And of course, it's not really a sign of weakness that consoles are more fragile.
My great grandmother's Iron is a block of Iron you heat up somehow. You can't break it. My iron can be broken. You can't break the clock in my father's first car because it didn't have one.
NESs had no moving parts. Now, consoles have optical media and motors. They run extremely powerful processors. They are better, objectively, than old consoles (and don't really cost more when inflation is considered). They are better because they are made of more complicated and capable and precise stuff.
Not to bust on your comment, my friend. I just think we are too nostalgic for those old super NESs.
(typed on a model M, so I'm a sucker for hardy old stuff too)
To hack a PS3 like you're complaining might happen, they have to get much much much more like a PC. If you have gotten a PS3 to run unsigned code, you can become an instant internet celebrity. Right now, there just isn't a reason to fear Folding at home can be used as a zombie.
Granted, it is lame to wait for a stupid update to load, but this update was meant to enhance your PS3's functionality, not to correct crappy reliability (thought the previous OS update was to fix reliability issues).
Updates that modernize your console are actually a huge plus. Why shouldn't Sony take drastic steps to improve the online features of their console seeing that the customers are wanting 360-like features? Who loses in that situation?
Games are indeed being released more buggy, and indeed we're seeing too many problems. But I think, for the most part, we will see Game Consoles become more secure, not less. Running unsigned code on an SNES or NES isn't that hard.
Buddy, most folks don't have any problem getting their console to work with their television.
I've got every nintendo console mass produced and every playstation ever produced, and they work on every SDTV and HDTV in my house and the vast majority of normal living room TVs out there.
If you're having a hard time getting a non-broken game console to even work, you're not going be able to play a non-solitaire computer game either.
Nothing at all wrong with your comments, but it's worth noting that you can get excellent surround sound in full quality from a PS3... so long as you have a decent (such cost as low as $120 today) sound system to take the Toslink.
Is this lame? Kinda, but there has to be something to differentiate the expensive blu-ray players from the PS3, and the big thing is the PS3 must rely on a different system. But you need that anyway, so I don't know that this is a huge problem (and if anyone out there is gaming on the PS3 in stereo... trust me, it's worth the upgrade to a surround system).
Also, it's worth noting that GPU power is not closely related to graphics quality in many respects. And the only parity between the system's graphics is that the games are being ported from 360 to PS3 and Microsoft seems to have a huge problem with a company releasing a mutliplatform that isn't equal, as we all heard with Capcom and their Bionic game. Many PS3 exclusives are simply wildly superior graphically than anything the xbox 360 has, and the graphical superiority has been proven. I still prefer my 360 because I love good FPSs like Bioshock and GoW, and the 360 has such a great selection and online support, but the PS3 is the better console in terms of potential (like the XBOX 1.0 was to the PS2, and we all know which of those was more fun to own).
As far as the deep colour issues go, you're right, but the difference is still visible if not accurately described in marketing or fully realized.
But a lot of this stuff simply doesn't matter. When I saw Gran Turismo 4 on display, I was sure there was a powerful PC with a great graphics card running it or it was prerendered (as a programmer, you probably realize that it's just a lot easier to run a racing sim with so many things you can leave out, but it takes a powerful PC to run a game that looks that good). A lot of this talk of power is not necessarily going to have the kind of impact that dedication in programming has. And surely, the extent and mapping of colors is not going to have the impact that painstaking details and huge texture maps will have (though I don't know that this favors the blu-ray drive if it reads too slowly). I think great graphics matter a hell of a lot in games, but I don't think the things discussed here matter much at all.
Yeah, that's a small part of the budget. Obviously to some, 17% is too high. But it's not. Many believe believe that the DoD gets the lion's share. Social programs and pork get the lion's share.
Gears was a great game, but it really didn't get the kind of following MGS, Gran Turismo, or Final Fantasy have, nor has the game really garnered much attention yet. Too early to tell, but I guarantee you that the enormous length of games like MGS, GT5, and FF13 are going to make a value proposition that Gears will never answer. Gears is practically demo lengthed.
And the eclusive content on GTA4 is a nice argument, except that GTA isn't about the missions's it's about the sandbox. Relatively nobody bought the PC editions of those games, despite enormous content advantages.
There's a reason people stick with old versions of Windows, VHS, DVD, etc.
But stores stop stocking nice SDTVs. Broadcasts require either a new TV or one of those receivers, and some folks are dummies about that stuff.
You're right though, I prefer my SDTVs to my HDTV when watching SD broadcasts over U-Verse. It just looks a lot better. Still, nice HD TVs are the way of the future. No getting around it. And they do have many benefits.
He's probably referring to the fact that the Sims sucks, objectively and obviously. It caters to the lowest common denominator as opposed to the true creativity and value of the other Sim games of Maxis.
