Slow down and stop offering new technology so that the Open Source guys can keep up at a slower pace?
or
Should they devote resources to a market with less than 3% market penetration and is largely composed of individuals who wouldn't install it simply because of the brand it's associated with?
I don't know how much more helpful Microsoft could be to the Moonlight team short of developing in house. And with the attitude of most Linux users out there combined with their numbers I wouldn't waste very much time trying to make them happy either.
Silverlight is an application largely targeted at the desktop. Its advantages are more interactive and friendly GUIs. If you start with 3% of computers running Linux you can probably shave off a half percentage of that for servers. Then you can probably shave off another % for zealots who won't use it because it's Microsoft. Then you can probably shave off another half percentage for the people who don't want a GUI and are perfectly happy to run everything through bash and CLI. These same people probably haven't installed flash either because good ol' HTML is all they ever wanted. So you're left with like 1% of the market who would use Silverlight on Linux.
If I'm ABC and I want to reach as many viewers as humanely possible and Microsoft drops Firefox, Chrome, Safari and OSX support then suddenly I'm presented with two options: Flash (which you claim works 100% of everywhere) or Silverlight. Which do I pick? Flash of course. There is one less Silverlight customer.
Flash and Silverlight offer an experience which is impossible through OSS. So while open standards has been dicking around for the better part of a decade with HTML4. Flash and Silverlight have offered a superior experience for the customer. This isn't a case of Microsoft and Adobe creating a competing standard. This is a case of Microsoft and Adobe offering something which doesn't exist.
Now I'm sure in 10 years there'll be an open source clone. And we'll all be hearing about how "Silverlight 12 is totally incompatible and how it's ruining the world." But until there is an open alternative to Flash or Silverlight you're just bitching that Microsoft and Adobe are actually creating useful and innovative products.
And for the record Silverlight 1 and large parts of 2 work on linux. Also Silverlight is developed for OSX by Microsoft.
Cost of Living on Land is less than the Cost of Living at Sea which is less than the Cost of Living in polar regions on land which is less than the Cost of living under water which is less than the Cost of Living in Space.
Floating in the ocean is much easier than living in space. And if you float in a temperate climate you don't have to reprocess oxygen. Maintain atmosphere. Ward off radiation etc etc.
Cost of Living on Land Cost of Living at Sea Cost of Living in polar regions on land Cost of living under water Cost of Living in Space.
By the time we exhaust our space on land we'll be socially conditioned to have less children. By the time we exhaust the surface of the ocean, the polar continents and under water we'll probably be software living in the matrix. Once we're software and the size of a smartphone without need for oxygen, food and resistant to radiation then we'll colonize space because it'll no longer be an inhospitable environment. Why create offspring when you can improve yourself and others? Teach the existing software things you've learned. Children are an awkward means of immortality and cultural advancement. If you find someone that is extremely attractive to you and you want to create something that mixes the best of the two of you then just share personality traits with one another.
The secret to ensuring humanity's survival is to become software and human in name only.
. If Silverlight and other proprietary technologies are GAINING prominence, how can we win?
Easy. Just look at Chrome or Firefox: By offering a better product.
OSS advocates need to realize the reason they haven't made headway in areas except for maybe Apache and Databases is because their products are largely inferior.
The reason Flash and Silverlight have taken off is because HTML fundamentally sucks at dynamic applications. The sorts of applications which customers like. As long as proprietary technologies (such as Windows) are better solutions to the customer than their open alternatives they will win. There are plenty of examples of open standards that have taken off. Usually because they're best.
The counter point is where I work. We're all artists. And it used to be that only 2 of us really knew anything about programming. Between the two of us. Even though we sit next to each other-- we still would write redundant code unaware of what the other already had. We don't do 'code reviews' but we often read each other's code to see how they approached something and if they had a better solution.
As it is we accidentally discover the other has written a new library for something that already exists when looking for something unrelated. "Wow you already wrote an XYZ function for... I really wish I knew that yesterday when I spent 2 hours working on that"
So even on a scale of 2 I can see the value in everyone being aware of what's out there. Maybe not a thorough review but certainly an overview of what others have done recently.
All I had in my calculus class was a solar powered scientific calculator that did basic trig functions. I found calculus really easy because there were far less opportunities to get something slightly wrong. You either knew the answer or it was pretty obvious you didn't. It was the first math class I got an A in since I was in 6th grade.
