When asked how to conserve energy, they passed by increasing the gas taxes, passed by making the CAFE standards apply to all vehicles including SUVs, passed by investing in alternative energy sources, and instead said "I know, let's make Daylight Saving Time apply a few more months out of the year!". I've got a better idea -- instead of fucking with the damn clock, why not encourage employers to let employees work flexible hours, or even change their work schedules in the summer months? That does it, I'm going to use GMT exclusively from now on! It's 20:43 GMT, dammit!
Most forms of expression are fairly linear - you read it, listen to it, or watch it all the way through once, and then you have a pretty good idea of everything that is in it. However, most video games are non-linear. There are multiple paths to the game objective, and many include features that are "locked" until after you play for hours and hours. I submit that there is no effective way to guarantee that the reviewer has excercised every code path through the game, therefore any rating is at best a guess based on incomplete information! The only people that know everything that is in a game are the people that wrote it, and probably no single one of them is familiar with the entire game either. Our best bet is to have the developer's rate the games themselves, then simply not buy from companies that misrate them. Having a 3rd party rate a videogame is really just an exercise in intellectual masterbation; the rating proves nothing because the rater knows far less about the content than the creator.
Viewing this "adult" material requires downloading a patch from the internet. All sights containing this patch should be rated "adult-only", no? So by definition, to view this material, you need to have unfettered access to the internet... in which case you can view previews of hundreds if not thousands of for more prurient videos! It's like saying a jpeg should be x-rated because there is a steganographic encoding of a XXX movie script in the background. At some point, with sufficiently sophisticated filters, you can start interpreting random noise as pornography, like in the book "Subliminal Seduction". Where do you draw the line?
It was an easter egg. I used to work for a firewall vendor. We had lots of spare room on the software distribution CD, so they added an mpeg of one of the employee's singing "I'm a little teapot" (I beleive she was drunk at the time). The point is, this was an inside joke, and never intended for customers. The point is also that software developers, and especially game developers, are really just big kids in adult bodies, and they like to screw around with thing like this. So no, the Rockstar management never intended this to be on the disk; chances are they never even knew it was there. It was obviously a proof-of-concept thrown together by a couple (possibly inebriated) developers, who then disabled it so it wouldn't appear in the final release, but for whatever reasons didn't feel like deleting it entirely. And yes, putting a "Mature Audiences Only" sticker on a game, movie, or record does make it much, much more desirable to teenagers! Male teens of our species are relatively expendable; therefore they are programmed to attempt to violate societal taboos. It's not until they get older that they realize most of those taboos are there for good reasons.
The SIMS has an ESRB rating of E-T (Everyone/Teens). However, there is a patch available for The SIMS that removes the dithering done when they are changing clothes, allowing one to see buck naked SIMS!. Doesn't this mean the ESRB should also revoke The SIMS "Everyone" rating?
a taxi that will take the most direct route You've obviously never driven a taxi. Taking the most direct route results in the lowest fares! Experienced taxi drivers learn to quickly spot out-of-towners, then take the most roundabout route possible, thereby maximize their income!
Nope, not good for ambulances, which usually operate in high-population density areas. Even experienced ambulance drivers have accidents; I wouldn't trust a machine to do this. Nope, wouldn't work for taxis; this would require sophisticated speech recognition. Nope, wouldn't work for pizza wagon, since somebody still has to knock on the door and collect the money (although automated baking while en route would be a good idea even if you had a driver). Nope, the only real application for this is driving across the dessert, tracking people down, and killing them...
What are the elimination criteria Well, for one thing, running over one of the judges is grounds for immediate dismissal from the competition!
But seriously, I beleive those vehicles that could not complete a closed obstacle course were eliminated. It has occured to you that autonomous vehicles do present a huge safety hazard (especially those with a 200-mile range), therefore they can't let just anybody participate in this, hasn't it?
I have friends from Nigeria, and yes, it really is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. They like to tell the story of the wealthy Nigerian who stuck his hand out of his Rolls Royce to shake hands with a crowd of common people -- when he pulled his hand back in, his Rolex was gone!
But since these people are free to travel, I suspect the scams are now coming from all over the world.
I was also able to find the president's home address online!
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
If you are relying on security-through-obscurity to keep people from tracking you down and harming you, perhaps you should be investing in some other form of security... one that doesn't assume that you are hard to find.