The Sims made a ton of money. So what? EA is an enterprise company totally devoted to profit and not really interested in the craft of gamemaking. The repeated responses to this criticism pointing out that the game made a lot of money is really, really stupid. no kidding it made money. It made money by whoring a great name to the lowest common denominator. Like the Star Wars prequels (more profitable than the originals, after all). Like Thomas Kincaid "art" (the most profitable art in history).
The profits are one way to measure business... if you are looking to buy a business. If you are a customer, it's one of the dumbest ways to evaluate a product. You want a game with some passion, life, and innovation to it. You want something that challenges your mind and opens the door to new gameplay ideas. You do not want the crap that the idiots are playing.
The only response to this criticism that is logical at all is that you found The Sims to be more innovative and challenging and interesting and well crafted than Sim City 2000 or whatever. And if you did, you're not a serious person.
Are you serious? Go buy an EA game and compare it to somethign you can buy from Valve or Insomniac or Naughty Dog or Polyphony or Nintendo.
EA occasionally comes out with something special, but generally it's repetitive and it's low quality and it's buggy. It's a well deserved reputation, not an isolated problem of yesteryear.
EA = minimal effort enterprise company. They will only put in as much effort as they absolutely have to to get sales before the next iteration. Game making is not an artform or craft to them. That's why, in GTA San Andreas, if you import a car, 1 in 4 or so have "EA SUCKS" as their license plate. EA isn't a joke int he industry, they're a nightmare.
Tellme, what version of HD-DVD is going to have feature parity with blu-ray? Lossless sound, large capacity, minimally decent support from studios. Oh what's that? Never? Oh. Wonder why blu-ray won out.
The price hike is because customers are willing to pay more for blu-rays than they would have paid for hd-dvd. Maybe not you, maybe not me, but they are out there. Why not cash in? Once the early adopters are fed for another year, then we can see some cheap players. Blu-ray is not catering to the bottom. It's the best mass produced movie tech ever produced, certainly far far far ahead of hd-dvd. It will be a long time before we see $30 blu-ray drives.
If that's not what you want, then by all means wait or never buy at all. But the economics are predictable and not really sinister at all.
One other thing, you don't need to organize the entire government to have a big brother surveillance system.
You just need computers that can understand spoken words. The NSA has had that since the 90s, and listen to just about everything they can.
I actually don't mind that much, and I'm no conspiracy theorist, realize Osama did 9/11 and all that, but all it would take for big brother is the say so of a few bureaucrats and funding.
There is NO LEGITIMATE conern for undercover cops. This site got its lists of cops from police stations. They are responsible for knowing who is a secret cop and who is an overt cop. The site even asked specifically not to get the names of the undercover cops.
Not to mention that they will remove any cop from here that is undercover as soon as they are told.
The undercover thing is a bullshit excuse used to silence dissent in a age where it's becoming more and more clear that our cops are horribly corrupt. Youtube proves they beat up kids for no reason. That they plant evidence and fake crimes. We know the highest paid cop in Houston ($172,000 a year) is also the one with the longest rap sheet of ethics complaints.
The cops say that this site isn't necessary, that we should report bad cops to other cops. Bullshit.
Sad. But also sad is the mental health standards in prisons, at least here in Texas. There's little chance of anyone being helped much in there.
And when you consider that some are awaiting trial if they are made mentally competent, the state might have an incentive not to provide great mental health care since they already have the guy incarcerated for a lengthy while.
Jeez, what a dumb post. Even had the Fisk thing going on in place of your own argumentation structure. That's why it's kinda hard to see what thesis you're supporting.
First, there's a huge difference between the hundreds of millions of Islamic radicals and American zealots. They both go too far, but there's very significant and obvious difference. One will compromise a lot more easily, and the other I'm not going to worry too much about. But this is a quibble.
The big point is: it really wouldn't take omnipotence to give everyone what they want. It takes customizability. Like a fuckin' filter. If someone really cannot bear to let their child see slashdot, that's their right even if I think that's stupid. My kids understand what GNAA and goatse are, and why it's just background noise. But I'm not about to argue that we cannot permit keeping that stuff away from kids if parents so desire. It seems as though you are making that claim.
I advise grouping all adult video and picture stuff together, maybe other content too, but let's leave it abstract. The domain has been called.xxx, but it's not to be compared with NC-17 or XXX adult films or hardcore porn. Let's just pretend it were a different domain, ok? It's.QCC now. There's going to be a certain amount of over or under inclusiveness, and obviously it would be wiser to be over inclusive in putting all sorts of content in the.QCC domain that aren't pornographic, but merely suggestive or objectionable. Even Our Bodies, Ourselves (or whatever book was mentioned above). Using iframes and popups, this would have an effect on a child's web experience similar to using adblock. In fact, it would be exactly the same. Parents could have a password protected filter, and upload sites that are ok. They could even get lists of sites that schools, churches, the ACLU, you, me, whoever advise are the right balance of free speech and learning to adult content.
