I agree. While I try to design sites to look clean and attractive, I know that the web should be about access to information.
I don't try to make my web sites into "art" like many people do. While these types of pages are pretty in IE, they often don't work in anything else at all. Also, the "art" gets in the way of the information on the page. HTML was originally intended to deliver information, not art.
JavaScript, Flash, Applets, Browser-specific features, and so forth should NEVER interfere with content. In other words, I should still be able to view all the real content on any browser, with all the crap/plugins disabled. In many cases, however, I can't, which is sad.
I don't think D&D is going anywhere...
on
Layoffs at WotC
·
· Score: 2
Seriously. I believe that they are just ousting the top paid people at WoTC to save some bucks. Which might not be a bad thing, since I believe at this point they can keep D&D alive since they've probably got their "core rules" out. Now they only really need people to make modules and other supplemental material that doesn't require very much work compared to coming up with the d20 system.
D&D will more than likely survive for several years in the "3rd. Edition" format. It won't surprise me if Hasbro will be forced to sell WoTC or D&D off after a few years, however. This could lead to "4th. Edition..." but who knows when this will happen.
Even if they went out of business tomorrow, it wouldn't stop me from playing Dungeons and Dragons, since I have rules for both 2nd. and 3rd. Editions lying around. (Even though this seems to be blasphemy to some, I prefer 3rd. over 2nd... but that is a different discussion altogether).
The books are out there. There are still plenty of people who play 2nd. Edition and even 1st. Edition! People aren't going to stop playing D&D or other Pen and Paper RPGs because of stuff like this.
The thing is that I've heard the Epic Level Handbook was selling like mad. Maybe the figures I've heard are wrong. Or maybe Hasbro is playing B.S. corporate politics. Who knows?
When an artist signs on to a record label, exactly how much control do they lose over they type of music that they will put out?
We've all heard the stories or watched a movie about how an indy band decides to sign onto a record label, and the label then forces them to change their image / play crappy music written by some 2-bit composer / or do something else that the band doesn't really like, but their contract obligates them to do.
Are these views extreme in most cases?
Does the artist lose all control, allowing themselves to be remade into whatever the record company wants them to be? Or is some amount of control retained?
Very scary.
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If this is not a skewed servey, as some might suggest, it is very scary. It would be scary to me if 1/10 or 2/10 would support any restriction to the first ammendment.
It is very scary to me that even more people in this survey think that government criticism should be prohibited.
It also sickens me that there are plenty of people who think that the government should be able to spy on religious practices. People think that their religion will be safe because they aren't muslim. They think: "Only muslims are terrorists, after all."
I have news for these ignorant people. Every major religion has terrorist groups associated with it. This includes ultra-right-wing psuedo-christian groups who think it is okay blow up abortion clinics. This includes the IRA. This even includes some fringe Jewish groups who plan mosque bombings.
The government WILL eventually use groups like these as an excuse to spy on everybody's church if given the opportunity.
You have to stand up for our rights, period. When the government starts raiding mosques routinely, don't just think "Oh, they're just going after the muslims. Everyone knows that only muslims are terrorists, so won't affect me." It will.
It would also help to get your ass up on election day and go vote.
This bill is rather interesting. It basically says all men must complete 1 year of military training after they graduate high school.
First off, it says that eligible persons will go to be trained either by the Army, Navy, Marines, Airforce, or Coast Guard. It doesn't say how it is determined where the eligible persons will go. It is not clear if those who are undergoing training under this act will have a chance to see active combat duty during the training period.
As far as anyone knows, those eligble who are sons of politicians or rich campaign contributors might find themselves in the Coast Guard, while the average person will find themselves in a branch of the military where they could see active duty overseas.
Secondly, it says that those who have religious reasons to oppose combat must still be trained, minus the combat training. This would still enable the Federal Government to "profile" these people. I'm actually surprised that they didn't include all women into this category.
Third, it makes exceptions for those who are still in High School, but not those who wish to pursue higher education. It could be possible that if this Bill were to be passed, that everyone would have to wait one year to go to college because of military training. The only exception, of course, is if you are accepted into a military academy. On the upside, everyone who completed this training would be eligible for educational assistance.
Personally, I don't like the bill out of principle. I think that if this is passed, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for a future bill to expand upon the training period, include required "regular" armed forces service, or so forth.
