I seem to be one of the three or four geeks left in the world that does *not* own an iPod, so forgive me if I sound backwards. In addition to craving every gadget that comes out like nearly every one of my fellow geeks does, I'm also an audiophile. I need to have the *best* sound available when I listen to music, and I hardly ever listen to just *a song;* it's either the entire album or nothing. I buy most of my music in CD form off of eBay, since most of what I listen to (modern progressive rock and European metal) isn't available on any online music service.
With that in mind, it should be obvious that I will never use a service like iTunes or Napster. Why? Because, for one, no matter how you stack it up, they are impersonal. With a CD, I can buy it and play it wherever I want. With either music service, there are severe restrictions on how, when, and where I can play it. Want to play those songs you downloaded off of iTunes or Napster on your expensive 7.1 surround-sound entertainment system? Tough cookies; you're restricted to either your PC or your iPod.
Either one is also somewhat expensive. iTunes costs at least $12 for a full album, which is about the cost of your average CD, but you also have lots of added external costs: the time and bandwidth it takes to download the songs, even more time if you want to upload it to an iPod, and the cost of HDD storage space. You're also not getting the packaging that a CD provides. Napster... I don't even need to mention, since if you plan on keeping your music for more than a year you will most likely be spending much more than if you decided to purchase a CD.
And all of the above is assuming they have the music that I want in the first place!
No, I think I'll keep my CD's, thanks, until the iTuneses and Napsters of the world can give me music I want, the way I want it, at a price that can better that of CD's.
There is a very excellent chapter near the end of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles that details something like this happening. Essentially, the entire population of the Earth has been wiped out, yet the various automations in the future-house described by Bradbury keep functioning of their own accord as though everything was normal.
The implied question is, will automation be our legacy to future civilizations? If innovations like Roomba keep coming, and if a catastrophe befalls us in the future, I could certainly see such a thing happening.
From the article: The court charged Google with trademark counterfeiting, unfair competition and misleading advertising.
Trademark counterfeiting? I really don't see this as being the case. Google is simply a tool by which various links are collected and set out in a presentable manner. Instead of shooting the messenger (Google), it seems to me that a more fair ruling would be to go after the counterfeitters themselves.
Unfair competition? I thought France had a relatively free market? And what exactly *is* "unfair competition" anyway? This aspect of the ruling seems as though it's set out to protect French business interests more than anything else.
Misleading advertising? Once again, it's the advertisers doing the misleading, not Google.
As I expected: Bring up anime and you get the obligatory fanboy yelling at the top of his lungs, "OMG anime isn't a cartoon!" as though *his* favorite art form is somehow a holy grail of perfection that cannot be tainted by generalizations.
Anime actually shares much in common with American animation. You have the occasional sophisticated movie or television show for adults, true, and some of the shows for kids are original, but the rest (the vast majority in fact) is bland, derivitive, and usually created to sell merchandise.
As an example: Did you ever notice how nearly *every* manga/anime artist uses pretty much the exact same style of drawing? Or for every Lodoss War or Cowboy Bebop that springs up there's ten anime franchises that fall into the "bland, derivitive category?
No, anime is not any more special than any other form of animation - or any other form of art, for that matter. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
"I cannot disprove that this cloth was the burial shroud that was used on Jesus," Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview Friday from his home."
So, all that he's saying is that the claim that the shroud was the cloth that wrapped Jesus is non-falsifiable, thus making any discussion of the matter scientifically and historically moot.
It's likely that fundamentalist Xtians will jump all over this story, but remember: it is *their* responsibility to prove, and not atheists'/agnostics' responsibility to disprove.
I couldn't agree more, though for different reasons. It seems as though Nintendo continues to cater to old-school gamers, through both their hardware and software, whereas the PS2 and XBOX crowd are mostly more "mainstream" gamers.
The way I like to compare the two is that most PS2 and XBOX games are more like interactive movies than anything else. The emphasis is on the graphics and cutscenes rather than gameplay and innovation. They go for the "flashy" factor rather than genuinely trying to do something that no one has ever done before.
