I do not understand why people are using virtual communities like Second life. Surely fads like Second life are simply doomed, since global warming and/or peak oil will rapidly deplete our ability to use gas / coal burning power stations for supplying electricity for such entertainment? I cannot understand why someone would go to the trouble of building an elaborate alternate reality that will be switched off within the decade.
Are second lifers people who simply don't accept anthropomorphic global warming is a reality? Are they simply fiddling while Rome burns?
The guy can't even spell Starforce, never mind sue them over it. Is he some kind of stalking horse, deliberately doomed to fail to discourage other people with more resources and ability to sue the company??
You seem to agree with Joel Bakan's theory; indeed it is a fairly obvious point, once it is out in the open and fully examined: that corporations ARE psychotic, by any human standards. You might view this with a matter of fact shrug, but I, for one, view Google's position as the planets number one trader of information, and the fact it will begin to pursue possibilities to completely capitalise on its position without regard to any moral responsibilities as something truly frightening.
I'm sure plenty of people reading that will think I'm a little overwrought about something which, if it does happen, is far into the future, but I really see this as inexorable, because of the nature of what Google now is.
The screened out results aren't some 'customs of the country' peculiar local ways. They are dissident sites that criticise and publicise China's human rights record. If there is one issue that transcends the borders of nation states it is people's favour of, and commitment to, human rights.
Google news is rather dubious. There's no real insight into how it selects headlines. There are reports that it will happily take as 'news' press releases from the BNP in Britain, which is a little like giving news releases from the Ku Klux Klan the same prominance as the NYT. Google caved under pressure to China to screen thoughtcrime out of its results. I'm not sure I like Google anymore.
I recently read Joel Bakan's The Corporation, which argues that due to their defining characteristic of only being beholden to profit and money, corporations are, in human terms, irredeemably psychotic. Google is an interesting case study, as it's set itself a higher moral standard, and has much further to fall. Google News was the beginning of that inevitable fall.
It is a fact that gamers are to blame for good game companies going under. As a group, we simply don't award creativity or innovation in gaming. 'Cult' hits are a sign of the disease, intelligent, thought provoking gaming like Planescape: Torment simply do not get the sales they deserve, and soon appear in the bargain bin.
I really have no idea why this happens. Fantastically good games available for about £5 in some cases is simply unbelievable in any other industry like film or music. Classics of the genre in those industries retain their value beyond a year - you don't find classics like On the Waterfront or 12 Angry Men in the bargain bin, as they seem to hold their value.
It's a sad thing, because in response, the game industry is going to chase the brainless blockbuster format, which EA has pretty much sewn up. And its hard to blame anyone other than ourselves. I don't really know why this happens, but I'd guess that too many of us are unwilling to try something new. It seems OK to be a FPS guy, or a sports sim guy - but if you only went to movies that were about sports, you'd be regarded as a total whacko.
Gamers will get the industry they support, and what they support is a million EA clones released with incremental changes year after year. It's so depressing.
If you had gone to a hospital bureaucrat and argued against shift patterns for junior doctors requiring them to nap during the night when no patients were around, and they asked you for evidence, what then do you do? Say that they would be sleepy? That it was common sense that they couldn't do their job safely?
I suspect you'd be dismissed because people don't make important decisions like that based on what Joe Schmoe reckons is 'obvious'. That's why things that, on the face of them seem obvious, must be checked out scientifically. There has to be evidence to base decisions on, as gut feelings and common sense are, in many cases, completely and flagrantly wrong.
You demand those new conditions for junior doctors, and you're suddenly paying them millions of pounds more countrywide. I wouldn't stake millions of pounds on someones common sense without something more to back it up.
We try to reduce pain and suffering in the way we imagine we would experience pain and suffering. Thus, from time to time, arguments erupt over how animals experience pain, for example is a caught fish in agony due to the hook through it's lip.
we can try to formulate theories of what it's like to be a mouse, and incorporate everything we know about how mice experience life into our decision
In fact, our animal welfare systems are just another name for this. We anthropomorphise the mouse 'experience' and try to reduce pain and suffering the same way we would try to reduce pain and suffering.
Mice and Rats in research are supposed to be pitied, by the usual pathetic ways that humans impart everything around them with the feelings or emotions which we possess. Actually, you should look at some facts.
