I think they were being semantic. East Germany (the region that is) has more problems with rascist attacks than the West German territories. Even though they are one state now, they still have quite a difference socially and economically.
This may not be a popular view with the yanks, but not all censorship or eavesdropping is inherently bad. The problem is making sure there are controls in place, so that that power can't be abused. The other problem is trust.
Maybe as a Yank, I have problems with eavesdropping.
For one... It is just inconsiderate. Secondly, it implies guilt. Lastly, it gives government too much power.
I'd rather have an ineffective and idiotic government than one that is strong and all knowing.
I don't care if it for "good", because we might have good people in office, but one day those tempted by power and greed might happen to be in a position of authority because all that power of the state is quite a target by those who would commit evil.
Keep the government weak and ineffective and those people will stick to running corporations or just doing evil on a local scale.
Crime can be prevented by local means and without using eavesdropping or monitoring. If they have a good reason, they can get a warrant and target specific suspects. Otherwise... They need to not be monitoring.
Wow, if nothing else the MGS4 demo has left me jaw dropped. That is some friggin high poly count. I was kind of doubtful of the PS3 thinking it would be just a Xbox 360, but that video looked awesome.
(Although, I dunno if it is still worth the price tag though)
I'm desperately trying to figure out when Slashdot became pro-piracy. It's really become quite a pro-piracy haven these last few years. People think it's perfectly all right to steal software and not pay the author for it. They actually believe it's okay to download, for instance, Doom 3, and not pay John Carmack, even though he spent five years of hard work to release it.
I wouldn't call it pro-piracy as it is as much as Anti-BSA or Anti-Microsoft or Anti-establisment.
Personally, I buy all my games because I have the money and I often feel like giving back to indie developers. (Go Darwinia! Go Red Orcherstra!)
But! I am highly suspicious of BSA's tactics and their claims of monetary loss which companies will use for tax purposes which I suppose directly is akin to "Tax Avoidance" which of course means it costs me indirectly anyways through higher taxes (Yeah I know it is a stretch)
They assume that if a person pirates software, they would have bought the software if they couldn't have pirate it. For some reason they cannot comprehend someone just doing without and finding something else to do.
If nothing else... Piracy hurts FOSS more than pay proprietary because with piracy there is no need for a free alternative, hence the lack of interest in those programs and hence less development. But I digress...
My second point I would have to raise with the BSA is how in the heck do they know that there is all this piracy in the first place? From my understanding they aren't going around house to house doing polls or making phone calls to everyone in the world and saying "Do you pirate software?"
Even if they did, no one in their right mind would say "Umm... Yes, I pirate software!"
Do they base this on figures of how many people they caught and then through a random multiplier with a dice roll and say "Here is our loss! Now give us a tax break!"
This is why I think most people on Slashdot appear to be pro-piracy.
And the fact these are faceless corporations or wealthy individuals aren't helping either.
A 14 year old kid won't stop to think as he is downloading Doom 3 torrent that John Carmack and go "bless his soul for his hard work in the 3d industry and without his hard effort we'd never have all the 3d games we have today", but rather "Gee... That man has 3 Ferraris! I'm sure this won't hurt em!"
Americans (and being one I know how this is) are selfish in general on our every day lives and we think we can get away with a lot of things. Sure during disasters we are generous, but most of the time we don't lift fingers to help each other or give each other the time of day.
We cut each other in traffic to get ahead. We speed because we think we can get away with it. We lie. We cheat. We steal. We put others down so we can get ahead. And we do it all because we want more... More of the good life.
I'm sure it is a generalization and most of the people I know aren't like this (because I wouldn't stand to be their associate) and luckily I don't work for a company such as I mentioned (because I would have quit by now).
But chances are between my home, job, and various other places in life I usually run in to those types (I live in a city of 1.25 million people so it's not hard)
And I'm sure other countries face similar problems but not in our extremes and we could work on our "altruism" or at least not try to be "self assholes" all the time.
Including me... I'm horrible for cutting people off in traffic and giving them the bird.
