you can use algorithms to define surfaces instead of relying high poly-count models.
That about sums up the benefits to ray tracing right there. It might not be useful everywhere, but being able to render infinite-edge curves would probably make curved objects look and behave far more realisticly (better real-time boundary detection).
I just can't wait for the day when a Renderman-esque engine does the in-game graphics.
The truth is, we live in an age of convenience. I mean, there is so little to worry about in terms of survival that we can put time into doing virtual things for fun. Back in the day, I used to play catch with my dad inside the house (to the chargrin of my mom). Nowadays, I see kids hooking up each other's GBA's or DS's, or just plain sitting in front of the TV or computer because physical activity requires too much work.
People pay for convenience. They pay for mundane things like cleaning or cooking, and then occupy that unused time with "luxury" pursuits that in the end are largely meaningless. They pay someone to watch their bratty children while they go out for some drinks and a dinner. And so when things become inconvenient, become truly difficult and challenging, instead of sucking it up and getting it over with, they throw their hands up in the air, sit down, and wait for someone else to take care of the problem. Or maybe wait to find a person they could pay to do it. And if neither scenario presents itself, they shut down and cease to continue functioning normally.
And we wonder why people have started to feel that their lives are empty.
Case in point:/.'s new discussion display system (keyword bindings and all) sucks big ones. Not only is it annoying to have to click on the damn "more" button 10 times to load up 400 more comments, but it also takes forever to load. And, if I accidentally click away from the page afterwards, like to reply or to read a long comment, I'll have to go through clicking the "more" button 10 times again just to pick up where I left off. And, it's buggy as hell, so that if I expand an abbreviated comment and then close it, its replies get hidden. Hidden! I can't even see the replies anymore. I have to expand the parent or click the "x replies have been hidden" message to see the replies again. I didn't hide the reply. I don't want to hide the reply. I want to click on the reply after shrinking the parent. But I can't expand the reply without yet another layer of clicking. And, even after I shrink the parent, it leaves a large blank space right below it, with a branch indicating a reply going into that perfectly empty white space. This is absolutely the most retarded discussion UI I've ever seen, far worse than the unthreaded message boards that became popular at around the turn of the millenium. I don't know why it's not still hidden away in a corner somewhere for beta testing by volunteers. I know I wasn't one such volunteer.
And no, despite the sarcasm, I'm actually being tongue-in-cheek. I don't surf/. logged in, and when I don't, I always see the new discussion interface.
The monitored part is questionable, but I certainly wouldn't mind being able to "shut down" unused cylinders. The general rule is that the more cylinders you have, the more torque, which means you can carry heavier loads. At the same time, the more cylinders, the lower MPG. However, cars that can pull heavy loads aren't always loaded up, so the extra gas used is wasted.
If I were driving a light truck to a nearby shopping mall to buy myself a complete home theater system, I wouldn't need all 6 or 8 cylinders. However, when driving back fully loaded, I probably wouldn't be able to move without 6 cylinders. Or, if I needed to drive up a steep hill with my load, I might need yet another 2 cylinders.
I'd imagine it would be economically and environmentally friendly to be able to turn on an extra 2 cylinders when necessary, and to turn them off when not.
I'd imagine this would be perfect not so much for file transfer, but for streaming. Imagine being able to play videos just by setting the camcorder or dvd player right next to the television. Or view slideshows by putting a camera nearby a laptop or photo frame.
If you had left this at your first paragraph it might have been a good post. I could say the same of you.
Look, you stopped making sense after the first paragraph. Seriously. GP was talking about how movies and books are entertainment of the same sort, that they're meant to take a person away from real life into someplace fantastical or near-fantastical (reality/game shows). I really don't follow how advertisements and fast-forward/rewind have anything to do with the subject matter at hand, or how this is indicative of GP's sense of entitlement. If anything, GP is saying that anyone who entertains themselves with everything except TV and asserting their superiority because of the TV part of the statement is a hypocrite. Other forms of entertainment are still entertainment, whether it's a play or a book or a movie or a TV show (what might be a really different use of time would be something constructive like building a hovercraft, or perhaps doing something artistic like painting or sculpting).
As someone interviewing/managing these people coming out of college I can tell you the attitude only hurts you in trying to get a grown up job. Just because you're interviewing doesn't make you a good interviewer. And just so you know, the attitude has nothing to do with reaching a particular goal (getting what you want), so much as it is about the methods used and the sacrifices made.
