(Sorry, I know you mean 'queue,' but I work in a call center as well (luckily not AOL), and it just irritates the crap out of me when people send me emails/instant messages/whatever that contain mention of "the que," or (even worse) "the Q" (the Q?).)
"If Apple can require an iPod for songs via iTunes, then music, book and film companies might restrict their products to specific players too, [Norwegian consumer ombudsman Bjorn Erik Thon] said."
That's such a load of crap. He may have a point if Apple were the originators of the content itself, but that's not the case. Apple is just one of many retail salepoints for songs that are produced elsewhere. If he doesn't like Apple's particular way of selling the songs, he has every right to purchase his music somewhere else (including buying the physical CD and ripping the music into whatever DRM-free format he would like... MP3, for example, which would still play on that iPod he apparently was forced to buy).
A more accurate way to argue the point he's making is to say that it would allow retailers to restrict the products they sell to specific players. For example, Barnes & Noble might start selling only ebooks in a proprietary.bn format that can only be played on their bnReader device. That won't stop you from swinging by Borders and picking up the good ol' dead-tree version, though.
Where is he claiming that he wrote it? Slashdot puts "[Submitter] writes [Blurb]" in its standard form. There's no option for "[Submitter] quotes [3rd party]: [Blurb]."
He's claiming that he wrote it by omission of the credit to the original author. He very well could have put in his own submission "From Engadget: [...]" or something equally simple to indicate that these are not his words. As you said, Slashdot's standard form is to attribute the text of your submission to you, so since Slashdot can't change (as much as perhaps it should), the onus is on the submitter to make sure that credit is given where it's due.
If he was actually stealing credit for the story, then why did he put a link right back to where he got it from? The intent was obviously to show the original story. I mean it's not like real thieves act like the Riddler and deliberately plant blatant clues to their crimes in real life.
He probably didn't do it on purpose, but he still did it. By not referencing the fact that he copied and pasted the text, he plagiarised. End of story. Now I realize this is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, and I'm not saying that he should be sued or anything along those lines (that's ridiculous, it's a freaking post on Slashdot for God's sake), but I feel that he should be made aware that the way he submitted it was improper.
He linked the original article as you pointed out. What more do you want, a full bibliography at the end of the article? This is Slashdot, not a thesis paper.
I'd like the submitter to acknowledge that he did not write that text himself. A full bibliography would be excessive, obviously... as you pointed out, this isn't a thesis paper. But how about this: "Juha-Matti Laurio quotes Engadget: 'Not eight days after [...]'"? Sure, the submitter still plagiarised, but a simple fix from the editors would clear the whole thing up, and make it acceptable.
Using a link as citation is good enough.
The link to the story he ripped off is NOT acceptable when the submitter is claiming that he wrote that summary when he quite obviously didn't.
that's a lot of text to just say "Whah! My story got rejected because someone else submitted the same thing before me."
Or it's not a way to say that at all, seeing as how I didn't attempt to submit the story. My problem with this is twofold. First, this is plagiarism. This is someone representing someone else's words as their own. Yes, they linked the blog post they stole it from, but that just makes the plagiarism easier to spot. They did NOT say that they were quoting the original blogger, they said that they wrote these words themselves ("Juha-Matti Laurio writes [my emphasis] 'Not eight days after [...]'"). It's a small thing, yes, but as a writer myself (sort of:) it bugs me to see this sort of thing happen. The other problem is that this story was posted two days ago on Engadget... the submitter had two days to put that into his own words (and clean up the grammar on the title) and he couldn't be bothered to do it. That's just sad.
He didn't. Or at least, if he did, the "editors" stripped out the citation. Linking the story you ripped off is not the same as saying "someone else wrote these words, and I'm passing them along to you." The way it's presented, Slashdot is saying those words were written by Juha-Matti Laurio ("Juha-Matti Laurio writes 'Not eight days after [...]'"), when in fact they were written by someone else. A simple "Juha-Matti Laurio quotes from Engadget: 'Not eight days after [...]'" would have been sufficient. As is, though, it's plagiarism, no matter how small or insignificant it may be in the grand scheme of things.
From the submission: Juha-Matti Laurio writes "Not eight days after Apple's new New York flagship store was unveiled, Stevie Job's fantastical glass elevator began acting a bit wonky, first opening and shutting its doors, then finally sealing in its passengers on the upper level. Apple store employees worked their hardest to release the bunch, but eventually the NYPD had to be called; the elevator's hydraulic system had to be drained. Close-up picture included to the source story as well."