FACT: Mice in the wild live about a year, in the most stressful, difficult and inhumane conditions you wouldn't like to imagine. Should they be unfortunate to gain access to one of the animal rights protestors habitat, middle class suburbia, the self same protestor, full of indignation at experimental killing, will of course call in someone to rid them of their little problem, or condemn them to freeze to death in wooded areas with humane capture traps. In the lab, mus musculus live on average about 2 years in controlled, warm conditions with regular feeding and exercise.
FACT: Rats in the wild live about 2 years max, again in stressful, disease ridden cramped conditions. In the lab, Rats can survive double that, again in nicely ordered, well controlled and comfortable conditions.
So don't bring up that ignorant rubbish about how animal experiments somehow harm rats and mice: unlike Joe Public taking potshots at rats and mice in his backyard, everything WE do is sanctioned, pored over and refined each and every step of the way to minimise suffering. Hell, our animals are no use for experimentation if they're unhappy or agitated: they get difficult to handle. We go to see them and handle them a couple of weeks before expts even start to get them used to our presence, smell, voices etc.
Rats and mice are far better treated in our labs than in the wild or in your homes, and they are also better treated than the conveyor belt of cattle fattened and slaughtered for your own diet. I get angered by the hypocrisy of people opposed to experimentation while conveniently overlooking the animal suffering inherent in large scale production of meat in all the developed world, with cattle stunned with bolt guns wandering into saws. It's so much easier to criticise someone else than look at your won behaviour, isn't it?
I don't see how having Mr. Ellison sit in some cozy Hilton with a fence is in any way justice to those who have been wronged.
It's one of the few things he would actually identify as punishment. And don't say he committed no crime - insider trading eats away at the whole point of the stockmarket. He knew there would be an earnings shortfall. He knew that everyone owning stocks have to take the rough with the smooth. He swindled to avoid playing by the rules of the game. The victims are the people who bought the stocks off them - he sold them something he knew would be valueless. If a shop trader sold you a TV he knew wouldn't work, would you say 'tough luck' then?
Let me get this straight, you truly believe that having Joe Taxpayer (including many shareholders) pay to keep Ellison at the crossbar motel sounds like justice?
You think having some burglar sit in a jail for stealing a couple hundred dollars worth of goods is any differt? You'd put a price on justice? Having Larry Ellison sit behind bars may seem like a waste of money, but how many other inside traders are going to look at him and back off?
Where is the benefit of locking up someone like Ellison?
Justice? To deter other white collar criminals? Maybe just to inflict a true punishment to pay him back for robbing a huge number of shareholders with his insider scams, the majority of those people being those who would have substantial repurcussions to their standard of living from losing the money.
White collar crime costs us all a staggering amount of money, is underreported, and is often erratically prosecuted because of the difficulty in trying complicated financial transactions, the sophistication of the criminals, and the money at the plaintiffs disposal to fight cases. When someone IS caught, there has to be a substantial deterrent sentence. Jail time at the very least.
I mean, the situation is ludicrous. If a small time burglar had robbed each stockholder of money, say a thousand of them, there is no way he would walk away with a fine. Put him in a suit and rob them electronically and the situation is somehow different.
Ellison's net worth is about 13.7 billion dollars. 13,700 million, under the American billion system. If you had $13,700 in the bank, robbed a couple of thousand people, and recieved a hundred buck fine, would you be suitably punished?
One for the rich, one for the poor. Steal an TV, and you get locked up. Steal millions of dollars, and you get a fine. Kill some bozo, and you get executed. Kill a million bozos with Apache helicopters and white phosphorus, and you get an unfavourable poll rating.
It's one rule for the rich, and one rule for the poor.
This is today's version of the Top Gun film. There is a silent war happening between two superpowers and the heroes of that war are neither remembered or mourned. I'd say the American team of computer experts fighting virtual dogfights with Chinese hackers are just as brave and committed as those fine pilots like Maverick, Iceman or Joker. And let us hope there is no Goose - that these brave experts do not pay for the work they do on our behalf with their lives.
I wonder if the American computer experts do an electronic 'flyby' of their bosses computer systems. I bet they do, and so they should, for our country is a country undeniably committed to freedom and no concentration of force in real or virtual worlds will change that. Let the Chinese do their worse - they will soon learn that superior American training and technology and goddam GUTS, like in Top Gun, will prevail.