Graphing calcs weren't banned I just wasn't a math major so I didn't feel like dropping a few hundred bucks for one class.
On the final test I borrowed another student's calculator to check my answers. He wasn't doing very well in the class which was sort of rediculous in my mind since I was an art student and he was a computer engineering major.
Well long story short after about 3 minutes of mucking around in the calculator I figured out how to enter in every question on the test verbatim and get the answer with the work (which wasn't necessary in the class. "If you get the answer why do I care how you got it." was the teacher's philosophy. Greatest teacher ever.).
If graphing calcs are allowed in Calculus classes there is absolutely no reason what so ever that any student should get less than 100%. I wish I had known about that before having finished the final. Oh well I was able to double check every question in about 10 minutes. Peace of mind is worth $200.
There is no reason to believe there isn't a space faring culture which comes from a species easily capable of near permanent sleep naturally.
Just because we can't be easily freezedried doesn't mean all species can't easily survive. --- My solution:
Beep. Beeep Beep. Beep Beep Beep. Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep. etc.... Establish a numerical system. Establish a mathematical system. Work your way out from mathematical constructs to nouns and grammar.
But that's assuming they're on par with us. They probably do have fancy multi-generational space ships in which case we can just had them a laptop with wifi. Let them figure it out.
Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form. - Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeal to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and with fine...
Being simply responsible for transmitting pornography is punishable as a crime.
If I was a lawyer and I read that law I would advise my client to at least make token efforts of compliance.
We could actually have more rounds of votes, and eliminate needing just 2 candidates at the beginning of the election
Excellent Idea!! And we could give this process of voting a name to denote its 'first round' qualities... something like 'primaries'. And we could have a really wide variety of positions and viewpoints which we then widdle down to 2.
Now to ensure a diverse set of viewpoints on the ballot these primaries could be broken up into multiple primaries run in parallel. We could call these grouped ideologies "Parties".
I really like this idea! Someone should get on it right away!/Sarcasm
If you ever bothered to actually give a shit about American Politics you might have noticed that we do in fact offer more than 2 choices at the beginning of the election. And that these multiple choices often run the gamut of political ideology. In some ways you might say Gravel was more similar to Ron Paul than they were to people in their own parties especially in viability.
Do you really think there was a large untapped electorate who really wanted to vote for Jon McCain but otherwise would have voted for Dennis Kucinich?
Go participate in primary season if you want more than two choices.
Add onto that and at some point of 'limited government' you're effectively in anarchy.
You "Bought" something. But there is no such thing as personal property. It's an illusion maintained and enforced by the legal system.
If you "buy" a house it becomes "yours" according to US property law. Remove the government from the equation and it's just assemblage of items that you spend most of your day in. If I come along with a 5 guys and some guns it's now my house and that little trinket you bought is now mine too.
In short: If Microsoft wants to employ Zimbabwians they can be my guest. Let me know how that works out for you. I'm sure it'll save you a lot of money.
Hell there is a reason Microsoft is in SEATTLE let alone Kansas. People *want to live and work in Seattle*. There are much much much cheaper places in the US... like say Alabama. But people don't want to live in Alabama. People at Google don't want to live in Nebraska. They want to live in California. Why? Because of the land and the government.
I'll believe Microsoft will leave the US when they at the very least try setting up shop inside the US outside of the West Coast.
Industrial Light and Magic has two large studios. One is at the Presidio (I'm sure that was cheap) and the other is in Singapore (tons of land on a small city/state/island).
Neither of those places are even close to being 'discount' locations. Instead of waterfront San Francisco they could have built out east. But nobody wants to live out east. Instead of Singapore they could have built 10 miles away in Malaysia. But nobody wants to live in Malaysia.
Microsoft etc put their businesses where they can attract the most valuable resources they can: their employees. As long as the best employees want to live and work in the US. Specifically the coast. He isn't going anywhere.
I suggest you read some history books on the Boston Tea Party.
The Boston Tea Party was in response to a TAX DECREASE.
- England was charging a high tarrif on all tea going to the colonies. - The East Indian Tea Company was going bankrupt and threatening to wipe out a huge part of the british economy. (Sound familiar?) - England decided it would impose the East Indian Tea Company as a monopoly on Tea in order to save it. Driving out a bunch of smaller Tea companies which weren't too large to fail. - In order to 'sweaten' the deal for the colonies England decided that they would do two things.
1) Slash the tax rate on Tea.
2) Stop requiring ships to stop in London to pay their corporate taxes before continueing on to the colonies. Instead England would setup an officer in the colonies to collect the tarrif once they enter colonial ports. - Several of these "revolutionairies" owned tea shops which would be put of business. So they inflamed a huge moral outrage over this severely reduced tarrif being collected on colonial soil instead of London (in order to save the colonies money on transportaiton costs) in order to save their own profit centers.
They weren't resisting taxes. They were resisting market consolidation and cutting out of the middle man brokers in order to offer direct to consumer bargain goods at a steep discount.
They were always paying the "Taxation without representation" in the form of foreign tarrifs. We STILL PAY THOSE KINDS OF TAXES on many goods. England just tried to get creative at the time and assess that tax at the point of delivery instead of the point of departure.
But you are right. Americans have been retarded hotheads about taxes since the begining.
While I admire everyone's knee jerk reaction to defend video games via free speech I think this method of defense is inherently idiotic.
If someone came up to me and accused me of murder I wouldn't base my case on freedom of privacy. I would hope my lawyer could simply disprove the actual charges against me.
Fighting these sorts of things largely on free speech seems to imply that that video games are actually responsible for some sort of mayhem but should be protected anyway. They aren't dangerous. They don't pose a public threat and they shouldn't even be charged as such let alone 'allowed' to exist in spite of these accusations.
People need to educate the voting public that the 12 year old next to them on the laughing and bragging about how he shot a rifle through someone's head yesterday and made it explode isn't a deraged lunatic.
Video games out of context sound insane and dangerous. This is largely an educational problem which needs a good PR campaign. It's easier to defend something which people understand and like than it is to fight an abstract constitutional battle about the conflict between freedom and public well being.
I'm a liberal. (Not really a democrat since I don't want my opinions to be automatically determined by a party).
But I get sick and tired of this sort of ignorant bullshit.
We don't have a true two party system. We have a 30+ party system that has a run off to two candidates. Ron Paul tried running as a Republican. He failed. Why? Because there aren't enough people who agree with him for him to win! No conspiracy. No monopoly of ideas on the two parties... he's just a loser that not very many people like.
The primary system is an opportunity for anybody to vote between an almost bewildering array of choices. Look at Michael Steele and the Republican party. What does the republican party believe in? Nothing. Look at the democratic party what do they believe in? Nothing. They are simply a fundraising and loose collections of individuals. Ideologically speaking they are composed of their members and most importantly of their leadership. If communists want to run they could run as a Republican. Or they could run as a Democrat. There is nothing to intrinsically define a party except whether or not they can garner enough votes.
Historically there have been numerous instances where the definition of Democrat and Republican have completely flipped.
The differences between Obama and Dennis Kucinich are about as extreme as Obama and McCain. The differences between McCain and Ron Paul were about as much as Obama and McCain.
There is no Duopoly unless you are completely uninvolved in primary politics. And if you are dissatisfied with your choices then you have nobody but yourself to blame for not getting involved and working to get your candidate to the forefront.
Representation irregardless of personal feels to me is a principle. IANAL but as far as I'm concerned my lawyer isn't on any sort mission he's out to protect me and my interests just as passionately as I would but with significantly more legal knowledge.
Criminal defense lawyers are some of the most important defenders of civil liberties in the world. Sure sometimes murderers get off on some technicality. But that technicality is usually a case where the police infringed the dependent's constitutional law.
Guns don't keep the government from infringing our rights. Lawyers do.
My TV has built in news and weather. I just push a button and it pops up the 5 day forecast. My HD-DVD player will download firmware upgrades. My Blu-Ray Player will download additional behind the scenes stuff. My Xbox downloads and streams videos etc. My DVR uses ethernet to download program guides and purchase Pay-Per-View.
All of that right now has to go through a seperate switch which sits on top of my Home Theater stack. If I had Ethernet over HDMI I would plug one ethernet cable from my wall outlet into my receiver. I would plug one HDMI cable from every device into my receiver and bam! I'm done!
HDMI has already been a godsent for cabling compared to component and composite cabling (4-5 cables!). HDMI with ethernet would take the number of cables from Component + RCA Stereo + Ethernet down to 1.
If the only potential uses you see are DRM then you're completely missing the point. HDCP is already as locked down as you could possibly ever dream of. They have no need for more DRM in the protocol.
I bought a 52" 1080p LCD *AS* my Computer Monitor.
Computer DVI -> HDMI.
Works great. I have a little 19" LCD off to the side that isn't even plugged in. Just in case.
For BluRay and HD-DVD I have a combo driver which cost $90 in my computer. Everything is run through a single harmony remote and wireless keyboard/mouse.
I also have a laptop in case I want to browse the web while watching TV. Just about the perfect setup if you ask me. Perhaps not for work when I want dual displays but more than adequate for all home computer activities.
My mistake. They are in fact releasing 5 + mini plug:
o Standard HDMI Cable - supports data rates up to 1080i/60; o High Speed HDMI Cable - supports data rates beyond 1080p, including Deep Color and all 3D formats of the new 1.4 specification; o Standard HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity; o High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity; o Automotive HDMI Cable - allows the connection of external HDMI-enabled devices to an in-vehicle HDMI device.
But. Standard HDMI cable == HDMI 1.1 cable and I don't even see those for sale anywhere. I assume it's pin compatible. So really the only new cables that people will encounter are:
1.4 Highspeed (1080p -> 4k, 3D, Deep color etc) 1.4 Highspeed + Ethernet.
Automotive will be built into your car hidden away from view. So unless you work at crutchfield you can ignore it.
Mini will be the same cables just with a differently sized plug.
Slashdot Mirror
So what should they do?
Slow down and stop offering new technology so that the Open Source guys can keep up at a slower pace?
or
Should they devote resources to a market with less than 3% market penetration and is largely composed of individuals who wouldn't install it simply because of the brand it's associated with?
I don't know how much more helpful Microsoft could be to the Moonlight team short of developing in house. And with the attitude of most Linux users out there combined with their numbers I wouldn't waste very much time trying to make them happy either.
Silverlight is an application largely targeted at the desktop. Its advantages are more interactive and friendly GUIs. If you start with 3% of computers running Linux you can probably shave off a half percentage of that for servers. Then you can probably shave off another % for zealots who won't use it because it's Microsoft. Then you can probably shave off another half percentage for the people who don't want a GUI and are perfectly happy to run everything through bash and CLI. These same people probably haven't installed flash either because good ol' HTML is all they ever wanted. So you're left with like 1% of the market who would use Silverlight on Linux.
Your rant is rediculous.
If I'm ABC and I want to reach as many viewers as humanely possible and Microsoft drops Firefox, Chrome, Safari and OSX support then suddenly I'm presented with two options: Flash (which you claim works 100% of everywhere) or Silverlight. Which do I pick? Flash of course. There is one less Silverlight customer.
Flash and Silverlight offer an experience which is impossible through OSS. So while open standards has been dicking around for the better part of a decade with HTML4. Flash and Silverlight have offered a superior experience for the customer. This isn't a case of Microsoft and Adobe creating a competing standard. This is a case of Microsoft and Adobe offering something which doesn't exist.
Now I'm sure in 10 years there'll be an open source clone. And we'll all be hearing about how "Silverlight 12 is totally incompatible and how it's ruining the world." But until there is an open alternative to Flash or Silverlight you're just bitching that Microsoft and Adobe are actually creating useful and innovative products.
And for the record Silverlight 1 and large parts of 2 work on linux. Also Silverlight is developed for OSX by Microsoft.
Oops Slashdot ate my less than signs.
Cost of Living on Land is less than the Cost of Living at Sea which is less than the Cost of Living in polar regions on land which is less than the Cost of living under water which is less than the Cost of Living in Space.
Floating in the ocean is much easier than living in space. And if you float in a temperate climate you don't have to reprocess oxygen. Maintain atmosphere. Ward off radiation etc etc.
Cost of Living on Land Cost of Living at Sea Cost of Living in polar regions on land Cost of living under water Cost of Living in Space.
By the time we exhaust our space on land we'll be socially conditioned to have less children. By the time we exhaust the surface of the ocean, the polar continents and under water we'll probably be software living in the matrix. Once we're software and the size of a smartphone without need for oxygen, food and resistant to radiation then we'll colonize space because it'll no longer be an inhospitable environment. Why create offspring when you can improve yourself and others? Teach the existing software things you've learned. Children are an awkward means of immortality and cultural advancement. If you find someone that is extremely attractive to you and you want to create something that mixes the best of the two of you then just share personality traits with one another.
The secret to ensuring humanity's survival is to become software and human in name only.
. If Silverlight and other proprietary technologies are GAINING prominence, how can we win?
Easy. Just look at Chrome or Firefox: By offering a better product.
OSS advocates need to realize the reason they haven't made headway in areas except for maybe Apache and Databases is because their products are largely inferior.
The reason Flash and Silverlight have taken off is because HTML fundamentally sucks at dynamic applications. The sorts of applications which customers like. As long as proprietary technologies (such as Windows) are better solutions to the customer than their open alternatives they will win. There are plenty of examples of open standards that have taken off. Usually because they're best.
The counter point is where I work. We're all artists. And it used to be that only 2 of us really knew anything about programming. Between the two of us. Even though we sit next to each other-- we still would write redundant code unaware of what the other already had. We don't do 'code reviews' but we often read each other's code to see how they approached something and if they had a better solution.
As it is we accidentally discover the other has written a new library for something that already exists when looking for something unrelated. "Wow you already wrote an XYZ function for ... I really wish I knew that yesterday when I spent 2 hours working on that"
So even on a scale of 2 I can see the value in everyone being aware of what's out there. Maybe not a thorough review but certainly an overview of what others have done recently.
..as I recall, the campus newspaper charged by the line for classified ads
The good news for his bank account was that all of his projects were written in perl!
All I had in my calculus class was a solar powered scientific calculator that did basic trig functions. I found calculus really easy because there were far less opportunities to get something slightly wrong. You either knew the answer or it was pretty obvious you didn't. It was the first math class I got an A in since I was in 6th grade.
Graphing calcs weren't banned I just wasn't a math major so I didn't feel like dropping a few hundred bucks for one class.
On the final test I borrowed another student's calculator to check my answers. He wasn't doing very well in the class which was sort of rediculous in my mind since I was an art student and he was a computer engineering major.
Well long story short after about 3 minutes of mucking around in the calculator I figured out how to enter in every question on the test verbatim and get the answer with the work (which wasn't necessary in the class. "If you get the answer why do I care how you got it." was the teacher's philosophy. Greatest teacher ever.).
If graphing calcs are allowed in Calculus classes there is absolutely no reason what so ever that any student should get less than 100%. I wish I had known about that before having finished the final. Oh well I was able to double check every question in about 10 minutes. Peace of mind is worth $200.
But... but... but.... Airbus is owned by pinko commie fascists and is evil!
Long live Capitalism!
WE need a multi-generational ship. WE need food.
There is no reason to believe there isn't a space faring culture which comes from a species easily capable of near permanent sleep naturally.
Just because we can't be easily freezedried doesn't mean all species can't easily survive.
---
My solution:
Beep. Beeep Beep. Beep Beep Beep. Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep. etc.... Establish a numerical system. Establish a mathematical system. Work your way out from mathematical constructs to nouns and grammar.
But that's assuming they're on par with us. They probably do have fancy multi-generational space ships in which case we can just had them a laptop with wifi. Let them figure it out.
Google hasnt been sued yet.....
Yet. They have been in the US.
The Indian law is far more general than US law.
Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form. - Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeal to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and with fine...
Being simply responsible for transmitting pornography is punishable as a crime.
If I was a lawyer and I read that law I would advise my client to at least make token efforts of compliance.
Well the facility only needs to run for a few milliseconds so reliability isn't terribly important.
We could actually have more rounds of votes, and eliminate needing just 2 candidates at the beginning of the election
Excellent Idea!! And we could give this process of voting a name to denote its 'first round' qualities... something like 'primaries'. And we could have a really wide variety of positions and viewpoints which we then widdle down to 2.
Now to ensure a diverse set of viewpoints on the ballot these primaries could be broken up into multiple primaries run in parallel. We could call these grouped ideologies "Parties".
I really like this idea! Someone should get on it right away! /Sarcasm
If you ever bothered to actually give a shit about American Politics you might have noticed that we do in fact offer more than 2 choices at the beginning of the election. And that these multiple choices often run the gamut of political ideology. In some ways you might say Gravel was more similar to Ron Paul than they were to people in their own parties especially in viability.