From the Engadget article linked in the submission: Well, that was fast. Not eight days after Apple's new flagship store was unveiled, Stevie J.'s fantastical glass elevator began acting a bit wonky, first opening and shutting its doors, then finally sealing in its passengers on the upper level. Apple store employees worked their hardest to release the bunch, but eventually the NYPD had to be called; the elevator's hydraulic system had to be drained, and the confined group was let out in the store's bowels (i.e. lower level).
They even ripped off the nonsensical title of the article itself!
Slashdot title: Apple: Jobs' Glass Elevator Locks in Group Customers
Engadget title: Jobs' glass elevator locks in group customers.
Shouldn't there be an 'of' in there? Maybe an 'a'? I'm thinking "Jobs' glass elevator locks in a group of customers." But the submitter couldn't even be bothered to add three little letters to make it a read more smoothly.
Slashdot submitter: Juha-Matti Laurio.
Engadget blogger: Ryan Block.
Removing a couple phrases and tacking one sentence of your own onto the end of the submission does NOT make it your own original work. If you're going to rip off your source word-for-word, at least have the courtesy to cite them instead of representing their work as your own.
the lack of saves is a drag though. perhaps i'm missing something, but it seems that you have to win a castle or pay to unlock a path in order to save. when i play, i actually avoid unlocking because the option to save is more valuable than the house items.
Nope, you're not missing anything... in fact, you hit the nail right on the head. You do, however, get the option to save at any time once you beat World 8. You might want to just rush through to the end, beat World 8, then go back to get all the Star Coins, etc.
His point is that you stated that you "could care less," implying there is room below the level at which you care. In other words, you DO care. The phrase you were looking for is "I couldn't care less."
Anyway, I don't have an answer to your other question, so I'll settle for just having cleared up a bit of miscommunication;)
I want a GBA player for my GC so I can play more of these - too bad DS games need the stylus!
I assume you're lamenting the fact that no (current) consoles can have a DS equivalent of the GameBoy Player with this comment. I was thinking about the same thing the other day, and I realized that the Wii would be capable of playing DS games. Dig it: take the Wiimote with nunchaku controller... you've got the analog stick on the nunchaku to replace the DS's D-pad, and the Z and C buttons (I believe that's what they're calling the "shoulder"-ish buttons on the nunchaku), either one of which could be used to replicate the DS's L shoulder button. Then on the Wiimote itself, you've got the B button (the trigger) to replicate the DS's R shoulder button, the + and - buttons (or whatever they're gonna end up labelled as... the ones to either side of the "Home" button) to take over Select and Start. You can use the Wiimote's D-pad to be the four main face buttons from the DS (A, B, X, Y). And finally, you use the Wiimote's pointing capabilities to replace the stylus (using the A button on the Wiimote to register a "touch").
With the two screens stacked atop one another on your TV (leaving black bars to either side, of course, but it's a necessary evil), and a "cursor" on the bottom screen to indicate where your Wiimote-cum-stylus is poised to touch... Hell, I'd say it's even better than the DS itself. The two screens would be seamless, helping out games where the two screens are representing a contiguous stretch of game-world that on the actual DS is broken up by the necessary physical separation of the screens. Plus, you'd have all of your controls on the "stylus" itself... no more having to use your finger on the screen for the games that use the physical controls 99% of the time but have an occasional need for the touchscreen.
'Course, now I'm all excited for this and it'll probably never happen.
Now if only they released a new Bomber, Man game (err... Bomberman).
Ask, and ye shall receive. Sort of. Not really a classic Bomberman-style game, but instead sounds like more of a WarioWare-style game starring Bomberman. Who knows, though? Maybe they'll have some classic-style gameplay in there with the minigames mentioned in the link as just supplement.
Tell that to N64-era Nintendo. They were the brand to beat in video games at the time, and Sony (who, of course, was a complete no-name video-game-wise) knocked 'em off their throne. It's not unheard of for a strong brand to lose ground very quickly in this industry. Nintendo learned the hard way that you have to have more than just a strong brand to stay on top, and it's a very real possibility that Sony may learn the same lesson in the near future.
Now we'll get to play such wonderful games as "Mario Wii."
This is bad on Nintendo. "Revolution" fit perfectly... it fit their plan for the console, it sounded cool, it was just right. I'm really surprised (and, obviously, disappointed) with the name change. I was hoping they'd follow the precedent they set with the DS and keep the development name intact since it worked so well. Anyway, I suppose we'll all get used to it, but I don't think anyone's going to like it as well as "Revolution."
