Increase traffic fines - now my judgement here may be skewed because the standard of living is lower in India and as a result these fines may be more to your average Indian, but check this out:
It's a list of "spot fines". Note that 40 rupees is about $1 USD.
Speeding? $7.50
Driving without a license? $7.50.
Running a red light? $2.50
Yeah - does anyone else wonder why these offenses continue to happen?
Your judgement is very skewed. No offence as you've obviously put a lot of work into your post, but what the fines are in USD is completely irrelevant, because Indians do not get paid in USD, nor do they get paid the USD equivalent in Rupees - You said yourself that there are around 40 Rupees to $1 USD, and yet you seem to be labouring under the impression that Indian traffic offences warrant fines of the Rupee equivalent of $7.50 - it's not R7.50, it's R300.
Yes that's still a low fine for speeding, but it's not as ludicrously low, and still not something you could write off as a daily expense ("oh sure it's a fine, but I make that much back in the hour I save speeding to work" - they don't). As good as America might be, when you are an Indian being fined in India in Indian Rupees, how much it's worth in USD is entirely irrelevant. It's like you losing your wallet with $500 in it and me saying it's not too bad because that's only around £250. It's still $500 to you.
What's the point to banning some incandescent light bulbs if this bullshit is allowed?
Shut up. This has been a year to end all years. We've been bullied into accepting bullshit laws left, right and center, we've seen our countrymen lose their lives in a neverending bullshit war, and the holiday season is the one time of year when we get to let our hair down and have fun without petty moaning getting in the way.
Yes, it's garish, and yes it's a "waste of energy", but you know what? I feel like getting up and going to work every day just to fall into bed and do it all over again tomorrow is a waste of energy, too, and I look forward to the fun and silliness of the holiday season, and things like this add to the fun. Pretty much everything else fun has been legislated to death, if we start legislating Christmas then we might as well give up the fight altogether and become mindless automatons retiring to our alcoves for 8 hours 'recharge' in between 365 days of work.
Yes, because what we really want is no TV for anyone. What you're conveniently ignoring is the fact that if we don't pay, somehow, for our shows, then a) the TV companies won't get the budget to make good shows, and b) we'd eliminate our ability to 'vote with our dollars' to get the kinds of shows we want. Both of these factors would lead to more reality TV, more ads per hour and more general television hell for those of us that would much rather watch our shows on a proper set instead of a PC monitor.
By all means encourage things like iTunes and the BBC's offering, allowing downloads for a price (though the BBC's one is covered by the UK licence fee), but don't encourage piracy, or in a few years the only thing you'll be able to torrent will be another series of 'America's Next Top Model', because that will be all the TV stations are broadcasting, digitally or otherwise.
There is a rule against modifying your own wiki page. This applies to organizations as well as individuals, largely because of ulterior motives like this.
Person who spends every minute of his professional life worrying about spelling, punctuation and proper words shockingly doesn't adhere to same when he gets a moment to himself.
I'm going to jump in here to avoid the OP from having to deal with you.
You are an idiot, and if you are truly under the impression that two children with autism must always == inbreeding, you are an even bigger idiot. Allow me to explain for the slow (the ones that don't have an excuse - that's you, Mr. AC).
There are four people. Parent a, Parent b, Child x, the autistic first child of parents a and b, and Child y, the as-yet unborn child of parents a and b.
We will accept for the purposes of this example that parent a carries whichever gene causes autism (it's not known which precise gene - or genes - produce this effect) and parent b does not, regardless of whether the parents are in any way related. The chances of child y having autism are *exactly the same* as the chances were of child x having the condition. The idea that, without 'inbreeding', the chances of two children with autism are very small is an example of the Gambler's fallacy.
It's two paragraphs later now, and you're still an idiot, but now you might be a slightly lesser one.
There's no reason to think that these people don't suffer from personality disorders.
Conversely, there's no sane reason to think that they do. Griefing in a FPS - where the *very object of the game* is to *kill other virtual people* is so far removed from any situation where real morals and consequences apply that a judgement cannot be made either way. If we start claiming what people do in computer games, whether in the spirit of the game or not, is representative of their real-life moral makeup, we might as well give up and hand over our keyboards to Jack Thompson.
The Internet just allows them to act out without any fear of punishment.