But they are effective. It is extremely demoralizing for a military to fight in a civil war. even if the military out guns and out mans the resistance it's not a "sure thing".
Depends on the occupier and how far are they willing to. If you take the German occupation of most countries during WWII, any violence by the resistance would be met with an unreasable amount of blind retaliation.
And don't forget what happened to the Warsaw Uprising... The only reason the French and Soviet resistance did so well was because they were supported by foreign powers still intact.
Heck... Vietnam and Afghanistan would have been a cakewalk for the occupiers had it not been for the other nations spending billions of dollars to supply the resistance.
The only reasons the Soviets pulled out was because of the Stinger missles and RPGs influx. Most of the APCs and helicopters were immune to small arms fire.
Last I checked assassination were mainly done with guns.
Actually, if you check the history of the middle east it is done mostly with bombs. Remember the politician in Lebanon that sparked nation wide protest when he was blown up?
But of course they still use guns... Its easier for them to just blow up the entire block though.
The best you can do is make your economy so bad that your government becomes militarily weak enough that they provoke someone to come and invade you.
You mean... Like spending less than $50,000 to get your minions to fly a plane into a building in which makes the enemy's people go dumb-walled and think by spending their country into oblivion and invading other countries that it will somehow solve a problem that could have been fixed by just installing a hundred dollar lock on all the cockpits doors?
I'm being sarcastic, but by all accounts it appears that if nothing else, terrorism has done its job. It has made us Americans over react and in effect kill ourselves in the process. (Curing the disease by killing the patient and what not.) I suppose we might be able to recover from the $9 trillion worth of debt and we might be able to recover our freedoms and we just might be able to live like things were before 9/11 (you know... no hassle at the airports... banking without having massive security checks... wiretaps... things like that), but I'm not holding my breath.
And yes... I agree with you. A crazy man with a hunting rifle is no match for a B-52 and a guided missile.
all the joys of the varied alien landscapes of fps and maybe practical real world simulation, be it lacking the feeling of jumping/climbing and the feeling of freefall, plus of course the lack of weight.
I was thinking to myself about how it would make for a good WWII Online or Red Orchestra addition since those games don't use a great deal of jumping and falling (usually falls result in death anyways).
There is plenty we don't know and many breakthroughs left in the universe, but I think it's human arrogance to think we're capable of omnipotence.
You are thinking too small. We simply cannot grasp infinity with our small minds. (Much less a billion years) However, the universe (or at least our present universe) is not infinite in time either so I put this to you.
If we do not achieve "technological omnipotence" then we will simply cease to be.
This might be from now to 100,000 years when a meteor hits our planet or we get hit by a gamma ray burst and wipe us out.
If we are looking at a longer time frame... Say 10 to a 100 billion years we are faced with the prospect of the Sun dying which involves it turning into a red dwarf which will expand and consume the earth. Even if we move to Mars or Pluto this will not be good enough. We must make it to other systems.
But even then it is not good enough!
We must find a way to reverse the 2nd law of thermodynamics or else we will end up with Heat Death of the Universe in 10^1000000000 so billion years.
Of course some postulate will face a Big Crunch of the universe where everything falls into a single point. I don't think without some type of superior technology will we be able to survive such an incident either.
Yes... Most of us will not be around by then, but the universe has a suspect time limit (if may not of course), but if we (human race, machines, aliens, or whatever is around at that time) haven't achieved true control of the universe via technology we will simply cease to be.
So our choices are either we achieve this state of Technological Singularity or we accept that the human race is going to be dead and the universe will go on without us.
I'd rather take my chances (and a bit of hope) that we will be able to overcome our current technological limitations and achieve this in 100, 1000, or 100,000 years from now.
Every day we stay grounded on this planet is more one tick towards 0% survival rate of human race.
IMO AOL sucked back as much as they do now. I really like Prodigy though, but they costed too much for an unemployed Jr Highschooler.
AOL was just wretched in the mid-early 90's. It only got worse.