Throughout, you're trying to be derogatory by asserting GP's youth and your own maturity. A word of advice: you might think there's a veil of anonymity because you're behind a projection of yourself that you created, but it's much harder to mask what you intrinsically are and mimic what you are not. There are mature people here, and there are others not so mature, and if I had to pick based on this thread, I'd be more likely to group you with the latter and GP with the former. I think part of it might be coming from the fact that I didn't read what I thought constituted a coherent, logical rebuttal to GP, but instead seemed to had picked up something rather trivial from GP and started ranting about something else entirely instead.
Main Entry: vandalism Pronunciation: 'vand-&l-"i-z&m Function: noun : the willful or malicious destruction or defacement of property Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 12 Jan. 2008.
You should stop talking. Your actions cannot be justified, and your attempt at it just makes you look worse.
Pray tell, what did I destroy? The TV still functioned. They turned it back on just before we left. NOBODY noticed that it was off except my table for around 30 minutes. The place was packed and the 50 inch plasma was 15 feet directly in front of me. The workers can't speak English and were too busy to serve meals to turn off the TV.
Put it this way: You're rushing down a single-file escalator, and there's a person in front of you. Instead of saying, "Excuse me," you shove your way past the person. Your initial attempt at justification is like saying it's not a big deal because the guy didn't get hurt, he dusted himself off and everything was back to normal. It wasn't like you pushed him down the escalator or anything. Then, you go on to effectively say, well, the guy's handicapped, so it wasn't as if he could retaliate. And then you also include the interesting bit of information that the guy doesn't speak English, as if that changes anything, or makes you better than him somehow.
Of course, your boss and your coworker condone and would willingly partake in such behavior, as if it was the most natural thing to do. So if they were right behind you, they would've pushed their way past the guy as well right behind you.
Actually my current manager is the best manager that I have ever had. He gets technology and he gets people. He stands up for me, and is very understanding of personal situations. The coworker that wanted three of them is one of the most ethical people I know.... Instead of "American Idol" he and I build Legos, and he learned to read at a very early age and do math at a very early age.
I don't care how great of a father you think you are (and I'm not saying you're not), how awesome your boss is, how ethical your worker is in the workplace. They're irrelevant. And the fact that you don't like television because it interferes with your ability to function normally is also irrelevant. It's not your television, it's not your restaurant. If you don't like the environment there, you go find a better place. Otherwise, if eating there is so important to you, deal with it. If you seek to impose your will upon others, and you think that's OK, you're a douche by my book. And if your environment actually condones such behavior, there's a lot of douchebaggery going on around you.
Oh, and it's interesting you say your coworker is one of the most ethical people you know. They say that the measure of a person isn't by what they do when there are consequences or the threat of consequences, but by what they do when there are no consequences. Quite frankly your coworker might be ethical, but that may be because he does not want to risk his job. I'm not so sure he's the kind of person I'd like to associate with. And I'm not sure you are either.
Look, nobody's perfect. Everybody's going to get pushed past that line at some point, and if we haven't already, we're all going to do something wrong to someone, or a group of people. But most people at least have the decency to be shameful about it; they do go around boasting about it, much less try to defend it after they bring it up. You remind me of the other douchebag here that started boasting about how he insulted this girl by calling her a slut, and how him and his buddies ganged up on her boyfriend for trying to defend her. But these things happen to even the best of us. It's not something to be proud of though, and moreso than the act itself, that is the most offensive part I find about what you've said.
Pranks involving TV-B-Gone were funny when I was in high school. If I was 14, I probably would've had a go
If this were true, then we would never be able to enjoy the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and others of ages past. Only the wealty would be able to read the Origin of Species or Thus Spoke Zarzuthra or Huckleberry Finn. And you'd be paying twice as much for everything because of all the licensing fees.
This is a terrible idea, though forcing content owners to pay a certain amount as upkeep over the duration of the government-sanctioned artificial monopoly may not be a bad idea.
All I know is that any voting system that can be simplified to 0 (No) or 1 (Yes) probably would be in the hands of the average person. So long as people aren't required to pick a second or third choice, it wouldn't really change a thing.
Watermarking does not prevent casual copying, which is what the **AA are trying to stomp out. P2P is just the most visible form of piracy, and thus P2P gets all the attention from both sides. However, P2P is just one front in their battle against we the people, and they haven't forgotten the other fronts even if we have.
