Manyof my liberal arts profs were actually the most friendly and punctual during office hours, and would say hello to you when you saw them on campus, and would often remember your name. Most of them also did their own teaching, surprisingly.
Homestar Runner is a great example of a good flash site. Unfortunately it is also a great example of a site that you can't do anything at unless you download a plugin and wait for the cartoons to load. This is 100% fine for a site like Homestar Runner, which is a cartoon-based site. It would not be a good design for a news page.
The challenge when making a web page that a lot of "pro" designers don't understand it seems, is that you need to pick a design that works with the content on your site. In many cases, the site layout might be very pretty, but gets in the way of the information being presented.
Cheating has always been a problem, and always will. The only way to deal with the problem is ignore the cheaters and play on LANs or servers you _personally_ trust. Lamers will always want to install hacks that allow them to cheat their rear ends off and pretend to be l33t.
Pack when I played Quake 3 quite a bit, I didn't mind the cheaters. I looked at it as playing against an enemy with an unfair advantage. And while I might have lost more often than not against a cheater, I'd still be honing my skills against them. Plus if someone else won the deathmatch, they'd be pissed out of their minds, which was always funny.
Problem is that this is not the employee's computer, it is the _company's_ computer. Most large companies do have an acceptable use policy, and most also have policies that employees will not use company computers to commit crimes.
Unfortunately, once techie noticed the kiddie porn, he was in a "damned if he does, damned if he doesnt" position. He had three choices. He could go to the cops like he did and face being fired for exposing the company to embarrasment. He could have kept his mouth shut. However, that might make him legally liable for covering up the fact there was child porn in his company's computers. He could have went to his boss and let the company deal with it. However if he had done this and the company decided to sweep it under the rug, he'd once again be legally liable for not reporting the pr0n to the authorities.
I would personally hate to be the sysadmin and discover kiddie porn on a computer in my network, however if if the IT department is theoritically in charge of enforicing a company's acceptable use policy, I see nothing wrong with them inspecting the hard drives of company computers periodically for abuses of said policy.
MP3s and stuff might deserve a reprimand (and deletion) if found, but child pornography is a whole different ballpark entirely.
Really, what is the bigger mess? Reporting it as soon as its found, turning over the pervert to the authorities and showing that most of your company is responsible and wont stand for this sort of thing OR not reporting it, having it discovered later by authorities, and then having your whole company be accused of harboring pedophiles?
Obviously, nobody is going to pay full price for a DVD that self destructs. This is meant as a rental replacement. However, something like this could put rental places out of business.
Why? Rental places typically buy a certian number of new copies and rent them out repeatedly, after a few rentals the disc is paid for and it is pure profit on the disc after that, especially when you factor in the real money maker, late fees. When the movie is no longer a hot rental, they'll then just sell off their excess copies as pre-owned DVDs.
With the self destructing DVD, rental places will continuously have to replace their stock. They will not be able to charge late fees, nor will they be able to sell excess copies they've already made money off of. Ultimately, the rental place will no longer even be necessary since you'll likely be able to buy the destructable disc at any retail outlet or direct from the company for $2 a pop.
Cars represent individualism. I can hop in my car and drive pretty much wherever I want, whenever I want. It offers me great individual mobility. Much moreso than the ever-so-overhyped Segway(tm).
Leftists hate individualism. They think people should be represented by their group, not by their own selves. They think people should be dependent on the government, not dependent on themselves. Individualism stands in the way of their big truth that all humans must embrace (or go to the gulag, as it always turns out in practice).
Yep. Remember consumers, the American Automobile represents individualism! That's why you should go out and buy a gas guzzling SUV and be like all of the other good, patriotic, middle class soccer moms!
Seriously, though. Cars offer less freedom than you think. For the most part, people use them to get to and from work. Thus they are stuck in traffic on the highways, obeying traffic signals, stressing out when they almost get hit by the half asleep guy who is swerving in the next lane over, and so forth for a good chunk of time when they could be doing more productive and easier things like reading, etc. on a well run public transportation system.