..some music is so poor, yet so successful. Take, just off the top of my head, a Madonna track that was released for the Bond movie "Die Another Day". It was A list on the radio and got played at least once every 3 hours, and it was utterly appalling. Like, so bad I couldn't understand why anyone would listen to it, never mind buy it.
I mean, music criticism is difficult because someone somewhere is going to see something in a track you might detest, but I'm pretty confident that 99% of the people who heard that track would think it was rubbish. But still it got on air, a lot.
DJ's these days are totally shackled by the system, I think they have very little freedom on large stations to play music they actually like. It used to be that an "Indie" DJ played music they liked, and if they were actually a good DJ with discerning taste and access to a lot of new stuff, it was like a filtering process to find stuff old and new you would like. But listen to any commercial station and the music is essentially interchangeable, at least here in the UK.
Anyway, talking of music that's overhyped and overpromoted, just read "most of modern R'n'B". The genre, with too few exceptions, requires little to no talent compared to too much arrogance and attitude. Recipe for success: a few hooks, some mediocre rapping and an effects/whore-heavy video. If it wasn't pushed so much, it wouldn't be popular.
I see. Because the police cannot accurately price their seized ecstasy, it naturally follows that buying pirated DVDs and giving your money to criminals is the correct and proper thing to do.
You can complain about copy protection all you want. But you must recognise it is there to cut into black marketeers profits, linux users and other consumers are just the collatoral damage of that war.
Good Heavens! Such an articulate rebuttal! I reply only to add - everything I have said is verifiable on the Internet somewhere. You can start by googling "piracy links organised crime", if interested.
Your first reaction is not necessarily the correct one.
I have an even greater moral repugnance for the black marketeers who are making a lot of money worldwide in cracked games, movies etc., selling pirated DVDs in markets and so on. Study after study has shown these people to be involved in much more horrific black market criminality than just this seemingly harmless trade, and more people should be aware of it.
In Britain for instance, the same people who are making vast profits from pirate DVDs and games are people smuggling, selling hard drugs, running child prostitution and exploitation networks in war torn places like Bosnia. They take the profits from their pirate business to help out the other parts. If it comes to a straight choice between murderers, drug dealers and paedophiles and big media companies, all jokes aside, I'd rather give my money to the CEO.
People need to be aware where the money is going, before they make the moral argument for piracy of goods.
I find the most convenient method of carrying reams of data around is my iPod. All you need to do is scan in all your documents and use it like you would any other storage device. The advantages of this are:
1) You can also listen to music and
2) You could convert your genealogy data into music notes, record them into mp3 files or aac, and listen to them. If you developed enough facility with this music -language (musuage) you could listen, on the hoof and answer questions relatives may have in real time.
Perhaps Aunt Nora may approach you at a BBQ and ask you about your mothers brothers in laws second cousins puported realtionship to Henry VII. One quick spin of the patented iPod wheel later, and you're listening to that relationship aurally and giving her a running commentary of that side of the family, whilst thoughtfully munching on a burnt sausage roll. I can see big things with this approach.
Abu Abbas was never trained in Iraq. He sheltered there for a time, granted. Parent is trying to inflate Iraq into a terrorist centre pre Coalition action, which is demonstrably false.
And I guess those $25,000 checks Saddam wrote to the families of Palestinian bombers weren't an endorsement of terrorism either.
And I guess all that domestic US funding of the IRA in the early 80's that your own government turned a blind eye to means the UK can invade the USA? Money that went to buying bombs that killed UK citizens? What about Saudi Arabia, and it's funding of various illegitimate terrorist groups? Don't try to make out Saddam's action are anything astonishing or unexpected in that region.
Is the US's continual funding of Israel not a support for terrorism? The IDF certainly kills civilians.
that they haven't scammed detail from places like say, the NYTimes subsriber database. "Mr A Butthole, Kansas" and "Phil McCrackin, Washington" might find unwanted junk mail winging their way towards them.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not understand why people are using virtual communities like Second life. Surely fads like Second life are simply doomed, since global warming and/or peak oil will rapidly deplete our ability to use gas / coal burning power stations for supplying electricity for such entertainment? I cannot understand why someone would go to the trouble of building an elaborate alternate reality that will be switched off within the decade.