My understanding of the DMCA is that it makes the use of a "circumvention device" illegal, regardless of whether or not you have "fair use" rights to the content.
He is right up there with the anti-handgun advocates who own guns for their own protection -- he wants everybody else to follow rules that he feels he is personaly above. I say we contact the appropriate copyright protection organisation and have him audited, since he has already publicly admitted to breaking the law (DMCA)!
Good case study for firms on HOW NOT TO IMPLEMENT DRM solutions. Wrong. Which generates more revenue: selling people the same content over and over again each time they buy a new computer, or giving it to them once and letting them migrate to any other machine for the rest of their life? He is obviously forgetting the main purpose of DRM: to make consumers pay for the same content over and over again! I'd say Microsoft's DRM is optimally designed to acheive Microsoft's goals: derive continuing revenue from something you used to pay for only once.
If you lie to the public and you know its a lie, then that is fraud. What if you lie to the public and you can tell that it is a lie because you're fucking nuts? I smell an insanity defense in the works for Darl... at least, that is the only rational explanation I can come up with to explain his public statements!
But, if they seriosly beleive that open source software contains code that violates copyright, then why are they shipping OpenSCO with several open source software packages, e.g. Samba? Doesn't that leave SCO open to a copyright infringment case, if they are using code that they beleive contains infringing material? Ouch... my head hurts. I guess I never mastered the skill of talking out of both sides of my mouth.
There was, at one stage, the idea that we would sell licenses to corporate customers who were using Linux as a kind of "insurance policy" in case it turned out that they were using code which infringed our copyright...
Yeah, I got a friend named Guido who sells "insurance policies" too... his catch phrase is "Nice place you've got here... be a shame if anything should happen to it!"
Am I misreading the law, or does this actually qualify as extortion?
This means the SCO lawsuit has just crossed the line from "Completely clueless lawsuit" to "Intentional frivilous lawsuit". Doesn't ignoring this email leave SCO wide-open to a counterclaim by IBM for restraint of trade? SCO may be right about one thing -- this may very well be 4 billion dollar lawsuit. The problem is, it looks like the billions in damage claims may very well be awarded to IBM, not SCO.
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When asked how to conserve energy, they passed by increasing the gas taxes, passed by making the CAFE standards apply to all vehicles including SUVs, passed by investing in alternative energy sources, and instead said "I know, let's make Daylight Saving Time apply a few more months out of the year!". I've got a better idea -- instead of fucking with the damn clock, why not encourage employers to let employees work flexible hours, or even change their work schedules in the summer months? That does it, I'm going to use GMT exclusively from now on! It's 20:43 GMT, dammit!
Most forms of expression are fairly linear - you read it, listen to it, or watch it all the way through once, and then you have a pretty good idea of everything that is in it. However, most video games are non-linear. There are multiple paths to the game objective, and many include features that are "locked" until after you play for hours and hours. I submit that there is no effective way to guarantee that the reviewer has excercised every code path through the game, therefore any rating is at best a guess based on incomplete information! The only people that know everything that is in a game are the people that wrote it, and probably no single one of them is familiar with the entire game either. Our best bet is to have the developer's rate the games themselves, then simply not buy from companies that misrate them. Having a 3rd party rate a videogame is really just an exercise in intellectual masterbation; the rating proves nothing because the rater knows far less about the content than the creator.
Viewing this "adult" material requires downloading a patch from the internet. All sights containing this patch should be rated "adult-only", no? So by definition, to view this material, you need to have unfettered access to the internet... in which case you can view previews of hundreds if not thousands of for more prurient videos! It's like saying a jpeg should be x-rated because there is a steganographic encoding of a XXX movie script in the background. At some point, with sufficiently sophisticated filters, you can start interpreting random noise as pornography, like in the book "Subliminal Seduction". Where do you draw the line?
Uh, I don't suppose you could tell us all what exactly that simple, one word cheat is, could you? Inquiring minds want to know!