It's a great idea. You just load the filter you agree with. The religious right in America would probably block a lot of things I don't, though I imagine they would permit a lot of the things slashdotters are pretending would be banned.
The procensorship people might have some motivation to completely destroy all things they disagree with, but I think you're full of shit on that point. Tin foil hat or not, this is a large coalition of different people with wildly divergent opinions on what needs to be blocked. Some blacks don't want Huck Finn in libraries because it makes slavery look less than horrible in their opinion, and uses the N word a lot. The Baptists probably are mad at sex. Tons and tons and tons and tons of the voters and others being convinced are hearing arguments specifically based on THEIR OWN children.
So, it can only be concluded that you are totally wrong, and if normal folks knew their own kids were not able to see Hentai or whatever, an enormous amount of the persuasive force of the tiny number of true die hard book burners would diminish greatly.
Is that so hard to understand? Further, my censorship system is constitutional, since it only categorizes things in a group to be filters by parents, the government is not actually discriminating at all. I think many censors, if they learned there was an easy way to do this stuff, would accept this as a great compromise. These people are not utterly inhuman. They just have obsolete ideas about sex. They can be reasoned with.
And imagine the benefit to the kids of those crazy parents! Instead of having no internet whatsoever, they have access to a lot of different ideas. You have invented a premise: that the censors are uniformly insistent on destroying anyone's access to porn and cannot accept a compromise to their solution of destroying all porn, but that's stupid. They have no way of destroying all porn even if they want, and many folks are just leaning on the censorship side, not nearly as zealous as you paint them to be
I read that book in highschool. What a coincidence. I think that's certainly appropriate in high school. Sad that anyone would ever care enough to ban it.
Now, I don't think we're on the same page re: the.xxx thing. OF course the parts of the middle east that block so many things would not cooperate, but who cares? They have to figure that out on their own. You're worried about getting the world to agree, but I'm looking for a way to easily customize what I let my kids see, that will also satisfy those who want to see nothing.
And yeah, people will go too far, but that's ok. There's nothing saying you can't grant permission for certain sources for your kids. I could have an exceptions like and grant scholastic.xxx, Musuem.xxx, etc etc, while others block all nudity. There's no reason why parents shouldn't be permitted to permit some and not others... there could even be a way to login to the middle school and choose.
The crazy people you are talking about are already having an impact. In clumsy destructive ways. Let them block everything nude if they really really want to do that, so long as I am given the obvious tools to raise my kids. It doesn't matter that you're right. They are still going to mucke verything up if we don't find a way to make everyone get what they want, and I think that's possible.
Note to people who aren't douchebags: PEBKAC stands for 'problem exists between keyboard and chair.' No, it's not me. This is a commonly reported problem, so perhaps you should look into it before insulting me like a 12 year old jackass. I know this is going to blow your mind, but Time Warner has more than one employee, and the people running the show in Austin might do things differently than those in Adelphia, especially if one area is using its bandwidth more than another. For 99% of people, this is a common sense prospect, but for you, if one Time Warner account works fine, they all must!
If I use torrents on any of my 5 computers, within a few minutes my entire connection is slowed down (can't watch Youtube, can't check emails quickly, etc). I can stop the torrent software and everything will stay slow for several minutes, but return like switch has flipped. If I encrypt, the slowdown does not occur. Strangely, I no longer have this problem with U-Verse, and did not have this problem in the past with Cox Communications.
You could use this amazing thing I like to call google and see that a lot of people are experiencing the same problem with Time Warner over the same period of time (November through now).
Of course an R rated trailer should go on the.xxx site! Anything you don't want a 6 year old kid to see! I think a lot of sites could implement iframes or popups that simply don't work unless the user grants access to.xxx. Thus, a.com site would still work fine.
I think the biggest problem with this idea is that "xxx" is associated with hardcore pornography VHS tapes from the 80s. Pretend it isn't. We're just talking about things we want to keep to the adults. And I don't care if the classification is a bit too broad, since adults can use it all anyway. As long as basic nude sculptures and anatomy stuff was left free for children, things would be ok.
Is this perfect? Of course not. But I think it's pretty damn good.
I realize Scientology is generally pretty dumb, but this aspect is particularly absurd.
If you have to be "clear" to a certain level before you can know certain things, how the fuck can a living SP, the opposite of someone who is clear and leveled up, know anything that could be harmful? If the Scions were right, the SP would be dead from the knowledge, so it's absurd to give out this warning. It's just another pathetic and obvious attempt to control the gullible and sick as long as possible to get all them money they can.
Almost as pathetic is this ignorant attempt to censor the internet. Give the porn people their.xxx domain! Make life easy to everyone! But no, that can't happen, because, as the legislator says above, this is about "fighting pornography" and not about keeping it away from kids. Law abiding citizens want pornography. It's legit to want to keep kids away, but not legit to want to "fight" the entire enterprise of adult entertainment. Until men are honest about this issue, their government will continue to go down the wrong path. Parents should also realize that the best way to protect your kids from porn is to give porn a nice, legit domain. The solution is obvious.
You know, I'm inclined to agree that censorship is never really necessary. But unfortunately, we live in a world where kids out there do need some protection. This filter crap doesn't have a prayer of working well, but something like a.xxx domain for all porn would certainly be a positive step.
You have to accept that we all have to share these decisions, and many people disagree with you on censorship. Child porn, things like that, really do need to be censored. Kids really can be negatively affected by normal porn in a way adults aren't. Bomb making tips might need to be curtailed in some instances. Messages from Al Qaida's website to cells abroad probably should be blocked. The cost of the public's insistence on such things is there, but the cost to denying democratic choice is also there if we follow your direction.
hahaha, but it doesn't matter how slow my torrents run, if I am running a bittorrent client unencrypted, my Time Warner connection always ground to a halt. I just canceled with Time Warner and switched to U-Verse. The guy on the phone told me "just be sure I bring that modem back whenever it's convenient". When I did five days later, the idiot at the desk told me she was going to change the date I disconnected to the day I returned the stupid modem. Even though the service did not work this week because I was already disconnected. Sounds like a nice, fun way to fuck with the idiots who accept that explanation. Looking forward to seeing how the final bill handles the situation!
Somehow I don't think AT&T will be an improvement in the billing department.
Of course, the right price is what the market will bear. So by increasing the supply of free games, the market bears only a lower price.
Sounds unethical, but dammit, I own all the SNES carts I like. some I've bought more than once. I'm not paying $7 for yet another copy. I can play it on my PS3, thanks much, streamed from my media server along with many other games to Ubuntu on the bigscreen. MAME, NES, N64, SNES, Atari, Genesis. Old games should belong to the public domain, not Nintendo. But for the convenience of a fresh copy, I would happily pay $2.
Granted, I'm not being realistic. And Nintendo is doing a better job than Sony with the old downloadable games. But the PS3 is so much more open than the other systems it's not even funny. Not sure this is helping the bottom line for Sony at all, but it's helping reduce my frown-lines!
I remember actually going to the library of congress, and they refused to allow me in. Why? Because I didn't actually have anything specific to research... I just wanted to check out what the library had to offer, browse around, read a book or two. Of course I waited five minutes and invented a research topic, but nonetheless it's absurd not to allow me, a taxpayer access to my library.
We aren't really talking about Gimp so much as we are talking about Wine, but if you really believe that Gimp isn't following the proprietary world and trying to be a nice photoshop alternative by going for things the photoshop customers get from photoshop, well, then we disagree. Of course Gimp developers should look to Photoshop and mimic much. I know it's not the cool answer, but it's true. Of course, I think there is plenty of room for innovation and to do a better job, as Ubuntu does in many areas vs. XP. But that has nothing to do with the price of tea in china. We're talking about Wine, which quite obviously has to follow the Windows API, etc.
Linux is kinda dealt a bad hand. I don't really see why we don't see Adobe and others specifically tailoring software for Ubuntu. Support costs, I bet. Photoshop (or whatever) on Wine with 100% support is precisely what a bunch of folks would need to get rid of their bloated OS.
Can you see a world where Wine is not needed by the serious Linux user? Of course you can, if you rule out a ton of useful software. In other words, if you rule out Linux as a serious OS choice for tons of folks.
That's the point... to you. You aren't in charge. Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with making money by selling Linux apps and proprietary stuff. There is an enormous monopoly in computing, and I would prefer to focus on that.
And yeah, you have to choose. You can't hope to compete against windows if the very best kinds of software really need windows (though Pshop obviously is also on macs). You either go nuts with every bit of information being free, of we give everyone an open set of basically strong tools, and let them buy professional level stuff, games, media, etc if they want it.
Gimp, openoffice, mozilla, ubuntu (or whatever) makes a nice level of stuff, but I need photoshop, I need VIZ, I need Autocad. And for CAD, there are free solutions, but they just aren't going to do. So I use Windows 2000, still the best version for me. I can boot into ubuntu, and would like to be able to use Wine, but we're about to buy Vista instead. How annoying.
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And of course, it's not really a sign of weakness that consoles are more fragile.