This is what I wonder. While corporations may just kill off the internet as we "know it," I rather forsee that the internet may "splinter" into different networks.
This is the most likely way I see it. We might splinter into a controlled "internet" and a Free "internet."
The controlled internet will likely run using Microsoft owned protocols, have DRM enabled at every point to try to prevent people from swapping MP3s, warez, etc., etc. Most main stream ISPs will allow access to only this net (though might offere access to the other with an additional charge). This net will be deemed "safe" for children. In reality, this internet will be just as insecure as the first, but corporations will have much greater control of who can say what.
Of course, things could be worse. The controlled net might split further, into various networks controlled by different media conglomerates. So you'll have AOL/Time Warner's net, Disney's Net, etc.
The free internet would be operated in a similar fasion to the current internet, altough many corporations will probably no longer support it, and move their sites to the corporate net. Educational institutes will probably be the core fo this network. As a result, there will be far fewer people on it.
Depending on how things are structured, there might be points where the different networks intersect. Really, there might be one "internet" still, but ISPs will merely maintain huge blacklists of servers that they don't allow (servers that run a free OS rather than a DRM os, for example).
The problem with the "free" internet, as I see it, is that it might be labeled as a network safe for terrorists, and/or be considered a "pirate internet."
It is good to see a manager / employer with a level head who likes to see results rather than reports and finger pointing. If I learned anything from the way my father treated his employees back in the day, is that employees with managers like that "shit gets done," rather than people getting away with "doing shit."
The unfortunate thing is that sometimes when a company is large, employees can point fingers in circles when they need to explain why the work isn't getting done.
It is completely amazing where my significant other is currently working [A rather famous, large company who will remain nameless]. There is one employee who typically comes in late and leaves early, takes 2-3 hour lunches, misses work at least once a week, and is generally a slacker. If I understand correctly, she is also one of the highest paid employees for her position, and management has let go several other people with much better work ethics. I wonder why she's around, honestly. I think that perhaps she's just good at superficially looking like a hard worker when the boss is around (since he has to manage several buildings the company owns).
Companies always tweak their code, insist on tests optimized for their hardware, etc. in order to get an edge up on benchmarks. This is probably especially true in cases where the competition is so neck-and-neck, as it seems to be with the video card industry. It seems that these companies will do anything to show they can get even two or three more FPS than the competition. It is hard to treat any benchmark seriously because of this.
At the same time, I'm debating what my next video card should be. Even though ATI's hardware might be slightly better this round, the differences will probably be negligable to all but the most extreme gamers. At the same time NVidia has proven to me that they have a history of writing good drivers, and they still provide significantly better support to the Linux community than ATI does.
For this reason I'm still siding with the GeForce family of video cards.
Neo is "Christ-like" because of the following reasons:
1) Neo is the "One." He is the only person capable of freeing man from the control of the machines. The Bible says that Chirst is the only one who can free man from sin and damnation.
2) Neo is betrayed by Cypher, much like Jesus is betrayed by Judas.
3) Neo is killed by the agents, but comes back to life. This is quite similar to how Christ was crucified, but came back to life.
Additionally, there are tons of little references as the article pointed out.
I'm not sure what you're getting at actually. According to the Bible, Moses was a liberator of the Jewish people, but he did not save mankind from their ultimate fate of eternal damnation. Nor did he rise from the dead.
To me, it seems obvious that these elements of who Neo is are INFLUENCED by the story of Christ, simply because it is symbolism that many people recognize. Even if they don't believe in the Bible, many will still recognize that the parallels between Neo and Christ are meant to signify how Neo is the Savior of mankind in the movie.
However this does not mean that the Matrix is a "Christian" movie, nor does it mean that it is really useful as an evengelical tool for Christians beyond saying, "Jesus is kinda like how Neo in the Matrix is" to teenagers. (Really, the addition of the Eastern philosophy and scifi stuff make it very clear that this is a secular film). The Biblical symbols were borrowed and modified for the Matrix because it fit well into the story.
