In the screenshots I have seen, the units didn't display as well when you were looking top-down at them, not to mention the terrain, which wasn't engineered to be seen from that one angle the way it has in the previous games.
If the show must have a military man saying "reverse the polarity" for you to acknowledge it as sci-fi, you'll find you're in no short supply of shows, and in no danger of quality.
Funniest Wikipedia article ever. The image there should have been labeled more along the lines of "We THINK this is a woman, but are unable to confirm."
I don't think I could name 50 sci-fi TV shows I'd call "good". Sure, there are some I'd call great, but 50 good ones? Most of them are an inch from green monsters from Mars and space-whores. I'll let you guys guess an inch in which direction that is.
I often check the dictionary for words I'm about to use, as opposed to words I've only just encountered. But I wouldn't say that I don't know what they mean, only that I am unsure they are the perfect match, that they embody the nuances I think they do and not others, or that their connotation is the right one. But never words whose meaning I don't "consciously know", only, sometimes, words whose meaning I couldn't explain in other words (I'm big on hand gestures). Also, this only applies to English, not to my native tongue.
Some things just work better in 2D. Think chess. Think Baldur's Gate, and soon Fallout. Unfortunately, I believe Civ will soon prove itself worth of making this list. Going 3D will only complicate issuing the same orders, not to mention bump the hardware requirements. And it's just not pretty. Hopefully the game would have enough redeeming qualities (AI that doesn't build as big a fleet when you're playing in a Pangaea-like world, less tedious and more effective bombardment units, the new religion scheme) to merit the purchase. And also, hopefully Civ5 will return to its 2D roots.
I see bread and butter as the same thing is some regards and different in others. Same with intellectual and material property. You've established yourself why the two are different, and I, of course, agree. But the two are also similar - both are things (to some extent) people have an interest of declaring an ownership on, that declaration of ownership boiling down to "if you don't play with these things by my rules [you can see my car, but not drive it - unless it's an "emergency", or...], I'll kick your ass. I banded with this guy and that guy, and they'll help me kick your ass. By the way, you can join us in this ass-kicking cooperative, since we currently have more use for another set of kickass legs than a new pair of boots."
Under this logic, the question to "how powerful should IP be?" is "how powerful is it comfortable for us to have it?", and I think you see it this way too. I agree we may all, on average, be more comfortable with it being cut down to 30 years, and I add - longer for works that are produced more slowly and/or consumed more slowly, and things where the profit margin relative to the production cost is higher. The vast majority of people get to know, like and than forget a new hit song within a year of its debut. Not so with a new book.
The last paragraph, the one you labeled controversial, I completely agree with. Unenforceable laws benefit no one, and making them enforceable would cost us too much in the way of liberty.
I'm surprised to see we've carried our disagreement all the way into the land that lies beyond good and evil. The question isn't whether I'd be willing to kill you for your song if the government didn't exist and you were willing to let me sing it. The question is 1. whether you'd be as willing to create the song (supposing it took a lot of time and effort), knowing you have no guarantee of payment and 2. if you wouldn't then band with some other makers of song and dictate by brute force, or by all of you going on strike together, that songs are not to be sung (maybe just in front of an audience, maybe also in private) without the payment of royalties to its writer? Sure you would, if it was economical.
That's what these people are doing now (more so middlemen who rake most of the money into their own pockets, but that's an entirely different (non)issue). Only question is, should we let them? As you explain yourself, the answer is no. But your "no" may be a lot less emphatic if you think about your favourite authors instead of some 17 years old pop "star" and his agent. Especially since you seem to be (just) a little heavier than me in the conscience department.
I think we misunderstand one another on the asides rather than disagree on the actual points.
Either:
1. Those submitting stories to slashdot are VERY serious about accuracy and spelling.
2. The stories from osnews.com get circulated through several dozens of blogs until they finally reach the one the slashdot submitters are reading.
If it's number two, we just need to convince these guys to read osnews.com. If it's number one... well, I didn't get what I didn't pay for.
You need not tell me why it would probably be unwise to kill you and etc. (maybe it would have been more politically correct of me to say "and rape your husband"), the laws I were talking about would have been nothing but hot air were they not enforced by someone whom I couldn't bring down or avoid. I also didn't go into the whole intellectual property issue. My only beef was with the claim against those guys "using" the law, to which I responded by saying that the law is a tool which we all use.