Not only would the rest of us be much less inconvenienced
Just out of curiosity... how in the world are you, as a (presumably) non-handicapped individual inconvenienced by public areas being made wheelchair-accessible? Nobody is forcing you to make your own home and private property wheelchair accessible, so that's not it. Maybe you're referring to handicap parking spaces, because you NEED to get as close a parking space as you possibly can get. That's not really gonna do it, either, as even with the robotic legs in the article, handicap parking would still be there; regardless of their means of locomotion, the handicapped will still be given those parking spots. I'm wracking my brain here to come up with something that makes sense of your comment, but I'm totally drawing a blank. Care to enlighten?
they aren't a real gnu/linux distribution because their business model and principles don't fit in with ours.
And George W. Bush isn't a real American because his principles don't fit with mine.
Just because you disagree with their principles/practices, that doesn't change the fact that Lindows does distribute a form of GNU/Linux. (Just as, in my above example, my disagreement with Bush's principles doesn't mean that he was born outside of the US... You can't change the intrinsic properties of something just because you don't like it) It's all built on a Linux kernel, and it includes GNU utilities. If that's not the definition of a GNU/Linux distribution, I don't know what is.
I haven't ever really understood what the RIAA hopes to achieve from all their lawsuits and extortion rackets [...]
It seems pretty straightforward. This (suing folks) is the most profitable business they can be in. Based on that link, there have been an estimated 18,337 people who have had a suit filed against them by the RIAA. With a large number of these cases being settled for between $3000-$6000 (thus assuming an average settlement of around $4500), if we assume an average of around $12.50 per CD, each person settling is paying the RIAA enough to buy (roughly) 360 CDs. That's far more than the average consumer would generally purchase, probably throughout their lifetime.
Plus, I imagine it's probably cheaper to hire a two-bit lawyer to sling threats around than it is to record/market albums.
I wrote up an idea similar to this on my blog a while back (substituting Apple for Google), when the RIAA was threatening Apple about raising the prices of the downloads. Pardon me for the blatant pimpage, but it sounds like my rant there might bear some interest for you:)
Terrorists strike only military / government / industrial targets. Bombing civilians and civilian populations is solely the domain of state governments.
Because the WTC was OBVIOUSLY military/government/industrial. Oh yes. You'll probably try to say that you consider it "industrial," but that's not technically correct. A better way to categorize the companies located there would be "commercial." You see, "industrial" would refer to companies that provide infrastructure (Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, etc.) for the military and the government. However, from what I understand, the World Trade Center housed mostly financial institutions that in and of themselves were not causing great harm to the world at large, and have no real link to the government or military. Terrorists DO target civilians. They do it to cause terror (funny how that works, eh?).
Bombing some stupid football game would only turn public opinion against them, which is not tactical nor strategic.
So bombing military/government/industrial targets would turn public opinion their way? Hell, from what I've seen in other comments here, bombing a football game would turn (geek) public opinion towards them. That's neither here nor there, however. As I mentioned above, terrorists work by inciting terror. What do you think would happen if the millions of people worldwide who were watching this "stupid football game" suddenly saw the thousands of people in the stadium get blown sky high? I'm thinking there'd be more than a few terrorized souls out there... Sound like something that terrorists would like? If it doesn't, you're not paying attention.
Flying a plane into the Pentagon, now that is something else entirely. That's a bonafide military target with a power they are formally at war with.
Being formally at war would require them to be formally recognized as a nation/state. This is not the case. We are not "formally" at war until Osama declares himself the Grand High Poobah of Terrorstan in Exile and the U.S. acknowledges Terrorstan as a legitimate nation. Since the chances of this happening are nigh unto zero, we cannot claim that we are "formally at war." As author Gore Vidal put it (and I'm paraphrasing here, as I'm quoting from memory off of a comment made on the History Channel's recent special on Abraham Lincoln): "The war on terror is a metaphor. It's like saying you're waging a war on dandruff."
Also (and more importantly), note that we were not at war (formally or otherwise) at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
For one, no football team has every invaded and bombed or exploited their country and killed their women and children and friends and family.
So that's why they attacked us? Because we invaded them, bombed them, etc? It's funny, but I don't recall that happening until after 9/11. Yes, I'll grant you that no football team has done any of that and our military/government has. I'm not defending the actions taken on our behalf, but the fact that the football teams in question are innocent has no bearing on whether or not the game gets attacked. The fact that thousands upon thousands of Americans are all gathered in one spot is key. And on top of that, millions more people are focused directly on that one spot. I'm sure the janitors in the WTC never invaded/bombed/exploited the terrorists, either, but the terrorists killed them right alongside everyone else. Think about it.
