I believe the parent was trying to point out that at least some of those who have been very critical in their comments about the USA have supported the USA, ie Germany and France.
Your friends will point out your mistakes, your enemies will abuse them.
There can be no question that it's not worth spending $500-$800 on Photoshop if your only purpose is to resize images. Thank you for pointing that out. For the rest of us,
You are suggesting here you are a professional photographer. Your needs are not at all representative, with a few exceptions, "the rest of us" are making pictures for fun.
there are a great many areas where Photoshop far and away beats the competition and which would cause us to take a long, hard look at buying it if it wasn't readily available for free.
Most things "the rest of us" (that is, anyone other then serious amateur or professional photographers or graphics artists) are available from the competition and even in free software.
Things like ACR, 32-bit (HDR) support,
May be nice to have but are not needed by the large majority of people with their point and shoot cameras.
web conversion,
Is very convenient, but the functionality is available from competing software as well, abeit in a possibly less convenient way.
layer effects, etc.
Layer effects are available in many graphics editors.
I have heard numerous photographers I know justify their pirated copy of Photoshop using exactly the logic of the parent poster, and it strikes me as utter crap.
If they do in fact need the software then it might be utter crap, yes. However, most people really do not need photoshop at all, it is a 'nice to have', but not something to spend any serious amount of money on.
The features they've come to rely on don't exist anywhere else, and yet they're suggesting their price elasticity of demand is infinite. It's a joke.
Don't assume that because YOU need certain features, everyone does.
Depending on what software you need exactly, there may be good, and at times even better alternatives that are free. I can say for sure that I wouldn't buy Microsoft software and I haven't for over a decade. I did get free *but legitimate) copies of Windows 95,98 and 2000, but even those got barely used. Why? because for almost everything I need there are very good alternatives.
Then, sure it is worth something to me to present my pictures in a nice way, but its not worth the price of photoshop to me, it is however worth the price of learning one of the other possibly less capable but still good enough tools that are more decently priced or free. Nowadays there is Photoshop Elements that might fill that place, but I already got used to the Gimp well enough that it will do the job for me.
Of course there are also situations where buying a certain expensive product can make a lot of sense, but that doesn't mean it usually does.
And no, I don't pirate software, when available I use free software, and where that doesn't do the job I'll buy something if the price is right compared to my need, and if it isn't then too bad.
Quite the other way around. If everybody but one guy is equally above average, and one guy is slightly below...
If all of them are only a very tiny bit above average that would work, given the guy who is below is further away from the average.
Its pretty unlikely that those who are currently above average will just sit there and wait for others to outcompete them, so that situation is maybe not impossible, but there are way more likely outcomes. If everyone improves the average improves, but the number of people above/below average will stay approximately the same.
Again, there is nothing wrong with raising the average, and by that also the skills and abilities of all individuals, rather the opposite, this is a very good thing. Neither is there anything wrong with requiring some kind of efford from an individual to get their position in society. That said, building a society that does not take into account that you will have people below average skill and ability on a very structural level and that there will have to be a place for those, is asking for serious social problems. Not to mention that it is economically unwise because you reduce the size of your internal market.
I fear that this part of the discussion is lost on you.
I rather think you don't understand what 'average' means.
When there is an exception to a rule, it is often easier to handle the exception than to change the rule.
So.. what you are suggesting is that practically everyone can be above average, those who are below are the exception, and as per your earlier post, they'll just be a bit below average...
I have only two questions, what the heck are you smoking, and can I have some.
The bigger the group above average, the smaller the group below average. Now, there are 2 possibilities, the average will change (causing less people above average again) or those who are below average are so deep below it that the average will change very little.
You can't lump everybody who is "below average" in skill or ability into the "less fortunate" category. That doesn't account for those who are below average for lack of effort. Both exist. The ratio is something which is hard (and unpopular) to collect hard data on, but I'd bet the "no effort" group dwarfs the "victim of misfortune" group.