One of the reasons I think people hated Wesley:
on
Dancing Barefoot
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· Score: 5, Insightful
This is just a thought, but I think that some of the younger Star Trek: TNG viewers might have even been JEALOUS of Wesley Crusher.
He is smart for his age (as many teenage Star Trek watchers were, or at least tink they were), and I think it might be easy for some younger viewers who were around Wesley's age at the time to relate to him.
However, the kids watching the show lived in the world of Junior High and High School, possible where they were made fun of for being nerds, trekkies, etc... whereas Wesley lived on the Enterprise and got to have at least a few cool adventures.
So I think it was easy for a young Trek fan to wonder why they couldn't be in a "cool" situation like Wesley was. So they were jealous of him. Some people might have also been jealous of a Wil Wheaton for being able to play Wesley on Star Trek and be on the Enterprise set rather than in school.
Personally, I'm jealous of Reginald Barclay. Yet another crazy, incompetent mental case with a better job than I have.
So, when you purchase an "Xbox" or other such item you actually only purchase a license to use it but not actual ownership of that physical unit. And of course, not being a property owner, you have no rights other than the right to use as the License states.
Since I have not purchased an X-Box, I might be wrong... but I'm sure that Microsoft lets you know of the fact that they consider your X-Box THEIR property AFTER you open the box.
Seriously. A PC case shaped like Tux the Penguin would be the perfect case for a Linux box that is sitting out in the open. A BSD Daemon case would also be a nice thing.
Though I suppose that the "Ellen" (the one shaped like a girl) case might be attractive to the hardcore otaku with even less of a life than a Slashdotter...
Actually, I don't think it is a good idea to attack the RIAA in such a manner. Sure, it is funny whenever the RIAA website gets defaced, or when they get DOSsed... for a little while.
But in the end such activities help paint the picture of people who use P2P services as being pirates as well as hackers... the very picture that the RIAA wants those who use P2P networks to have.
Your analogy is flawed because your copying a physical object that is supposedly rare. A CD or DVD was designed to be mass copied in the first place and it is only an artificial scarcity created by the industries that make it worth anything in the first place.
If the ACME Copy-Tron actually existed, money wouldn't matter anymore since we could just copy food, housing, etc. for free.
In theory you could use your ACME Copy-Tron to make another ACME Copy-Tron... so even the Copy-Tron itself is worthless money wise.
Actually, there was a time period where commoners were not allowed to read the Bible (if they could read at all). They had to depend on the Catholic Church to "interpret" it for them.
You make a good point. I personally believe that this is the REAL reason the RIAA want to shut down P2P networks and stop people from swapping files.
Back when Metallica went after Napster, Lars Ulrich himself said that they had lost "pennies" to MP3 trading on the news. He was being honest and said that the reason they were attacking Napster was to retain "control" of how their music was distributed.
I believe that the RIAA is grossly overinflating their "losses" to "piracy" for this very reason. What the RIAA fears is that they will lose their control of the "music industry" itself. Digital music and file sharing apps make it much easier for indy musicians to get heard, like you said.
Sure, the RIAA is wants to stop people from downloading pirated music as well. But this is a side effect of their true goal. The fact is that piracy probably does NOT hurt them as much as they say. Many people who pirate a CD (probably most of those who pirate) are people who weren't going to buy the CD anyways, regardless.
Traditionally, for a band to "make it" and be heard anywhere outside a local club, they have to go through the RIAA... allowing RIAA execs to exploit artists. Destroying P2P and other similar means, and making people afraid to download ANY mp3 file would help keep them in this position of being a music cartel.
Once again, I need to throw in that I find english dubs to be horrible. All of them. Don't even try to tell me, "Well Cowboy Bebop was a good dub." Because it wasn't.