Do you really think there was a large untapped electorate who really wanted to vote for Jon McCain but otherwise would have voted for Dennis Kucinich?
Go participate in primary season if you want more than two choices.
Helo sir! I see your post and hope u comprehend that I gro up in NY and agree with OP. Stop hating on my felo nu yorkers. China Rules!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_India
Pornography is illegal in India. I assume the reason Microsoft bans the word "Sex" is ensure it is not sued as a pornography distributor.
Add onto that and at some point of 'limited government' you're effectively in anarchy.
You "Bought" something. But there is no such thing as personal property. It's an illusion maintained and enforced by the legal system.
If you "buy" a house it becomes "yours" according to US property law. Remove the government from the equation and it's just assemblage of items that you spend most of your day in. If I come along with a 5 guys and some guns it's now my house and that little trinket you bought is now mine too.
In short: If Microsoft wants to employ Zimbabwians they can be my guest. Let me know how that works out for you. I'm sure it'll save you a lot of money.
Hell there is a reason Microsoft is in SEATTLE let alone Kansas. People *want to live and work in Seattle*. There are much much much cheaper places in the US... like say Alabama. But people don't want to live in Alabama. People at Google don't want to live in Nebraska. They want to live in California. Why? Because of the land and the government.
I'll believe Microsoft will leave the US when they at the very least try setting up shop inside the US outside of the West Coast.
Industrial Light and Magic has two large studios. One is at the Presidio (I'm sure that was cheap) and the other is in Singapore (tons of land on a small city/state/island).
Neither of those places are even close to being 'discount' locations. Instead of waterfront San Francisco they could have built out east. But nobody wants to live out east. Instead of Singapore they could have built 10 miles away in Malaysia. But nobody wants to live in Malaysia.
Microsoft etc put their businesses where they can attract the most valuable resources they can: their employees. As long as the best employees want to live and work in the US. Specifically the coast. He isn't going anywhere.
I suggest you read some history books on the Boston Tea Party.
The Boston Tea Party was in response to a TAX DECREASE.
- England was charging a high tarrif on all tea going to the colonies.
- The East Indian Tea Company was going bankrupt and threatening to wipe out a huge part of the british economy. (Sound familiar?)
- England decided it would impose the East Indian Tea Company as a monopoly on Tea in order to save it. Driving out a bunch of smaller Tea companies which weren't too large to fail.
- In order to 'sweaten' the deal for the colonies England decided that they would do two things.
1) Slash the tax rate on Tea.
2) Stop requiring ships to stop in London to pay their corporate taxes before continueing on to the colonies. Instead England would setup an officer in the colonies to collect the tarrif once they enter colonial ports.
- Several of these "revolutionairies" owned tea shops which would be put of business. So they inflamed a huge moral outrage over this severely reduced tarrif being collected on colonial soil instead of London (in order to save the colonies money on transportaiton costs) in order to save their own profit centers.
They weren't resisting taxes. They were resisting market consolidation and cutting out of the middle man brokers in order to offer direct to consumer bargain goods at a steep discount.
They were always paying the "Taxation without representation" in the form of foreign tarrifs. We STILL PAY THOSE KINDS OF TAXES on many goods. England just tried to get creative at the time and assess that tax at the point of delivery instead of the point of departure.
But you are right. Americans have been retarded hotheads about taxes since the begining.
While I admire everyone's knee jerk reaction to defend video games via free speech I think this method of defense is inherently idiotic.
If someone came up to me and accused me of murder I wouldn't base my case on freedom of privacy. I would hope my lawyer could simply disprove the actual charges against me.
Fighting these sorts of things largely on free speech seems to imply that that video games are actually responsible for some sort of mayhem but should be protected anyway. They aren't dangerous. They don't pose a public threat and they shouldn't even be charged as such let alone 'allowed' to exist in spite of these accusations.
People need to educate the voting public that the 12 year old next to them on the laughing and bragging about how he shot a rifle through someone's head yesterday and made it explode isn't a deraged lunatic.
Video games out of context sound insane and dangerous. This is largely an educational problem which needs a good PR campaign. It's easier to defend something which people understand and like than it is to fight an abstract constitutional battle about the conflict between freedom and public well being.