By the way, the intellectual property issue goes a bit beyond "defending something which does not exist", as I am sure you are well aware. Those laws protect the time and effort exerted to produce those things. We're not talking someone patenting straight dots here, we're talking about the labour of people who have written hundreds of pages (a labour which goes far beyond the meager task of just typing those pages, needless to say), as well as the risk taken by those who invested in publishing those pages (if you can't feel sympathy for a faceless corporation, think about an author who got published with money loaned to him by friend and family), and the labour of hundreds of other people involved in the process of bringing this book to your screen or doorstep.
Who cares what goes on "in nature"? There's nothing sacred about the situation as it is now, and there's nothing sacred about the situation as it was back then. It's completely "natural" for me to kill you to get a better chance with your wife, about whose consent I may subsequently not give a damn. We have laws forbidding this that because it's convenient (to prevent these things from happening), not because it's the "natural/moral/whatever order of things". And we have these laws because keeping it from happening to your neighbour, even if you don't like him very much and wouldn't bother about his iterests otherwise, is a good step towards keeping it from happening to you.
Other than that line, we're pretty much in agreement about the necessity and function of the laws. Except, I don't fall into seeing the law as trying to embody some hypothetical justice. I see it as a struggle between often conflicting interests. And not getting to have your work go down the drain because someone has made it impossible to stop people from stealing it is an interest that isn't that fundamentally different to keeping your stuff yours. It's an interest that's in conflict with yours and mine, and we will prevail upon it in the courts, but my original post was about some guy bemoaning the using the law.
The next logical step to "not using the law to keeping oneself paid" is "not using the law to keeping one's possessions." When you ascribe to that policy too, give me a call, so I can pay you a visit. Don't worry about fitting me into your schedule, in my line of work, we're accustomed to dropping by when the client's away.
I find that my downstream speed drops significantly once I start uploading at more than half my upstream capacity - 12KBps. As for the the faster downloads for big sharers - either the difference between uploading at 3KBps and 6KBps is so negligible that I haven't noticed it, or it's been completely erased by the drop in download speed).
Slashdot Mirror
In the screenshots I have seen, the units didn't display as well when you were looking top-down at them, not to mention the terrain, which wasn't engineered to be seen from that one angle the way it has in the previous games.
If the show must have a military man saying "reverse the polarity" for you to acknowledge it as sci-fi, you'll find you're in no short supply of shows, and in no danger of quality.
Funniest Wikipedia article ever. The image there should have been labeled more along the lines of "We THINK this is a woman, but are unable to confirm."
You're right - compared to Star Trek and the other shows, Thunder Cats and Futurama are just way too realistic to be considered sci-fi.
I don't think I could name 50 sci-fi TV shows I'd call "good". Sure, there are some I'd call great, but 50 good ones? Most of them are an inch from green monsters from Mars and space-whores. I'll let you guys guess an inch in which direction that is.
I often check the dictionary for words I'm about to use, as opposed to words I've only just encountered. But I wouldn't say that I don't know what they mean, only that I am unsure they are the perfect match, that they embody the nuances I think they do and not others, or that their connotation is the right one. But never words whose meaning I don't "consciously know", only, sometimes, words whose meaning I couldn't explain in other words (I'm big on hand gestures). Also, this only applies to English, not to my native tongue.
Some things just work better in 2D. Think chess. Think Baldur's Gate, and soon Fallout. Unfortunately, I believe Civ will soon prove itself worth of making this list. Going 3D will only complicate issuing the same orders, not to mention bump the hardware requirements. And it's just not pretty. Hopefully the game would have enough redeeming qualities (AI that doesn't build as big a fleet when you're playing in a Pangaea-like world, less tedious and more effective bombardment units, the new religion scheme) to merit the purchase. And also, hopefully Civ5 will return to its 2D roots.
I see bread and butter as the same thing is some regards and different in others. Same with intellectual and material property. You've established yourself why the two are different, and I, of course, agree. But the two are also similar - both are things (to some extent) people have an interest of declaring an ownership on, that declaration of ownership boiling down to "if you don't play with these things by my rules [you can see my car, but not drive it - unless it's an "emergency", or...], I'll kick your ass. I banded with this guy and that guy, and they'll help me kick your ass. By the way, you can join us in this ass-kicking cooperative, since we currently have more use for another set of kickass legs than a new pair of boots."
Under this logic, the question to "how powerful should IP be?" is "how powerful is it comfortable for us to have it?", and I think you see it this way too. I agree we may all, on average, be more comfortable with it being cut down to 30 years, and I add - longer for works that are produced more slowly and/or consumed more slowly, and things where the profit margin relative to the production cost is higher. The vast majority of people get to know, like and than forget a new hit song within a year of its debut. Not so with a new book.
The last paragraph, the one you labeled controversial, I completely agree with. Unenforceable laws benefit no one, and making them enforceable would cost us too much in the way of liberty.