On the other hand, a lot of other countries have seemingly worse "involuntary conscription" periods for young men.
Well, it seems that the RIAA and MPAA are not only trying to buy laws that would make it a crime to hurt their business model, but they are also trying to buy laws that would allow them to impose vigilante justice on anyone they even suspected doing so.
Is it just me, or am I wrong to be suspicous that any company would have the blatant ego to release something like Palladium, which could have the capabilities of squashing all competition, in light of an antitrust trial?
It looks like the Bush Administration wants the DOJ to give Microsoft a slap on the wrist, however. Even though they've been found guilty of leveraging their Monopoly powers to squash competition.
I'm not going to point to any conspiracy theories, etc., just a gut feeling. Could it be that the Bush Administration secretly wants Microsoft to deploy Palladium?
If Palladium is as bad as people are saying it is, it has the capability of forcing every computer user who wants to use the internet in a meaningful way to use the same exact (or very similar) system as everyone else.
Imagine that MS deploys Palladium, then announces that they are going to "cooperate" with the Office of Homeland Security, allowing them to use the capabilities of Palladium to "fight terrorism."
Working together with Microsoft, the government could suddenly have access to everyone's hard drive. Not only in the United States, either, but on any PC in the world that is running on Palladium hardware. Unplugging your PC from the network won't even be an option if you are required to be connected to use any software.
And of course, anyone who resists upgrading to Palladium after a certain period of time would not only be pictured as being against capitalism by refusing to spend money to upgrade their PCs, but would also be seen as aiding the terrorists by using non-Palladium hardware.
They could also justify a military raid of Southeast Asian countries for producing "terrorist computer hardware," in other words cheap computer hardware that is not Palladium-enabled.
I might be a bit alarmist, but it seems that some of the capabilities of Palladium are very much aligned with the Bush Administrations current track record of curtailing our civil liberties and screwing around with other countries in the name of "fighting terrorism."
Additionally, though I'm still skeptical, I'm becoming more and more convinced of the possibility that the Bush Administration knew about what was going to happen on 9/11 at least a few weeks before hand.
I certainly hope we don't start seeing "Palladium-enabled" purchacing kioscs at our supermarkets and so forth, but it wouldn't surprise me. Revelation 13 is seriously starting to freak me out.
It certainly concerns me. However, the average person doesn't even KNOW about Palladium. They probably won't know about it until the press hypes the "next version of Windows" that will "stop hackers from stealing."
If you work for a university, the university claims ownership of your ideas.
I've also heard that if you're a student at many universities, the university claims ownership of your ideas. I've never seen a university try to enforce this, however.
Really, it sucks that Bioware and Interplay had legal problems. I sort of feel that Infogames forced Bioware's hands in releasing this game with only a very short public beta run. While there might be plenty of reasons for the release date, I somehow am getting the impression that Infogames is responsible for the switch from "simultaneous release" for all operating systems to "wait until fall for Linux and Mac versions, sorry..."
It is saddening, since even when it went gold, I thought that the Linux version was going to be in the box. I guess I didn't read the press releases.
There are also some bug-related issues in the game, but they don't seem to bother me that much.
All that being said, the game is still really awesome. Especially multiplayer. The changes to 3E were minimal (though I don't get why they added parry mode) for the PC translation. Obviously, some spells and cleric domains were taken out, but it is still darn cool.
While yo did make money, you only made $70 off of six months of work. Even working at Starbucks for minimum wage, you'd at least make a few thousand with the same time investment.
Exactly one of the reasons EQ is not "fun," is what you mentioned. Everyone around you is an adventurer. There are very few "commoners" in the game. What makes it worse is that no matter if you kill the evil orc king (or whoever), he'll just respawn for the next guy. Nothing you do affects the world. Infact, to build your character, you might have to sit around and wait for that evil orc king to respawn. Lame.
Another problem is that to have a group of friends to play with in the game, you HAVE to play as much as they do... because of the persistant nature of the game, you can play it 24/7.
I also tried DAoC for similar reasons you did. The PvP system in it sounded compelling, in that the PvP you did would have an affect on the world in some way. Of course, to get to the point where you can participate in the PvP in any meaningful way it turned out you needed to be high level. Until that point it is just another EQ with a bit better of a story.