Specifically replying though, your method of watermarking does not prevent people from buying a legit copy and posting it online. The alternative method would be to uniquely watermark every copy, which is costly, but doable. Which is why it's done only for screeners.
Regardless, it is possible to remove watermarks or distort watermarks with two copies of the same file. Since they're the same, they should be digitally equivalent. If they're not, then you know something's up.
Watermarks work for screeners because it's hard to get ahold of two copies of the same work. But even that doesn't work completely, as it's possible, despite being difficult, to get two copies and do the comparison. And once a scheme has been detected once, it has effectively been defeated.
It isn't so much that there hasn't been any attempts at controlling audio. Look at WMA, and other DRM schemes. It's just that no new audio formats have gained any traction. In particular, the cables that go from source to speaker have stayed the same, but even with software, it's been quite. Look at DVD-Audio or SACD and you'll notice that they're crawling with DRM. However, nobody wants it, because CD's and MP3's are by and large good enough. And if they aren't among the preferred formats, then it's likely LP's as opposed to any of the new HD formats. Granted, there are takers for both DVD-A and SACD, but they're the same ones who'll drop $25K on the newest top-of-the-line receiver every year without second thought.
Images, on the other hand, are still in development. Since our visual resolution is far greater than what existing formats offer, there's always room for new formats, and always reasons to upgrade to newer hardware. And that's why you hear about DRM in video more. Even so however, the HD video formats aren't doing terribly well either, though significantly better than the HD audio formats.
brag enough about martial arts skills and willingness to fight anyone who disagrees with you
FTA:
Remember that I've studied enough martial arts to be deadly even though I'm old, and I don't give a fuck if I kick your mother fucking ass or you kick mine. It wasn't a brag per say (more like name-dropping), but based on experience, the most vocal are also the least capable. And in the martial arts world, anyone who refers to themselves as "deadly" or talks about killing is more than likely no more than your average bully.
Your analogy doesn't work. People who are born deaf are born with a missing part of the ear or the brain that processes auditory information. People who become deaf usually are deaf for a reason that we know about. In the latter case, action and result are directly observable.
Nobody is genetically or otherwise hardwired to dream everything bu tthis one type of dream. And there's nothing to show that "threat simulation" is a near guaranteed result of a particular past event. Dreams vary per night. The same people can dream one way, another way, then the first way again, and "threat simulation" does not do anything to explain this. It barely explains that particular "category" of dream, if we can even categorize dreams as such.
Besides, when I fail to get REM sleep (lots of 2-hour power naps instead of one continuous 8/9-hour sleep), I respond poorly too, because I'm tired. Maybe, just maybe, these rats were tired too.
So while one counterexample might not imply a hypothesis to be wrong, there never was evidence of correlation anyway. It was only just speculation to begin with, and poor speculation at that.
It doesn't matter. Source code for most software is never released to the public. There's nothing in copyright that requires all works to be released into the public. The only thing is that companies can't sue under copyright if their work has been leaked. They can probably still sue under trade secret laws.
The only people it'll matter to is the open source camp.
When the copyright terms are less for corporations, this wouldn't be a problem. Licensing only works before a work has gone into the public domain.
But if copyright terms get shrunk to something as pittiful as 10 years, then your scenario would be the only viable way for most creators to make a living. Corporations would engage in anti-competitive practices for the 10 years of copyright (or whenever the term goes up) and then milk the work for all it is worth the moment the work enters the public domain (think Disney). Creators would have no choice but to work for corporations, if they want to see even a small return for their creations. Corporations can wait the 5 or 10 years before it capitalizes on a work. Individuals cannot.
Copyright must balance the needs of the creator with the needs of the public. It must take into account that those with money can bully those without, and that creators tend to fall into the latter camp. As such, it must provide measures to protect creators from such a situation. At the same time, copyright needs no measure to encourage creators to create. Creators will create whether there is money in doing so or not, whether there is a need to or not, whether there is any money to be made or not. Ask any artist, any writer, any musician. It's only a matter of fairness to the creators that they reap the reward of their creations.
As such, I'm more in disagreement with the definitions of fair use and of copyright infringement (the former should be expanded, the latter should be narrowed down to the most egregious and blatant violations), as well as with the intend behind the DMCA's DRM clause, than with the length of copyright. I think these should be addressed before anything else.