Most BBS's were tons of fun and not too shabby. I sort of miss the BBS days, but then I think most people miss things that they did when they were growing up.
I can't believe they rated the IBM PC jr as the 13th worse product!!!
I have many a child hood memory playing King Quest II on that thing... Jumpman, Ghostbuster, Gato, and Tapper... Oh those were the days. I'm sure it would suck for business apps and serious computing power, but it was fun as heck if you were a kid.
Or is that the substandard gameplay or horrible control scheme?
Really? I thought it was the 12 year olds screaming obscenities about my sexual orientation at painful volumes into my headset that made the game not fun to play.
The broad, nonpartisan movement for Internet freedom notched a major victory today, when a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee passed the "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 -- a bill that offers meaningful protections for Network Neutrality, "the First Amendment of the Internet."
20 members of the Commitee (6 Republicans and 14 Democrats) voted for the bipartisan Bill, and only 13 against.
Even lists numbers of congress critters on the committee you can call, but I think they are already in voting session if they haven't already finished.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they were being semantic. East Germany (the region that is) has more problems with rascist attacks than the West German territories. Even though they are one state now, they still have quite a difference socially and economically.
This may not be a popular view with the yanks, but not all censorship or eavesdropping is inherently bad. The problem is making sure there are controls in place, so that that power can't be abused. The other problem is trust.
Maybe as a Yank, I have problems with eavesdropping.
For one... It is just inconsiderate. Secondly, it implies guilt. Lastly, it gives government too much power.
I'd rather have an ineffective and idiotic government than one that is strong and all knowing.
I don't care if it for "good", because we might have good people in office, but one day those tempted by power and greed might happen to be in a position of authority because all that power of the state is quite a target by those who would commit evil.
Keep the government weak and ineffective and those people will stick to running corporations or just doing evil on a local scale.
Crime can be prevented by local means and without using eavesdropping or monitoring. If they have a good reason, they can get a warrant and target specific suspects. Otherwise... They need to not be monitoring.
Wow, if nothing else the MGS4 demo has left me jaw dropped. That is some friggin high poly count. I was kind of doubtful of the PS3 thinking it would be just a Xbox 360, but that video looked awesome.
(Although, I dunno if it is still worth the price tag though)
I'm desperately trying to figure out when Slashdot became pro-piracy. It's really become quite a pro-piracy haven these last few years. People think it's perfectly all right to steal software and not pay the author for it. They actually believe it's okay to download, for instance, Doom 3, and not pay John Carmack, even though he spent five years of hard work to release it.
I wouldn't call it pro-piracy as it is as much as Anti-BSA or Anti-Microsoft or Anti-establisment.
Personally, I buy all my games because I have the money and I often feel like giving back to indie developers. (Go Darwinia! Go Red Orcherstra!)
But! I am highly suspicious of BSA's tactics and their claims of monetary loss which companies will use for tax purposes which I suppose directly is akin to "Tax Avoidance" which of course means it costs me indirectly anyways through higher taxes (Yeah I know it is a stretch)
They assume that if a person pirates software, they would have bought the software if they couldn't have pirate it. For some reason they cannot comprehend someone just doing without and finding something else to do.
If nothing else... Piracy hurts FOSS more than pay proprietary because with piracy there is no need for a free alternative, hence the lack of interest in those programs and hence less development. But I digress...
My second point I would have to raise with the BSA is how in the heck do they know that there is all this piracy in the first place? From my understanding they aren't going around house to house doing polls or making phone calls to everyone in the world and saying "Do you pirate software?"
Even if they did, no one in their right mind would say "Umm... Yes, I pirate software!"
Do they base this on figures of how many people they caught and then through a random multiplier with a dice roll and say "Here is our loss! Now give us a tax break!"
This is why I think most people on Slashdot appear to be pro-piracy.
And the fact these are faceless corporations or wealthy individuals aren't helping either.