Strangely, DAoC is not as "addictive" (so to speak) as EQ. Dunno why. EverQuest has some weird quality about it that makes you feel the need to play, even if you don't want to.
Anyway, Neverwinter Nights is great. The ability for DMs to make their own worlds and change them based on the actions of the players makes it much more fun than EQ. Real roleplaying can occur (rather than loot collecting and camping). Plus it is hard to play 24/7, since the world is not constantly respawning (there are people who have made modules with respawns, etc... but the game is more geared towards single shot encounters).
For the time being, I don't think CG is lifelike enough to replace real actors in non sci-fi movies. The reason is that CG chacaters, even good ones, still seem to lack realistic motions... even if they have lifelike appearance as a still.
Over the long run, however, I still don't see it happening. The reason being is the entire culture that has been built upon the obsession of movie stars and their lifestyles.
For some reason, one that I can't explain, people seem to enjoy reading about the daily lives of their favorite celebrities. They like reading about the rediculous things these actors do with their money. They like reading about Hollywood divorces. They like obsessing over famous figures, and dream about someday meeting them. They like watching their favorite actors win academy awards.
If you replace actors with computer generated characters, all of this goes away. The allure of celebrity vanishes because a computer generated character isn't real. They can't win awards in the same way. They can't have a lifestyle that the common person envies because they aren't alive. A common person can't ever hope to meet a celebrity who only exists as a computer program.
I believe a huge part of the film industry relies on the attraction people have to the actors themselves. I believe that replacing actors with CG will affect just about everything but kids films negatively from a money standpoint, because people will lose interest.
Record and movie execs have gotten foreign nationals invovled with DeCSS, who have not even stepped foot in the US, arrested and brought over here for trial for violating the DMCA.
If this stupid "rich campaign contributors are allowed to hack you for no good reason" bill passes, I hope that the Aussies bust the media companies, just so that these execs get a taste of their own medicine.
Of course, they'll probably just "donate" money to some powerful person over there to avoid this situation, but it is nice to dream...
Remember, never point out someone's security holes so they can fix things before real damage is done. If you do these things, you are nothing more than an evil terrorist! And according to Gestapo... err Attorney General John Ashcroft, you must be an Al Qaeda operative deserving of the death penalty!!
Congress needs cleaned out now. I've said it before, but incumbants need to go. All of them. It is quite obvious that the vast majority of people in our congress no longer represent the American people, but now represent whoever pays them the most.
If voters can wake up and realize this, and voted their incumbants out, it would send the message to congress that they can't get away with selling us out. It would also send a message to corporations that they need to get back to running their businesses properly, rather than buying a law to protect them.
Of course, this won't happen as long as both major parties are successful in duping voters into thinking that they "care" about issues important to voters.
"Under GOD?" Yeah right. Christians, as well as members of other faiths, shouldn't be duped by Dubya and company. They do the exact same "evil stuff" as the left wingers, except that they pretend they are all "moral," and for "family values" to get the votes from those that care about those things.
I spent a summer in Western Michigan, and it seemed every other bumper had a "George W. Bush" sticker on it. The area also has a high concentration of those who claim to be fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. As if the Republican party is the party of God or something... they are just as bad as the "liberals" when it comes to morailty issues.
Either way, I can envision a time in the future where it is illegal to read the Bible because it might contradict "state sponsored worship."
Hopefully then people won't still look at me like an idiot when I told them I voted Libertarian.
Re:Palladium's Power: total corporate domination
on
The Power of Palladium
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It maybe a funny post, but it is an extreme view of the way we're going. Just look at the trends.
Media corporations and advertisers are accusing TV viewers of theft if you skip commercials with a PVR, or by going to get a snack or going to the bathroom.
Likewise, media corporations are claiming that if they make $X billion in a year rather than $X*2 billion in a year, they are being threatened by theft (piracy), rather than blaming it on their lack of ability to make anything remotely entertaining.
Disney essentially paid Senator Hollings to write a bill that would require you to have "policeware" features in your computer, TV, stereo, etc. They also apparently made some anti-MP3 propaganda where a rap star's paycheck is reduced to $3 a month because of Napster.
