Why would Microsoft care if people who didn't pay for their software switched to something else?
As for those cases where WGA says they didn't pay, but they did: for a company as big as Microsoft who holds a near monopoly, it probably isn't a big deal.
...to disclose any information necessary to satisfy any laws, regulations or other governmental request...
Stating that you will disclose information that is required by law is obvious. But disclosing information that you are not allowed to disclose and do not have to disclose, makes no sense. I can see no benefit to the company. What gives?
Carbon dioxide is abundant in volcanic gases, but not enough to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons of carbon dioxide per year while man's activities contribute about 10 billion tons per year.
I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Global Warming. Once you do, follow the links to other articles such as Global Cooling and Global Warming Controversy. The last article I mentioned has a section Listing supporters of global warming and also detractors. I recently went through the list of detractors and read what their opinions are (there are articles on some of those people on Wikipedia). As it turns out, the people who don't support global warming still claim that the earth is getting hotter: they only debate the percentage of human influence involved.
There's a good week's worth of reading in there, and I am far from finished. But it is quite informative. Really, the only question is when will this become a problem. Because even if you eliminate mankind, the earth is in a warm cycle, and historically, those cycles tend to wipe out major organisms.
If a game can draw any emotion out of you, then it is doing something right. Games are like stories - if they don't make you think, or love, or hate, or fear, or SOMETHING then they are just dumbing you down by staring at pretty pixels.
When Doom 3 came out, I upgraded my video card, setup my 5.1 sound system, and dimmed the theater lights. My friends would gather round as I played. People would fidget, jump, dodge, and squeal as things jumped out at them. The game was truly emotional for the people playing and watching. Now THAT is entertainment.
I had a similar experience with Shadow of the Colossus and Half-Life 2. Shadow made you hate what you were doing to those beautiful creatures. Half-Life 2 made you feel like you were in 1984 (the book, not the year!).
The biggest problem is getting enoug content without making the game repetitive. Shadow and Doom 3 both had this problem. But overall, making a provocative interactive story is difficult to do, but it is definitely a winning formula.
The especially odd thing is that even at the same resolution, his DVD screen shots look worse. That indicates that something other than resolution is going on here.
I see these anti-network neutrality articles, and they all seem to be talking about something completely different. This one, for example:
They want Congress to pass a new law to ban that practice by regulating the price of broadband service and the way it's sold.
1) Who is they? 2) AFAIK, network neutrality has nothing to do with regulating the prices or how it is sold.
Are there multiple things going under the name of network neutrality? Network neutrality, as I know it, is codifying into law the existing way the internet already works. It involves no new regulations, no special agencies, nothing about prices, or sales, etc. Am I wrong? Or are these guys making up FUD to confuse the issue?
I'm shocked that NPR aired this. I understand giving airing sides of an argument, but this is nothing but lies. I don't mean that I don't like it, or I disagree - I mean that factually this is nothing but lies. NPR needs to do a little bit of fact checking before airing something so inaccurate. Usually I like NPR, but this is abhorrent.
Worse yet, is that this isn't new: These guys are winning this battle because they are putting out so much misinformation.
I doubt that the majority of the RIAA's income comes from wealthy businessmen. It probably comes from the 37 million people who make 37,000 dollars a year.
This is another case of misunderstanding network neutrality. Your example has nothing to do with it.
1) If you want a low-latency connection for gaming, nothing today stops you from doing that today. Contact your local telecom and ISPs and ask them what latencies they offer and at what price. There's nothing wrong with doing that, it happens today all the time.
For example, I work for a telemedicine company and our clients are hospitals who use low-latency high-bandwidth pipes, and they pay extra for that. They prioritize the audio/video traffic over the HTTP requests.
2) This would be a net neutrality issue if Microsoft paid Comcast to prioritize XBOX Live traffic over Playstation traffic. Or if Comcast bandwidth capped World of Warcraft traffic unless Blizzard or their customers paid them extra.
Remember when Intel started to make video cards and motherboards? The FTC forbade them from doing it. ATI + AMD would present a similar situation. Now, at the time, Intel was dominating the market much more than they are now, but it still presents a similar risk.