And as for punishment, how about fining them, and simply relieving them of all past copyrights they might be holding?
To say that dreams are a virtual reality, or a simulation of reality within our minds, is a good way of describing dreams.
To attribute a reason to this phenomenon based on shaky, selective anecdotal evidence sounds suspiciously like supersitition.
I've had such dreams before. I've had dreams of fighting, of killing, of being in mortal danger, and of being wounded. Sometimes, I wake up before the action begins, sometimes in the middle just as things are about to get good, sometimes I can force myself to continue dreaming, to see how far I can go before I wake up. I've had dreams where I died. The one time I forced myself to continue dreaming after I had died in it, my heart rate slowed significantly and my breathing stopped. I probably would have died if I hadn't woken myself up (think Matrix--if the brain thinks you're dead, you're dead).
I've had far more dreams where I've relived recent past events, though slightly distorted by the dream environment. And dreams that feature some type of violence in them usually reflect something I saw or read about the day before, or occasionally, something I did, but with a violent twist, perhaps a possible scenario that I was considering during the event.
And every so often, I have dreams that have nothing to do with anything recent, or anything significant. However, the dream would remind me of something that happened a long time ago that I didn't consciously remember before.
We don't know why dreams happen. There might not even be a "why." Let's not start making up shit like this just because we want dreaming to have some special meaning. Quite frankly, I'm more inclined to think that dreams are linked with memory. But that's based on my observation of all my dreams, not just the exciting ones.
It's easy to introduce legislation; it's difficult to get it passed.
There's a lot of political maneuvering and back room deals that has to happen to get things through congress. And then there's always the big stamp that ways "veto" the president wields. Sometimes, if it doesn't piss off the constituency too much, and it does annoy the $$$, it's not worth trying to introduce a bill that you know isn't going to go anywhere.
Now, if the constituency was a little more vocal about the issue, then maybe they'll pay their voters lip service by introducing a bill, all while trying to calm down their $$$ backing by convincing the $$$ that the bill won't become law anyway.
And if 67% of congress want to appease their constituency on the matter, then there's very little the $$$ can do...
This means they cannot expand into new locations and offer service where it isn't already being offered.
They can eat up 100% of their existing markets (where they offer service) without a problem. But that's the hard limit. Once this happens, they won't have anyone else to become new customers (and if they do, it wouldn't haven been 100%).
In a way, that's what blogs are (despite the fact that I hate the word). And this has been affirmed by a recent SCOTUS decision. But now the problem becomes that of having too many to choose from. That's why we read slashdot, digg, and perhaps a few prominent blogs, instead of a thousand individual blogs that might range from nobodies to prominent public figures. We use sites that aggregate, categorize, and rate content to distinguish the interesting from the junk.
But the internet is controlled by a small group of companies. So long as they control what does and what doesn't go through their pipes, we can never have free press or free speech on the internet. Sure, there's always SSL to encrypt our communication. But the words we write and put online have to be hosted somewhere, and so we have to play by the host's rules. The host, in turn, has to play by their ISP's rules.
The backbone needs to be a part of the public infrastructure in order for internet journalism to truly become our individual printing press, or at least it needs to be regulated as such (it'd be safer if it was maintained like our current transportation infrastructure though). And that's exactly where net neutrality comes into play.
what I reject is the limitation imposed by atheistic scientists that the answer to that first argued question must be presupposed towards randomness, not design.
The imposition of atheism into science is as bad as the imposition of any other religion.
If some deity one day just randomly appears and explains everything, then science will modify itself to take the deity into account. But for the most part, by its very nature of being outside of reality, we cannot know what the underlying forces behind reality while we are still bound by it. The analogy is a little crude, but it's something like asking a blind man to describe in words the difference between the colors "red" and "green". Heck, I couldn't describe to you their difference in words. I'd have to resort to a technical definition, where one is light with a wavelength of 740mm and the other of 520mm. But that doesn't actually describe the color, only the cause of the color...
God is as good an answer as randomness as the Flying Spaghetti Monster as any other attempt at an explanation. Some people pick one poison, and others pick another. Not a lot of people want to say, "I don't know, and from a scientific standpoint, I probably shouldn't care."
Slashdot Mirror
you can use algorithms to define surfaces instead of relying high poly-count models.
That about sums up the benefits to ray tracing right there. It might not be useful everywhere, but being able to render infinite-edge curves would probably make curved objects look and behave far more realisticly (better real-time boundary detection).
