Here's my take on it. Sex scenes are just fine, as long as they're not completely gratuitous, and are portrayed in a tasteful way.
Considering I just introduced two big loopholes that allow you to call mostly everything "not fine", I'll expand on general guidelines for both concepts:
- By gratuitous I mean the typical porn plot of "guy helps gal in gas station, and they proceed to have scalding sex in the back of his pickup truck". The plot is just there to give (some) context to the fucking. So the rule would be that there is a bigger plot and the sex scenes serve to reinforce that plot, not to show some hankypanky despite it. Even if in the plot, the sex is gratuitous.
- By tasteful, I mean that for a sex scene to work, you don't need to have a closeup of the actual penetration, and similar rules of thumb. Somebody gave the example of Pulp Fiction. It's quite evident that there's a male/male rape scene, but the scene is portrayed well enough that it's shocking (it is meant to be shocking, it's rape), while not being overly graphic. It's a good example of how to portray a rather distasteful idea in an appropriate manner.
Once these rules of thumb are covered, you've basically just removed "porn" from the list of things that are appropriate for more or less unlimited display on public TV. Everything else is fair game. However, this is where the industry should become self-regulatory and exert some moderation. If a film/series might be construed as inappropriate, make sure it's on at a time when parents can be reasonably expected to be around to decide what their children should or should not be exposed to. Make sure that at the beginning of said films/series (and possibly at the end of each commercial break), you make a clear warning that the film might contain certain types of inappropriate material so parents have due forewarning.
I think it might be stretching it a bit, but there's this BBC series called "Silent Witness" that I used to watch on some cable channel, where they put splash screens before particularly gory scenes warning you that the following scene might be a bit too gruesome for more sensitive people. That pretty much allows you to watch the series without any trouble at all, and leave, close your eyes, turn your head, or whatever else around those scenes and come back once they're done.
Arguably, as neat as Linux might have been at the time, it would *never* have picked up speed without a solid set of userland tools on top, so there would never have been a set of tools specifically written for it. Sure, people could've used a BSD toolchain rather than the GNU set, but ultimately the Linux kernel was always dependent on somebody else's userland to carve its space in IT.
The key issue, as has been brought up several times in this thread, is that you're not asking the architect to plan a two-story house in the suburbia, no matter how cool or elaborate a house that might be. You're asking the architect to design an arcology. Out of the ordinary requests get out of the ordinary execution times.
I believe he meant that the encryption itself isn't much of a show stopper, compared with the bulk of the work involved (which dovetails nicely with your point about not taking the Wine project 5 minutes to reimplement windows libs)
Alright, it's obviously flame bait, but I'll bite nonetheless. We're talking about open standards and specifications that anybody can implement software against. We're not talking about open source software, and decidedly not about Stallman or GPLv3. Irrespectively of your opinion on Stallman's attitudes towards software licensing, you have to agree that, for public records, there's no reason NOT to use a document format that's an ISO standard, requires no royalties to implement, and is well documented. Hell, I don't give a damn if they write their documents in MS Office and save it in ODF through a filter. As long as it's ODF (or any other similar standard, but ODF is what we have right now), I know I can read it and communicate in the same standard without necessarily having to own Microsoft Office. And that's what this is all about.
Yeah, it's odd that web can be "compiled" with both tangle and weave, and then generate different stuff. And using pascal is a pain, I'd much rather have it be C. But it's still one of the pieces of software with the least amounts of bugs in the history of computing. And it's thoroughly (you might even say annoyingly) commented.
I meant the code for TeX itself, not stuff written in TeX. I just use LaTex and Lillypond as appropriate, and leave the "proper" TeX for people with the time and inclination to write those packages.
Nowhere did it say that the owners of the cards had *requested* the refunds. If I were in the place of the Red Cross, I'd certainly want to give the money back, if only to make sure that my image remained immaculate.
I'd answer to your post point by point, but really you're making the same point over and over, so I'll simply reply to that instead. The way science works is simple. There's reality (ok, if you want to get philosophical, there *might* not be reality to begin with). Then some guy comes and devises a model that represents a fraction of reality. Then some more guys come, grab that model, consider its consequences, and come up with some experiments aimed at disproving the model. The key word here is "disproving". You can't *ever* prove a model right. Naturally, if a theory does a good job at modeling reality, and repeated and thorough experimentation doesn't disprove it, you consider it to be true, for a somewhat fuzzy value of truth.
Now... Someone comes up with some theory that's at odds with what's considered scientific truth, and, moreover, is described as behaving in a manner that has been proven impossible by experimentation. The knee jerk reaction is obviously to call it crackpot. Unless the "scientist" at hand comes up with some compelling arguments for his statements, the knee jerk reaction will stand. Can't really blame people for that.
Oh, and nobody's really particularly interested in seeing yet another proof of preexisting knowledge, unless the proof is interesting in and of itself, or adds some additional information to the table.