President Bush encourages people to go out and spend their cash rather than save it, despite the fact that many people are having a hard enough time paying off their executive-greed-inflated bills.
Maybe the RIAA is not making as much money as they'd like (they are still making tons of money, though - I don't see any record execs power-lunching at McDonald's yet) because people are fed up with buying a CD for one or two decent songs while the rest of the album is crap.
At least when I buy a movie I know I like I get 2 hours or so of entertainment out of it, for just about the same price as the 3-6 minutes of entertainment I get out of a CD's one or two good songs.
Additionally, I personally bought more music when Napster was still around, because through Napster I previewed songs from the CD other than what was being played on the radio. Eventually I either deleted the song or bought the CD. I also discovered a lot of stuff I would have _never_ heard of otherwise.
Also, we're in the middle of an economic downturn. Maybe, just maybe, people aren't buying as much music because it isn't enough value per dollar. If I'm budgeting my entertainment spending, I'm going to opt to pay $20 for a DVD rather than $20 for a CD, because the DVD has more value.
The story might be along the lines of being FUD-like, but the fact remains that Stallman's vision of the future in that story is much closer to being reality than a world without music or art.
Take a look at the potential abuse of this new DRM system Microsoft is proposing as well as legislation proposed by Senator Hollings.
It seems that the ultimate goal of Microsoft is nothing short of total control and ownership of your PC and all the data on it. It is also quite frightening that this DRM version seems to fit quite perfectly as a potential standard if bills like Holling's are actually passed into law.
It is easy to forsee that a bill very similar to Holling's is eventually passed, and then Microsoft uses its monopoly position and money to force its own DRM scheme as the standard. All of a sudden, Linux, MacOS, BSD, Solaris, etc. are illegal. All of a sudden it is illegal to build your own PC, or get a PC that is made without DRM hardware.
All of a sudden, Microsoft literally owns the internet, your PC, your TV, your VCR, your stereo, your DVD player, video game console, and your personal data... and is 100% backed up by our corrupt government in doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
For more information: http://www.chick.com
If you read Harry Potter, Play D&D, or don't pass out Chick Tracts, you WILL end up in a satanic cult!
I agree. While I try to design sites to look clean and attractive, I know that the web should be about access to information.
I don't try to make my web sites into "art" like many people do. While these types of pages are pretty in IE, they often don't work in anything else at all. Also, the "art" gets in the way of the information on the page. HTML was originally intended to deliver information, not art.
JavaScript, Flash, Applets, Browser-specific features, and so forth should NEVER interfere with content. In other words, I should still be able to view all the real content on any browser, with all the crap/plugins disabled. In many cases, however, I can't, which is sad.
Seriously. I believe that they are just ousting the top paid people at WoTC to save some bucks.
Which might not be a bad thing, since I believe at this point they can keep D&D alive since they've probably got their "core rules" out. Now they only really need people to make modules and other supplemental material that doesn't require very much work compared to coming up with the d20 system.
D&D will more than likely survive for several years in the "3rd. Edition" format. It won't surprise me if Hasbro will be forced to sell WoTC or D&D off after a few years, however. This could lead to "4th. Edition..." but who knows when this will happen.
Even if they went out of business tomorrow, it wouldn't stop me from playing Dungeons and Dragons, since I have rules for both 2nd. and 3rd. Editions lying around. (Even though this seems to be blasphemy to some, I prefer 3rd. over 2nd... but that is a different discussion altogether).
The books are out there. There are still plenty of people who play 2nd. Edition and even 1st. Edition! People aren't going to stop playing D&D or other Pen and Paper RPGs because of stuff like this.
The thing is that I've heard the Epic Level Handbook was selling like mad. Maybe the figures I've heard are wrong. Or maybe Hasbro is playing B.S. corporate politics. Who knows?
Seriously. I think someone else said this, but I'd probably work on writing a book. I've always wanted to do that. ^_^
When an artist signs on to a record label, exactly how much control do they lose over they type of music that they will put out?
We've all heard the stories or watched a movie about how an indy band decides to sign onto a record label, and the label then forces them to change their image / play crappy music written by some 2-bit composer / or do something else that the band doesn't really like, but their contract obligates them to do.
Are these views extreme in most cases?
Does the artist lose all control, allowing themselves to be remade into whatever the record company wants them to be? Or is some amount of control retained?