Which in no way changes that there will be a substantial group of people below average, and you will have to ensure they have a place in society. Note that I am not saying that they should have the same chances or such, but I am saying that discarding them is a very bad idea since even when you remove all 'lack of efford' cases, those people WILL exist.
At any rate, the idea you are presenting is very popular in all kinds of 'develop yourself' courses, and when looking at the individual case, and assuming virtually noone else changes and the average stays the same, it is also quite true, many if not most people would be able to develop quite a bit beyond the current average. It completely ignores what happens when the large majority of people would follow that idea however. Now, I think it would be a very good idea if the large majority of people put in the effort to develop themselves further, but all this will do is change the average, not the number of people above/below average. This is however what you have to keep in mind when applying this idea on a large scale.
There is this fun thing about averages.. they change when things change.
On average (that is, all people together) the skills and abilities of people are average. If many people get better skills and abilities, the average just changes.
In theory you are right that you can have the majority of people being above average, given that there are enough people also who are way below average.
Either way, you end up with a society that is made for those with above average abilities and fuck those who don't. Now, there was something about the advancement of society depending on how well it cares for the less fortunate people in it.
If you bring top notch skills to the table, you can earn an above average living no matter where you happen to be located. Falling currency values just make it that much easier (in the short term) for international players to pay you an above average salary.
People have average skills and abilities. That way above average people can do well regardless of the situation is nice, but not going to do anything at all for most people.
Nothing leads to upheaval. Upheaval is a constant state. The only thing that changes is who it effects.
Well, I hope it hits you quite a bit to teach you why your attitude of acceptance to this is a very bad one.
Unfortunately the list seems to shrink rather than grow.
Maybe so. The point of my post was to say that where there are native Linux versions, they usually work very well, this in response to a post claiming that gaming on Linux does not work at all.
NWN is a good example. They were supporting Linux and they went all the way with DX9 and C#/.Net for the editor in NWN 2.
So I heard. But then, I was somewhat surprised to see a port ot the original NWN client for Linux anyway.. being in a iche market already it is unlikely that releasing a client for another niche market with which there is little overlap is going to be a succes.
Publishing Linux games seems to work well for those who already ended up building a platform independent engine to begin with (and usually for other reasons then providing a Linux version)
I am a lot into games, even being a IGDA member so I do get to see a lot from the developers point of view.
I've seen the rise and fall of the 2600 and anything that came after it. Built y own games at various occations, been involved in publishing another one..
And the sad reality is that developing for Linux doesn't pay off, and most publishers aren't interested on the market. Except a few ones.
Developing for Linux specifically is unlikely to pay off in many but not all cases, but platform independent development definitely pays off, it gives you access to all kinds of markets besdes the typical Windows one, ie, you'll have an easy time providing mac or console versions, and incidentely also a Linux version, for a lower cost then develkoping for windows specifically and then having to do a console port.
The support they get from Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo is way lot better than what they would get for developing for Linux.
Gee, the software development company I am currently working for is saving a lot of money and efford by having moved to Linux and FreeBSD both as our development and deployment platform. Why? knowing what you do and being able to verify how things work in the end is both better and cheaper then depending on what MS is willing to tell you.
And today's graphics cards are hardware implementations of the DX API, so OpenGL also lags behind (I do know about extensions). So there is little hope this will ever change.
That might have to do more with a certain company trying to sabotage the development of opengl. At any rate, Linux is used quite a bit on high-end graphics workstations, which happen to also use the higher end hardware from nvidia at least (less familiar with ATI in this), and it seems to me that many if not all of nvidias gpus are in concept still an sgi reality engine on a chip (or multiple such engines), which is not exactly a hardware directx 9 implementation.
I used to be a huge Linux fan, I do Linux development professionally but lately I have started to only use Windows as a home environment.
Because gaming is about the game not the the platform.
Uh no, gaming is about entertainment. If Linux with the games that are available doesn't provide you with the entertainment you seek then you should definitely use something else, but that doesn't mean that no games work on Linux or that it can't be a viable gaming platform.