And that is probably what will primarily be shown (I heard that they were considering subtitled stuff LATE AT NIGHT, which doesn't do me good since I'm asleep).
Second is the fact that they probably will mainly show things I've already seen. It might sound like arrogance, but I'm currently watching Wolf's Rain, Scrapped Princess, Last Exile, and DNAngel. If this stuff even gets onto the Anime Network, it'll probably be there 2+ years from now. There is no incentive for me to watch shows I've already seen.
Samurai X Ah yes, another reason. The stupid anime-is-cool trend. I've watched anime since the early 90s because I LIKE it, not because it is cool and trendy. This is a stupid ploy by companies like ADV (and others) to label anime as cool and the next wave of extreme animation, and crap like that, and retitle shows like RUROUNI KENSHIN with stupid names like Samurai X because it supposedly sounds cool.
I would LOVE to stop being SBC's customer. Believe me. This nonsense makes me hate them even more. Unfortunately I have absolutely no one else to get phone service from. So my choices are (1) continue to give money to this evil corporation or (2) have no telephone.
First of all, you need some sort of educational goals for the club. You seem that you have some good ideas. You want to teach peers about various things you know about technology. You just need to make sure that the other members who will join your club have the same goals.
Which means at every one of your meetings, you should have a topic to discuss and stay in that vicinity.
Many people, especially administrators, might see your club as a hacker group or a bunch of teenage warez traders before it even starts. So be sure that none of that type of stuff goes on in the club at all.
As far as all the warnings that you'll suffer wedgies, etc... I'd really not worry about it too much. A/V people are always depicted as being the brunt of the football team's abuse on TV, but at my high school the A/V people were actually seen as being pretty cool because they showed off exaclty what types of stuff they did.
Also, if "computers" is too broad of a subject for a club, you can change your focus, and at the same time de-nerdify it. Provide a project that students can put together and show off to the school at large.
For example, if you are interested in games, you could start a digital entertainment club. You can talk about game projects, stuff like SDL and OpenGL and then you might be able to wow the normal kids by getting a Linux kit for PS2 and making a simple game on it or something similar.
This is a very interesting point. American McGee might have stupid ideas according to some, but he darkens tales that are in PUBLIC DOMAIN.
I think this is a perfect example of you how Disney's lobbying for de facto indefinite copyrights has destroyed what copyright was supposed to be about in the first place.
Baum had the opportunity to profit off of his Oz works back in the early 1900s. His books were popular, and now the stories have fallen into a place where they have literally become a staple fairy tale, As far as I know the original stories and concepts themselves are now PUBLIC DOMAIN, where they SHOULD BE.
But now things that should enter public domain will never be, thanks to Disney. Whenever Mickey is in danger of becoming public domain (like he should be right now), Disney will pay off some congressmen to extend the copyright laws again.
If this continues, 100 years from now people we will have no NEW stories like Oz or Alice in Wonderland that they can work with freely. Everything will still be copyrighted because the copyrights will now continue to be extended. Every story people grew up with will be still be owned by Disney or another faceless media corporation.
I agree 100%. If we tried to rebuild the internet from scratch the government would get its grubby little paws on the project. The following then would likely happen...
1) Microsoft would offer its "solutions" to the government. As a result, MS would own all of the major protocols of the new net.
2) The DOJ/Dept. of Homeland Security/Schutzstaffeln... err Secret Service/etc. will make sure all these protocols are snoop friendly.
3) The RIAA and MPAA would get in on the mess and lobby for SSSCA/CBDTPA-like crap placed into the protocols as well... and perhaps free reign on people's hard drives.
We'd probably still get spam, but we'd have zero freedoms online.
Slashdot Mirror
Manyof my liberal arts profs were actually the most friendly and punctual during office hours, and would say hello to you when you saw them on campus, and would often remember your name. Most of them also did their own teaching, surprisingly.