Maybe it's because half of us non-Americans apply for a greencard each year. Just an idea.
You call that a joke? "Oops, I made a very normal mistake"? On what planet is such an admission so unusual that it's actually funny?
I don't get it. I loved your first post, but why on earth did you get to +5 funny in a post correcting a typu? (I'm paving the path for my own +5)
Moderators - don't miss this one.
I'm surprised to see we've carried our disagreement all the way into the land that lies beyond good and evil. The question isn't whether I'd be willing to kill you for your song if the government didn't exist and you were willing to let me sing it. The question is 1. whether you'd be as willing to create the song (supposing it took a lot of time and effort), knowing you have no guarantee of payment and 2. if you wouldn't then band with some other makers of song and dictate by brute force, or by all of you going on strike together, that songs are not to be sung (maybe just in front of an audience, maybe also in private) without the payment of royalties to its writer? Sure you would, if it was economical.
That's what these people are doing now (more so middlemen who rake most of the money into their own pockets, but that's an entirely different (non)issue). Only question is, should we let them? As you explain yourself, the answer is no. But your "no" may be a lot less emphatic if you think about your favourite authors instead of some 17 years old pop "star" and his agent. Especially since you seem to be (just) a little heavier than me in the conscience department.
I think we misunderstand one another on the asides rather than disagree on the actual points.
I've got 1.5a comfortably installed here, and I'm reluctant to switch back. Just wondering what the rest of you is doing, and for what reasons.
Either:
1. Those submitting stories to slashdot are VERY serious about accuracy and spelling.
2. The stories from osnews.com get circulated through several dozens of blogs until they finally reach the one the slashdot submitters are reading.
If it's number two, we just need to convince these guys to read osnews.com. If it's number one... well, I didn't get what I didn't pay for.
You need not tell me why it would probably be unwise to kill you and etc. (maybe it would have been more politically correct of me to say "and rape your husband"), the laws I were talking about would have been nothing but hot air were they not enforced by someone whom I couldn't bring down or avoid. I also didn't go into the whole intellectual property issue. My only beef was with the claim against those guys "using" the law, to which I responded by saying that the law is a tool which we all use. By the way, the intellectual property issue goes a bit beyond "defending something which does not exist", as I am sure you are well aware. Those laws protect the time and effort exerted to produce those things. We're not talking someone patenting straight dots here, we're talking about the labour of people who have written hundreds of pages (a labour which goes far beyond the meager task of just typing those pages, needless to say), as well as the risk taken by those who invested in publishing those pages (if you can't feel sympathy for a faceless corporation, think about an author who got published with money loaned to him by friend and family), and the labour of hundreds of other people involved in the process of bringing this book to your screen or doorstep.
In NUCLEAR Russia, radiation is exposed to you!
Who cares what goes on "in nature"? There's nothing sacred about the situation as it is now, and there's nothing sacred about the situation as it was back then. It's completely "natural" for me to kill you to get a better chance with your wife, about whose consent I may subsequently not give a damn. We have laws forbidding this that because it's convenient (to prevent these things from happening), not because it's the "natural/moral/whatever order of things". And we have these laws because keeping it from happening to your neighbour, even if you don't like him very much and wouldn't bother about his iterests otherwise, is a good step towards keeping it from happening to you. Other than that line, we're pretty much in agreement about the necessity and function of the laws. Except, I don't fall into seeing the law as trying to embody some hypothetical justice. I see it as a struggle between often conflicting interests. And not getting to have your work go down the drain because someone has made it impossible to stop people from stealing it is an interest that isn't that fundamentally different to keeping your stuff yours. It's an interest that's in conflict with yours and mine, and we will prevail upon it in the courts, but my original post was about some guy bemoaning the using the law.
This is actually were I was first intending to go - him not using the law to protect himself from bodily harm.
The next logical step to "not using the law to keeping oneself paid" is "not using the law to keeping one's possessions." When you ascribe to that policy too, give me a call, so I can pay you a visit. Don't worry about fitting me into your schedule, in my line of work, we're accustomed to dropping by when the client's away.
He's right, you know.
Let it be known I also approve the space elevator. In fact, I was the first. Let me go down in history as the first man to rubber-stamp this project.
I find that my downstream speed drops significantly once I start uploading at more than half my upstream capacity - 12KBps. As for the the faster downloads for big sharers - either the difference between uploading at 3KBps and 6KBps is so negligible that I haven't noticed it, or it's been completely erased by the drop in download speed).
I thought people sue the state all the time.
I would have modded you, but I've already replied. Good points.