Are second lifers people who simply don't accept anthropomorphic global warming is a reality? Are they simply fiddling while Rome burns?
The bunny vac with the chamber of floating bunnies had to be done with CGI, since it was technically near impossible otherwise.
To blow that shit out of it. Man, that would be good.
The guy can't even spell Starforce, never mind sue them over it. Is he some kind of stalking horse, deliberately doomed to fail to discourage other people with more resources and ability to sue the company??
You seem to agree with Joel Bakan's theory; indeed it is a fairly obvious point, once it is out in the open and fully examined: that corporations ARE psychotic, by any human standards. You might view this with a matter of fact shrug, but I, for one, view Google's position as the planets number one trader of information, and the fact it will begin to pursue possibilities to completely capitalise on its position without regard to any moral responsibilities as something truly frightening.
I'm sure plenty of people reading that will think I'm a little overwrought about something which, if it does happen, is far into the future, but I really see this as inexorable, because of the nature of what Google now is.
The screened out results aren't some 'customs of the country' peculiar local ways. They are dissident sites that criticise and publicise China's human rights record. If there is one issue that transcends the borders of nation states it is people's favour of, and commitment to, human rights.
Google news is rather dubious. There's no real insight into how it selects headlines. There are reports that it will happily take as 'news' press releases from the BNP in Britain, which is a little like giving news releases from the Ku Klux Klan the same prominance as the NYT. Google caved under pressure to China to screen thoughtcrime out of its results. I'm not sure I like Google anymore.
I recently read Joel Bakan's The Corporation, which argues that due to their defining characteristic of only being beholden to profit and money, corporations are, in human terms, irredeemably psychotic. Google is an interesting case study, as it's set itself a higher moral standard, and has much further to fall. Google News was the beginning of that inevitable fall.
It is a fact that gamers are to blame for good game companies going under. As a group, we simply don't award creativity or innovation in gaming. 'Cult' hits are a sign of the disease, intelligent, thought provoking gaming like Planescape: Torment simply do not get the sales they deserve, and soon appear in the bargain bin.
I really have no idea why this happens. Fantastically good games available for about £5 in some cases is simply unbelievable in any other industry like film or music. Classics of the genre in those industries retain their value beyond a year - you don't find classics like On the Waterfront or 12 Angry Men in the bargain bin, as they seem to hold their value.
It's a sad thing, because in response, the game industry is going to chase the brainless blockbuster format, which EA has pretty much sewn up. And its hard to blame anyone other than ourselves. I don't really know why this happens, but I'd guess that too many of us are unwilling to try something new. It seems OK to be a FPS guy, or a sports sim guy - but if you only went to movies that were about sports, you'd be regarded as a total whacko.
Gamers will get the industry they support, and what they support is a million EA clones released with incremental changes year after year. It's so depressing.
If you had gone to a hospital bureaucrat and argued against shift patterns for junior doctors requiring them to nap during the night when no patients were around, and they asked you for evidence, what then do you do? Say that they would be sleepy? That it was common sense that they couldn't do their job safely?
I suspect you'd be dismissed because people don't make important decisions like that based on what Joe Schmoe reckons is 'obvious'. That's why things that, on the face of them seem obvious, must be checked out scientifically. There has to be evidence to base decisions on, as gut feelings and common sense are, in many cases, completely and flagrantly wrong.
You demand those new conditions for junior doctors, and you're suddenly paying them millions of pounds more countrywide. I wouldn't stake millions of pounds on someones common sense without something more to back it up.
We try to reduce pain and suffering in the way we imagine we would experience pain and suffering. Thus, from time to time, arguments erupt over how animals experience pain, for example is a caught fish in agony due to the hook through it's lip.
we can try to formulate theories of what it's like to be a mouse, and incorporate everything we know about how mice experience life into our decision
In fact, our animal welfare systems are just another name for this. We anthropomorphise the mouse 'experience' and try to reduce pain and suffering the same way we would try to reduce pain and suffering.
Mice and Rats in research are supposed to be pitied, by the usual pathetic ways that humans impart everything around them with the feelings or emotions which we possess. Actually, you should look at some facts.