However, Nintendo continues to host games like Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Paper Mario (both), and the various WarioWare games, all of which, while not really pushing the graphics department, do something *new* and genuinely immerse the player in their gameplay without having to rely on cutscenes and a trite storyline appealing mostly to the adolescent MTV generation. They also continue to take chances in terms of hardware (think of all the strange things they jam-packed into the DS.)
Yes, if anything, I'll probably be buying the next-gen Nintendo console. Everyone else can keep their interactive movies; give me something that challenges my brain, and not just dazzles my eyes.
Where you are mistaken is that the Constitution was written for the American people. In fact, it was written for those that represent you. It was simply a limitation on the government not rights granted to you.
That's my point. The government does not *grant* rights, it takes them away. We have all the rights in the world without government, but in creating a government we give up some of those rights for protection.
So, "a limitation on the government" and a right are the same thing. A limitation on the government means that an individual living under that government's rule will not have that right taken away.
A lot of people confuse the constitution with the Declaration Of Independence.. saying, "we hold these truths to be self evident" - which is what your point is... self evident rights. The Declaration Of Indepence has NO bearing in judicial law accept only as it applies to our freedom from British rule.
But the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are drawn from much the same sources - primarily the human-rights philosophers of the Enlightenment, and most specifically Locke. Therefore, my argument (or, more precisely, that of the sources which I draw it from) is not limited to one document or another, or one state or the other; it is universal.
[The Constitution] states, "Congress shall make no laws linking the two."
Umm... no it doesn't
Then how do you interpret "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"?
Seeing as no one is really sure either way whether the website was genuine news or (pro- or anti-"Mullahcracy") propaganda, your guess is as good as mine.
You seem to be working off of the assumption that a government must expressly dictate what rights are, when the opposite is true. A "right" is essentially anything that the government does not make a law against. This statement only goes for personal rights, though; the State, being an artificial and bureaucratic institution, must explicitly set out what rights it has (in other words, which laws it can enforce.)
To explain, consider that Man, in his/her natural state, has no Man-made laws governing him/her. Laws, like government, are an artificial creation, and they are not the natural state of mankind. Therefore, the burden of proof is on those who would take away our rights, not those who would restore them to their natural state.
So it does not matter that the Constitution does not explicitly say "you have the right to etc., etc." What matters is that Congress shall make no laws restricting speech, which essentially means that we *maintain* our right to freedom of speech in the face of the State.
By extension, the separation of church and state is also in the Constitution. Instead of "you have the right to separation of church and state," it states, "Congress shall make no laws linking the two." The reason for this is that the State is a compulsory organization, whereas a church is a voluntary one. Linking the two would make whatever church is endorced by the State a de-facto compulsory organization. State religion was not part of our social contract with the State (in which we essentially give up power for protection in an artificial body.) Both the Church and the State are artificial institutions, in other words, but while we collectively allow the State to exist as a compulsory organization, we made no such contract with any church. Mankind in his/her natural state has no religion except that which is invented or passed down, and therefore we have a right to be free from religion unless we voluntarily give that right up (say, by joining one of our own free will.)
In actuality, Iran isn't quite as oppressive as the Bushies would have us believe. What they don't tell you is that the Iranian government consists of a semi- (or "illiberal") democracy, with a reformer as its current head, and that Iran probably has the most potential of any Mideast country to evolve genuine democratic institutions over time (aside from Turkey, obviously, which has already pretty much democratized.) The Iranian people have an extensive (for a Mideast country) freedom of expression, voting rights, and the opportunity to lay out more rights given time to work things out on their own.
Essentially the only thing holding it back is the infamous mullahs, who have oversight over everything that takes place in the government and can go so far as to declare a candidate for any given office "too liberal," thus taking him out of the running.
So, it seems extremely unlikely that this website was a "mouthpiece of an oppressive regime" unless the mullahs had something to do with it, which from what I can tell is a stretch at best. With that in mind, the only assumption that one can make is that the closing of this website has something to do with the fact that the Bushies have Iran in their sights for the next misguided invasion. And what do the Bushies do when they want to go to war? Spread lies and false information, and try to cover up the viewpoint of the other side. With that in mind, I would not be surprised if they were behind this. However, considering the lack of details, I'll just have to don my TinFoilHat for now.
"Fuck hackers! Fuck the hackers that shut down my companies when worms or virus compromised security. Fuck the hackers with their clusters of zombie machines running PsyBNC. Fuck every single one of them that constantly pound my servers with brute force attacks. Fuck'em all. Their time for comeuppance will arrive."
The sad thing is that those people aren't "hackers." There's no hacking involved in writing a virus or attacking other peoples' computers.
Hacking, by definition, is attempting to figure out how something works. Hackers, therefore, are constantly curious - they never accept what they're told and always must find out if something is true for themselves.
So, a guy who looks for security holes in software? A hacker. Someone who researches historical details to find out the truth of a certain event? Major hacker. A twelve-year-old kid who takes apart a Walkman to figure out how it works? Definitely a hacker.
People like those you describe, therefore, are not hackers at all. They don't seek knowledge, for whatever end; they just want the infamy and script-kiddie-cred that come with making the lives of other people miserable. It is only the media, constantly seeking demons to vanquish, that paints these people as "hackers" without even knowing what the term really means. And it's people like you who, by furthering the stereotype, continue to give hackers a bad name by making them synonymous with criminals.
My parents are obsessive about security, and that tendency carries over to their PC's. While they're not the tech-clueless middle-agers that will ask you to "install the Internet" for them, there is still a lot that they don't know about modern computing.
Over Christmas break my father told me that he was concerned about all of the spyware in his computer. He said that his weekly scans with Ad-Aware came up with at least a dozen threats every time. The very first thing I did was ask him what browser he was using.
The predictable answer: IE.
So, I installed Firefox for him, and ever since he has seen spyware cut down by *at least* one-half. He also seems pleased with the faster load times and *gasp* tabbed browsing.
So, there is hope for the IE crowd. We just need to show them the light.
...that once Neil Gaiman is done writing an epic, intelligent script akin to his work in the medium of novels and graphic novels, Hollywood execs are probably going to pick it apart piece by piece. In the end, it will likely be just a bunch of random action sequences with little in the way of plot to tie it together, and with Neil's name attached to it to attract his fans.
Then again, Hollywood hasn't ruined *everything* it has touched (think of the LotR movies.) There might still be hope.
The Protestant work ethic has stolen our lives out from under us. Instead of trying to find our own fulfillment, we're busy chasing the next carrot on a string that society dangles in front of us. In grade school we *have* to get A's and engage in extracurricular activities in order to get into a good college. In college we *have* to get A's and do generally well to get a good job. At our jobs we *need* to work hard so we can earn our next paycheck and afford to feed ourselves every year so that we can... spend all of the next year working again.
Where does it all end? Death?
No, I must disagree with the author of this speech. The key to life is not working hard so that you can work hard again the next year so that you can work hard again the next year, etc., etc., but instead finding personal fulfillment. Society may not agree with the decisions you have to make in this regard, but then again, society isn't living your life. The choice is yours, and yours alone.
George Lucas announced today that 27-year old graphic artist Jeff Tweiten would be enlisted as head of the merchandising department for the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: Heir to the Cash Cow. Lucas cites Tweiten's "commitment to excellence" and "expertise in the world of marketing exemplified by his media stunt."
However, in private, Lucas remarked, "I really just hired him because he's the only guy who actually *liked* the freakin' prequels."
Bad anime made to sell action figures (think Draginball Z): Gimmick with millions of American viewers.
So don't discount it just because it sounds gimmicky. It may surprise you how many idiots addicted to bad TV there are out there who will actually watch this type of thing.
Without trying to start a flame war, I will say that, while trying to choose the next MMO to play in the past month or so, I did some research on both EQ2 and WoW, and talked extensively to people who play each game. Unfortunately, without trying to start a flame war, I can say that this poster exemplifies the general attitude of the EQ2 community. To them, challenge equals the amount of time you have to spend on a game and not how hard the game actually *is*. To offer an example of what I mean: I consider Contra on the NES to be one of the most challenging games ever made, yet one could essentially beat it within a few days of "hardcore" playtime.