Is anyone afraid that this could lead to fewer choices in the video card market?
Let's also remember that Richard Armey was given the Poetic Justice Award because his web site was blocked by the filtering software that he voted to make mandatory. Time to change your name, Dick!
An anonymous submitter noticed that the Web site of Richard "Dick"
Armey, Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and a
staunch defender of censorware and strict Internet regulation, is
himself a victim of censorware. Netnanny, Surfwatch, Cybersitter,
N2H2, and Wisechoice are among the "software solutions" which Armey
advocates. All of them filter his site because it contains the word
"dick."
There is just so much confusion over what this issue means. How can anyone say that Net Neutrality would cause anything, when it is what we already have today? This isn't about adding regulation - it is about preserving the system we already have this is working great.
When explaining net neutrality to lay people, make sure you mention that it is merely legislating how things already are today. It makes it much easier for people to understand and they can see through FUD like this article very easily.
You misunderstand what net neutrality is about. The problem is that people throw out the term "tiered service" with many different meanings.
"Tiered service" = people pay for different levels of bandwidth: This already exists, and is not a bad thing at all. Obviously companies need more bandwidth than individuals. This seems to be the definition you are using, but it isn't what the uproar is over.
"Tiered service" = you get more bandwidth to Google than Yahoo, or more bandwidth to affiliates, or less bandwidth to entertainment sites: That is a bad thing that would could the Internet into many competing pieces. Carriers should not distinguish based on site content or affiliation. It would revert things back to the early 1990s world of AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy. That was where each "ISP" had different content depending on who they affiliated with.
This just shows how confusing things are. The bill you linked to is a net neutrality bill, which is a good thing. But the article refers to another Bill, HR 5252 which has nothing to do with net neutrality - they want it added. Then, there are articles by other major news organizations that refer to other bills that would state the opposite of net neutrality.
On a related note, instead of adding a net neutrality provision to another bill, why can't we have a separate net neutrality bill? Too many things get stuffed into one bill, which cascades causing the "Save the Earth Act of 2006" to have nothing to do with the environment.
I have a Roomba, and the only problem with it is that the batteries dropped to about 40% capacity within 3 months. My Roomba is no longer able to complete the standard cleaning cycle without the batteries dying. Anybody else have this experience? I can't wait until a fuel-cell version is available.:-)
It is difficult to eliminate the errors, so a better solution is to minimize them. The easiest way to do this is to add extra workbooks named "sheet2" and "sheet3" with thousands of extra cells in them. Then, the percentage of error is 3 times lower. Example:
Before: "sheet1" has 50x50 cells, with 25 errors. That's 25 / 50^2 = 1% errors. After: Add "sheet2" and "sheet3" with another 50x50 cells. Now, the error rate is 25 / 50^2 / 3 = 1/3 % error.
According to my spreadsheet, that is a much better error rate!
Such a study would be very interesting, so long as it isn't sponsored by the government.
1) US government studies on political issues are politically biased, and monetarily inefficient. 2) Congress proposing a "study" is a common ploy to either delay a bill without voting against it directly, or to keep a bill alive in the hopes that your cronies will be around next year. It has the added benefit of obtaububg psuedo-scientific support.
Let's try Moby Disk's congressional bill passing algorithm:
IF the people want such a bill AND there is scientific support for the problem AND there is a well-defined way to solve the problem AND it is something the people cannot do without legal involvement THEN pass a law.
Video game violence does not meet any of the above critera.
In the 1950s - 1970s was there any attempt to pass laws to make rock music illegal? I'm looking for a parallel with the video game laws.
Every now and then someone posts about how, in each generation, there is some subversive counterculture thing that is supposedly going to brainwash the children. Elvis, Rock and Roll, Dunegons and Dragons, whatever. Today it is video games. But I can't recollect anyone talking about laws to make D&D illegal. It seems like something different is happening this time around. Unless someone has a counter-example for me.
(1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence.
The author of this bill thinks that minors have an intrinsic morbid interest in violence. But non-morbid violence would be okay. Wow.
(2) The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors.