If this is not a skewed servey, as some might suggest, it is very scary. It would be scary to me if 1/10 or 2/10 would support any restriction to the first ammendment.
It is very scary to me that even more people in this survey think that government criticism should be prohibited.
It also sickens me that there are plenty of people who think that the government should be able to spy on religious practices. People think that their religion will be safe because they aren't muslim. They think: "Only muslims are terrorists, after all."
I have news for these ignorant people. Every major religion has terrorist groups associated with it. This includes ultra-right-wing psuedo-christian groups who think it is okay blow up abortion clinics. This includes the IRA. This even includes some fringe Jewish groups who plan mosque bombings.
The government WILL eventually use groups like these as an excuse to spy on everybody's church if given the opportunity.
You have to stand up for our rights, period. When the government starts raiding mosques routinely, don't just think "Oh, they're just going after the muslims. Everyone knows that only muslims are terrorists, so won't affect me." It will.
It would also help to get your ass up on election day and go vote.
This bill is rather interesting. It basically says all men must complete 1 year of military training after they graduate high school.
First off, it says that eligible persons will go to be trained either by the Army, Navy, Marines, Airforce, or Coast Guard. It doesn't say how it is determined where the eligible persons will go. It is not clear if those who are undergoing training under this act will have a chance to see active combat duty during the training period.
As far as anyone knows, those eligble who are sons of politicians or rich campaign contributors might find themselves in the Coast Guard, while the average person will find themselves in a branch of the military where they could see active duty overseas.
Secondly, it says that those who have religious reasons to oppose combat must still be trained, minus the combat training. This would still enable the Federal Government to "profile" these people.
I'm actually surprised that they didn't include all women into this category.
Third, it makes exceptions for those who are still in High School, but not those who wish to pursue higher education. It could be possible that if this Bill were to be passed, that everyone would have to wait one year to go to college because of military training. The only exception, of course, is if you are accepted into a military academy.
On the upside, everyone who completed this training would be eligible for educational assistance.
Personally, I don't like the bill out of principle.
I think that if this is passed, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for a future bill to expand upon the training period, include required "regular" armed forces service, or so forth.
On the other hand, a lot of other countries have seemingly worse "involuntary conscription" periods for young men.
Well, it seems that the RIAA and MPAA are not only trying to buy laws that would make it a crime to hurt their business model, but they are also trying to buy laws that would allow them to impose vigilante justice on anyone they even suspected doing so.
I think the post is supposed to be a joke.
Or at least I _really_ hope so.
Where is the BeOS port they were promising 5 years ago...
5 9&mode=thread&tid=87
oh wait... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/22/14202
Darn.
Is it just me, or am I wrong to be suspicous that any company would have the blatant ego to release something like Palladium, which could have the capabilities of squashing all competition, in light of an antitrust trial?
It looks like the Bush Administration wants the DOJ to give Microsoft a slap on the wrist, however. Even though they've been found guilty of leveraging their Monopoly powers to squash competition.
I'm not going to point to any conspiracy theories, etc., just a gut feeling. Could it be that the Bush Administration secretly wants Microsoft to deploy Palladium?
If Palladium is as bad as people are saying it is, it has the capability of forcing every computer user who wants to use the internet in a meaningful way to use the same exact (or very similar) system as everyone else.
Imagine that MS deploys Palladium, then announces that they are going to "cooperate" with the Office of Homeland Security, allowing them to use the capabilities of Palladium to "fight terrorism."
Working together with Microsoft, the government could suddenly have access to everyone's hard drive. Not only in the United States, either, but on any PC in the world that is running on Palladium hardware. Unplugging your PC from the network won't even be an option if you are required to be connected to use any software.
And of course, anyone who resists upgrading to Palladium after a certain period of time would not only be pictured as being against capitalism by refusing to spend money to upgrade their PCs, but would also be seen as aiding the terrorists by using non-Palladium hardware.
They could also justify a military raid of Southeast Asian countries for producing "terrorist computer hardware," in other words cheap computer hardware that is not Palladium-enabled.
I might be a bit alarmist, but it seems that some of the capabilities of Palladium are very much aligned with the Bush Administrations current track record of curtailing our civil liberties and screwing around with other countries in the name of "fighting terrorism."