Homestar Runner is a great example of a good flash site. Unfortunately it is also a great example of a site that you can't do anything at unless you download a plugin and wait for the cartoons to load. This is 100% fine for a site like Homestar Runner, which is a cartoon-based site. It would not be a good design for a news page.
The challenge when making a web page that a lot of "pro" designers don't understand it seems, is that you need to pick a design that works with the content on your site. In many cases, the site layout might be very pretty, but gets in the way of the information being presented.
Cheating has always been a problem, and always will. The only way to deal with the problem is ignore the cheaters and play on LANs or servers you _personally_ trust. Lamers will always want to install hacks that allow them to cheat their rear ends off and pretend to be l33t.
Pack when I played Quake 3 quite a bit, I didn't mind the cheaters. I looked at it as playing against an enemy with an unfair advantage. And while I might have lost more often than not against a cheater, I'd still be honing my skills against them. Plus if someone else won the deathmatch, they'd be pissed out of their minds, which was always funny.
Problem is that this is not the employee's computer, it is the _company's_ computer. Most large companies do have an acceptable use policy, and most also have policies that employees will not use company computers to commit crimes.
Unfortunately, once techie noticed the kiddie porn, he was in a "damned if he does, damned if he doesnt" position. He had three choices. He could go to the cops like he did and face being fired for exposing the company to embarrasment. He could have kept his mouth shut. However, that might make him legally liable for covering up the fact there was child porn in his company's computers. He could have went to his boss and let the company deal with it. However if he had done this and the company decided to sweep it under the rug, he'd once again be legally liable for not reporting the pr0n to the authorities.
I would personally hate to be the sysadmin and discover kiddie porn on a computer in my network,
however if if the IT department is theoritically in charge of enforicing a company's acceptable use policy, I see nothing wrong with them inspecting the hard drives of company computers periodically for abuses of said policy.
MP3s and stuff might deserve a reprimand (and deletion) if found, but child pornography is a whole different ballpark entirely.
Really, what is the bigger mess? Reporting it as soon as its found, turning over the pervert to the authorities and showing that most of your company is responsible and wont stand for this sort of thing OR not reporting it, having it discovered later by authorities, and then having your whole company be accused of harboring pedophiles?
Obviously, nobody is going to pay full price for a DVD that self destructs. This is meant as a rental replacement. However, something like this could put rental places out of business.
Why? Rental places typically buy a certian number of new copies and rent them out repeatedly, after a few rentals the disc is paid for and it is pure profit on the disc after that, especially when you factor in the real money maker, late fees. When the movie is no longer a hot rental, they'll then just sell off their excess copies as pre-owned DVDs.
With the self destructing DVD, rental places will continuously have to replace their stock. They will not be able to charge late fees, nor will they be able to sell excess copies they've already made money off of. Ultimately, the rental place will no longer even be necessary since you'll likely be able to buy the destructable disc at any retail outlet or direct from the company for $2 a pop.
From my experiences with Fords, 60,000 miles or 10 years would be a VAST IMPROVEMENT over their current lifespan.
Cars represent individualism. I can hop in my car and drive pretty much wherever I want, whenever I want. It offers me great individual mobility. Much moreso than the ever-so-overhyped Segway(tm).
Leftists hate individualism. They think people should be represented by their group, not by their own selves. They think people should be dependent on the government, not dependent on themselves. Individualism stands in the way of their big truth that all humans must embrace (or go to the gulag, as it always turns out in practice).
Yep. Remember consumers, the American Automobile represents individualism! That's why you should go out and buy a gas guzzling SUV and be like all of the other good, patriotic, middle class soccer moms!
Seriously, though. Cars offer less freedom than you think. For the most part, people use them to get to and from work. Thus they are stuck in traffic on the highways, obeying traffic signals, stressing out when they almost get hit by the half asleep guy who is swerving in the next lane over, and so forth for a good chunk of time when they could be doing more productive and easier things like reading, etc. on a well run public transportation system.
Of course, "well run" is the key here.
This is what I wonder. While corporations may just kill off the internet as we "know it," I rather forsee that the internet may "splinter" into different networks.
This is the most likely way I see it. We might splinter into a controlled "internet" and a Free "internet."
The controlled internet will likely run using Microsoft owned protocols, have DRM enabled at every point to try to prevent people from swapping MP3s, warez, etc., etc. Most main stream ISPs will allow access to only this net (though might offere access to the other with an additional charge). This net will be deemed "safe" for children. In reality, this internet will be just as insecure as the first, but corporations will have much greater control of who can say what.
Of course, things could be worse. The controlled net might split further, into various networks controlled by different media conglomerates. So you'll have AOL/Time Warner's net, Disney's Net, etc.
The free internet would be operated in a similar fasion to the current internet, altough many corporations will probably no longer support it, and move their sites to the corporate net. Educational institutes will probably be the core fo this network. As a result, there will be far fewer people on it.
Depending on how things are structured, there might be points where the different networks intersect. Really, there might be one "internet" still, but ISPs will merely maintain huge blacklists of servers that they don't allow (servers that run a free OS rather than a DRM os, for example).
The problem with the "free" internet, as I see it, is that it might be labeled as a network safe for terrorists, and/or be considered a "pirate internet."
It is good to see a manager / employer with a level head who likes to see results rather than reports and finger pointing. If I learned anything from the way my father treated his employees back in the day, is that employees with managers like that "shit gets done," rather than people getting away with "doing shit."
The unfortunate thing is that sometimes when a company is large, employees can point fingers in circles when they need to explain why the work isn't getting done.
It is completely amazing where my significant other is currently working [A rather famous, large company who will remain nameless]. There is one employee who typically comes in late and leaves early, takes 2-3 hour lunches, misses work at least once a week, and is generally a slacker. If I understand correctly, she is also one of the highest paid employees for her position, and management has let go several other people with much better work ethics. I wonder why she's around, honestly. I think that perhaps she's just good at superficially looking like a hard worker when the boss is around (since he has to manage several buildings the company owns).
Companies always tweak their code, insist on tests optimized for their hardware, etc. in order to get an edge up on benchmarks. This is probably especially true in cases where the competition is so neck-and-neck, as it seems to be with the video card industry. It seems that these companies will do anything to show they can get even two or three more FPS than the competition. It is hard to treat any benchmark seriously because of this.
At the same time, I'm debating what my next video card should be. Even though ATI's hardware might be slightly better this round, the differences will probably be negligable to all but the most extreme gamers. At the same time NVidia has proven to me that they have a history of writing good drivers, and they still provide significantly better support to the Linux community than ATI does.
For this reason I'm still siding with the GeForce family of video cards.
You're wrong, Zelda is _that_ good and more. So is Metroid Prime. Heck, even Animal Crossing and Super Smash Bros. Melee are _that_ good.
Plus Konami is releasing a rendition of Metal Gear Solid 1 for the Game Cube called "Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes."
Neo is "Christ-like" because of the following reasons:
1) Neo is the "One." He is the only person capable of freeing man from the control of the machines.
The Bible says that Chirst is the only one who can free man from sin and damnation.
2) Neo is betrayed by Cypher, much like Jesus is betrayed by Judas.
3) Neo is killed by the agents, but comes back to life. This is quite similar to how Christ was crucified, but came back to life.
Additionally, there are tons of little references as the article pointed out.
I'm not sure what you're getting at actually. According to the Bible, Moses was a liberator of the Jewish people, but he did not save mankind from their ultimate fate of eternal damnation. Nor did he rise from the dead.
To me, it seems obvious that these elements of who Neo is are INFLUENCED by the story of Christ, simply because it is symbolism that many people recognize. Even if they don't believe in the Bible, many will still recognize that the parallels between Neo and Christ are meant to signify how Neo is the Savior of mankind in the movie.