FACT: Mice in the wild live about a year, in the most stressful, difficult and inhumane conditions you wouldn't like to imagine. Should they be unfortunate to gain access to one of the animal rights protestors habitat, middle class suburbia, the self same protestor, full of indignation at experimental killing, will of course call in someone to rid them of their little problem, or condemn them to freeze to death in wooded areas with humane capture traps. In the lab, mus musculus live on average about 2 years in controlled, warm conditions with regular feeding and exercise.
FACT: Rats in the wild live about 2 years max, again in stressful, disease ridden cramped conditions. In the lab, Rats can survive double that, again in nicely ordered, well controlled and comfortable conditions.
So don't bring up that ignorant rubbish about how animal experiments somehow harm rats and mice: unlike Joe Public taking potshots at rats and mice in his backyard, everything WE do is sanctioned, pored over and refined each and every step of the way to minimise suffering. Hell, our animals are no use for experimentation if they're unhappy or agitated: they get difficult to handle. We go to see them and handle them a couple of weeks before expts even start to get them used to our presence, smell, voices etc.
Rats and mice are far better treated in our labs than in the wild or in your homes, and they are also better treated than the conveyor belt of cattle fattened and slaughtered for your own diet. I get angered by the hypocrisy of people opposed to experimentation while conveniently overlooking the animal suffering inherent in large scale production of meat in all the developed world, with cattle stunned with bolt guns wandering into saws. It's so much easier to criticise someone else than look at your won behaviour, isn't it?
I don't see how having Mr. Ellison sit in some cozy Hilton with a fence is in any way justice to those who have been wronged.
It's one of the few things he would actually identify as punishment. And don't say he committed no crime - insider trading eats away at the whole point of the stockmarket. He knew there would be an earnings shortfall. He knew that everyone owning stocks have to take the rough with the smooth. He swindled to avoid playing by the rules of the game. The victims are the people who bought the stocks off them - he sold them something he knew would be valueless. If a shop trader sold you a TV he knew wouldn't work, would you say 'tough luck' then?
Let me get this straight, you truly believe that having Joe Taxpayer (including many shareholders) pay to keep Ellison at the crossbar motel sounds like justice?
You think having some burglar sit in a jail for stealing a couple hundred dollars worth of goods is any differt? You'd put a price on justice? Having Larry Ellison sit behind bars may seem like a waste of money, but how many other inside traders are going to look at him and back off?
Where is the benefit of locking up someone like Ellison?
Justice? To deter other white collar criminals? Maybe just to inflict a true punishment to pay him back for robbing a huge number of shareholders with his insider scams, the majority of those people being those who would have substantial repurcussions to their standard of living from losing the money.
White collar crime costs us all a staggering amount of money, is underreported, and is often erratically prosecuted because of the difficulty in trying complicated financial transactions, the sophistication of the criminals, and the money at the plaintiffs disposal to fight cases. When someone IS caught, there has to be a substantial deterrent sentence. Jail time at the very least.
I mean, the situation is ludicrous. If a small time burglar had robbed each stockholder of money, say a thousand of them, there is no way he would walk away with a fine. Put him in a suit and rob them electronically and the situation is somehow different.
Ellison's net worth is about 13.7 billion dollars. 13,700 million, under the American billion system. If you had $13,700 in the bank, robbed a couple of thousand people, and recieved a hundred buck fine, would you be suitably punished?
One for the rich, one for the poor. Steal an TV, and you get locked up. Steal millions of dollars, and you get a fine. Kill some bozo, and you get executed. Kill a million bozos with Apache helicopters and white phosphorus, and you get an unfavourable poll rating.
It's one rule for the rich, and one rule for the poor.
This is today's version of the Top Gun film. There is a silent war happening between two superpowers and the heroes of that war are neither remembered or mourned. I'd say the American team of computer experts fighting virtual dogfights with Chinese hackers are just as brave and committed as those fine pilots like Maverick, Iceman or Joker. And let us hope there is no Goose - that these brave experts do not pay for the work they do on our behalf with their lives.
I wonder if the American computer experts do an electronic 'flyby' of their bosses computer systems. I bet they do, and so they should, for our country is a country undeniably committed to freedom and no concentration of force in real or virtual worlds will change that. Let the Chinese do their worse - they will soon learn that superior American training and technology and goddam GUTS, like in Top Gun, will prevail.