A 14 year old kid won't stop to think as he is downloading Doom 3 torrent that John Carmack and go "bless his soul for his hard work in the 3d industry and without his hard effort we'd never have all the 3d games we have today", but rather "Gee... That man has 3 Ferraris! I'm sure this won't hurt em!"
Because it is kind of true.
Americans (and being one I know how this is) are selfish in general on our every day lives and we think we can get away with a lot of things. Sure during disasters we are generous, but most of the time we don't lift fingers to help each other or give each other the time of day.
We cut each other in traffic to get ahead. We speed because we think we can get away with it. We lie. We cheat. We steal. We put others down so we can get ahead. And we do it all because we want more... More of the good life.
It happens in our corporations work and it happens in our government as well.
I'm sure it is a generalization and most of the people I know aren't like this (because I wouldn't stand to be their associate) and luckily I don't work for a company such as I mentioned (because I would have quit by now).
But chances are between my home, job, and various other places in life I usually run in to those types (I live in a city of 1.25 million people so it's not hard)
And I'm sure other countries face similar problems but not in our extremes and we could work on our "altruism" or at least not try to be "self assholes" all the time.
Including me... I'm horrible for cutting people off in traffic and giving them the bird.
But they are effective. It is extremely demoralizing for a military to fight in a civil war. even if the military out guns and out mans the resistance it's not a "sure thing".
Depends on the occupier and how far are they willing to. If you take the German occupation of most countries during WWII, any violence by the resistance would be met with an unreasable amount of blind retaliation.
And don't forget what happened to the Warsaw Uprising... The only reason the French and Soviet resistance did so well was because they were supported by foreign powers still intact.
Heck... Vietnam and Afghanistan would have been a cakewalk for the occupiers had it not been for the other nations spending billions of dollars to supply the resistance.
The only reasons the Soviets pulled out was because of the Stinger missles and RPGs influx. Most of the APCs and helicopters were immune to small arms fire.
Last I checked assassination were mainly done with guns.
Actually, if you check the history of the middle east it is done mostly with bombs. Remember the politician in Lebanon that sparked nation wide protest when he was blown up?
But of course they still use guns... Its easier for them to just blow up the entire block though.
The best you can do is make your economy so bad that your government becomes militarily weak enough that they provoke someone to come and invade you.
You mean... Like spending less than $50,000 to get your minions to fly a plane into a building in which makes the enemy's people go dumb-walled and think by spending their country into oblivion and invading other countries that it will somehow solve a problem that could have been fixed by just installing a hundred dollar lock on all the cockpits doors?
I'm being sarcastic, but by all accounts it appears that if nothing else, terrorism has done its job. It has made us Americans over react and in effect kill ourselves in the process. (Curing the disease by killing the patient and what not.) I suppose we might be able to recover from the $9 trillion worth of debt and we might be able to recover our freedoms and we just might be able to live like things were before 9/11 (you know... no hassle at the airports... banking without having massive security checks... wiretaps... things like that), but I'm not holding my breath.
And yes... I agree with you. A crazy man with a hunting rifle is no match for a B-52 and a guided missile.
I dunno who to root for.
It is like an episode of Borg vs Species 8472.
Try 25%. And that figure's from the Bush DOE. I'll leave how that impacts your argument as an exercise.
So its pirates then?
all the joys of the varied alien landscapes of fps and maybe practical real world simulation, be it lacking the feeling of jumping/climbing and the feeling of freefall, plus of course the lack of weight.
I was thinking to myself about how it would make for a good WWII Online or Red Orchestra addition since those games don't use a great deal of jumping and falling (usually falls result in death anyways).
And I'm of the opinion that unless there's some mass societal changes, no one's going to be doing serious science in 100s of years.
What? There are more Scientist and Engineers alive now (an employed) than the total that ever existed during the entire history of the human race.
Secondly, even if we did have a dark age it doesn't mean another society can rise above it in 1,000 or so odd years.
And lastly... You are thinking that this depends on just the United States (and or Europe).
I'd wager in 50 years, China will have an economy larger than the US and a space program that puts our current Nasa programs to shame.