I just can't wait for the day when a Renderman-esque engine does the in-game graphics.
The truth is, we live in an age of convenience. I mean, there is so little to worry about in terms of survival that we can put time into doing virtual things for fun. Back in the day, I used to play catch with my dad inside the house (to the chargrin of my mom). Nowadays, I see kids hooking up each other's GBA's or DS's, or just plain sitting in front of the TV or computer because physical activity requires too much work.
/.'s new discussion display system (keyword bindings and all) sucks big ones. Not only is it annoying to have to click on the damn "more" button 10 times to load up 400 more comments, but it also takes forever to load. And, if I accidentally click away from the page afterwards, like to reply or to read a long comment, I'll have to go through clicking the "more" button 10 times again just to pick up where I left off. And, it's buggy as hell, so that if I expand an abbreviated comment and then close it, its replies get hidden. Hidden! I can't even see the replies anymore. I have to expand the parent or click the "x replies have been hidden" message to see the replies again. I didn't hide the reply. I don't want to hide the reply. I want to click on the reply after shrinking the parent. But I can't expand the reply without yet another layer of clicking. And, even after I shrink the parent, it leaves a large blank space right below it, with a branch indicating a reply going into that perfectly empty white space. This is absolutely the most retarded discussion UI I've ever seen, far worse than the unthreaded message boards that became popular at around the turn of the millenium. I don't know why it's not still hidden away in a corner somewhere for beta testing by volunteers. I know I wasn't one such volunteer.
/. logged in, and when I don't, I always see the new discussion interface.
People pay for convenience. They pay for mundane things like cleaning or cooking, and then occupy that unused time with "luxury" pursuits that in the end are largely meaningless. They pay someone to watch their bratty children while they go out for some drinks and a dinner. And so when things become inconvenient, become truly difficult and challenging, instead of sucking it up and getting it over with, they throw their hands up in the air, sit down, and wait for someone else to take care of the problem. Or maybe wait to find a person they could pay to do it. And if neither scenario presents itself, they shut down and cease to continue functioning normally.
And we wonder why people have started to feel that their lives are empty.
Case in point:
And no, despite the sarcasm, I'm actually being tongue-in-cheek. I don't surf
So they will just write another law.
One that will force every backbone owner to filter traffic. Because if one can do it, all of them can.
And henceforth, it will be named: The Great Firewall Act.
It doesn't have to be implemented directly by the government to be oppressive.
The monitored part is questionable, but I certainly wouldn't mind being able to "shut down" unused cylinders. The general rule is that the more cylinders you have, the more torque, which means you can carry heavier loads. At the same time, the more cylinders, the lower MPG. However, cars that can pull heavy loads aren't always loaded up, so the extra gas used is wasted.
If I were driving a light truck to a nearby shopping mall to buy myself a complete home theater system, I wouldn't need all 6 or 8 cylinders. However, when driving back fully loaded, I probably wouldn't be able to move without 6 cylinders. Or, if I needed to drive up a steep hill with my load, I might need yet another 2 cylinders.
I'd imagine it would be economically and environmentally friendly to be able to turn on an extra 2 cylinders when necessary, and to turn them off when not.
I'd imagine this would be perfect not so much for file transfer, but for streaming. Imagine being able to play videos just by setting the camcorder or dvd player right next to the television. Or view slideshows by putting a camera nearby a laptop or photo frame.
GTA-style car chase scenes, only this time, you're playing the police.
Look, you stopped making sense after the first paragraph. Seriously. GP was talking about how movies and books are entertainment of the same sort, that they're meant to take a person away from real life into someplace fantastical or near-fantastical (reality/game shows). I really don't follow how advertisements and fast-forward/rewind have anything to do with the subject matter at hand, or how this is indicative of GP's sense of entitlement. If anything, GP is saying that anyone who entertains themselves with everything except TV and asserting their superiority because of the TV part of the statement is a hypocrite. Other forms of entertainment are still entertainment, whether it's a play or a book or a movie or a TV show (what might be a really different use of time would be something constructive like building a hovercraft, or perhaps doing something artistic like painting or sculpting). As someone interviewing/managing these people coming out of college I can tell you the attitude only hurts you in trying to get a grown up job. Just because you're interviewing doesn't make you a good interviewer. And just so you know, the attitude has nothing to do with reaching a particular goal (getting what you want), so much as it is about the methods used and the sacrifices made.