The internet just allows fuckwads to act like fuckwads without fear of punishment. If you've never had someone deliberately try to make you angry for their own amusement, you obviously don't have any siblings and have never attended high school. It's not a personality disorder, it's just an annoying part of human nature - unless immaturity is a personality disorder. Which it isn't.
Hey, politicians listen up... Want my vote? Put a fucking stop to this waste of time, energy and money. Thanks.
They don't want your vote, they want the votes of the ignorant masses that think knee-jerk idiocy like this will actually achieve something, because there's more of them than there are of you.
Your (and our) only option is to educate people, tell the general public what's going on, because the longer the masses stay ignorant, the longer the politicians will keep getting away with things like this, because - as sad as this sounds - people will genuinely think this is a good idea.
They're the sort of device a straight male doesn't mind carrying around.
Wow, insecure much? Seriously, if you think your choice of media player or your ability to appreciate aesthetics makes you 'gay', you must think you're pretty close to that dreaded borderline already, right?
It's Vivendi that owns UMG, not UMG that owns Vivendi. Basically, that means Vivendi will do whatever makes the most money. Guitar Hero is massively popular, and selling tracks a-la iTunes-for-GH is likely to be far more profitable than suing people for anything they can think of. Picture the scene:
- You're with your friends, having a few beers and some laughs on Guitar Hero. - After the fifth beer, male bravado is starting to kick in. You and your buddies all start to think you're guitar Gods. - "I bet you can't play Track X", says one of your buddies. You, of course, accept the challenge, and purchase Track X from the GH online store. - Once you're done murdering that, you turn and you say to your equally bravado-fuelled friend, "oh yeah, I bet you can't play Track Y better than me", and off you trot, once again, to the online store to purchase Track Y. - Repeat until you're all too drunk to work a controller.
I'm betting this would happen a *lot*, because one or two quid/bucks is nothing when you're having a laugh with your friends, which is where GH gets most of it's play.
Allow me to refer you to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. If someone TK'ing in a game of Counter-Strike is your criteria for 'psychopath', I would say you're the one with the mental issue, causing you to take computer games far too seriously.
Sure, it's annoying when some loser 'nades your spawn, blocks doors, etc, but it isn't indicative of being "very likely suffer from personality disorders, maybe even to the point of being psychopaths". Irritating? yes, childish? Extremely. Psychopathic? No. When they start kicking (real-life) babies, get back to me.
Why yes, IAAQPR (I Am A Qualified Psychological Researcher), but you don't have to be to realise that there is a huge gulf between being an ass in a FPS and being a psychopath.
I fail to see the difference between killing something and dragging it back to the nest, and paralysing something and 'walking' it back to the nest to be killed there, except it requires less effort on the part of the predator. Certainly not enough for it to be the deciding factor in someone's evaluation on whether or not there is a higher power - where does that argument begin and end?
What about Komodo dragons? They are hugely powerful animals that could easily kill most prey in an out and out fight, but they instead hunt by biting their prey and tracking them as they die of likely horrifically painful infection - 'A just and kind god would not create a creature who's life cycle involves infecting another with poisonous bacteria when good old fashioned outright killing would do'. Lots of animals kill their prey in lots of horrible ways. Wasps mind-controlling cockroaches is just one of them, and seems to be a strange choice for this person's final decision on the existence of God.
This should serve once and for all to dispel the myth of a benevolent creator.
Alright, you've posted with your real account, which has no history of trolling, so either this is a genuine statement or you forgot to hit 'Post Anonymously'.
I have to ask, at the risk of being modded troll myself... why?
People have been doing worse things than this to one another for centuries, usually in the name of one God or another, and you are taking the existence of a zombie cockroach as your final proof of a Godless universe? Is there a justification here I'm just not seeing?
As numerous other posters have pointed out, this will not result in Sony having to release the source code for their game. The myth of the 'viral GPL' is already going strong enough without/. fuelling it by posting articles like this.
Oh well, time to sit back and watch the trolls have a field day...
What really would matter is, are there PC makers who would pre install Firefox at the factory?
I bought my latest desktop from Dixons (in the UK) and it came with Firefox, Google Desktop and numerous other things preinstalled. I think Google Earth was another one. I'm betting this was a Google deal with the store as their Toolbar was also preinstalled as a Firefox extension, but there are indeed major outlets (at least over here) that come with Firefox preinstalled.