However this does not mean that the Matrix is a "Christian" movie, nor does it mean that it is really useful as an evengelical tool for Christians beyond saying, "Jesus is kinda like how Neo in the Matrix is" to teenagers. (Really, the addition of the Eastern philosophy and scifi stuff make it very clear that this is a secular film).
The Biblical symbols were borrowed and modified for the Matrix because it fit well into the story.
This is just a thought, but I think that some of the younger Star Trek: TNG viewers might have even been JEALOUS of Wesley Crusher.
He is smart for his age (as many teenage Star Trek watchers were, or at least tink they were), and I think it might be easy for some younger viewers who were around Wesley's age at the time to relate to him.
However, the kids watching the show lived in the world of Junior High and High School, possible where they were made fun of for being nerds, trekkies, etc... whereas Wesley lived on the Enterprise and got to have at least a few cool adventures.
So I think it was easy for a young Trek fan to wonder why they couldn't be in a "cool" situation like Wesley was. So they were jealous of him.
Some people might have also been jealous of a Wil Wheaton for being able to play Wesley on Star Trek and be on the Enterprise set rather than in school.
Personally, I'm jealous of Reginald Barclay. Yet another crazy, incompetent mental case with a better job than I have.
So, when you purchase an "Xbox" or other such item you actually only purchase a license to use it but not actual ownership of that physical unit. And of course, not being a property owner, you have no rights other than the right to use as the License states.
Since I have not purchased an X-Box, I might be wrong... but I'm sure that Microsoft lets you know of the fact that they consider your X-Box THEIR property AFTER you open the box.
Seriously. A PC case shaped like Tux the Penguin would be the perfect case for a Linux box that is sitting out in the open. A BSD Daemon case would also be a nice thing.
Though I suppose that the "Ellen" (the one shaped like a girl) case might be attractive to the hardcore otaku with even less of a life than a Slashdotter...
Actually, I don't think it is a good idea to attack the RIAA in such a manner. Sure, it is funny whenever the RIAA website gets defaced, or when they get DOSsed... for a little while.
But in the end such activities help paint the picture of people who use P2P services as being pirates as well as hackers... the very picture that the RIAA wants those who use P2P networks to have.
Your analogy is flawed because your copying a physical object that is supposedly rare. A CD or DVD was designed to be mass copied in the first place and it is only an artificial scarcity created by the industries that make it worth anything in the first place.
If the ACME Copy-Tron actually existed, money wouldn't matter anymore since we could just copy food, housing, etc. for free.
In theory you could use your ACME Copy-Tron to make another ACME Copy-Tron... so even the Copy-Tron itself is worthless money wise.
Actually, there was a time period where commoners were not allowed to read the Bible (if they could read at all). They had to depend on the Catholic Church to "interpret" it for them.
You make a good point. I personally believe that this is the REAL reason the RIAA want to shut down P2P networks and stop people from swapping files.
Back when Metallica went after Napster, Lars Ulrich himself said that they had lost "pennies" to MP3 trading on the news. He was being honest and said that the reason they were attacking Napster was to retain "control" of how their music was distributed.
I believe that the RIAA is grossly overinflating their "losses" to "piracy" for this very reason.
What the RIAA fears is that they will lose their control of the "music industry" itself. Digital music and file sharing apps make it much easier for indy musicians to get heard, like you said.
Sure, the RIAA is wants to stop people from downloading pirated music as well. But this is a side effect of their true goal. The fact is that piracy probably does NOT hurt them as much as they say. Many people who pirate a CD (probably most of those who pirate) are people who weren't going to buy the CD anyways, regardless.
Traditionally, for a band to "make it" and be heard anywhere outside a local club, they have to go through the RIAA... allowing RIAA execs to exploit artists. Destroying P2P and other similar means, and making people afraid to download ANY mp3 file would help keep them in this position of being a music cartel.
Once again, I need to throw in that I find english dubs to be horrible. All of them. Don't even try to tell me, "Well Cowboy Bebop was a good dub." Because it wasn't.