Throughout, you're trying to be derogatory by asserting GP's youth and your own maturity. A word of advice: you might think there's a veil of anonymity because you're behind a projection of yourself that you created, but it's much harder to mask what you intrinsically are and mimic what you are not. There are mature people here, and there are others not so mature, and if I had to pick based on this thread, I'd be more likely to group you with the latter and GP with the former. I think part of it might be coming from the fact that I didn't read what I thought constituted a coherent, logical rebuttal to GP, but instead seemed to had picked up something rather trivial from GP and started ranting about something else entirely instead.
Main Entry: vandalism
Pronunciation: 'vand-&l-"i-z&m
Function: noun
: the willful or malicious destruction or defacement of property
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 12 Jan. 2008.
You should stop talking. Your actions cannot be justified, and your attempt at it just makes you look worse.
Pray tell, what did I destroy? The TV still functioned. They turned it back on just before we left. NOBODY noticed that it was off except my table for around 30 minutes. The place was packed and the 50 inch plasma was 15 feet directly in front of me. The workers can't speak English and were too busy to serve meals to turn off the TV.
Put it this way: You're rushing down a single-file escalator, and there's a person in front of you. Instead of saying, "Excuse me," you shove your way past the person. Your initial attempt at justification is like saying it's not a big deal because the guy didn't get hurt, he dusted himself off and everything was back to normal. It wasn't like you pushed him down the escalator or anything. Then, you go on to effectively say, well, the guy's handicapped, so it wasn't as if he could retaliate. And then you also include the interesting bit of information that the guy doesn't speak English, as if that changes anything, or makes you better than him somehow.
Of course, your boss and your coworker condone and would willingly partake in such behavior, as if it was the most natural thing to do. So if they were right behind you, they would've pushed their way past the guy as well right behind you.
Actually my current manager is the best manager that I have ever had. He gets technology and he gets people. He stands up for me, and is very understanding of personal situations. The coworker that wanted three of them is one of the most ethical people I know. ...
Instead of "American Idol" he and I build Legos, and he learned to read at a very early age and do math at a very early age.
I don't care how great of a father you think you are (and I'm not saying you're not), how awesome your boss is, how ethical your worker is in the workplace. They're irrelevant. And the fact that you don't like television because it interferes with your ability to function normally is also irrelevant. It's not your television, it's not your restaurant. If you don't like the environment there, you go find a better place. Otherwise, if eating there is so important to you, deal with it. If you seek to impose your will upon others, and you think that's OK, you're a douche by my book. And if your environment actually condones such behavior, there's a lot of douchebaggery going on around you.
Oh, and it's interesting you say your coworker is one of the most ethical people you know. They say that the measure of a person isn't by what they do when there are consequences or the threat of consequences, but by what they do when there are no consequences. Quite frankly your coworker might be ethical, but that may be because he does not want to risk his job. I'm not so sure he's the kind of person I'd like to associate with. And I'm not sure you are either.
Look, nobody's perfect. Everybody's going to get pushed past that line at some point, and if we haven't already, we're all going to do something wrong to someone, or a group of people. But most people at least have the decency to be shameful about it; they do go around boasting about it, much less try to defend it after they bring it up. You remind me of the other douchebag here that started boasting about how he insulted this girl by calling her a slut, and how him and his buddies ganged up on her boyfriend for trying to defend her. But these things happen to even the best of us. It's not something to be proud of though, and moreso than the act itself, that is the most offensive part I find about what you've said.
Pranks involving TV-B-Gone were funny when I was in high school. If I was 14, I probably would've had a go
If this were true, then we would never be able to enjoy the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and others of ages past. Only the wealty would be able to read the Origin of Species or Thus Spoke Zarzuthra or Huckleberry Finn. And you'd be paying twice as much for everything because of all the licensing fees.
This is a terrible idea, though forcing content owners to pay a certain amount as upkeep over the duration of the government-sanctioned artificial monopoly may not be a bad idea.
All I know is that any voting system that can be simplified to 0 (No) or 1 (Yes) probably would be in the hands of the average person. So long as people aren't required to pick a second or third choice, it wouldn't really change a thing.
It's a trap!