It was worse in Total Annihilation.
I watched the AI once to see how it adjusted difficulty: speed.
The fast AI could build units faster, move faster and collect more resources per second. It simply cheated.
The camera has depth perception. So it happily will ignore anything behind you. Unless it's in your personal bubble.
I'm a liberal. (Not really a democrat since I don't want my opinions to be automatically determined by a party).
But I get sick and tired of this sort of ignorant bullshit.
We don't have a true two party system. We have a 30+ party system that has a run off to two candidates. Ron Paul tried running as a Republican. He failed. Why? Because there aren't enough people who agree with him for him to win! No conspiracy. No monopoly of ideas on the two parties... he's just a loser that not very many people like.
The primary system is an opportunity for anybody to vote between an almost bewildering array of choices. Look at Michael Steele and the Republican party. What does the republican party believe in? Nothing. Look at the democratic party what do they believe in? Nothing. They are simply a fundraising and loose collections of individuals. Ideologically speaking they are composed of their members and most importantly of their leadership. If communists want to run they could run as a Republican. Or they could run as a Democrat. There is nothing to intrinsically define a party except whether or not they can garner enough votes.
Historically there have been numerous instances where the definition of Democrat and Republican have completely flipped.
The differences between Obama and Dennis Kucinich are about as extreme as Obama and McCain. The differences between McCain and Ron Paul were about as much as Obama and McCain.
There is no Duopoly unless you are completely uninvolved in primary politics. And if you are dissatisfied with your choices then you have nobody but yourself to blame for not getting involved and working to get your candidate to the forefront.
I think you have a twisted view of "principles".
Representation irregardless of personal feels to me is a principle. IANAL but as far as I'm concerned my lawyer isn't on any sort mission he's out to protect me and my interests just as passionately as I would but with significantly more legal knowledge.
Criminal defense lawyers are some of the most important defenders of civil liberties in the world. Sure sometimes murderers get off on some technicality. But that technicality is usually a case where the police infringed the dependent's constitutional law.
Guns don't keep the government from infringing our rights. Lawyers do.
My TV has built in news and weather. I just push a button and it pops up the 5 day forecast.
My HD-DVD player will download firmware upgrades.
My Blu-Ray Player will download additional behind the scenes stuff.
My Xbox downloads and streams videos etc.
My DVR uses ethernet to download program guides and purchase Pay-Per-View.
All of that right now has to go through a seperate switch which sits on top of my Home Theater stack. If I had Ethernet over HDMI I would plug one ethernet cable from my wall outlet into my receiver. I would plug one HDMI cable from every device into my receiver and bam! I'm done!
HDMI has already been a godsent for cabling compared to component and composite cabling (4-5 cables!). HDMI with ethernet would take the number of cables from Component + RCA Stereo + Ethernet down to 1.
If the only potential uses you see are DRM then you're completely missing the point. HDCP is already as locked down as you could possibly ever dream of. They have no need for more DRM in the protocol.
I bought a 52" 1080p LCD *AS* my Computer Monitor.
Computer DVI -> HDMI.
Works great. I have a little 19" LCD off to the side that isn't even plugged in. Just in case.
For BluRay and HD-DVD I have a combo driver which cost $90 in my computer. Everything is run through a single harmony remote and wireless keyboard/mouse.
I also have a laptop in case I want to browse the web while watching TV. Just about the perfect setup if you ask me. Perhaps not for work when I want dual displays but more than adequate for all home computer activities.
My mistake. They are in fact releasing 5 + mini plug:
o Standard HDMI Cable - supports data rates up to 1080i/60;
o High Speed HDMI Cable - supports data rates beyond 1080p, including Deep Color and all 3D formats of the new 1.4 specification;
o Standard HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
o High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
o Automotive HDMI Cable - allows the connection of external HDMI-enabled devices to an in-vehicle HDMI device.
But. Standard HDMI cable == HDMI 1.1 cable and I don't even see those for sale anywhere. I assume it's pin compatible. So really the only new cables that people will encounter are:
1.4 Highspeed (1080p -> 4k, 3D, Deep color etc)
1.4 Highspeed + Ethernet.
Automotive will be built into your car hidden away from view. So unless you work at crutchfield you can ignore it.
Mini will be the same cables just with a differently sized plug.