There is plenty we don't know and many breakthroughs left in the universe, but I think it's human arrogance to think we're capable of omnipotence.
You are thinking too small. We simply cannot grasp infinity with our small minds. (Much less a billion years) However, the universe (or at least our present universe) is not infinite in time either so I put this to you.
If we do not achieve "technological omnipotence" then we will simply cease to be.
This might be from now to 100,000 years when a meteor hits our planet or we get hit by a gamma ray burst and wipe us out.
If we are looking at a longer time frame... Say 10 to a 100 billion years we are faced with the prospect of the Sun dying which involves it turning into a red dwarf which will expand and consume the earth. Even if we move to Mars or Pluto this will not be good enough. We must make it to other systems.
But even then it is not good enough!
We must find a way to reverse the 2nd law of thermodynamics or else we will end up with Heat Death of the Universe in 10^1000000000 so billion years.
Of course some postulate will face a Big Crunch of the universe where everything falls into a single point. I don't think without some type of superior technology will we be able to survive such an incident either.
Yes... Most of us will not be around by then, but the universe has a suspect time limit (if may not of course), but if we (human race, machines, aliens, or whatever is around at that time) haven't achieved true control of the universe via technology we will simply cease to be.
So our choices are either we achieve this state of Technological Singularity or we accept that the human race is going to be dead and the universe will go on without us.
I'd rather take my chances (and a bit of hope) that we will be able to overcome our current technological limitations and achieve this in 100, 1000, or 100,000 years from now.
Every day we stay grounded on this planet is more one tick towards 0% survival rate of human race.
Since we have reduced CFC's in the past 20 years one would assume it would do something.
You know... We don't use CFC in our hair spray, styrofoam, air conditioners, and so on anymore.
Considering we've cut back so much... Wouldn't you think that would explain the ozone recovering?
That are we have more pirates these days.
IMO AOL sucked back as much as they do now. I really like Prodigy though, but they costed too much for an unemployed Jr Highschooler.
AOL was just wretched in the mid-early 90's. It only got worse.
Most BBS's were tons of fun and not too shabby. I sort of miss the BBS days, but then I think most people miss things that they did when they were growing up.
I can't believe they rated the IBM PC jr as the 13th worse product!!!
I have many a child hood memory playing King Quest II on that thing... Jumpman, Ghostbuster, Gato, and Tapper... Oh those were the days. I'm sure it would suck for business apps and serious computing power, but it was fun as heck if you were a kid.
Or is that the substandard gameplay or horrible control scheme?
Really? I thought it was the 12 year olds screaming obscenities about my sexual orientation at painful volumes into my headset that made the game not fun to play.
And when I think Beatles-Beatles, I instantly think spammer. ;)
Personally, I prefer SaveTheInternet. But you can't really understand your own position without knowing your opponent's.
;)
Well after seeing AT&T and Bellsouth in their members section I certainly do.
(Or at least understand their motives)
Check out Savetheinternet.com.
Grass roots campaign for the Net Neutrality bill. They have been helping out by giving information to people on how to contact their reps and so on.
Heck even Moby supports them.
If it was "quietly swept under the rug" why do you know about it? National media sttention: not exactly the definition of "quietly" to me.
Well... There wasn't much of a coverup as a "let's pretend it never happened" and call anyone who brought it up a "liberal with an agenda".
Personally, I could care less...
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/
well... There is always the save the internet campaign:
g -vote-today-call-congress-right-now/
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2006/05/25/bi
Even lists numbers of congress critters on the committee you can call, but I think they are already in voting session if they haven't already finished.
Do laws really help our children or is it ultimately the parents role to decided?
I thought laws were made to get politicians re-elected?
As per the discussion on Digg here is a video of the robot in action with the MRI:
s _bmi_robot_hand.php
e ts-mind-control-interface/
http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/honda_develop
And all the other links that were related:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/24/hondas-asimo-g
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=12565
The Japancorp has the most information than both the engadget and then Yahoo.