Watermarking does not prevent casual copying, which is what the **AA are trying to stomp out. P2P is just the most visible form of piracy, and thus P2P gets all the attention from both sides. However, P2P is just one front in their battle against we the people, and they haven't forgotten the other fronts even if we have.
Specifically replying though, your method of watermarking does not prevent people from buying a legit copy and posting it online. The alternative method would be to uniquely watermark every copy, which is costly, but doable. Which is why it's done only for screeners.
Regardless, it is possible to remove watermarks or distort watermarks with two copies of the same file. Since they're the same, they should be digitally equivalent. If they're not, then you know something's up.
Watermarks work for screeners because it's hard to get ahold of two copies of the same work. But even that doesn't work completely, as it's possible, despite being difficult, to get two copies and do the comparison. And once a scheme has been detected once, it has effectively been defeated.
Right, there's a DAC somewhere...
It isn't so much that there hasn't been any attempts at controlling audio. Look at WMA, and other DRM schemes. It's just that no new audio formats have gained any traction. In particular, the cables that go from source to speaker have stayed the same, but even with software, it's been quite. Look at DVD-Audio or SACD and you'll notice that they're crawling with DRM. However, nobody wants it, because CD's and MP3's are by and large good enough. And if they aren't among the preferred formats, then it's likely LP's as opposed to any of the new HD formats. Granted, there are takers for both DVD-A and SACD, but they're the same ones who'll drop $25K on the newest top-of-the-line receiver every year without second thought.
Images, on the other hand, are still in development. Since our visual resolution is far greater than what existing formats offer, there's always room for new formats, and always reasons to upgrade to newer hardware. And that's why you hear about DRM in video more. Even so however, the HD video formats aren't doing terribly well either, though significantly better than the HD audio formats.
FTA: Remember that I've studied enough martial arts to be deadly even though I'm old, and I don't give a fuck if I kick your mother fucking ass or you kick mine. It wasn't a brag per say (more like name-dropping), but based on experience, the most vocal are also the least capable. And in the martial arts world, anyone who refers to themselves as "deadly" or talks about killing is more than likely no more than your average bully.
Your analogy doesn't work. People who are born deaf are born with a missing part of the ear or the brain that processes auditory information. People who become deaf usually are deaf for a reason that we know about. In the latter case, action and result are directly observable.
Nobody is genetically or otherwise hardwired to dream everything bu tthis one type of dream. And there's nothing to show that "threat simulation" is a near guaranteed result of a particular past event. Dreams vary per night. The same people can dream one way, another way, then the first way again, and "threat simulation" does not do anything to explain this. It barely explains that particular "category" of dream, if we can even categorize dreams as such.
Besides, when I fail to get REM sleep (lots of 2-hour power naps instead of one continuous 8/9-hour sleep), I respond poorly too, because I'm tired. Maybe, just maybe, these rats were tired too.
So while one counterexample might not imply a hypothesis to be wrong, there never was evidence of correlation anyway. It was only just speculation to begin with, and poor speculation at that.
It doesn't matter. Source code for most software is never released to the public. There's nothing in copyright that requires all works to be released into the public. The only thing is that companies can't sue under copyright if their work has been leaked. They can probably still sue under trade secret laws.
The only people it'll matter to is the open source camp.
When the copyright terms are less for corporations, this wouldn't be a problem. Licensing only works before a work has gone into the public domain.
But if copyright terms get shrunk to something as pittiful as 10 years, then your scenario would be the only viable way for most creators to make a living. Corporations would engage in anti-competitive practices for the 10 years of copyright (or whenever the term goes up) and then milk the work for all it is worth the moment the work enters the public domain (think Disney). Creators would have no choice but to work for corporations, if they want to see even a small return for their creations. Corporations can wait the 5 or 10 years before it capitalizes on a work. Individuals cannot.
Copyright must balance the needs of the creator with the needs of the public. It must take into account that those with money can bully those without, and that creators tend to fall into the latter camp. As such, it must provide measures to protect creators from such a situation. At the same time, copyright needs no measure to encourage creators to create. Creators will create whether there is money in doing so or not, whether there is a need to or not, whether there is any money to be made or not. Ask any artist, any writer, any musician. It's only a matter of fairness to the creators that they reap the reward of their creations.
As such, I'm more in disagreement with the definitions of fair use and of copyright infringement (the former should be expanded, the latter should be narrowed down to the most egregious and blatant violations), as well as with the intend behind the DMCA's DRM clause, than with the length of copyright. I think these should be addressed before anything else.