And that is probably what will primarily be shown (I heard that they were considering subtitled stuff LATE AT NIGHT, which doesn't do me good since I'm asleep).
Second is the fact that they probably will mainly show things I've already seen. It might sound like arrogance, but I'm currently watching Wolf's Rain, Scrapped Princess, Last Exile, and DNAngel.
If this stuff even gets onto the Anime Network, it'll probably be there 2+ years from now. There is no incentive for me to watch shows I've already seen.
Samurai X
Ah yes, another reason. The stupid anime-is-cool trend. I've watched anime since the early 90s because I LIKE it, not because it is cool and trendy. This is a stupid ploy by companies like ADV (and others) to label anime as cool and the next wave of extreme animation, and crap like that, and retitle shows like RUROUNI KENSHIN with stupid names like Samurai X because it supposedly sounds cool.
I would LOVE to stop being SBC's customer. Believe me. This nonsense makes me hate them even more. Unfortunately I have absolutely no one else to get phone service from. So my choices are (1) continue to give money to this evil corporation or (2) have no telephone.
First of all, you need some sort of educational goals for the club. You seem that you have some good ideas. You want to teach peers about various things you know about technology. You just need to make sure that the other members who will join your club have the same goals.
Which means at every one of your meetings, you should have a topic to discuss and stay in that vicinity.
Many people, especially administrators, might see your club as a hacker group or a bunch of teenage warez traders before it even starts. So be sure that none of that type of stuff goes on in the club at all.
As far as all the warnings that you'll suffer wedgies, etc... I'd really not worry about it too much. A/V people are always depicted as being the brunt of the football team's abuse on TV, but at my high school the A/V people were actually seen as being pretty cool because they showed off exaclty what types of stuff they did.
Also, if "computers" is too broad of a subject for a club, you can change your focus, and at the same time de-nerdify it. Provide a project that students can put together and show off to the school at large.
For example, if you are interested in games, you could start a digital entertainment club. You can talk about game projects, stuff like SDL and OpenGL and then you might be able to wow the normal kids by getting a Linux kit for PS2 and making a simple game on it or something similar.
This is a very interesting point. American McGee might have stupid ideas according to some, but he darkens tales that are in PUBLIC DOMAIN.
I think this is a perfect example of you how Disney's lobbying for de facto indefinite copyrights has destroyed what copyright was supposed to be about in the first place.
Baum had the opportunity to profit off of his Oz works back in the early 1900s. His books were popular, and now the stories have fallen into a place where they have literally become a staple fairy tale, As far as I know the original stories and concepts themselves are now PUBLIC DOMAIN, where they SHOULD BE.
But now things that should enter public domain will never be, thanks to Disney. Whenever Mickey is in danger of becoming public domain (like he should be right now), Disney will pay off some congressmen to extend the copyright laws again.
If this continues, 100 years from now people we will have no NEW stories like Oz or Alice in Wonderland that they can work with freely. Everything will still be copyrighted because the copyrights will now continue to be extended. Every story people grew up with will be still be owned by Disney or another faceless media corporation.
Mortal Kombat (the first one) has been the only one that has entertained me.
Everything else has sucked. Street Fighter? Sucked. Double Dragon? Sucked. Mario Bros.? Sucked. Final Fantasy? Sucked.
There are only two reasons that Tomb Raider did well at the box office. I think you know what they are.
I agree 100%. If we tried to rebuild the internet from scratch the government would get its grubby little paws on the project. The following then would likely happen...
1) Microsoft would offer its "solutions" to the government. As a result, MS would own all of the major protocols of the new net.
2) The DOJ/Dept. of Homeland Security/Schutzstaffeln... err Secret Service/etc. will make sure all these protocols are snoop friendly.
3) The RIAA and MPAA would get in on the mess and lobby for SSSCA/CBDTPA-like crap placed into the protocols as well... and perhaps free reign on people's hard drives.
We'd probably still get spam, but we'd have zero freedoms online.