Additionally, though I'm still skeptical, I'm becoming more and more convinced of the possibility that the Bush Administration knew about what was going to happen on 9/11 at least a few weeks before hand.
I certainly hope we don't start seeing "Palladium-enabled" purchacing kioscs at our supermarkets and so forth, but it wouldn't surprise me. Revelation 13 is seriously starting to freak me out.
It certainly concerns me. However, the average person doesn't even KNOW about Palladium. They probably won't know about it until the press hypes the "next version of Windows" that will "stop hackers from stealing."
If you work for a university, the university claims ownership of your ideas.
I've also heard that if you're a student at many universities, the university claims ownership of your ideas. I've never seen a university try to enforce this, however.
Really, it sucks that Bioware and Interplay had legal problems. I sort of feel that Infogames forced Bioware's hands in releasing this game with only a very short public beta run. While there might be plenty of reasons for the release date, I somehow am getting the impression that Infogames is responsible for the switch from "simultaneous release" for all operating systems to "wait until fall for Linux and Mac versions, sorry..."
It is saddening, since even when it went gold, I thought that the Linux version was going to be in the box. I guess I didn't read the press releases.
There are also some bug-related issues in the game, but they don't seem to bother me that much.
All that being said, the game is still really awesome. Especially multiplayer. The changes to 3E were minimal (though I don't get why they added parry mode) for the PC translation. Obviously, some spells and cleric domains were taken out, but it is still darn cool.
While yo did make money, you only made $70 off of six months of work. Even working at Starbucks for minimum wage, you'd at least make a few thousand with the same time investment.
Exactly one of the reasons EQ is not "fun," is what you mentioned. Everyone around you is an adventurer. There are very few "commoners" in the game. What makes it worse is that no matter if you kill the evil orc king (or whoever), he'll just respawn for the next guy. Nothing you do affects the world. Infact, to build your character, you might have to sit around and wait for that evil orc king to respawn. Lame.
Another problem is that to have a group of friends to play with in the game, you HAVE to play as much as they do... because of the persistant nature of the game, you can play it 24/7.
I also tried DAoC for similar reasons you did. The PvP system in it sounded compelling, in that the PvP you did would have an affect on the world in some way. Of course, to get to the point where you can participate in the PvP in any meaningful way it turned out you needed to be high level. Until that point it is just another EQ with a bit better of a story.
Strangely, DAoC is not as "addictive" (so to speak) as EQ. Dunno why. EverQuest has some weird quality about it that makes you feel the need to play, even if you don't want to.
Anyway, Neverwinter Nights is great. The ability for DMs to make their own worlds and change them based on the actions of the players makes it much more fun than EQ. Real roleplaying can occur (rather than loot collecting and camping). Plus it is hard to play 24/7, since the world is not constantly respawning (there are people who have made modules with respawns, etc... but the game is more geared towards single shot encounters).
For the time being, I don't think CG is lifelike enough to replace real actors in non sci-fi movies. The reason is that CG chacaters, even good ones, still seem to lack realistic motions... even if they have lifelike appearance as a still.
Over the long run, however, I still don't see it happening. The reason being is the entire culture that has been built upon the obsession of movie stars and their lifestyles.
For some reason, one that I can't explain, people seem to enjoy reading about the daily lives of their favorite celebrities. They like reading about the rediculous things these actors do with their money. They like reading about Hollywood divorces. They like obsessing over famous figures, and dream about someday meeting them. They like watching their favorite actors win academy awards.
If you replace actors with computer generated characters, all of this goes away. The allure of
celebrity vanishes because a computer generated character isn't real. They can't win awards in the same way. They can't have a lifestyle that the common person envies because they aren't alive. A common person can't ever hope to meet a celebrity who only exists as a computer program.
I believe a huge part of the film industry relies on the attraction people have to the actors themselves. I believe that replacing actors with CG will affect just about everything but kids films negatively from a money standpoint, because people will lose interest.
Record and movie execs have gotten foreign nationals invovled with DeCSS, who have not even stepped foot in the US, arrested and brought over here for trial for violating the DMCA.
If this stupid "rich campaign contributors are allowed to hack you for no good reason" bill passes, I hope that the Aussies bust the media companies, just so that these execs get a taste of their own medicine.