It's not very useful when you have to discuss Johnny's grades and why he is not turning in any assignments.
Why isn't it? If you have logging software, I'd say IM is as good, if not better, than an email for discussing Johnny's theoretical grades. Why? Because I'd rather a teacher enter into a real-time conversation with me about my kids grades and ask me any questions they need to ask me, right there and then. Emails are not ideal for train of thought or coherent discussion, and I want there to be interaction between me and my kids' teachers. If they want to email me about coming in for a meeting, that's fine, but if a discussion is going to take place I'd rather have it face-to-face, on the phone or, yes, even IM.
A better example of where email beats out IM for usefulness is in a work environment. If your boss wants to give you a new task, it's one-sided and it doesn't matter if it's asynchronous. He tells you what to do, you do it. Maybe you might email him back any questions you have, but it's not going to be a long conversation. Emails make it easier to have huge blocks of data *telling you what to do*, but they don't lend themselves to productive discussion.
Training 17 hours a day for football? A-Okay!
Training 17 hours a day for Starcraft? NOT OKAY!!!
Dude, I'm from the UK so I've never played American Football, but I used to play rugby, and if you were to train at that for 17 hours a day, you'd be dead pretty soon. Give me Starcraft any day!
But then putting the house on the market and expecting someone to welcome such an addition? That just doesn't make sense.
The market might be small but the price they'd be willing to pay to get this setup is not. How many Star Trek nerds here would be willing to pay top dollar to buy this guy's house?
Yes, only those catchphrase-spouting tuneless wonders like Radiohead and Trent Reznor want musicians to embrace new technologies or give away their material for free.
Slashdot Mirror
Increase traffic fines - now my judgement here may be skewed because the standard of living is lower in India and as a result these fines may be more to your average Indian, but check this out:
http://www.bcp.gov.in/english/trafficpolice/trafficdos/spotfines.htm
It's a list of "spot fines". Note that 40 rupees is about $1 USD.
Speeding? $7.50 Driving without a license? $7.50. Running a red light? $2.50
Yeah - does anyone else wonder why these offenses continue to happen?
Your judgement is very skewed. No offence as you've obviously put a lot of work into your post, but what the fines are in USD is completely irrelevant, because Indians do not get paid in USD, nor do they get paid the USD equivalent in Rupees - You said yourself that there are around 40 Rupees to $1 USD, and yet you seem to be labouring under the impression that Indian traffic offences warrant fines of the Rupee equivalent of $7.50 - it's not R7.50, it's R300.
Yes that's still a low fine for speeding, but it's not as ludicrously low, and still not something you could write off as a daily expense ("oh sure it's a fine, but I make that much back in the hour I save speeding to work" - they don't). As good as America might be, when you are an Indian being fined in India in Indian Rupees, how much it's worth in USD is entirely irrelevant. It's like you losing your wallet with $500 in it and me saying it's not too bad because that's only around £250. It's still $500 to you.
What's the point to banning some incandescent light bulbs if this bullshit is allowed?
Shut up. This has been a year to end all years. We've been bullied into accepting bullshit laws left, right and center, we've seen our countrymen lose their lives in a neverending bullshit war, and the holiday season is the one time of year when we get to let our hair down and have fun without petty moaning getting in the way.
Yes, it's garish, and yes it's a "waste of energy", but you know what? I feel like getting up and going to work every day just to fall into bed and do it all over again tomorrow is a waste of energy, too, and I look forward to the fun and silliness of the holiday season, and things like this add to the fun. Pretty much everything else fun has been legislated to death, if we start legislating Christmas then we might as well give up the fight altogether and become mindless automatons retiring to our alcoves for 8 hours 'recharge' in between 365 days of work.
"it's bigger than my neighbour's"
It is bigger than your neighbour is? I wouldn't consider that a viable selling point, unless you live next door to some seriously small people.
Yes, because what we really want is no TV for anyone. What you're conveniently ignoring is the fact that if we don't pay, somehow, for our shows, then a) the TV companies won't get the budget to make good shows, and b) we'd eliminate our ability to 'vote with our dollars' to get the kinds of shows we want. Both of these factors would lead to more reality TV, more ads per hour and more general television hell for those of us that would much rather watch our shows on a proper set instead of a PC monitor.