My great grandmother's Iron is a block of Iron you heat up somehow. You can't break it. My iron can be broken. You can't break the clock in my father's first car because it didn't have one.
NESs had no moving parts. Now, consoles have optical media and motors. They run extremely powerful processors. They are better, objectively, than old consoles (and don't really cost more when inflation is considered). They are better because they are made of more complicated and capable and precise stuff.
Not to bust on your comment, my friend. I just think we are too nostalgic for those old super NESs.
(typed on a model M, so I'm a sucker for hardy old stuff too)
To hack a PS3 like you're complaining might happen, they have to get much much much more like a PC. If you have gotten a PS3 to run unsigned code, you can become an instant internet celebrity. Right now, there just isn't a reason to fear Folding at home can be used as a zombie.
Granted, it is lame to wait for a stupid update to load, but this update was meant to enhance your PS3's functionality, not to correct crappy reliability (thought the previous OS update was to fix reliability issues).
Updates that modernize your console are actually a huge plus. Why shouldn't Sony take drastic steps to improve the online features of their console seeing that the customers are wanting 360-like features? Who loses in that situation?
Games are indeed being released more buggy, and indeed we're seeing too many problems. But I think, for the most part, we will see Game Consoles become more secure, not less. Running unsigned code on an SNES or NES isn't that hard.
At least I hope I'm right.
Buddy, most folks don't have any problem getting their console to work with their television.
I've got every nintendo console mass produced and every playstation ever produced, and they work on every SDTV and HDTV in my house and the vast majority of normal living room TVs out there.
If you're having a hard time getting a non-broken game console to even work, you're not going be able to play a non-solitaire computer game either.
Nothing at all wrong with your comments, but it's worth noting that you can get excellent surround sound in full quality from a PS3... so long as you have a decent (such cost as low as $120 today) sound system to take the Toslink.
Is this lame? Kinda, but there has to be something to differentiate the expensive blu-ray players from the PS3, and the big thing is the PS3 must rely on a different system. But you need that anyway, so I don't know that this is a huge problem (and if anyone out there is gaming on the PS3 in stereo... trust me, it's worth the upgrade to a surround system).
Also, it's worth noting that GPU power is not closely related to graphics quality in many respects. And the only parity between the system's graphics is that the games are being ported from 360 to PS3 and Microsoft seems to have a huge problem with a company releasing a mutliplatform that isn't equal, as we all heard with Capcom and their Bionic game. Many PS3 exclusives are simply wildly superior graphically than anything the xbox 360 has, and the graphical superiority has been proven. I still prefer my 360 because I love good FPSs like Bioshock and GoW, and the 360 has such a great selection and online support, but the PS3 is the better console in terms of potential (like the XBOX 1.0 was to the PS2, and we all know which of those was more fun to own).
As far as the deep colour issues go, you're right, but the difference is still visible if not accurately described in marketing or fully realized.
But a lot of this stuff simply doesn't matter. When I saw Gran Turismo 4 on display, I was sure there was a powerful PC with a great graphics card running it or it was prerendered (as a programmer, you probably realize that it's just a lot easier to run a racing sim with so many things you can leave out, but it takes a powerful PC to run a game that looks that good). A lot of this talk of power is not necessarily going to have the kind of impact that dedication in programming has. And surely, the extent and mapping of colors is not going to have the impact that painstaking details and huge texture maps will have (though I don't know that this favors the blu-ray drive if it reads too slowly). I think great graphics matter a hell of a lot in games, but I don't think the things discussed here matter much at all.
Yeah, that's a small part of the budget. Obviously to some, 17% is too high. But it's not. Many believe believe that the DoD gets the lion's share. Social programs and pork get the lion's share.
" to some degree "
Gears was a great game, but it really didn't get the kind of following MGS, Gran Turismo, or Final Fantasy have, nor has the game really garnered much attention yet. Too early to tell, but I guarantee you that the enormous length of games like MGS, GT5, and FF13 are going to make a value proposition that Gears will never answer. Gears is practically demo lengthed.
And the eclusive content on GTA4 is a nice argument, except that GTA isn't about the missions's it's about the sandbox. Relatively nobody bought the PC editions of those games, despite enormous content advantages.
And GTA players are used to a dualshock
There's a reason people stick with old versions of Windows, VHS, DVD, etc.
But stores stop stocking nice SDTVs. Broadcasts require either a new TV or one of those receivers, and some folks are dummies about that stuff.
You're right though, I prefer my SDTVs to my HDTV when watching SD broadcasts over U-Verse. It just looks a lot better. Still, nice HD TVs are the way of the future. No getting around it. And they do have many benefits.
He's probably referring to the fact that the Sims sucks, objectively and obviously. It caters to the lowest common denominator as opposed to the true creativity and value of the other Sim games of Maxis.