No, what EQ2 and most other MMORPG's offer is not a challenge, but a timesink. You cannot solo past level 20 or so at any pace other than "unbelievably slow", so you are forced to spend perhaps hours seeking a group; you incur a penalty when *another person in your group* dies; simple things like crafting and travel take tons of time and resources; and so on and so forth. However, WoW, with its action-based gameplay, has been perhaps the most challenging MMO I've ever played, not in terms of the time needed to get anything done, but in terms of *real,* Contra-like challenge.
I won't address this poster's other points, since they're largely opinion. But I will say this: a game should not take "effort" beyond the effort required to have fun. I'm glad the WoW developers recognized this fact and made the game a *game,* rather than just another bunch of timesinks.
Internet pr0n. It's the reason that most people use #3 (PC's,) fiber optics (#4) were invented to deliver it faster, and e-mail (#5) makes it available to the masses.
As for cell phones (#2), the best use for which is to call up women so you can eventually *see* them naked... how many/.ers know any women in the first place?
It kind of figures that one of the major product features of a Linux-based handheld is that it supports a media standard championed by MS, doesn't it? I mean why not support open-source standards like OGG?
...there should be laws against this type of flagrant disregard for the wishes of the "spamee." Perhaps something like the United States government's do-not-call list (https://www.donotcall.gov/), only a systen im which one registers his or her e-mail to not recieve spam.
At the very least, however, the same laws which apply to telemarketers should apply to spammers. If I remember correctly, here in the States, if someone recieves a telemarketing call and requests to be removed from the telemarketers' list of numbers, the telemarketing company is required by law to remove that number from their list. The same thing should apply to spammers, and be enforcable with (at the very least) heavy fines.
Slashdot Mirror
With that in mind, it should be obvious that I will never use a service like iTunes or Napster. Why? Because, for one, no matter how you stack it up, they are impersonal. With a CD, I can buy it and play it wherever I want. With either music service, there are severe restrictions on how, when, and where I can play it. Want to play those songs you downloaded off of iTunes or Napster on your expensive 7.1 surround-sound entertainment system? Tough cookies; you're restricted to either your PC or your iPod.
Either one is also somewhat expensive. iTunes costs at least $12 for a full album, which is about the cost of your average CD, but you also have lots of added external costs: the time and bandwidth it takes to download the songs, even more time if you want to upload it to an iPod, and the cost of HDD storage space. You're also not getting the packaging that a CD provides. Napster... I don't even need to mention, since if you plan on keeping your music for more than a year you will most likely be spending much more than if you decided to purchase a CD.
And all of the above is assuming they have the music that I want in the first place!
No, I think I'll keep my CD's, thanks, until the iTuneses and Napsters of the world can give me music I want, the way I want it, at a price that can better that of CD's.
We can only hope.
The implied question is, will automation be our legacy to future civilizations? If innovations like Roomba keep coming, and if a catastrophe befalls us in the future, I could certainly see such a thing happening.
Trademark counterfeiting? I really don't see this as being the case. Google is simply a tool by which various links are collected and set out in a presentable manner. Instead of shooting the messenger (Google), it seems to me that a more fair ruling would be to go after the counterfeitters themselves.
Unfair competition? I thought France had a relatively free market? And what exactly *is* "unfair competition" anyway? This aspect of the ruling seems as though it's set out to protect French business interests more than anything else.
Misleading advertising? Once again, it's the advertisers doing the misleading, not Google.
Anime actually shares much in common with American animation. You have the occasional sophisticated movie or television show for adults, true, and some of the shows for kids are original, but the rest (the vast majority in fact) is bland, derivitive, and usually created to sell merchandise.
As an example: Did you ever notice how nearly *every* manga/anime artist uses pretty much the exact same style of drawing? Or for every Lodoss War or Cowboy Bebop that springs up there's ten anime franchises that fall into the "bland, derivitive category?
No, anime is not any more special than any other form of animation - or any other form of art, for that matter. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.
So, all that he's saying is that the claim that the shroud was the cloth that wrapped Jesus is non-falsifiable, thus making any discussion of the matter scientifically and historically moot.
It's likely that fundamentalist Xtians will jump all over this story, but remember: it is *their* responsibility to prove, and not atheists'/agnostics' responsibility to disprove.