It was an easter egg. I used to work for a firewall vendor. We had lots of spare room on the software distribution CD, so they added an mpeg of one of the employee's singing "I'm a little teapot" (I beleive she was drunk at the time). The point is, this was an inside joke, and never intended for customers. The point is also that software developers, and especially game developers, are really just big kids in adult bodies, and they like to screw around with thing like this. So no, the Rockstar management never intended this to be on the disk; chances are they never even knew it was there. It was obviously a proof-of-concept thrown together by a couple (possibly inebriated) developers, who then disabled it so it wouldn't appear in the final release, but for whatever reasons didn't feel like deleting it entirely. And yes, putting a "Mature Audiences Only" sticker on a game, movie, or record does make it much, much more desirable to teenagers! Male teens of our species are relatively expendable; therefore they are programmed to attempt to violate societal taboos. It's not until they get older that they realize most of those taboos are there for good reasons.
The SIMS has an ESRB rating of E-T (Everyone/Teens). However, there is a patch available for The SIMS that removes the dithering done when they are changing clothes, allowing one to see buck naked SIMS!. Doesn't this mean the ESRB should also revoke The SIMS "Everyone" rating?
Either that, or he had really friendly neighbors...
Nope, not good for ambulances, which usually operate in high-population density areas. Even experienced ambulance drivers have accidents; I wouldn't trust a machine to do this. Nope, wouldn't work for taxis; this would require sophisticated speech recognition. Nope, wouldn't work for pizza wagon, since somebody still has to knock on the door and collect the money (although automated baking while en route would be a good idea even if you had a driver). Nope, the only real application for this is driving across the dessert, tracking people down, and killing them...
But seriously, I beleive those vehicles that could not complete a closed obstacle course were eliminated. It has occured to you that autonomous vehicles do present a huge safety hazard (especially those with a 200-mile range), therefore they can't let just anybody participate in this, hasn't it?
Even worse, it's pronounced "Toe-rag"! Ewww!
Now what am I gonna do at work? Obviously read and post to /.!
But since these people are free to travel, I suspect the scams are now coming from all over the world.
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
If you are relying on security-through-obscurity to keep people from tracking you down and harming you, perhaps you should be investing in some other form of security... one that doesn't assume that you are hard to find.
My understanding of the DMCA is that it makes the use of a "circumvention device" illegal, regardless of whether or not you have "fair use" rights to the content.
He is right up there with the anti-handgun advocates who own guns for their own protection -- he wants everybody else to follow rules that he feels he is personaly above. I say we contact the appropriate copyright protection organisation and have him audited, since he has already publicly admitted to breaking the law (DMCA)!
Good case study for firms on HOW NOT TO IMPLEMENT DRM solutions. Wrong. Which generates more revenue: selling people the same content over and over again each time they buy a new computer, or giving it to them once and letting them migrate to any other machine for the rest of their life? He is obviously forgetting the main purpose of DRM: to make consumers pay for the same content over and over again! I'd say Microsoft's DRM is optimally designed to acheive Microsoft's goals: derive continuing revenue from something you used to pay for only once.
Now I'm going to have to take the MCP exams, just to prove I'm as smart as a 9-year old!
My four-year old can use a computer without assistance. So far, she hasn't written any software.
Tom Cruise as Groklaw Hmmm... not sure how Pamela would feel about being played by Tom Cruise... how good does he look in a dress?
If you lie to the public and you know its a lie, then that is fraud. What if you lie to the public and you can tell that it is a lie because you're fucking nuts? I smell an insanity defense in the works for Darl... at least, that is the only rational explanation I can come up with to explain his public statements!
Really?!? Well, if he was wrong about that, then maybe he might be wrong about Linux being the work of the Devil too!
That would be classified as a mercy killing, wouldn't it? Come on, just put them out of their misery...
But, if they seriosly beleive that open source software contains code that violates copyright, then why are they shipping OpenSCO with several open source software packages, e.g. Samba? Doesn't that leave SCO open to a copyright infringment case, if they are using code that they beleive contains infringing material? Ouch... my head hurts. I guess I never mastered the skill of talking out of both sides of my mouth.
Yeah, I got a friend named Guido who sells "insurance policies" too... his catch phrase is "Nice place you've got here... be a shame if anything should happen to it!"
Am I misreading the law, or does this actually qualify as extortion?
This means the SCO lawsuit has just crossed the line from "Completely clueless lawsuit" to "Intentional frivilous lawsuit". Doesn't ignoring this email leave SCO wide-open to a counterclaim by IBM for restraint of trade? SCO may be right about one thing -- this may very well be 4 billion dollar lawsuit. The problem is, it looks like the billions in damage claims may very well be awarded to IBM, not SCO.