The Sims made a ton of money. So what? EA is an enterprise company totally devoted to profit and not really interested in the craft of gamemaking. The repeated responses to this criticism pointing out that the game made a lot of money is really, really stupid. no kidding it made money. It made money by whoring a great name to the lowest common denominator. Like the Star Wars prequels (more profitable than the originals, after all). Like Thomas Kincaid "art" (the most profitable art in history).
The profits are one way to measure business... if you are looking to buy a business. If you are a customer, it's one of the dumbest ways to evaluate a product. You want a game with some passion, life, and innovation to it. You want something that challenges your mind and opens the door to new gameplay ideas. You do not want the crap that the idiots are playing.
The only response to this criticism that is logical at all is that you found The Sims to be more innovative and challenging and interesting and well crafted than Sim City 2000 or whatever. And if you did, you're not a serious person.
years ago?
Are you serious? Go buy an EA game and compare it to somethign you can buy from Valve or Insomniac or Naughty Dog or Polyphony or Nintendo.
EA occasionally comes out with something special, but generally it's repetitive and it's low quality and it's buggy. It's a well deserved reputation, not an isolated problem of yesteryear.
EA = minimal effort enterprise company. They will only put in as much effort as they absolutely have to to get sales before the next iteration. Game making is not an artform or craft to them. That's why, in GTA San Andreas, if you import a car, 1 in 4 or so have "EA SUCKS" as their license plate. EA isn't a joke int he industry, they're a nightmare.
Tellme, what version of HD-DVD is going to have feature parity with blu-ray? Lossless sound, large capacity, minimally decent support from studios. Oh what's that? Never? Oh. Wonder why blu-ray won out.
The price hike is because customers are willing to pay more for blu-rays than they would have paid for hd-dvd. Maybe not you, maybe not me, but they are out there. Why not cash in? Once the early adopters are fed for another year, then we can see some cheap players. Blu-ray is not catering to the bottom. It's the best mass produced movie tech ever produced, certainly far far far ahead of hd-dvd. It will be a long time before we see $30 blu-ray drives.
If that's not what you want, then by all means wait or never buy at all. But the economics are predictable and not really sinister at all.
One other thing, you don't need to organize the entire government to have a big brother surveillance system.
You just need computers that can understand spoken words. The NSA has had that since the 90s, and listen to just about everything they can.
I actually don't mind that much, and I'm no conspiracy theorist, realize Osama did 9/11 and all that, but all it would take for big brother is the say so of a few bureaucrats and funding.
There is NO LEGITIMATE conern for undercover cops. This site got its lists of cops from police stations. They are responsible for knowing who is a secret cop and who is an overt cop. The site even asked specifically not to get the names of the undercover cops.
Not to mention that they will remove any cop from here that is undercover as soon as they are told.
The undercover thing is a bullshit excuse used to silence dissent in a age where it's becoming more and more clear that our cops are horribly corrupt. Youtube proves they beat up kids for no reason. That they plant evidence and fake crimes. We know the highest paid cop in Houston ($172,000 a year) is also the one with the longest rap sheet of ethics complaints.
The cops say that this site isn't necessary, that we should report bad cops to other cops. Bullshit.
Sad. But also sad is the mental health standards in prisons, at least here in Texas. There's little chance of anyone being helped much in there.
And when you consider that some are awaiting trial if they are made mentally competent, the state might have an incentive not to provide great mental health care since they already have the guy incarcerated for a lengthy while.
Jeez, what a dumb post. Even had the Fisk thing going on in place of your own argumentation structure. That's why it's kinda hard to see what thesis you're supporting.
.xxx, but it's not to be compared with NC-17 or XXX adult films or hardcore porn. Let's just pretend it were a different domain, ok? It's .QCC now. There's going to be a certain amount of over or under inclusiveness, and obviously it would be wiser to be over inclusive in putting all sorts of content in the .QCC domain that aren't pornographic, but merely suggestive or objectionable. Even Our Bodies, Ourselves (or whatever book was mentioned above). Using iframes and popups, this would have an effect on a child's web experience similar to using adblock. In fact, it would be exactly the same. Parents could have a password protected filter, and upload sites that are ok. They could even get lists of sites that schools, churches, the ACLU, you, me, whoever advise are the right balance of free speech and learning to adult content.
First, there's a huge difference between the hundreds of millions of Islamic radicals and American zealots. They both go too far, but there's very significant and obvious difference. One will compromise a lot more easily, and the other I'm not going to worry too much about. But this is a quibble.
The big point is: it really wouldn't take omnipotence to give everyone what they want. It takes customizability. Like a fuckin' filter. If someone really cannot bear to let their child see slashdot, that's their right even if I think that's stupid. My kids understand what GNAA and goatse are, and why it's just background noise. But I'm not about to argue that we cannot permit keeping that stuff away from kids if parents so desire. It seems as though you are making that claim.