4. First person to have an orgasm just by touching it (it being the iPhone you sicko) You're the onewho suggested having an orgasm over touching a mobile phone, and you have the gall of calling other people sick?
Actually, the reason why overclocking the processor will do squat for a gamer's performance is because the bottleneck is on the graphics card. The day the graphics industry matures enough to be on par with the general purpose processor industry will not mean you won't get anything from overclocking the graphics card. Rather, it'll mean that you'll gain the most performance by overclocking both GPU and CPU (because neither is holding the other back). Of course, the question is "do you really need the extra performance?" -- I seriously doubt that games will hit a cap on the power they can harness from your box anytime soon. There's always higher res textures, more detailed models, more elaborate particle systems, etc to be had, especially if the support for physics cards doesn't really become a trend and nVidia/AMD manage to make the GPGPU thing happen.
Your mouse doesn't provide tactile feedback when you move the cursor over a button, indeed. but it does indeed provide some feedback in the form of the 'click' sound that gives mouse clicking its name. Granted, trackpads that support tapping don't provide much in the way of feedback either, and I like them plenty (provided they're big and mounted shallow, like my iBook's).
DirectX is a large set of libraries, with Direct3D being the graphics library in the package, with DirectInput being the input module, etc. Some games (id software games come to mind) use DirectX for a number of things, while still using OpenGL for graphics. The only confusion about the name is in your head, really:)
Regarding performance, it seems to me that even if there *is* a performance hit (and there probably will be), the purpose here is not getting the world's best gaming rig. I don't think anyone here is convinced any product in the Apple lineup will ever be that. The purpose is getting enough performance to run games decently without hiccups getting in the way of your fun. And I think it quite likely they'll succeed in that.
What the fine article means, however, is that zombifying is an entirely extraneous step. You can just find a p2p server and subvert all its clients to attack a webserver (strategically directing all traffic to port 80).
From the sketches in the article, the patent is not on putting those two things together on a device (which wouldn't warrant a patent), but rather having them positioned in a particularly clever way, using the display to "pretend" you're seeing the touchpad beneath it (which, provided you believe in patents as a concept, warrants awarding one).
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Here's my take on it. Sex scenes are just fine, as long as they're not completely gratuitous, and are portrayed in a tasteful way.
Considering I just introduced two big loopholes that allow you to call mostly everything "not fine", I'll expand on general guidelines for both concepts:
- By gratuitous I mean the typical porn plot of "guy helps gal in gas station, and they proceed to have scalding sex in the back of his pickup truck". The plot is just there to give (some) context to the fucking. So the rule would be that there is a bigger plot and the sex scenes serve to reinforce that plot, not to show some hankypanky despite it. Even if in the plot, the sex is gratuitous.
- By tasteful, I mean that for a sex scene to work, you don't need to have a closeup of the actual penetration, and similar rules of thumb. Somebody gave the example of Pulp Fiction. It's quite evident that there's a male/male rape scene, but the scene is portrayed well enough that it's shocking (it is meant to be shocking, it's rape), while not being overly graphic. It's a good example of how to portray a rather distasteful idea in an appropriate manner.
Once these rules of thumb are covered, you've basically just removed "porn" from the list of things that are appropriate for more or less unlimited display on public TV. Everything else is fair game. However, this is where the industry should become self-regulatory and exert some moderation. If a film/series might be construed as inappropriate, make sure it's on at a time when parents can be reasonably expected to be around to decide what their children should or should not be exposed to. Make sure that at the beginning of said films/series (and possibly at the end of each commercial break), you make a clear warning that the film might contain certain types of inappropriate material so parents have due forewarning.
I think it might be stretching it a bit, but there's this BBC series called "Silent Witness" that I used to watch on some cable channel, where they put splash screens before particularly gory scenes warning you that the following scene might be a bit too gruesome for more sensitive people. That pretty much allows you to watch the series without any trouble at all, and leave, close your eyes, turn your head, or whatever else around those scenes and come back once they're done.
Neither. Slashdot has just passed the denial stage regarding its readers ever reading TFA.
Copy link location, open a new browser tab/window and paste the link into the address bar. It's all about the referrer (or lack thereof :)
Arguably, as neat as Linux might have been at the time, it would *never* have picked up speed without a solid set of userland tools on top, so there would never have been a set of tools specifically written for it. Sure, people could've used a BSD toolchain rather than the GNU set, but ultimately the Linux kernel was always dependent on somebody else's userland to carve its space in IT.
The key issue, as has been brought up several times in this thread, is that you're not asking the architect to plan a two-story house in the suburbia, no matter how cool or elaborate a house that might be. You're asking the architect to design an arcology. Out of the ordinary requests get out of the ordinary execution times.
I believe he meant that the encryption itself isn't much of a show stopper, compared with the bulk of the work involved (which dovetails nicely with your point about not taking the Wine project 5 minutes to reimplement windows libs)
Ooooh, you have a wireless router in your garage?