Ipods are a fashion article, and changing them all the time, incorporating new technologies on a regular basis makes that Apple can sell overprised mp3 players to the same people over and over. No competition needed to drive this one, and no intentional weak spots needed for creating a replacement market.
I don't know about UT2006, but yes ET works and runs well without problems. It is one of the few games I have installed on my machine.
And so do doom 1-3, quake 1-4, Wolfenstein, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, NWN and quite a few others.. but indeed its a very sort list compared to whats avaiable on esp. Windows. Also, many if not most either come from Id software or use one of their engines.
Of course there is also a rather nice Star Control II clone (actually, an open source version of the original game with a different name) which is a lot of fun to play still, and then there is oolite or whatever it is called, and I'm pretty sure I forgot quite a few other games that run natively (and no, I didn't forget tuxracer, but I honestly can't see that as more then an entertaining demo)
The thing is, if you are after running specific titles, then you have a very big chance that you won't get far with Linux. If you want to have enough games available to entertain yourself but you don't care too much about the actual titles being available, then Linux does quite fine. If you are like me, then the few games that I'd be interested in turn out to work on Linux (and then you get people like me who run those games on FreeBSD.. )
Thats pretty much as good as it gets as far as my experiance goes.
Hmm.. UT2006 and Enemy Territory are just 2 of the games that I played recently on Linux, and both run extremely well...
Actually, most games that I tried worked prety well, but maybe that is because I only try games for which a Linux version is available, and of course that makes for a relatively short list when compared to say Windows.
Try to play a fighting game with a keyboard. What a pain, it's a chore to do a simple hadouken! Try a platformer. A racing game. A shmup. Almost anything will be far more enjoyable with a good gamepad than with keyboard and mouse. And if the game is done right, RTSs and FPSs will play just fine with a gamepad too.
How nice then that I can connect a choice of game controllers, joysticks, steering wheels and what not to a pc.
And no, many FPS and similar games don't play as well with a gamepad. Those that do are specifically designed for a gamepad and usually lack many of the options you have with the combination of keyboard, mouse (or in my case trackball) and an optional controller or joystick. Also, even the best controllers don't come close to the acuracy of a good mouse or trackball.
Really, the one single advantage a console has is that it is a purpose built device with the results that most of the time, it just works, no fiddling with drivers needed, and a standarized hardware platform that if it lives long enough, allows developers to exploit the possibilities of that hardware better.
don't care who they are going after, disabled people or young girls arent automatically innocent.
Untill proven otherwise, they are in fact automatically innocent. Just like 30 year old males for example.. or anyone else, at least, if the laws of the country are followed.
I have to disagree, some children know exactly what they are doing at a young age (talking about malicious acts here). That there are little consequences for them does not improve matters.
Following this reasoning, since some children know what they are doing at a young age, they should be allowed to make their own choices in matters of drinking, sex and so on?
Its very simple, you cannot hold people responsible when they have no right to decide. Want to hold them responsible for their actions? Start with giving them the right to decide on their own actions.
And for the principe it really does not matter what kind of actions we are talking about.
not because they were making excuses but because that was what they saw as the natural interpretation of the text
Just to clarify my previous post on this, I don't see most interpretations as 'excuses' anyway. What I tried to point out is that the meaning of the book does not depend on it being litteraly true, and that the fact that it is not shouldn't be of much concern. That said, there is also little point in denying it, and those who do usually end up looking like fanatics.
At any rate, how well a story communicates an idea seldom depends on the story being litteraly true, rather it depends a lot more on how well the story communicates the idea to its intended audience. If for example the creation story in the Bible is to say that the actual creation of the universe took an insignificant amount of time compared to the lifetime of it till now, then it does a good job I guess.
Ah yeah, and that was an interesting point of view you refered to.
and none of them were anywhere close in interpretation.
Litteraly true or not being contradicted by facts when interpreted in a very specific way.. those are 2 entirely different things.
And since you can always change your interpretation to not contradict known facts, that means you can forever maintain that the Bible contains only true things. Oh, and the bible isn't unique in that...