Actually, I am Madonna's target demographic. She send me shit all the time, the fat slag.
..some music is so poor, yet so successful. Take, just off the top of my head, a Madonna track that was released for the Bond movie "Die Another Day". It was A list on the radio and got played at least once every 3 hours, and it was utterly appalling. Like, so bad I couldn't understand why anyone would listen to it, never mind buy it.
I mean, music criticism is difficult because someone somewhere is going to see something in a track you might detest, but I'm pretty confident that 99% of the people who heard that track would think it was rubbish. But still it got on air, a lot.
DJ's these days are totally shackled by the system, I think they have very little freedom on large stations to play music they actually like. It used to be that an "Indie" DJ played music they liked, and if they were actually a good DJ with discerning taste and access to a lot of new stuff, it was like a filtering process to find stuff old and new you would like. But listen to any commercial station and the music is essentially interchangeable, at least here in the UK.
Anyway, talking of music that's overhyped and overpromoted, just read "most of modern R'n'B". The genre, with too few exceptions, requires little to no talent compared to too much arrogance and attitude. Recipe for success: a few hooks, some mediocre rapping and an effects/whore-heavy video. If it wasn't pushed so much, it wouldn't be popular.
I see. Because the police cannot accurately price their seized ecstasy, it naturally follows that buying pirated DVDs and giving your money to criminals is the correct and proper thing to do.
You can complain about copy protection all you want. But you must recognise it is there to cut into black marketeers profits, linux users and other consumers are just the collatoral damage of that war.
Good Heavens! Such an articulate rebuttal! I reply only to add - everything I have said is verifiable on the Internet somewhere. You can start by googling "piracy links organised crime", if interested.
Your first reaction is not necessarily the correct one.
I have an even greater moral repugnance for the black marketeers who are making a lot of money worldwide in cracked games, movies etc., selling pirated DVDs in markets and so on. Study after study has shown these people to be involved in much more horrific black market criminality than just this seemingly harmless trade, and more people should be aware of it.
In Britain for instance, the same people who are making vast profits from pirate DVDs and games are people smuggling, selling hard drugs, running child prostitution and exploitation networks in war torn places like Bosnia. They take the profits from their pirate business to help out the other parts. If it comes to a straight choice between murderers, drug dealers and paedophiles and big media companies, all jokes aside, I'd rather give my money to the CEO.
People need to be aware where the money is going, before they make the moral argument for piracy of goods.
I find the most convenient method of carrying reams of data around is my iPod. All you need to do is scan in all your documents and use it like you would any other storage device. The advantages of this are:
1) You can also listen to music and
2) You could convert your genealogy data into music notes, record them into mp3 files or aac, and listen to them. If you developed enough facility with this music -language (musuage) you could listen, on the hoof and answer questions relatives may have in real time.
Perhaps Aunt Nora may approach you at a BBQ and ask you about your mothers brothers in laws second cousins puported realtionship to Henry VII. One quick spin of the patented iPod wheel later, and you're listening to that relationship aurally and giving her a running commentary of that side of the family, whilst thoughtfully munching on a burnt sausage roll. I can see big things with this approach.
Abu Abbas was never trained in Iraq. He sheltered there for a time, granted. Parent is trying to inflate Iraq into a terrorist centre pre Coalition action, which is demonstrably false.
And I guess those $25,000 checks Saddam wrote to the families of Palestinian bombers weren't an endorsement of terrorism either.
And I guess all that domestic US funding of the IRA in the early 80's that your own government turned a blind eye to means the UK can invade the USA? Money that went to buying bombs that killed UK citizens? What about Saudi Arabia, and it's funding of various illegitimate terrorist groups? Don't try to make out Saddam's action are anything astonishing or unexpected in that region.
Is the US's continual funding of Israel not a support for terrorism? The IDF certainly kills civilians.
Oh? Then perhaps you could name one terrorist incident in the last 20 years committed by an Iraqi trained terrorist?
that they haven't scammed detail from places like say, the NYTimes subsriber database. "Mr A Butthole, Kansas" and "Phil McCrackin, Washington" might find unwanted junk mail winging their way towards them.