Alright, it's obviously flame bait, but I'll bite nonetheless. We're talking about open standards and specifications that anybody can implement software against. We're not talking about open source software, and decidedly not about Stallman or GPLv3. Irrespectively of your opinion on Stallman's attitudes towards software licensing, you have to agree that, for public records, there's no reason NOT to use a document format that's an ISO standard, requires no royalties to implement, and is well documented. Hell, I don't give a damn if they write their documents in MS Office and save it in ODF through a filter. As long as it's ODF (or any other similar standard, but ODF is what we have right now), I know I can read it and communicate in the same standard without necessarily having to own Microsoft Office. And that's what this is all about.
Yeah, it's odd that web can be "compiled" with both tangle and weave, and then generate different stuff. And using pascal is a pain, I'd much rather have it be C. But it's still one of the pieces of software with the least amounts of bugs in the history of computing. And it's thoroughly (you might even say annoyingly) commented.
I meant the code for TeX itself, not stuff written in TeX. I just use LaTex and Lillypond as appropriate, and leave the "proper" TeX for people with the time and inclination to write those packages.
Damn, just read your post, after posting the same. Beat me to it by 20 minutes :(
Can't say from personal experience, but I hear that the TeX source is a truly enlightning experience. Knuth is all for literate programming, you see.
Nowhere did it say that the owners of the cards had *requested* the refunds. If I were in the place of the Red Cross, I'd certainly want to give the money back, if only to make sure that my image remained immaculate.
I'd answer to your post point by point, but really you're making the same point over and over, so I'll simply reply to that instead. The way science works is simple. There's reality (ok, if you want to get philosophical, there *might* not be reality to begin with). Then some guy comes and devises a model that represents a fraction of reality. Then some more guys come, grab that model, consider its consequences, and come up with some experiments aimed at disproving the model. The key word here is "disproving". You can't *ever* prove a model right. Naturally, if a theory does a good job at modeling reality, and repeated and thorough experimentation doesn't disprove it, you consider it to be true, for a somewhat fuzzy value of truth.
Now... Someone comes up with some theory that's at odds with what's considered scientific truth, and, moreover, is described as behaving in a manner that has been proven impossible by experimentation. The knee jerk reaction is obviously to call it crackpot. Unless the "scientist" at hand comes up with some compelling arguments for his statements, the knee jerk reaction will stand. Can't really blame people for that.
Oh, and nobody's really particularly interested in seeing yet another proof of preexisting knowledge, unless the proof is interesting in and of itself, or adds some additional information to the table.
You're thinking thermo electric centrals. He meant stuff like Hoover Dam
I typically drag both too. And you can also drag diagonally, works wonders.
The "Rama" game from Sierra also featured plenty of pattern recognition and logics, and some elementary maths (let's do maths in base-16, people!)
Actually, the reason why overclocking the processor will do squat for a gamer's performance is because the bottleneck is on the graphics card. The day the graphics industry matures enough to be on par with the general purpose processor industry will not mean you won't get anything from overclocking the graphics card. Rather, it'll mean that you'll gain the most performance by overclocking both GPU and CPU (because neither is holding the other back). Of course, the question is "do you really need the extra performance?" -- I seriously doubt that games will hit a cap on the power they can harness from your box anytime soon. There's always higher res textures, more detailed models, more elaborate particle systems, etc to be had, especially if the support for physics cards doesn't really become a trend and nVidia/AMD manage to make the GPGPU thing happen.
It's a double-size not gate.
Your mouse doesn't provide tactile feedback when you move the cursor over a button, indeed. but it does indeed provide some feedback in the form of the 'click' sound that gives mouse clicking its name. Granted, trackpads that support tapping don't provide much in the way of feedback either, and I like them plenty (provided they're big and mounted shallow, like my iBook's).
Ever heard of Godwin's Law?
DirectX is a large set of libraries, with Direct3D being the graphics library in the package, with DirectInput being the input module, etc. Some games (id software games come to mind) use DirectX for a number of things, while still using OpenGL for graphics. The only confusion about the name is in your head, really :)
Regarding performance, it seems to me that even if there *is* a performance hit (and there probably will be), the purpose here is not getting the world's best gaming rig. I don't think anyone here is convinced any product in the Apple lineup will ever be that. The purpose is getting enough performance to run games decently without hiccups getting in the way of your fun. And I think it quite likely they'll succeed in that.
What the fine article means, however, is that zombifying is an entirely extraneous step. You can just find a p2p server and subvert all its clients to attack a webserver (strategically directing all traffic to port 80).
From the sketches in the article, the patent is not on putting those two things together on a device (which wouldn't warrant a patent), but rather having them positioned in a particularly clever way, using the display to "pretend" you're seeing the touchpad beneath it (which, provided you believe in patents as a concept, warrants awarding one).