I believe you quite demonstrated the point of the GP.
Matter of fact is, context or not, the Bible claims that god created the world in 6 days and then took a day of rest. No amount of interpretation is going to change that, and realizing it is not a factual truth but a poetic description isn't jusr interpretation, it is also realizing that there are things in that Bible that are factually wrong, no matter how much you may dislike saying that.
This all doesn't change that its a book that provides inspiration and wisdom for many also. A story doesn't have to be true to tell its message well.
Now, take video games (pre-Internet.) You ship a product on a ROM cartridge or a CD, that has no way of ever being updated except by shipping the customer a new media... well. Believe me, the reliability of those products approaches unity, because a single software error could (and has) cost millions. Consequently, it was worth the investment in design and quality assurance to make the product reliable. Contrast this to, say, any modern operating system where the programmers know that even if they screw up royally they can just fix it with the next maintenance release.
Yes and no. All the keys were found in the same region of memory in clear, obfuscated plaintext. They were only in memory for a short period of time, but that just meant patient individuals had to run the program slowly, take frequent memory dumps, and test the area of memory for the key every so often.
Since the program will need the key and not some obfusicated version, for decryption, there is no way to always keep it obfusicated.
so attacking those who believe in the most conservative, economical, and environmentally friendly method of prevention is foolish.
Those who believe they can remove the huge interest in sex that teenagers have are foolish. Check out this nasty thing called reality. Thousands of years trying to change this, including potential extreme punishment and such, did not change this.
Some things I didn't address in my previous posts..
And, as I detailed back toward where I came in, having copyright does not interfere with those who don't want to use it, so by having copyright, we get strictly more.
Nope. Copyright is automatic, and unless you take the efford of putting something in the public domain explicitly, it applies to your work. You can choose to not enforce it, but that provides no guarantee whatsoever that your heirs for example won't enforce it.
The situation becomes problematic when it is not known anymore who the author of a work is, in which case we end up with a work that cannot be used untill copyright expires (currently 70 years after the death of the author in case of the USA, but since the author is unknown, this cannot be determined)
Oh, give me a break! I'm the last person this objection is warranted for. I accept that there are innovative ideas that will appear in the future and change everything, that we can't anticipate today. I'm the one always lecturing people on the dangers of static thinking and the possibility of unforseen new methods. I'm the one who actually hates the terms "paycheck" and "paystub" since they assume an obsolete item. (e.g., You can get direct deposit rather than having to go to a bank yourself to depsit a checkable note. I prefer "pay" or "payment" and "pay record" respectively.) I'm the one currently compiling a paper that details new, as-of-yet unused ways to profit from intellectual works without IP (and have much better ideas for inventions than artistic works.)
However, the "current way" has long incorporated alternate, copyright-free revenue models, and none has been powerful enough to make copyright models obsolete. No one, including you, describe, even in the most general terms, how such a method would work. I can of course understand why you can't tell me *exactly* how it would work, but not even at an abstract level? Give me something to contradict my claim, anything. But remember as long as copyright can provide better compensation, that means it will lead to some works that wouldn't have existed otherwise and that people would volutarily part with their own money to see.
I gave an example of how this can work early on in the discussion, please do what your signature suggests others should be doing.
Is it better then copyright? There is no easy way to determine that, just like there is no easy way to determine if copyright does better then the alternatives. This is because they do interfer with eachother even if they can coexist. The existnce of copyright does limit the alternatives first due to what I stated at the top of this post, and second because copyright gives a level of control to distributors that they desire, making it the preferable way for them.
This however has little to do with what would serve the author of a work better.
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I believe the parent was trying to point out that at least some of those who have been very critical in their comments about the USA have supported the USA, ie Germany and France.
Your friends will point out your mistakes, your enemies will abuse them.
There can be no question that it's not worth spending $500-$800 on Photoshop if your only purpose is to resize images.