I thought the word "patently" was only used by Slashdot trolls who didn't feel like backing up their point. I'm amazed to see it in a law. Eg: "That is patently absurd!" Meaning "that is so absurd I don't even care to justify why it is absurd"
(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
I didn't know that minors had different standards for literary, artistic, political, and scientific value. I guess that means that only a minor could judge it!
Slashdot Mirror
Why would Microsoft care if people who didn't pay for their software switched to something else?
As for those cases where WGA says they didn't pay, but they did: for a company as big as Microsoft who holds a near monopoly, it probably isn't a big deal.
Stating that you will disclose information that is required by law is obvious. But disclosing information that you are not allowed to disclose and do not have to disclose, makes no sense. I can see no benefit to the company. What gives?
The Computer Science terms you are looking for are "coupling" and "cohesion." A good design minimizes coupling and maximizes cohesion.
I recommend reading The Truth Machine
According to the University of California, Santa Barbara:
I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on Global Warming. Once you do, follow the links to other articles such as Global Cooling and Global Warming Controversy. The last article I mentioned has a section Listing supporters of global warming and also detractors. I recently went through the list of detractors and read what their opinions are (there are articles on some of those people on Wikipedia). As it turns out, the people who don't support global warming still claim that the earth is getting hotter: they only debate the percentage of human influence involved.
There's a good week's worth of reading in there, and I am far from finished. But it is quite informative. Really, the only question is when will this become a problem. Because even if you eliminate mankind, the earth is in a warm cycle, and historically, those cycles tend to wipe out major organisms.
If a game can draw any emotion out of you, then it is doing something right. Games are like stories - if they don't make you think, or love, or hate, or fear, or SOMETHING then they are just dumbing you down by staring at pretty pixels.
When Doom 3 came out, I upgraded my video card, setup my 5.1 sound system, and dimmed the theater lights. My friends would gather round as I played. People would fidget, jump, dodge, and squeal as things jumped out at them. The game was truly emotional for the people playing and watching. Now THAT is entertainment.
I had a similar experience with Shadow of the Colossus and Half-Life 2. Shadow made you hate what you were doing to those beautiful creatures. Half-Life 2 made you feel like you were in 1984 (the book, not the year!).
The biggest problem is getting enoug content without making the game repetitive. Shadow and Doom 3 both had this problem. But overall, making a provocative interactive story is difficult to do, but it is definitely a winning formula.
The especially odd thing is that even at the same resolution, his DVD screen shots look worse. That indicates that something other than resolution is going on here.
Obviously, the winner is the one with the last bid: that's how auctions work. You don't go back and bid a lower value!
1) Who is they?
2) AFAIK, network neutrality has nothing to do with regulating the prices or how it is sold.
Are there multiple things going under the name of network neutrality? Network neutrality, as I know it, is codifying into law the existing way the internet already works. It involves no new regulations, no special agencies, nothing about prices, or sales, etc. Am I wrong? Or are these guys making up FUD to confuse the issue?
I'm shocked that NPR aired this. I understand giving airing sides of an argument, but this is nothing but lies. I don't mean that I don't like it, or I disagree - I mean that factually this is nothing but lies. NPR needs to do a little bit of fact checking before airing something so inaccurate. Usually I like NPR, but this is abhorrent.
Worse yet, is that this isn't new: These guys are winning this battle because they are putting out so much misinformation.
I doubt that the majority of the RIAA's income comes from wealthy businessmen. It probably comes from the 37 million people who make 37,000 dollars a year.
I recommend the best of both worlds. Buy a Pentium M or AMD Turion based desktop computer.
This is another case of misunderstanding network neutrality. Your example has nothing to do with it.
1) If you want a low-latency connection for gaming, nothing today stops you from doing that today. Contact your local telecom and ISPs and ask them what latencies they offer and at what price. There's nothing wrong with doing that, it happens today all the time.
For example, I work for a telemedicine company and our clients are hospitals who use low-latency high-bandwidth pipes, and they pay extra for that. They prioritize the audio/video traffic over the HTTP requests.
2) This would be a net neutrality issue if Microsoft paid Comcast to prioritize XBOX Live traffic over Playstation traffic. Or if Comcast bandwidth capped World of Warcraft traffic unless Blizzard or their customers paid them extra.
Remember when Intel started to make video cards and motherboards? The FTC forbade them from doing it. ATI + AMD would present a similar situation. Now, at the time, Intel was dominating the market much more than they are now, but it still presents a similar risk.
Is anyone afraid that this could lead to fewer choices in the video card market?
There is just so much confusion over what this issue means. How can anyone say that Net Neutrality would cause anything, when it is what we already have today? This isn't about adding regulation - it is about preserving the system we already have this is working great.
When explaining net neutrality to lay people, make sure you mention that it is merely legislating how things already are today. It makes it much easier for people to understand and they can see through FUD like this article very easily.
You misunderstand what net neutrality is about. The problem is that people throw out the term "tiered service" with many different meanings.
"Tiered service" = people pay for different levels of bandwidth: This already exists, and is not a bad thing at all. Obviously companies need more bandwidth than individuals. This seems to be the definition you are using, but it isn't what the uproar is over.
"Tiered service" = you get more bandwidth to Google than Yahoo, or more bandwidth to affiliates, or less bandwidth to entertainment sites: That is a bad thing that would could the Internet into many competing pieces. Carriers should not distinguish based on site content or affiliation. It would revert things back to the early 1990s world of AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy. That was where each "ISP" had different content depending on who they affiliated with.
This just shows how confusing things are. The bill you linked to is a net neutrality bill, which is a good thing. But the article refers to another Bill, HR 5252 which has nothing to do with net neutrality - they want it added. Then, there are articles by other major news organizations that refer to other bills that would state the opposite of net neutrality.
On a related note, instead of adding a net neutrality provision to another bill, why can't we have a separate net neutrality bill? Too many things get stuffed into one bill, which cascades causing the "Save the Earth Act of 2006" to have nothing to do with the environment.
I have a Roomba, and the only problem with it is that the batteries dropped to about 40% capacity within 3 months. My Roomba is no longer able to complete the standard cleaning cycle without the batteries dying. Anybody else have this experience? I can't wait until a fuel-cell version is available. :-)
It is difficult to eliminate the errors, so a better solution is to minimize them. The easiest way to do this is to add extra workbooks named "sheet2" and "sheet3" with thousands of extra cells in them. Then, the percentage of error is 3 times lower. Example:
Before: "sheet1" has 50x50 cells, with 25 errors. That's 25 / 50^2 = 1% errors.
After: Add "sheet2" and "sheet3" with another 50x50 cells. Now, the error rate is 25 / 50^2 / 3 = 1/3 % error.
According to my spreadsheet, that is a much better error rate!
Such a study would be very interesting, so long as it isn't sponsored by the government.
1) US government studies on political issues are politically biased, and monetarily inefficient.
2) Congress proposing a "study" is a common ploy to either delay a bill without voting against it directly, or to keep a bill alive in the hopes that your cronies will be around next year. It has the added benefit of obtaububg psuedo-scientific support.
Let's try Moby Disk's congressional bill passing algorithm:
IF the people want such a bill
AND there is scientific support for the problem
AND there is a well-defined way to solve the problem
AND it is something the people cannot do without legal involvement
THEN pass a law.
Video game violence does not meet any of the above critera.
No it is not. The article has nothing to do with copyright at all.
In the 1950s - 1970s was there any attempt to pass laws to make rock music illegal? I'm looking for a parallel with the video game laws.
Every now and then someone posts about how, in each generation, there is some subversive counterculture thing that is supposedly going to brainwash the children. Elvis, Rock and Roll, Dunegons and Dragons, whatever. Today it is video games. But I can't recollect anyone talking about laws to make D&D illegal. It seems like something different is happening this time around. Unless someone has a counter-example for me.
The author of this bill thinks that minors have an intrinsic morbid interest in violence. But non-morbid violence would be okay. Wow.
I thought the word "patently" was only used by Slashdot trolls who didn't feel like backing up their point. I'm amazed to see it in a law. Eg: "That is patently absurd!" Meaning "that is so absurd I don't even care to justify why it is absurd"
I didn't know that minors had different standards for literary, artistic, political, and scientific value. I guess that means that only a minor could judge it!