...)
The reason the barrens suck so much is because for some reason Alliance players who roll Horde can only ever manage to get as far as the barrens. Then I guess they stop there because they think they're in Stormwind or something and must therefore be at max level.
It's entirely possible that the reason many independent "artists" don't sell a lot of records or get listed on popular charts is, amazingly... because they actually aren't very good?
If they are very good, well, more often that not in the case of artists who are good who are independent, they will be offered lucrative deals by the industry and they'll sign up. Here's 5 million dollars. You can have it, you just have to compromise your ideals slightly.
That's the same story for most Windows malware.
Can I have your IP address please? Your fancy Linux "trade-off" security methodology is relevant to the interests of my Russian associates.
You're running without A/V protection? That's like wandering around in Afghanistan and assuming you won't be shot because you're not a US soldier. Just because your system doesn't look like everyone else's doesn't mean you can't be attacked.
Security through obscurity is not true security.
All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
Well, to some extent what the parent has written is true, however, he's declined to note a couple of key facts that are vital in understanding the issues at hand.
1) Telstra didn't submit a legally compliant bid. No matter what else is going on, if the government had accepted it, they would be immediately sued by the other bidders, and they would lose. The government had "public servants" look at the situation, but the parent declines to mention that those public servants include such individuals as the Solicitor General. If Telstra is so arrogant or incompetent they can't follow a pretty basic set of rules when tendering, they should not be trusted with even a loan of taxpayers money.
2) Telstra's manifest failure at driving forward the growth of internet infrastructure in Australia is the whole reason we need an NBN in the first place.
3) If Telstra is somehow empowered to prevent the growth of a fair and competitive broadband infrastructure, ostensibly through leveraging their monopoly stranglehold on Australian telecommunications infrastructure, then the problem again is not one of the Australian government but one of Telstra causing harm to the people of Australia. This can be remedied by seperating the monopoly part of Telstra from the part of Telstra which is motivated to abuse that monopoly, creating a neutral infrastructure wholesaler and a large retailer, thus encouraging competition and enriching the quality of Australian telecommunications.
While the situation is currently dismal and has been for some time, mostly due to Telstra's significant damage to Australia's telco industry, this is exactly the medicine that Australia needs to cut away the cancer and move into a more progressive market.
The government had 5 very serious legal consultations on the process including the Solicitor General. The RFP must be answered adequately and correctly from a legal perspective. Every bidder except for Telstra managed to do so. Because Telstra did not meet the requirements of the RFP, the government had no legal choice but to remove them from the process. You cannot suggest with any reasonable degree of sanity that the Australian Solicitor General's interpretation of Australian Law is not at least adequate in this case.
If the government allowed Telstra into the bidding process despite the fact that everyone new their response to the RFP wasn't legally sound, every single other bidder could have sued the government and won on solid legal grounds.
Whether you believe Telstra is a hard working, competitive company with a good track record of quality infrastructure and excellent employee conditions, or a violent aggressive monopoliser deliberately holding back Australian internet infrastructure to prevent widespread adoption of VoIP and to preserve the stranglehold on the copper network is up to the individual (although evidence should help people make up their own minds), the legalities of this present circumstance are plain and simple.
Strange, because I know people who play Bejewelled for longer than I play WoW. Sure, it's a bit cheaper, but they don't even have a virtual L70 dude with virtual "purple" items to show for it.
Although, we do have one thing in common, we spent our time doing a repetitive but enjoyable activity.
Other enjoyable yet potentially repetitive activities that humans perform for pleasure are as follows:
- Sex
- Fishing
- Sport
- Boardgames
- Card games
- Eating
- Reading
- Walking
- Running
- Cycling
- Preparing food
- Going to the local pub
- Waking up in the morning
- Going to sleep at night
- Gambling
- Playing CCG's
- Swimming
I could go on... if you aren't enjoying the repetitive activity that is the human experience, you're quite free to stop.
Huh? No new and interesting way to get around such filtering is needed. Any VPN, proxy, anonymiser, tunnel etc will do it in moments. High school kids bypassed it in less than 2 minutes when it was demo'd at a local school.
Although you could have been sarcastic and I missed it.
"They have painted a yellow line around the doorway. We must now try to investigate new methods to bypass this yellow barrier. Perhaps we will step over it and see how that goes."
Sadly, the mandatory filtering is bypassed in moments, simply doesn't work, and adds a layer of overhead to our already woeful internet connectivity.
From what I've seen under WinXP, it will most likely crash some apps, panic slightly, throw the user overboard, then create a pagefile on some random disk and go back to sucking it's thumb.