Thank you for pointing that out. For the rest of us,
You are suggesting here you are a professional photographer. Your needs are not at all representative, with a few exceptions, "the rest of us" are making pictures for fun.
there are a great many areas where Photoshop far and away beats the competition and which would cause us to take a long, hard look at buying it if it wasn't readily available for free.
Most things "the rest of us" (that is, anyone other then serious amateur or professional photographers or graphics artists) are available from the competition and even in free software.
Things like ACR, 32-bit (HDR) support,
May be nice to have but are not needed by the large majority of people with their point and shoot cameras.
web conversion,
Is very convenient, but the functionality is available from competing software as well, abeit in a possibly less convenient way.
layer effects, etc.
Layer effects are available in many graphics editors.
I have heard numerous photographers I know justify their pirated copy of Photoshop using exactly the logic of the parent poster, and it strikes me as utter crap.
If they do in fact need the software then it might be utter crap, yes. However, most people really do not need photoshop at all, it is a 'nice to have', but not something to spend any serious amount of money on.
The features they've come to rely on don't exist anywhere else, and yet they're suggesting their price elasticity of demand is infinite. It's a joke.
Don't assume that because YOU need certain features, everyone does.
Depending on what software you need exactly, there may be good, and at times even better alternatives that are free. I can say for sure that I wouldn't buy Microsoft software and I haven't for over a decade. I did get free *but legitimate) copies of Windows 95,98 and 2000, but even those got barely used. Why? because for almost everything I need there are very good alternatives.
Then, sure it is worth something to me to present my pictures in a nice way, but its not worth the price of photoshop to me, it is however worth the price of learning one of the other possibly less capable but still good enough tools that are more decently priced or free. Nowadays there is Photoshop Elements that might fill that place, but I already got used to the Gimp well enough that it will do the job for me.
Of course there are also situations where buying a certain expensive product can make a lot of sense, but that doesn't mean it usually does.
And no, I don't pirate software, when available I use free software, and where that doesn't do the job I'll buy something if the price is right compared to my need, and if it isn't then too bad.
Quite the other way around. If everybody but one guy is equally above average, and one guy is slightly below...
If all of them are only a very tiny bit above average that would work, given the guy who is below is further away from the average.
Its pretty unlikely that those who are currently above average will just sit there and wait for others to outcompete them, so that situation is maybe not impossible, but there are way more likely outcomes. If everyone improves the average improves, but the number of people above/below average will stay approximately the same.
Again, there is nothing wrong with raising the average, and by that also the skills and abilities of all individuals, rather the opposite, this is a very good thing. Neither is there anything wrong with requiring some kind of efford from an individual to get their position in society. That said, building a society that does not take into account that you will have people below average skill and ability on a very structural level and that there will have to be a place for those, is asking for serious social problems. Not to mention that it is economically unwise because you reduce the size of your internal market.
I fear that this part of the discussion is lost on you.
I rather think you don't understand what 'average' means.
When there is an exception to a rule, it is often easier to handle the exception than to change the rule.
So.. what you are suggesting is that practically everyone can be above average, those who are below are the exception, and as per your earlier post, they'll just be a bit below average...
I have only two questions, what the heck are you smoking, and can I have some.
Way below average? Even "slightly" would work...
The bigger the group above average, the smaller the group below average. Now, there are 2 possibilities, the average will change (causing less people above average again) or those who are below average are so deep below it that the average will change very little.
You can't lump everybody who is "below average" in skill or ability into the "less fortunate" category. That doesn't account for those who are below average for lack of effort. Both exist. The ratio is something which is hard (and unpopular) to collect hard data on, but I'd bet the "no effort" group dwarfs the "victim of misfortune" group.
Which in no way changes that there will be a substantial group of people below average, and you will have to ensure they have a place in society. Note that I am not saying that they should have the same chances or such, but I am saying that discarding them is a very bad idea since even when you remove all 'lack of efford' cases, those people WILL exist.