The way I like to compare the two is that most PS2 and XBOX games are more like interactive movies than anything else. The emphasis is on the graphics and cutscenes rather than gameplay and innovation. They go for the "flashy" factor rather than genuinely trying to do something that no one has ever done before.
However, Nintendo continues to host games like Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Paper Mario (both), and the various WarioWare games, all of which, while not really pushing the graphics department, do something *new* and genuinely immerse the player in their gameplay without having to rely on cutscenes and a trite storyline appealing mostly to the adolescent MTV generation. They also continue to take chances in terms of hardware (think of all the strange things they jam-packed into the DS.)
Yes, if anything, I'll probably be buying the next-gen Nintendo console. Everyone else can keep their interactive movies; give me something that challenges my brain, and not just dazzles my eyes.
Where you are mistaken is that the Constitution was written for the American people. In fact, it was written for those that represent you. It was simply a limitation on the government not rights granted to you. That's my point. The government does not *grant* rights, it takes them away. We have all the rights in the world without government, but in creating a government we give up some of those rights for protection. So, "a limitation on the government" and a right are the same thing. A limitation on the government means that an individual living under that government's rule will not have that right taken away. A lot of people confuse the constitution with the Declaration Of Independence .. saying, "we hold these truths to be self evident" - which is what your point is ... self evident rights. The Declaration Of Indepence has NO bearing in judicial law accept only as it applies to our freedom from British rule.
But the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are drawn from much the same sources - primarily the human-rights philosophers of the Enlightenment, and most specifically Locke. Therefore, my argument (or, more precisely, that of the sources which I draw it from) is not limited to one document or another, or one state or the other; it is universal.
[The Constitution] states, "Congress shall make no laws linking the two."
Umm ... no it doesn't
Then how do you interpret "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"?
Seeing as no one is really sure either way whether the website was genuine news or (pro- or anti-"Mullahcracy") propaganda, your guess is as good as mine.
To explain, consider that Man, in his/her natural state, has no Man-made laws governing him/her. Laws, like government, are an artificial creation, and they are not the natural state of mankind. Therefore, the burden of proof is on those who would take away our rights, not those who would restore them to their natural state.
So it does not matter that the Constitution does not explicitly say "you have the right to etc., etc." What matters is that Congress shall make no laws restricting speech, which essentially means that we *maintain* our right to freedom of speech in the face of the State.
By extension, the separation of church and state is also in the Constitution. Instead of "you have the right to separation of church and state," it states, "Congress shall make no laws linking the two." The reason for this is that the State is a compulsory organization, whereas a church is a voluntary one. Linking the two would make whatever church is endorced by the State a de-facto compulsory organization. State religion was not part of our social contract with the State (in which we essentially give up power for protection in an artificial body.) Both the Church and the State are artificial institutions, in other words, but while we collectively allow the State to exist as a compulsory organization, we made no such contract with any church. Mankind in his/her natural state has no religion except that which is invented or passed down, and therefore we have a right to be free from religion unless we voluntarily give that right up (say, by joining one of our own free will.)
I hope I've helped to answer your questions.
Essentially the only thing holding it back is the infamous mullahs, who have oversight over everything that takes place in the government and can go so far as to declare a candidate for any given office "too liberal," thus taking him out of the running.
So, it seems extremely unlikely that this website was a "mouthpiece of an oppressive regime" unless the mullahs had something to do with it, which from what I can tell is a stretch at best. With that in mind, the only assumption that one can make is that the closing of this website has something to do with the fact that the Bushies have Iran in their sights for the next misguided invasion. And what do the Bushies do when they want to go to war? Spread lies and false information, and try to cover up the viewpoint of the other side. With that in mind, I would not be surprised if they were behind this. However, considering the lack of details, I'll just have to don my TinFoilHat for now.
Hacking, by definition, is attempting to figure out how something works. Hackers, therefore, are constantly curious - they never accept what they're told and always must find out if something is true for themselves.
So, a guy who looks for security holes in software? A hacker. Someone who researches historical details to find out the truth of a certain event? Major hacker. A twelve-year-old kid who takes apart a Walkman to figure out how it works? Definitely a hacker.
People like those you describe, therefore, are not hackers at all. They don't seek knowledge, for whatever end; they just want the infamy and script-kiddie-cred that come with making the lives of other people miserable. It is only the media, constantly seeking demons to vanquish, that paints these people as "hackers" without even knowing what the term really means. And it's people like you who, by furthering the stereotype, continue to give hackers a bad name by making them synonymous with criminals.
Over Christmas break my father told me that he was concerned about all of the spyware in his computer. He said that his weekly scans with Ad-Aware came up with at least a dozen threats every time. The very first thing I did was ask him what browser he was using.
The predictable answer: IE.
So, I installed Firefox for him, and ever since he has seen spyware cut down by *at least* one-half. He also seems pleased with the faster load times and *gasp* tabbed browsing.
So, there is hope for the IE crowd. We just need to show them the light.
Then again, Hollywood hasn't ruined *everything* it has touched (think of the LotR movies.) There might still be hope.
I wonder if that means EA employees will only have to work 90-hour weeks...
The Protestant work ethic has stolen our lives out from under us. Instead of trying to find our own fulfillment, we're busy chasing the next carrot on a string that society dangles in front of us. In grade school we *have* to get A's and engage in extracurricular activities in order to get into a good college. In college we *have* to get A's and do generally well to get a good job. At our jobs we *need* to work hard so we can earn our next paycheck and afford to feed ourselves every year so that we can... spend all of the next year working again.
Where does it all end? Death?
No, I must disagree with the author of this speech. The key to life is not working hard so that you can work hard again the next year so that you can work hard again the next year, etc., etc., but instead finding personal fulfillment. Society may not agree with the decisions you have to make in this regard, but then again, society isn't living your life. The choice is yours, and yours alone.
Not that I have anything to hide in the first place... no, really...!
Don't hurt me.
However, in private, Lucas remarked, "I really just hired him because he's the only guy who actually *liked* the freakin' prequels."
Reality TV: Gimmick and (unfortunately) popular.
MTV: Gimmick and caught on almost immediately.
Bad anime made to sell action figures (think Draginball Z): Gimmick with millions of American viewers.
So don't discount it just because it sounds gimmicky. It may surprise you how many idiots addicted to bad TV there are out there who will actually watch this type of thing.
Built-in XP firewall - Pretty much everyone disabled it and installed another.
Internet Explorer - Lets all the spyware in in the first place. Firefox is ten times better.
MS Office - Don't even need to say how bad it is.
Windows itself - Ditto.
MS AntiSpyware - Only gets rid of two-thirds of spyware. Mostly just more bloatware.
Nope. I'm not very surprised.
Wouldn't that technically be "by sadists, for masochists"?
No, what EQ2 and most other MMORPG's offer is not a challenge, but a timesink. You cannot solo past level 20 or so at any pace other than "unbelievably slow", so you are forced to spend perhaps hours seeking a group; you incur a penalty when *another person in your group* dies; simple things like crafting and travel take tons of time and resources; and so on and so forth. However, WoW, with its action-based gameplay, has been perhaps the most challenging MMO I've ever played, not in terms of the time needed to get anything done, but in terms of *real,* Contra-like challenge.
I won't address this poster's other points, since they're largely opinion. But I will say this: a game should not take "effort" beyond the effort required to have fun. I'm glad the WoW developers recognized this fact and made the game a *game,* rather than just another bunch of timesinks.
Internet pr0n. It's the reason that most people use #3 (PC's,) fiber optics (#4) were invented to deliver it faster, and e-mail (#5) makes it available to the masses. As for cell phones (#2), the best use for which is to call up women so you can eventually *see* them naked... how many /.ers know any women in the first place?
supports Microsoft DRM protected files (WMV, WMA)
It kind of figures that one of the major product features of a Linux-based handheld is that it supports a media standard championed by MS, doesn't it? I mean why not support open-source standards like OGG?
At the very least, however, the same laws which apply to telemarketers should apply to spammers. If I remember correctly, here in the States, if someone recieves a telemarketing call and requests to be removed from the telemarketers' list of numbers, the telemarketing company is required by law to remove that number from their list. The same thing should apply to spammers, and be enforcable with (at the very least) heavy fines.