By all means encourage things like iTunes and the BBC's offering, allowing downloads for a price (though the BBC's one is covered by the UK licence fee), but don't encourage piracy, or in a few years the only thing you'll be able to torrent will be another series of 'America's Next Top Model', because that will be all the TV stations are broadcasting, digitally or otherwise.
There is a rule against modifying your own wiki page. This applies to organizations as well as individuals, largely because of ulterior motives like this.
Person who spends every minute of his professional life worrying about spelling, punctuation and proper words shockingly doesn't adhere to same when he gets a moment to himself.
News at 11.
They're obvious academic knowledge with clear educational merit. Where exactly is the problem?
I'm going to jump in here to avoid the OP from having to deal with you.
You are an idiot, and if you are truly under the impression that two children with autism must always == inbreeding, you are an even bigger idiot. Allow me to explain for the slow (the ones that don't have an excuse - that's you, Mr. AC).
There are four people. Parent a, Parent b, Child x, the autistic first child of parents a and b, and Child y, the as-yet unborn child of parents a and b.
We will accept for the purposes of this example that parent a carries whichever gene causes autism (it's not known which precise gene - or genes - produce this effect) and parent b does not, regardless of whether the parents are in any way related. The chances of child y having autism are *exactly the same* as the chances were of child x having the condition. The idea that, without 'inbreeding', the chances of two children with autism are very small is an example of the Gambler's fallacy.
It's two paragraphs later now, and you're still an idiot, but now you might be a slightly lesser one.
There's no reason to think that these people don't suffer from personality disorders.
Conversely, there's no sane reason to think that they do. Griefing in a FPS - where the *very object of the game* is to *kill other virtual people* is so far removed from any situation where real morals and consequences apply that a judgement cannot be made either way. If we start claiming what people do in computer games, whether in the spirit of the game or not, is representative of their real-life moral makeup, we might as well give up and hand over our keyboards to Jack Thompson.
The Internet just allows them to act out without any fear of punishment.
The internet just allows fuckwads to act like fuckwads without fear of punishment. If you've never had someone deliberately try to make you angry for their own amusement, you obviously don't have any siblings and have never attended high school. It's not a personality disorder, it's just an annoying part of human nature - unless immaturity is a personality disorder. Which it isn't.
Hey, politicians listen up... Want my vote? Put a fucking stop to this waste of time, energy and money. Thanks.
They don't want your vote, they want the votes of the ignorant masses that think knee-jerk idiocy like this will actually achieve something, because there's more of them than there are of you.
Your (and our) only option is to educate people, tell the general public what's going on, because the longer the masses stay ignorant, the longer the politicians will keep getting away with things like this, because - as sad as this sounds - people will genuinely think this is a good idea.
They're the sort of device a straight male doesn't mind carrying around.
Wow, insecure much? Seriously, if you think your choice of media player or your ability to appreciate aesthetics makes you 'gay', you must think you're pretty close to that dreaded borderline already, right?
Welcome to having children. Enjoy your stay.
Yes, because the licence and terms of a product's code is directly related to it's quality. Oh wait.
It's Vivendi that owns UMG, not UMG that owns Vivendi. Basically, that means Vivendi will do whatever makes the most money. Guitar Hero is massively popular, and selling tracks a-la iTunes-for-GH is likely to be far more profitable than suing people for anything they can think of. Picture the scene:
-
You're with your friends, having a few beers and some laughs on Guitar Hero.
- After the fifth beer, male bravado is starting to kick in. You and your buddies all start to think you're guitar Gods.
- "I bet you can't play Track X", says one of your buddies. You, of course, accept the challenge, and purchase Track X from the GH online store.
- Once you're done murdering that, you turn and you say to your equally bravado-fuelled friend, "oh yeah, I bet you can't play Track Y better than me", and off you trot, once again, to the online store to purchase Track Y.
- Repeat until you're all too drunk to work a controller.
I'm betting this would happen a *lot*, because one or two quid/bucks is nothing when you're having a laugh with your friends, which is where GH gets most of it's play.
Allow me to refer you to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. If someone TK'ing in a game of Counter-Strike is your criteria for 'psychopath', I would say you're the one with the mental issue, causing you to take computer games far too seriously.