I advise grouping all adult video and picture stuff together, maybe other content too, but let's leave it abstract. The domain has been called
It's a great idea. You just load the filter you agree with. The religious right in America would probably block a lot of things I don't, though I imagine they would permit a lot of the things slashdotters are pretending would be banned.
The procensorship people might have some motivation to completely destroy all things they disagree with, but I think you're full of shit on that point. Tin foil hat or not, this is a large coalition of different people with wildly divergent opinions on what needs to be blocked. Some blacks don't want Huck Finn in libraries because it makes slavery look less than horrible in their opinion, and uses the N word a lot. The Baptists probably are mad at sex. Tons and tons and tons and tons of the voters and others being convinced are hearing arguments specifically based on THEIR OWN children.
So, it can only be concluded that you are totally wrong, and if normal folks knew their own kids were not able to see Hentai or whatever, an enormous amount of the persuasive force of the tiny number of true die hard book burners would diminish greatly.
Is that so hard to understand? Further, my censorship system is constitutional, since it only categorizes things in a group to be filters by parents, the government is not actually discriminating at all. I think many censors, if they learned there was an easy way to do this stuff, would accept this as a great compromise. These people are not utterly inhuman. They just have obsolete ideas about sex. They can be reasoned with.
And imagine the benefit to the kids of those crazy parents! Instead of having no internet whatsoever, they have access to a lot of different ideas. You have invented a premise: that the censors are uniformly insistent on destroying anyone's access to porn and cannot accept a compromise to their solution of destroying all porn, but that's stupid. They have no way of destroying all porn even if they want, and many folks are just leaning on the censorship side, not nearly as zealous as you paint them to be
AHHA, Man!
.xxx thing. OF course the parts of the middle east that block so many things would not cooperate, but who cares? They have to figure that out on their own. You're worried about getting the world to agree, but I'm looking for a way to easily customize what I let my kids see, that will also satisfy those who want to see nothing.
I read that book in highschool. What a coincidence. I think that's certainly appropriate in high school. Sad that anyone would ever care enough to ban it.
Now, I don't think we're on the same page re: the
And yeah, people will go too far, but that's ok. There's nothing saying you can't grant permission for certain sources for your kids. I could have an exceptions like and grant scholastic.xxx, Musuem.xxx, etc etc, while others block all nudity. There's no reason why parents shouldn't be permitted to permit some and not others... there could even be a way to login to the middle school and choose.
The crazy people you are talking about are already having an impact. In clumsy destructive ways. Let them block everything nude if they really really want to do that, so long as I am given the obvious tools to raise my kids. It doesn't matter that you're right. They are still going to mucke verything up if we don't find a way to make everyone get what they want, and I think that's possible.
Note to people who aren't douchebags: PEBKAC stands for 'problem exists between keyboard and chair.' No, it's not me. This is a commonly reported problem, so perhaps you should look into it before insulting me like a 12 year old jackass. I know this is going to blow your mind, but Time Warner has more than one employee, and the people running the show in Austin might do things differently than those in Adelphia, especially if one area is using its bandwidth more than another. For 99% of people, this is a common sense prospect, but for you, if one Time Warner account works fine, they all must!
If I use torrents on any of my 5 computers, within a few minutes my entire connection is slowed down (can't watch Youtube, can't check emails quickly, etc). I can stop the torrent software and everything will stay slow for several minutes, but return like switch has flipped. If I encrypt, the slowdown does not occur. Strangely, I no longer have this problem with U-Verse, and did not have this problem in the past with Cox Communications.
You could use this amazing thing I like to call google and see that a lot of people are experiencing the same problem with Time Warner over the same period of time (November through now).
Of course an R rated trailer should go on the .xxx site! Anything you don't want a 6 year old kid to see! I think a lot of sites could implement iframes or popups that simply don't work unless the user grants access to .xxx. Thus, a .com site would still work fine.
I think the biggest problem with this idea is that "xxx" is associated with hardcore pornography VHS tapes from the 80s. Pretend it isn't. We're just talking about things we want to keep to the adults. And I don't care if the classification is a bit too broad, since adults can use it all anyway. As long as basic nude sculptures and anatomy stuff was left free for children, things would be ok.
Is this perfect? Of course not. But I think it's pretty damn good.
I realize Scientology is generally pretty dumb, but this aspect is particularly absurd.
.xxx domain! Make life easy to everyone! But no, that can't happen, because, as the legislator says above, this is about "fighting pornography" and not about keeping it away from kids. Law abiding citizens want pornography. It's legit to want to keep kids away, but not legit to want to "fight" the entire enterprise of adult entertainment. Until men are honest about this issue, their government will continue to go down the wrong path. Parents should also realize that the best way to protect your kids from porn is to give porn a nice, legit domain. The solution is obvious.