At any rate, the idea you are presenting is very popular in all kinds of 'develop yourself' courses, and when looking at the individual case, and assuming virtually noone else changes and the average stays the same, it is also quite true, many if not most people would be able to develop quite a bit beyond the current average. It completely ignores what happens when the large majority of people would follow that idea however. Now, I think it would be a very good idea if the large majority of people put in the effort to develop themselves further, but all this will do is change the average, not the number of people above/below average. This is however what you have to keep in mind when applying this idea on a large scale.
There is this fun thing about averages.. they change when things change.
On average (that is, all people together) the skills and abilities of people are average. If many people get better skills and abilities, the average just changes.
In theory you are right that you can have the majority of people being above average, given that there are enough people also who are way below average.
Either way, you end up with a society that is made for those with above average abilities and fuck those who don't. Now, there was something about the advancement of society depending on how well it cares for the less fortunate people in it.
If you bring top notch skills to the table, you can earn an above average living no matter where you happen to be located. Falling currency values just make it that much easier (in the short term) for international players to pay you an above average salary.
People have average skills and abilities. That way above average people can do well regardless of the situation is nice, but not going to do anything at all for most people.
Nothing leads to upheaval. Upheaval is a constant state. The only thing that changes is who it effects.
Well, I hope it hits you quite a bit to teach you why your attitude of acceptance to this is a very bad one.
Unfortunately the list seems to shrink rather than grow.
Maybe so. The point of my post was to say that where there are native Linux versions, they usually work very well, this in response to a post claiming that gaming on Linux does not work at all.
NWN is a good example. They were supporting Linux and they went
all the way with DX9 and C#/.Net for the editor in NWN 2.
So I heard. But then, I was somewhat surprised to see a port ot the original NWN client for Linux anyway.. being in a iche market already it is unlikely that releasing a client for another niche market with which there is little overlap is going to be a succes.
Publishing Linux games seems to work well for those who already ended up building a platform independent engine to begin with (and usually for other reasons then providing a Linux version)
I am a lot into games, even being a IGDA member so I do get to
see a lot from the developers point of view.
I've seen the rise and fall of the 2600 and anything that came after it. Built y own games at various occations, been involved in publishing another one..
And the sad reality is that developing for Linux doesn't pay off,
and most publishers aren't interested on the market. Except a few
ones.
Developing for Linux specifically is unlikely to pay off in many but not all cases, but platform independent development definitely pays off, it gives you access to all kinds of markets besdes the typical Windows one, ie, you'll have an easy time providing mac or console versions, and incidentely also a Linux version, for a lower cost then develkoping for windows specifically and then having to do a console port.
The support they get from Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo is way lot
better than what they would get for developing for Linux.
Gee, the software development company I am currently working for is saving a lot of money and efford by having moved to Linux and FreeBSD both as our development and deployment platform. Why? knowing what you do and being able to verify how things work in the end is both better and cheaper then depending on what MS is willing to tell you.
And today's graphics cards are hardware implementations of the DX API,
so OpenGL also lags behind (I do know about extensions). So there is
little hope this will ever change.
That might have to do more with a certain company trying to sabotage the development of opengl. At any rate, Linux is used quite a bit on high-end graphics workstations, which happen to also use the higher end hardware from nvidia at least (less familiar with ATI in this), and it seems to me that many if not all of nvidias gpus are in concept still an sgi reality engine on a chip (or multiple such engines), which is not exactly a hardware directx 9 implementation.
I used to be a huge Linux fan, I do Linux development professionally but
lately I have started to only use Windows as a home environment.
Because gaming is about the game not the the platform.
Uh no, gaming is about entertainment. If Linux with the games that are available doesn't provide you with the entertainment you seek then you should definitely use something else, but that doesn't mean that no games work on Linux or that it can't be a viable gaming platform.
Exactly: the distinction is only enforcement, not morality, legality, etc. This was my point.
And that was not what I said, try again.
Ipods are a fashion article, and changing them all the time, incorporating new technologies on a regular basis makes that Apple can sell overprised mp3 players to the same people over and over. No competition needed to drive this one, and no intentional weak spots needed for creating a replacement market.
When I own a car, I have exclusive rights to use it and to decide who else uses it. So I fail to see the distinction here.