Of course, they'll probably just "donate" money to some powerful person over there to avoid this situation, but it is nice to dream...
Remember, never point out someone's security holes so they can fix things before real damage is done. If you do these things, you are nothing more than an evil terrorist! And according to Gestapo... err Attorney General John Ashcroft, you must be an Al Qaeda operative deserving of the death penalty!!
Nostalgia is basically the only reason, but that doesn't make it any less cool.
Congress needs cleaned out now. I've said it before, but incumbants need to go. All of them. It is quite obvious that the vast majority of people in our congress no longer represent the American people, but now represent whoever pays them the most.
If voters can wake up and realize this, and voted their incumbants out, it would send the message to congress that they can't get away with selling us out. It would also send a message to corporations that they need to get back to running their businesses properly, rather than buying a law to protect them.
Of course, this won't happen as long as both major parties are successful in duping voters into thinking that they "care" about issues important to voters.
"Under GOD?" Yeah right. Christians, as well as members of other faiths, shouldn't be duped by Dubya and company. They do the exact same "evil stuff" as the left wingers, except that they pretend they are all "moral," and for "family values" to get the votes from those that care about those things.
I spent a summer in Western Michigan, and it seemed every other bumper had a "George W. Bush" sticker on it. The area also has a high concentration of those who claim to be fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. As if the Republican party is the party of God or something... they are just as bad as the "liberals" when it comes to morailty issues.
Either way, I can envision a time in the future where it is illegal to read the Bible because it might contradict "state sponsored worship."
Hopefully then people won't still look at me like an idiot when I told them I voted Libertarian.
It maybe a funny post, but it is an extreme view of the way we're going. Just look at the trends.
Media corporations and advertisers are accusing TV viewers of theft if you skip commercials with a PVR, or by going to get a snack or going to the bathroom.
Likewise, media corporations are claiming that if they make $X billion in a year rather than $X*2 billion in a year, they are being threatened by theft (piracy), rather than blaming it on their lack of ability to make anything remotely entertaining.
Disney essentially paid Senator Hollings to write a bill that would require you to have "policeware" features in your computer, TV, stereo, etc. They also apparently made some anti-MP3 propaganda where a rap star's paycheck is reduced to $3 a month because of Napster.
President Bush encourages people to go out and spend their cash rather than save it, despite the fact that many people are having a hard enough time paying off their executive-greed-inflated bills.
I know this is likely redundant, but:
Maybe the RIAA is not making as much money as they'd like (they are still making tons of money, though - I don't see any record execs power-lunching at McDonald's yet) because people are fed up with buying a CD for one or two decent songs while the rest of the album is crap.
At least when I buy a movie I know I like I get 2 hours or so of entertainment out of it, for just about the same price as the 3-6 minutes of entertainment I get out of a CD's one or two good songs.
Additionally, I personally bought more music when Napster was still around, because through Napster I previewed songs from the CD other than what was being played on the radio. Eventually I either deleted the song or bought the CD. I also discovered a lot of stuff I would have _never_ heard of otherwise.
Also, we're in the middle of an economic downturn. Maybe, just maybe, people aren't buying as much music because it isn't enough value per dollar.
If I'm budgeting my entertainment spending, I'm going to opt to pay $20 for a DVD rather than $20 for a CD, because the DVD has more value.
The story might be along the lines of being FUD-like, but the fact remains that Stallman's vision of the future in that story is much closer to being reality than a world without music or art.
Take a look at the potential abuse of this new DRM system Microsoft is proposing as well as legislation proposed by Senator Hollings.
It seems that the ultimate goal of Microsoft is nothing short of total control and ownership of your PC and all the data on it. It is also quite frightening that this DRM version seems to fit quite perfectly as a potential standard if bills like Holling's are actually passed into law.
It is easy to forsee that a bill very similar to Holling's is eventually passed, and then Microsoft uses its monopoly position and money to force its own DRM scheme as the standard. All of a sudden, Linux, MacOS, BSD, Solaris, etc. are illegal. All of a sudden it is illegal to build your own PC, or get a PC that is made without DRM hardware.
All of a sudden, Microsoft literally owns the internet, your PC, your TV, your VCR, your stereo, your DVD player, video game console, and your personal data... and is 100% backed up by our corrupt government in doing so.