Sure, it's annoying when some loser 'nades your spawn, blocks doors, etc, but it isn't indicative of being "very likely suffer from personality disorders, maybe even to the point of being psychopaths". Irritating? yes, childish? Extremely. Psychopathic? No. When they start kicking (real-life) babies, get back to me.
Why yes, IAAQPR (I Am A Qualified Psychological Researcher), but you don't have to be to realise that there is a huge gulf between being an ass in a FPS and being a psychopath.
Unknown file type : PDF
o Open with X
o Save to Disk
X opens PDFs on it's own now? FEATURE CREEP! FEATURE CREEP!
*sounds the klaxon*
...
...
Oh.
I fail to see the difference between killing something and dragging it back to the nest, and paralysing something and 'walking' it back to the nest to be killed there, except it requires less effort on the part of the predator. Certainly not enough for it to be the deciding factor in someone's evaluation on whether or not there is a higher power - where does that argument begin and end?
What about Komodo dragons? They are hugely powerful animals that could easily kill most prey in an out and out fight, but they instead hunt by biting their prey and tracking them as they die of likely horrifically painful infection - 'A just and kind god would not create a creature who's life cycle involves infecting another with poisonous bacteria when good old fashioned outright killing would do'. Lots of animals kill their prey in lots of horrible ways. Wasps mind-controlling cockroaches is just one of them, and seems to be a strange choice for this person's final decision on the existence of God.
This should serve once and for all to dispel the myth of a benevolent creator.
Alright, you've posted with your real account, which has no history of trolling, so either this is a genuine statement or you forgot to hit 'Post Anonymously'.
I have to ask, at the risk of being modded troll myself... why?
People have been doing worse things than this to one another for centuries, usually in the name of one God or another, and you are taking the existence of a zombie cockroach as your final proof of a Godless universe? Is there a justification here I'm just not seeing?
As numerous other posters have pointed out, this will not result in Sony having to release the source code for their game. The myth of the 'viral GPL' is already going strong enough without /. fuelling it by posting articles like this.
Oh well, time to sit back and watch the trolls have a field day...
Great concepts that the computer languages should be do their best to equal.
;).
Do be do be do...
1st rule of the internet: If you're going to call someone out for using a primitive language, make sure you're up to scratch with your own
What really would matter is, are there PC makers who would pre install Firefox at the factory?
I bought my latest desktop from Dixons (in the UK) and it came with Firefox, Google Desktop and numerous other things preinstalled. I think Google Earth was another one. I'm betting this was a Google deal with the store as their Toolbar was also preinstalled as a Firefox extension, but there are indeed major outlets (at least over here) that come with Firefox preinstalled.
It's not very useful when you have to discuss Johnny's grades and why he is not turning in any assignments.
Why isn't it? If you have logging software, I'd say IM is as good, if not better, than an email for discussing Johnny's theoretical grades. Why? Because I'd rather a teacher enter into a real-time conversation with me about my kids grades and ask me any questions they need to ask me, right there and then. Emails are not ideal for train of thought or coherent discussion, and I want there to be interaction between me and my kids' teachers. If they want to email me about coming in for a meeting, that's fine, but if a discussion is going to take place I'd rather have it face-to-face, on the phone or, yes, even IM.
A better example of where email beats out IM for usefulness is in a work environment. If your boss wants to give you a new task, it's one-sided and it doesn't matter if it's asynchronous. He tells you what to do, you do it. Maybe you might email him back any questions you have, but it's not going to be a long conversation. Emails make it easier to have huge blocks of data *telling you what to do*, but they don't lend themselves to productive discussion.
Training 17 hours a day for football? A-Okay! Training 17 hours a day for Starcraft? NOT OKAY!!!
Dude, I'm from the UK so I've never played American Football, but I used to play rugby, and if you were to train at that for 17 hours a day, you'd be dead pretty soon. Give me Starcraft any day!
But then putting the house on the market and expecting someone to welcome such an addition? That just doesn't make sense.
The market might be small but the price they'd be willing to pay to get this setup is not. How many Star Trek nerds here would be willing to pay top dollar to buy this guy's house?
Yes, only those catchphrase-spouting tuneless wonders like Radiohead and Trent Reznor want musicians to embrace new technologies or give away their material for free.
Oh wait.