The distinction is that you cannot stop me from using an identical car.
This is somewhat of a problem with copyright, it is a much more serious problem with patents.
You could do it that way, but only if you want to have a lot more fans, and thus, a lot more noise.
No need for that, all you need is an air inlet on top of the cpu fan so that it can draw air from the outside. nMany cases have that nowadays anyway.
I don't know about UT2006, but yes ET works and runs well without problems. It is one of the few games I have installed on my machine.
And so do doom 1-3, quake 1-4, Wolfenstein, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, NWN and quite a few others.. but indeed its a very sort list compared to whats avaiable on esp. Windows. Also, many if not most either come from Id software or use one of their engines.
Of course there is also a rather nice Star Control II clone (actually, an open source version of the original game with a different name) which is a lot of fun to play still, and then there is oolite or whatever it is called, and I'm pretty sure I forgot quite a few other games that run natively (and no, I didn't forget tuxracer, but I honestly can't see that as more then an entertaining demo)
The thing is, if you are after running specific titles, then you have a very big chance that you won't get far with Linux. If you want to have enough games available to entertain yourself but you don't care too much about the actual titles being available, then Linux does quite fine. If you are like me, then the few games that I'd be interested in turn out to work on Linux (and then you get people like me who run those games on FreeBSD.. )
Thats pretty much as good as it gets as far as my experiance goes.
Hmm.. UT2006 and Enemy Territory are just 2 of the games that I played recently on Linux, and both run extremely well...
Actually, most games that I tried worked prety well, but maybe that is because I only try games for which a Linux version is available, and of course that makes for a relatively short list when compared to say Windows.
For some reason I always end up thinking of Aule when reading about Bombardil.
Try to play a fighting game with a keyboard. What a pain, it's a chore to do a simple hadouken! Try a platformer. A racing game. A shmup. Almost anything will be far more enjoyable with a good gamepad than with keyboard and mouse. And if the game is done right, RTSs and FPSs will play just fine with a gamepad too.
How nice then that I can connect a choice of game controllers, joysticks, steering wheels and what not to a pc.
And no, many FPS and similar games don't play as well with a gamepad. Those that do are specifically designed for a gamepad and usually lack many of the options you have with the combination of keyboard, mouse (or in my case trackball) and an optional controller or joystick. Also, even the best controllers don't come close to the acuracy of a good mouse or trackball.
Really, the one single advantage a console has is that it is a purpose built device with the results that most of the time, it just works, no fiddling with drivers needed, and a standarized hardware platform that if it lives long enough, allows developers to exploit the possibilities of that hardware better.
don't care who they are going after, disabled people or young girls arent automatically innocent.
Untill proven otherwise, they are in fact automatically innocent. Just like 30 year old males for example.. or anyone else, at least, if the laws of the country are followed.
I have to disagree, some children know exactly what they are doing at a young age (talking about malicious acts here). That there are little consequences for them does not improve matters.
Following this reasoning, since some children know what they are doing at a young age, they should be allowed to make their own choices in matters of drinking, sex and so on?
Its very simple, you cannot hold people responsible when they have no right to decide. Want to hold them responsible for their actions? Start with giving them the right to decide on their own actions.
And for the principe it really does not matter what kind of actions we are talking about.
not because they were making excuses but because that was what they saw as the natural interpretation of the text
Just to clarify my previous post on this, I don't see most interpretations as 'excuses' anyway. What I tried to point out is that the meaning of the book does not depend on it being litteraly true, and that the fact that it is not shouldn't be of much concern. That said, there is also little point in denying it, and those who do usually end up looking like fanatics.
At any rate, how well a story communicates an idea seldom depends on the story being litteraly true, rather it depends a lot more on how well the story communicates the idea to its intended audience. If for example the creation story in the Bible is to say that the actual creation of the universe took an insignificant amount of time compared to the lifetime of it till now, then it does a good job I guess.
Ah yeah, and that was an interesting point of view you refered to.
and none of them were anywhere close in interpretation.