The superbowl is less about football and more about statistics and gambling anyway. In fact, I'd say its just about all about statistics and gambling now.
WTF? (Score: -1, Offtopic)
Terroists want to strike at the centeres of hated oppressors, spiritual corrupters, exploiters, and criminal organizations. While I'm sure the Superbowl powers that pull the strings behind
I'm right there with you on it... Inverted Y-axis is the only way to go with FPS games, but normal pointing should stay as-is.
I've found that it really comes down to the distinction of moving a single point on a fixed plane (normal pointing) versus moving the entire plane (FPS). When you're mousing normally, you're moving a single point within a fixed plane, but when you're playing a FPS, the single point (crosshair) is fixed, and it's the plane (your view) that you're altering. I'm not entirely certain of why, but it's always just been far more intuitive to me to invert the Y-axis when manipulating the entire viewing plane. This is especially noticeable in games that include turrets of some sort (I'm racking my brain for examples, and I'm coming up empty...) where the view stays static, but in aiming the turret the crosshair moves around the screen... Anything along those lines will trip me up for a good long while.
Nettwerk: By standing up to the RIAA like this, we're sticking it to The Man! Generic Lackey: But, you are The Man. So does this mean you're sticking it to yourself? Nettwerk:... Maybe.
Slashdot Mirror
(Sorry, I know you mean 'queue,' but I work in a call center as well (luckily not AOL), and it just irritates the crap out of me when people send me emails/instant messages/whatever that contain mention of "the que," or (even worse) "the Q" (the Q?).)
Why not just throw one of these into the standard kit, and let the troops do it themselves whenever they see fit?
A more accurate way to argue the point he's making is to say that it would allow retailers to restrict the products they sell to specific players. For example, Barnes & Noble might start selling only ebooks in a proprietary
From the bottom of every page of Engadget: "All contents copyright © 2006, Weblogs, Inc."
The link to the story he ripped off is NOT acceptable when the submitter is claiming that he wrote that summary when he quite obviously didn't.
From the submission: Juha-Matti Laurio writes "Not eight days after Apple's new New York flagship store was unveiled, Stevie Job's fantastical glass elevator began acting a bit wonky, first opening and shutting its doors, then finally sealing in its passengers on the upper level. Apple store employees worked their hardest to release the bunch, but eventually the NYPD had to be called; the elevator's hydraulic system had to be drained. Close-up picture included to the source story as well."
From the Engadget article linked in the submission: Well, that was fast. Not eight days after Apple's new flagship store was unveiled, Stevie J.'s fantastical glass elevator began acting a bit wonky, first opening and shutting its doors, then finally sealing in its passengers on the upper level. Apple store employees worked their hardest to release the bunch, but eventually the NYPD had to be called; the elevator's hydraulic system had to be drained, and the confined group was let out in the store's bowels (i.e. lower level).
They even ripped off the nonsensical title of the article itself!
Slashdot title: Apple: Jobs' Glass Elevator Locks in Group Customers
Engadget title: Jobs' glass elevator locks in group customers.
Shouldn't there be an 'of' in there? Maybe an 'a'? I'm thinking "Jobs' glass elevator locks in a group of customers." But the submitter couldn't even be bothered to add three little letters to make it a read more smoothly.
Slashdot submitter: Juha-Matti Laurio.
Engadget blogger: Ryan Block.
Removing a couple phrases and tacking one sentence of your own onto the end of the submission does NOT make it your own original work. If you're going to rip off your source word-for-word, at least have the courtesy to cite them instead of representing their work as your own.
From the submission: ThPhox writes "A student in the Plainfield School District in New Jersey [...]"
ThPhox apparently didn't bother to read the article and notice that it's Plainfield, Illinois, not New Jersey.
His point is that you stated that you "could care less," implying there is room below the level at which you care. In other words, you DO care. The phrase you were looking for is "I couldn't care less."
;)
Anyway, I don't have an answer to your other question, so I'll settle for just having cleared up a bit of miscommunication
With the two screens stacked atop one another on your TV (leaving black bars to either side, of course, but it's a necessary evil), and a "cursor" on the bottom screen to indicate where your Wiimote-cum-stylus is poised to touch... Hell, I'd say it's even better than the DS itself. The two screens would be seamless, helping out games where the two screens are representing a contiguous stretch of game-world that on the actual DS is broken up by the necessary physical separation of the screens. Plus, you'd have all of your controls on the "stylus" itself... no more having to use your finger on the screen for the games that use the physical controls 99% of the time but have an occasional need for the touchscreen.