If you have to be "clear" to a certain level before you can know certain things, how the fuck can a living SP, the opposite of someone who is clear and leveled up, know anything that could be harmful? If the Scions were right, the SP would be dead from the knowledge, so it's absurd to give out this warning. It's just another pathetic and obvious attempt to control the gullible and sick as long as possible to get all them money they can.
Almost as pathetic is this ignorant attempt to censor the internet. Give the porn people their
You know, I'm inclined to agree that censorship is never really necessary. But unfortunately, we live in a world where kids out there do need some protection. This filter crap doesn't have a prayer of working well, but something like a .xxx domain for all porn would certainly be a positive step.
You have to accept that we all have to share these decisions, and many people disagree with you on censorship. Child porn, things like that, really do need to be censored. Kids really can be negatively affected by normal porn in a way adults aren't. Bomb making tips might need to be curtailed in some instances. Messages from Al Qaida's website to cells abroad probably should be blocked. The cost of the public's insistence on such things is there, but the cost to denying democratic choice is also there if we follow your direction.
hahaha,
but it doesn't matter how slow my torrents run, if I am running a bittorrent client unencrypted, my Time Warner connection always ground to a halt. I just canceled with Time Warner and switched to U-Verse. The guy on the phone told me "just be sure I bring that modem back whenever it's convenient". When I did five days later, the idiot at the desk told me she was going to change the date I disconnected to the day I returned the stupid modem. Even though the service did not work this week because I was already disconnected. Sounds like a nice, fun way to fuck with the idiots who accept that explanation. Looking forward to seeing how the final bill handles the situation!
Somehow I don't think AT&T will be an improvement in the billing department.
Of course, the right price is what the market will bear. So by increasing the supply of free games, the market bears only a lower price.
Sounds unethical, but dammit, I own all the SNES carts I like. some I've bought more than once. I'm not paying $7 for yet another copy. I can play it on my PS3, thanks much, streamed from my media server along with many other games to Ubuntu on the bigscreen. MAME, NES, N64, SNES, Atari, Genesis. Old games should belong to the public domain, not Nintendo. But for the convenience of a fresh copy, I would happily pay $2.
Granted, I'm not being realistic. And Nintendo is doing a better job than Sony with the old downloadable games. But the PS3 is so much more open than the other systems it's not even funny. Not sure this is helping the bottom line for Sony at all, but it's helping reduce my frown-lines!
SO TRUE!
I remember actually going to the library of congress, and they refused to allow me in. Why? Because I didn't actually have anything specific to research... I just wanted to check out what the library had to offer, browse around, read a book or two. Of course I waited five minutes and invented a research topic, but nonetheless it's absurd not to allow me, a taxpayer access to my library.
Bureaucracy.
'cause you sure aren't getting laid wearin' that!
"Nobody is in charge"
Exactly.
We aren't really talking about Gimp so much as we are talking about Wine, but if you really believe that Gimp isn't following the proprietary world and trying to be a nice photoshop alternative by going for things the photoshop customers get from photoshop, well, then we disagree. Of course Gimp developers should look to Photoshop and mimic much. I know it's not the cool answer, but it's true. Of course, I think there is plenty of room for innovation and to do a better job, as Ubuntu does in many areas vs. XP. But that has nothing to do with the price of tea in china. We're talking about Wine, which quite obviously has to follow the Windows API, etc.
Linux is kinda dealt a bad hand. I don't really see why we don't see Adobe and others specifically tailoring software for Ubuntu. Support costs, I bet. Photoshop (or whatever) on Wine with 100% support is precisely what a bunch of folks would need to get rid of their bloated OS.
Can you see a world where Wine is not needed by the serious Linux user? Of course you can, if you rule out a ton of useful software. In other words, if you rule out Linux as a serious OS choice for tons of folks.
That's the point... to you. You aren't in charge. Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with making money by selling Linux apps and proprietary stuff. There is an enormous monopoly in computing, and I would prefer to focus on that.
And yeah, you have to choose. You can't hope to compete against windows if the very best kinds of software really need windows (though Pshop obviously is also on macs). You either go nuts with every bit of information being free, of we give everyone an open set of basically strong tools, and let them buy professional level stuff, games, media, etc if they want it.
Gimp, openoffice, mozilla, ubuntu (or whatever) makes a nice level of stuff, but I need photoshop, I need VIZ, I need Autocad. And for CAD, there are free solutions, but they just aren't going to do. So I use Windows 2000, still the best version for me. I can boot into ubuntu, and would like to be able to use Wine, but we're about to buy Vista instead. How annoying.