Litteraly true or not being contradicted by facts when interpreted in a very specific way.. those are 2 entirely different things.
And since you can always change your interpretation to not contradict known facts, that means you can forever maintain that the Bible contains only true things. Oh, and the bible isn't unique in that...
I believe you quite demonstrated the point of the GP.
Matter of fact is, context or not, the Bible claims that god created the world in 6 days and then took a day of rest. No amount of interpretation is going to change that, and realizing it is not a factual truth but a poetic description isn't jusr interpretation, it is also realizing that there are things in that Bible that are factually wrong, no matter how much you may dislike saying that.
This all doesn't change that its a book that provides inspiration and wisdom for many also. A story doesn't have to be true to tell its message well.
Now, take video games (pre-Internet.) You ship a product on a ROM cartridge or a CD, that has no way of ever being updated except by shipping the customer a new media ... well. Believe me, the reliability of those products approaches unity, because a single software error could (and has) cost millions. Consequently, it was worth the investment in design and quality assurance to make the product reliable. Contrast this to, say, any modern operating system where the programmers know that even if they screw up royally they can just fix it with the next maintenance release.
http://www.frontier.co.uk/games/firstencounters/
Ok, the internet quite existed in 1995, but most people didn't have an internet connection yet.
Yes and no. All the keys were found in the same region of memory in clear, obfuscated plaintext. They were only in memory for a short period of time, but that just meant patient individuals had to run the program slowly, take frequent memory dumps, and test the area of memory for the key every so often.
Since the program will need the key and not some obfusicated version, for decryption, there is no way to always keep it obfusicated.
nothing will beat not being exposed,
Absolutely
so attacking those who believe in the most conservative, economical, and environmentally friendly method of prevention is foolish.
Those who believe they can remove the huge interest in sex that teenagers have are foolish. Check out this nasty thing called reality. Thousands of years trying to change this, including potential extreme punishment and such, did not change this.
Some things I didn't address in my previous posts..
And, as I detailed back toward where I came in, having copyright does not interfere with those who don't want to use it, so by having copyright, we get strictly more.
Nope. Copyright is automatic, and unless you take the efford of putting something in the public domain explicitly, it applies to your work. You can choose to not enforce it, but that provides no guarantee whatsoever that your heirs for example won't enforce it.
The situation becomes problematic when it is not known anymore who the author of a work is, in which case we end up with a work that cannot be used untill copyright expires (currently 70 years after the death of the author in case of the USA, but since the author is unknown, this cannot be determined)
Oh, give me a break! I'm the last person this objection is warranted for. I accept that there are innovative ideas that will appear in the future and change everything, that we can't anticipate today. I'm the one always lecturing people on the dangers of static thinking and the possibility of unforseen new methods. I'm the one who actually hates the terms "paycheck" and "paystub" since they assume an obsolete item. (e.g., You can get direct deposit rather than having to go to a bank yourself to depsit a checkable note. I prefer "pay" or "payment" and "pay record" respectively.) I'm the one currently compiling a paper that details new, as-of-yet unused ways to profit from intellectual works without IP (and have much better ideas for inventions than artistic works.)
However, the "current way" has long incorporated alternate, copyright-free revenue models, and none has been powerful enough to make copyright models obsolete. No one, including you, describe, even in the most general terms, how such a method would work. I can of course understand why you can't tell me *exactly* how it would work, but not even at an abstract level? Give me something to contradict my claim, anything. But remember as long as copyright can provide better compensation, that means it will lead to some works that wouldn't have existed otherwise and that people would volutarily part with their own money to see.
I gave an example of how this can work early on in the discussion, please do what your signature suggests others should be doing.
Is it better then copyright? There is no easy way to determine that, just like there is no easy way to determine if copyright does better then the alternatives. This is because they do interfer with eachother even if they can coexist. The existnce of copyright does limit the alternatives first due to what I stated at the top of this post, and second because copyright gives a level of control to distributors that they desire, making it the preferable way for them.
This however has little to do with what would serve the author of a work better.