And as for punishment, how about fining them, and simply relieving them of all past copyrights they might be holding?
To say that dreams are a virtual reality, or a simulation of reality within our minds, is a good way of describing dreams.
To attribute a reason to this phenomenon based on shaky, selective anecdotal evidence sounds suspiciously like supersitition.
I've had such dreams before. I've had dreams of fighting, of killing, of being in mortal danger, and of being wounded. Sometimes, I wake up before the action begins, sometimes in the middle just as things are about to get good, sometimes I can force myself to continue dreaming, to see how far I can go before I wake up. I've had dreams where I died. The one time I forced myself to continue dreaming after I had died in it, my heart rate slowed significantly and my breathing stopped. I probably would have died if I hadn't woken myself up (think Matrix--if the brain thinks you're dead, you're dead).
I've had far more dreams where I've relived recent past events, though slightly distorted by the dream environment. And dreams that feature some type of violence in them usually reflect something I saw or read about the day before, or occasionally, something I did, but with a violent twist, perhaps a possible scenario that I was considering during the event.
And every so often, I have dreams that have nothing to do with anything recent, or anything significant. However, the dream would remind me of something that happened a long time ago that I didn't consciously remember before.
We don't know why dreams happen. There might not even be a "why." Let's not start making up shit like this just because we want dreaming to have some special meaning. Quite frankly, I'm more inclined to think that dreams are linked with memory. But that's based on my observation of all my dreams, not just the exciting ones.
You're not selling him the chair, you're selling him the "right to throw."
Pants? It's not penetration testing if there's no penetration.
It better be hard or it won't be interesting.
It's easy to introduce legislation; it's difficult to get it passed.
There's a lot of political maneuvering and back room deals that has to happen to get things through congress. And then there's always the big stamp that ways "veto" the president wields. Sometimes, if it doesn't piss off the constituency too much, and it does annoy the $$$, it's not worth trying to introduce a bill that you know isn't going to go anywhere.
Now, if the constituency was a little more vocal about the issue, then maybe they'll pay their voters lip service by introducing a bill, all while trying to calm down their $$$ backing by convincing the $$$ that the bill won't become law anyway.
And if 67% of congress want to appease their constituency on the matter, then there's very little the $$$ can do...
This means they cannot expand into new locations and offer service where it isn't already being offered.
They can eat up 100% of their existing markets (where they offer service) without a problem. But that's the hard limit. Once this happens, they won't have anyone else to become new customers (and if they do, it wouldn't haven been 100%).
In a way, that's what blogs are (despite the fact that I hate the word). And this has been affirmed by a recent SCOTUS decision. But now the problem becomes that of having too many to choose from. That's why we read slashdot, digg, and perhaps a few prominent blogs, instead of a thousand individual blogs that might range from nobodies to prominent public figures. We use sites that aggregate, categorize, and rate content to distinguish the interesting from the junk.
But the internet is controlled by a small group of companies. So long as they control what does and what doesn't go through their pipes, we can never have free press or free speech on the internet. Sure, there's always SSL to encrypt our communication. But the words we write and put online have to be hosted somewhere, and so we have to play by the host's rules. The host, in turn, has to play by their ISP's rules.
The backbone needs to be a part of the public infrastructure in order for internet journalism to truly become our individual printing press, or at least it needs to be regulated as such (it'd be safer if it was maintained like our current transportation infrastructure though). And that's exactly where net neutrality comes into play.
what I reject is the limitation imposed by atheistic scientists that the answer to that first argued question must be presupposed towards randomness, not design.
The imposition of atheism into science is as bad as the imposition of any other religion.
If some deity one day just randomly appears and explains everything, then science will modify itself to take the deity into account. But for the most part, by its very nature of being outside of reality, we cannot know what the underlying forces behind reality while we are still bound by it. The analogy is a little crude, but it's something like asking a blind man to describe in words the difference between the colors "red" and "green". Heck, I couldn't describe to you their difference in words. I'd have to resort to a technical definition, where one is light with a wavelength of 740mm and the other of 520mm. But that doesn't actually describe the color, only the cause of the color...
God is as good an answer as randomness as the Flying Spaghetti Monster as any other attempt at an explanation. Some people pick one poison, and others pick another. Not a lot of people want to say, "I don't know, and from a scientific standpoint, I probably shouldn't care."