'Course, now I'm all excited for this and it'll probably never happen.
that a little Wii came out.
Now we'll get to play such wonderful games as "Mario Wii."
This is bad on Nintendo. "Revolution" fit perfectly... it fit their plan for the console, it sounded cool, it was just right. I'm really surprised (and, obviously, disappointed) with the name change. I was hoping they'd follow the precedent they set with the DS and keep the development name intact since it worked so well. Anyway, I suppose we'll all get used to it, but I don't think anyone's going to like it as well as "Revolution."
Just because you disagree with their principles/practices, that doesn't change the fact that Lindows does distribute a form of GNU/Linux. (Just as, in my above example, my disagreement with Bush's principles doesn't mean that he was born outside of the US... You can't change the intrinsic properties of something just because you don't like it) It's all built on a Linux kernel, and it includes GNU utilities. If that's not the definition of a GNU/Linux distribution, I don't know what is.
Plus, I imagine it's probably cheaper to hire a two-bit lawyer to sling threats around than it is to record/market albums.
I wrote up an idea similar to this on my blog a while back (substituting Apple for Google), when the RIAA was threatening Apple about raising the prices of the downloads. Pardon me for the blatant pimpage, but it sounds like my rant there might bear some interest for you :)
Because the WTC was OBVIOUSLY military/government/industrial. Oh yes. You'll probably try to say that you consider it "industrial," but that's not technically correct. A better way to categorize the companies located there would be "commercial." You see, "industrial" would refer to companies that provide infrastructure (Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, etc.) for the military and the government. However, from what I understand, the World Trade Center housed mostly financial institutions that in and of themselves were not causing great harm to the world at large, and have no real link to the government or military. Terrorists DO target civilians. They do it to cause terror (funny how that works, eh?).
So bombing military/government/industrial targets would turn public opinion their way? Hell, from what I've seen in other comments here, bombing a football game would turn (geek) public opinion towards them. That's neither here nor there, however. As I mentioned above, terrorists work by inciting terror. What do you think would happen if the millions of people worldwide who were watching this "stupid football game" suddenly saw the thousands of people in the stadium get blown sky high? I'm thinking there'd be more than a few terrorized souls out there... Sound like something that terrorists would like? If it doesn't, you're not paying attention.
Being formally at war would require them to be formally recognized as a nation/state. This is not the case. We are not "formally" at war until Osama declares himself the Grand High Poobah of Terrorstan in Exile and the U.S. acknowledges Terrorstan as a legitimate nation. Since the chances of this happening are nigh unto zero, we cannot claim that we are "formally at war." As author Gore Vidal put it (and I'm paraphrasing here, as I'm quoting from memory off of a comment made on the History Channel's recent special on Abraham Lincoln): "The war on terror is a metaphor. It's like saying you're waging a war on dandruff."
Also (and more importantly), note that we were not at war (formally or otherwise) at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
So that's why they attacked us? Because we invaded them, bombed them, etc? It's funny, but I don't recall that happening until after 9/11. Yes, I'll grant you that no football team has done any of that and our military/government has. I'm not defending the actions taken on our behalf, but the fact that the football teams in question are innocent has no bearing on whether or not the game gets attacked. The fact that thousands upon thousands of Americans are all gathered in one spot is key. And on top of that, millions more people are focused directly on that one spot. I'm sure the janitors in the WTC never invaded/bombed/exploited the terrorists, either, but the terrorists killed them right alongside everyone else. Think about it.
WTF? (Score: -1, Offtopic)
I'm right there with you on it... Inverted Y-axis is the only way to go with FPS games, but normal pointing should stay as-is.
I've found that it really comes down to the distinction of moving a single point on a fixed plane (normal pointing) versus moving the entire plane (FPS). When you're mousing normally, you're moving a single point within a fixed plane, but when you're playing a FPS, the single point (crosshair) is fixed, and it's the plane (your view) that you're altering. I'm not entirely certain of why, but it's always just been far more intuitive to me to invert the Y-axis when manipulating the entire viewing plane. This is especially noticeable in games that include turrets of some sort (I'm racking my brain for examples, and I'm coming up empty...) where the view stays static, but in aiming the turret the crosshair moves around the screen... Anything along those lines will trip me up for a good long while.
Nettwerk: By standing up to the RIAA like this, we're sticking it to The Man! ... Maybe.
Generic Lackey: But, you are The Man. So does this mean you're sticking it to yourself?
Nettwerk: