So you're telling us that a "small business owner" doesn't know how to Google for an app and stumble onto VersionTracker (which he/she should suspect exists anyway as similar sites exist for Windows) but the same "small business owner" knows what a Terminal app is; knows how to drive a command line, and knows that he/she needs to use a command called "apt-get".
As a user of PCs and Linux machines for a LONG time, I have long known of terminals (Eterm, Xterm, so many flavors), know how to use a command line, and know of the existence of apt-get, emerge, yum, and at least one GUI package management tool for Ubuntu.
I had never heard of VersionTracker, and would never have thought to look for it if you had not posted about it. On one hand, thanks for the tip -- it sounds handy. On the other, it is a little elitist for you to assume that it's impossible (or even indicative of idiocy) for someone to know about these advanced tools, and to have never googled for VersionTracker.
Cut the guy some slack.:D
Of course, as a small business owner, the fellow in question probably pays someone else to manage his computer assets. Not all small businesses are the 4-person kind that deal intimately with software.:)
Why would I need to buy tax software, when I can do it online at TurboTax.com, hrblock.com, and a multitude of others? For Americans, what need is there to use dedicated tax software?
For Non-Americans, I don't know if there are web-based tax tools... but I imagine there are, given the successes we have seen here in the states.
A web-based application is quite often platform-agnostic (unless they are retarded and require IE;)). Some of them were some of the best dynamic web applications I'd seen in a LONG time, too.
I* decide if the government gets my mail. They better have a search warrant (assuming they haven't totally taken away every right we have) when they come asking for my server. If they don't. I've got time to destroy the drives.
Isn't this illegal? I'm not a lawyer, and it's been a while since I read news about the various corporate scandals, but isn't destroying such evidence considered a crime in many US jurisdictions?
Heck, I thought I remembered something about a UK law that made refusal to disclose a private encryption key punishable, but I don't remember if that ever went live.
Go stick _Applied Cryptography_ up your (bleep), Anonymous (bleep) Coward.
Well, I hate to say it but I agree with the AC, a little bit. Encrypting something twice makes the message weaker versus cryptanalysis, from what I remember reading in Applied Cryptography.
Encrypting twice with DIFFERENT schemes... that seems like it isn't significantly more secure. Remember that you should always assume that your attackers know which algorithms you are using, and thus the strength of your message depends on the strength of your key(s).
I could be wrong, as far as using multiple different encryption algorithms. I do know that 2x encrypting with the same key/alg is considered VERY weak, though. It's been a while since I read this, though, and I certainly didn't absorb the information rectally.
Now, for hashes... I guess that makes sense. It's hard enough to create a hash colision with an arbitrary document, and making one that collides with two different hashing methods (which are a basis for digital signatures) would be VERY hard. So, your suggestion might work well for signing documents, even if I don't think it will work for encrypting them.
Re:"but no one can get online to play it"
on
World of Queuecraft
·
· Score: 1
Logging in (or staying logged in for any appreciable time) is adversely affected by the server crashing "at least a dozen times" (and more).
by equating Bush to Hitler, you lose perspective on how very bad Hitler was, how mediocre Bush is, and how much worse things can get, and ultimately, you make the very tyranny you rail against all the more likely since you have lost any real capacity to make a contrasting assessment between leaders of history and the one you have now or will get in the future.
*Equating* Bush with Hitler is bad, yes. However, comparing a leader to Hitler isn't, as it allows us to identify ways that they are similar -- if the rise to power is similar, or the strategies of dealing with "how the rules apply to me", etc, is similar, that should at least throw up some warning flags and make one take a closer look.
I am not saying Bush is like Hitler.
However, Bush's absolute insistence on secrecy, his claims that all (or nearly all) is justified in the name of "fighting terror", the fact that he has lied about reasons to go to war (in Iraq -- I have no problems that I can think of with Afghanistan), these are all scary. The way he is reported to talk about people who disagree with him, even in his own staff, is very scary.
How can we expect his view/strategy/plan to make sense, or be a good course of action, if he doesn't tolerate criticism, or alternate scenarios? This is very similar to the way dictators have often run. THAT is why it's scary -- it's too similar to Stalin and Hitler's modus operandi.
A local business where I live actually has this as their phone number, and advertises it on the radio (complete with jingle). Amusing and jarring at the same time.
It appears from this article that SCO believes its only hope would seem to be to bait the judge into saying or doing something stupid, like Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case a few years back.
This strikes me as a very very stupid strategy, if it is indeed SCO's plan. I would be very hesitant (whether as a lawyer or any other party to the case) to risk being found by the judge to have been deliberately trying to cheese her off. I mean... can they really be that dumb? (Yes, probably:))
As the parent said, Hawaii is hit hard by foreign species, also. However, it's not just animals. Kauai's being overrun by foreign plants, which are out-competing indigenous plant life.
starts with the unproved assumption that marriage must be good and beneifical, and so creates results to fit that hypothesis.
That's a very interestnig possiblity; I'm sure that several have done exactly that. Good point about people not wanting to challenge something that claims that "Marriage is good".:)
The majority of marriages are not healthy, and not because people intend to enter unhealthy marriages. It's because they make decisions based on their emotions instead of actually thinking it through like I advocate.
I agree with your reasons for the existence of many bad marriages. Too many leap before looking, so to speak. However, ARE the majority of marriages unhealthy? I have never really looked at this.
Hmm... thinking at the keyboard, I am, now...
Of those people who get divorced, I think we can assume it's because they were not happy or satisfied in their relationship. Whether they were mistaken in their expectations ("work? why should it need work?"), immature, just not well-suited to their partner, or even abused, I imagine that at least one of the parties is happier un-married, or at least NOT married to the other person. I don't think that many of those (if any) would have been a "happy" marriage.
Of marriages that do not end in divorce (or have not yet), it seems that they either are satisfied and happy, OR consider themselves "unable" to divorce -- whether because of religion, social pressure, the kids, etc.
So... yeah, of all the marriages that get started, it seems that a minority of them will last. However, this seems (to me) to be a product of our society's attitude towards marriage. It's considered OK to marry, decide it's not for you, and quit, and then try again. This is a VERY different attitude than what prevailed a century ago, when people were often nearly pariahs if they divorced.
So... I think that the proportion of marriages which are "happy" may be larger than it used to be, in that we now have an escape clause if we feel it's warranted.
On the other hand, what does "happy" mean? We probably define it very differently now. Our ideas of family roles are different, and many people want to feel entertained, pampered, adored, and haev that "in-love" feeling, whereas in decades past, people were more accepting of the idea that it takes work and sacrifice to get the good stuff. The "in-love" feeling is mainly chemical, it's up to us to do the work to keep a relationship healthy and alive past two years.:)
I recommend a book called "the 5 love languages", or something like that -- it's an interesting read for those who want to have lasting relationships. It really taught me a lot, hehe.
A great example of how correlation is not causation.
There IS a correlation. Whether this is caused by being married, I don't know. It's not that correlative indices are NEVER causally related, just that they are NOT NECESSARILY causally related. I haven't read the book, and know nothing about their research. But, "studies found that married people have these benefits" seems to have a pretty clear message that a healthy marriage is NOT all bad.
What about the hypothesis that couples smart enough and happy enough to have long, successful marriages tend to be successful at other things as well, like budgeting and having a healthy lifestyle?
That seems like a reasonable hypothesis. But, how would you test it? How do you know if someone is "smart enough/happy enough" to have a long, successful marriage, if they are not married? I can't even begin to imagine how one would conduct an experiment to verify or falsify this hypothesis.
how about the hypthesis that it's much easier to have a successful marriage when you're rich, healthy, and sexually compatible? Of course, that would ruin your magical fantasy because it implies that a successful marriage is a result - not the cause - of the factors you listed.
Thank you for referring to this as "my magical fantasy" -- that really added to the argument.;-)
As for the hypothesis -- of course it seems that it would be easier to have a successful marriage if you're rich, healthy, etc. However, there are many that are rich, healthy, and sexually compatible (I assume) that have NOT had happy marriages. Again, I'm not sure how one would test this hypothesis.
All you seem to have done is present alternate hypotheses to what the psychologists I mentioned have proposed. You are free to do research and publish your findings when you disprove their work.
I am not saying that they ARE right, merely that they COULD be. Since they have done a lot more research into than I have (I assume, of course -- and I know assuming risks mistaken conclusions), it seems to me that their conclusions may have some weight.
You might be interested in Discovery Health's page on this:
It just seems that the majority of current research (as far as I can find via easy Google searches, of course;)) indicates that a commitment to marriage has real, tangible benefits to both parties.
Now, if you're jsut getting married for the tax benefits, or on a "Why not?" basis, and are not willing to put the work in to keep it healthy (because it DOES require work), you are much more likely to have marital problems. So... yeah. Of course it erquires work, but if you are willing to do so, the benefits are real.
I don't think I have presented "emotional" reasoning -- merely said "hey, several scientists believe this. Maybe it has some merit."
Married people live longer. Married people have stronger finances. Married people have better mental health. Married people (statisically) have more and better sex than single people.
And, interestingly, several of these did not really apply to couples that were merely cohabiting.
Cloud turns up Everyone turns up Cloud owns everything Sephiroth turns up Cloud owns him
*chuckles*... to be fair, the plot of MANY stories is similarly simplistic, when you boil it down. Check out the "tales for the l33t" flast videos, which reduce Shakespeare to some stick figures and IRC-esque lines.
Ironically, I actually found it enjoyable entertainment -- and it did a VERY good job of capturing many core parts of the story.
The ascii star wars project (I forget the URL or name...) is similar.
Just because the plot can be simply summarized doesn't mean that the story can't be fun to watch. Heck, all the Robin Hood movies I've ever seen had very thin plots, which is evident when you see it a first or second time. But I still love them.
probably quite suddenly, public opinion will turn overwhelmingly against those seen to be supporting such measures. The technology companies will back away, and those who offered less offensive alternatives will profit greatly. The legislators will turn on the media companies like piranha on raw meat, and several will fall as they try to distance themselves from any pro-abusive-system laws they voted on previously.
This sounds very optimistic -- but, I REALLY hope that this happens.:) Much as the birth of Tivo led to 'average' media consumers thinking about digital recording, and the necesity of commercials. Sounds good.:D
Remember that bus that IBM made, microchannel or something, that was suppose to be better than ISA..... [A]long came a small company called Compaq and gave consumers what they wanted. Over the years I have watched this same scenerio play out over and over again with HD interfaces, Video cards, data file formats, you name it. Each time the open market solution natuarly won.
The main difference between the current DRM situation and what has happened in the past is that (to my knowledge) this is the first time that there has been a legislative push to accompany it. If those who are pushing DRM get their desires, it may be infeasible/illegal for the "open market solution" to exist. DMCA and similar laws are making it very difficult for people to cook up something that will play well with the DRM circus.
Hmm. It seems like an "open market solution" would work if hardware vendors kept selling a non-DRM alternative. However, I am sure that license agreements to be able to MAKE DRM hardware will forbid such competition. A "you agree to only make DRM stuff.." clause would probabyl be legally enforceable, or cost a LOT of money to fight.
Major hardware vendors WILL go the DRM route, I expect. Why? Joe Sixpack and Grandpa. The average media consumer will want to go the route of least resistance. This is like the popularity of MS Office, or Windows : Everyone else has it, it's what they can buy at the store, etc.
When the new Disney videos come out, and are DRM'ed, who is going to tell their kids and grandkids, "Sorry, we aren't going to support the technology used in these"? At best, people might buy two players -- one for DRM content, and one for non-DRM; eventually, they will wonder why they have two media players.
When most of the people will buy/consume what is foisted upon them by media producers, vendors will see no reason NOT to go with DRM.
I really hope you're right, and that DRM is defeated in the long run by the open market solution -- but I'm worried that it won't.
In Wolfenstein, I don't think they imply that ALL germans are Nazis... rather, you ar part of the war machine,and are facing german soldiers. The elite-trooper status of many higher level opponents means that they are usually SS, and thus Nazis, but I did always feel a little bad about killing the grunts.
A little. They were, after all, only sprites. Oh, and the "Mein Leben!" cracked me up occasionally.
I don't know that this is different from GUN, as I haven't played it. But I can sort of see where you're coming from.
Where is the line between "stereotyping an entire culture as bad guys", versus "all the bad guys you face are from this culture"? I think Wolfenstein has a small amount more leeway, since it's in a war setting.
If Google were to make it an opt-in (or out, even) service for news sites, and free, the smaller news sites might flock to it, ensuring publicity -- whereas the larger sites will simply opt out.
[Half Life 2] is like an interactive waiting simulation - why the hell were there so many loading screens? Walk for a minute, load, walk for another minute, load...
I thought PC games were past this kind of crap.
If you're a PC gamer, you owe it to yourself to invest in Good Hardware. "Minimum" system requirements almost NEVER are what we would consider "adequate".
I've played the HL2 demo, and it behaved the way you described. So did Far Fry, and the Doom3 demo (though that DID scale very well). Battlefield 2 takes over a minute to load a level on my machine. This bothers me, but I know that it is because my hardware is over a generation old.
Games like Half Life 2, Battlefield 2, and almost any "modern" game requires a Very Beefy machine to run in a snappy fashion. Don't blame the game makers -- they are specifically targetting that market.
If you were dissatisfied with Half Life 2's performance, a LARGE part of that is almost certainly the quality of your machine. You should have the equivalent of what would run you about $1400-$2000 in new-machine-specs (ie, if you were to spec out a new machine from NewEgg parts, or some vendor's prebuilt one) in order to get Very Good performance.
Our hobby is a performance-enthusiast culture. It requires either the money to get the Best Gear, or the willingness to tolerate suboptimal performance.
For what it's worth, my machine is NOT what I would consider top of the line: AthlonXP 2200, 1 gig ram, Geforce 6600GT.
It runs World of Warcraft, but chugs a bit. I have to turn off some shader options to get the resolution I desire. Battlefield2, HalfLife 2, and Far Cry all run decently -- once things are loaded. They take Freakin' Forever to load. I'd play HL2 on my machine (if I had the money: See WoW addiction;)), and then be willing to maybe visit it again when I had better hardware. I'd love to see CS:Source.
who will take away the back pain I get from spending all day in front of my computer playing fighting and sports games?
I would say that regular exercise, perhaps even yoga, will be a good way to help prevent/diminish your pain. I know that as soon as I stopped working out regularly, my back started hurting.
My personal experience suggests that people purchased Internet access for information and communication purposes, and that for the most part it was sites like Amazon that brought us e-commerce.
Information and communication are why many users started using the internet. However, think about some of the technologies used on the internet.
- streaming video - multimedia-rich websites - managing high bandwidth content distribution - javascript abuse (ugh.. I hate it but it was still clever) - universally-accepted age verification (OK, I don't know where this is used outside the porn industry;))
Porn may not have invented these, and may even not have been the first to use it. However, they were some of the very first to use them in a widespread manner.
While the Internet's current success is heavily influenced by sites like Ebay and Amazon, the porn sites were around before, and laid a lot of the groundwork for the WWW as we currently know it.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're telling us that a "small business owner" doesn't know how to Google for an app and stumble onto VersionTracker (which he/she should suspect exists anyway as similar sites exist for Windows) but the same "small business owner" knows what a Terminal app is; knows how to drive a command line, and knows that he/she needs to use a command called "apt-get".
:D
:)
As a user of PCs and Linux machines for a LONG time, I have long known of terminals (Eterm, Xterm, so many flavors), know how to use a command line, and know of the existence of apt-get, emerge, yum, and at least one GUI package management tool for Ubuntu.
I had never heard of VersionTracker, and would never have thought to look for it if you had not posted about it. On one hand, thanks for the tip -- it sounds handy. On the other, it is a little elitist for you to assume that it's impossible (or even indicative of idiocy) for someone to know about these advanced tools, and to have never googled for VersionTracker.
Cut the guy some slack.
Of course, as a small business owner, the fellow in question probably pays someone else to manage his computer assets. Not all small businesses are the 4-person kind that deal intimately with software.
Why would I need to buy tax software, when I can do it online at TurboTax.com, hrblock.com, and a multitude of others? For Americans, what need is there to use dedicated tax software?
;)). Some of them were some of the best dynamic web applications I'd seen in a LONG time, too.
For Non-Americans, I don't know if there are web-based tax tools... but I imagine there are, given the successes we have seen here in the states.
A web-based application is quite often platform-agnostic (unless they are retarded and require IE
I* decide if the government gets my mail. They better have a search warrant (assuming they haven't totally taken away every right we have) when they come asking for my server. If they don't. I've got time to destroy the drives.
Isn't this illegal? I'm not a lawyer, and it's been a while since I read news about the various corporate scandals, but isn't destroying such evidence considered a crime in many US jurisdictions?
Heck, I thought I remembered something about a UK law that made refusal to disclose a private encryption key punishable, but I don't remember if that ever went live.
Applying a mathematical model to the social dynamics of people...
:)
Did anyone else think of Psychohistory when they read that?
Go stick _Applied Cryptography_ up your (bleep), Anonymous (bleep) Coward.
... that seems like it isn't significantly more secure. Remember that you should always assume that your attackers know which algorithms you are using, and thus the strength of your message depends on the strength of your key(s).
... I guess that makes sense. It's hard enough to create a hash colision with an arbitrary document, and making one that collides with two different hashing methods (which are a basis for digital signatures) would be VERY hard. So, your suggestion might work well for signing documents, even if I don't think it will work for encrypting them.
Well, I hate to say it but I agree with the AC, a little bit. Encrypting something twice makes the message weaker versus cryptanalysis, from what I remember reading in Applied Cryptography.
Encrypting twice with DIFFERENT schemes
I could be wrong, as far as using multiple different encryption algorithms. I do know that 2x encrypting with the same key/alg is considered VERY weak, though. It's been a while since I read this, though, and I certainly didn't absorb the information rectally.
Now, for hashes
Logging in (or staying logged in for any appreciable time) is adversely affected by the server crashing "at least a dozen times" (and more).
by equating Bush to Hitler, you lose perspective on how very bad Hitler was, how mediocre Bush is, and how much worse things can get, and ultimately, you make the very tyranny you rail against all the more likely since you have lost any real capacity to make a contrasting assessment between leaders of history and the one you have now or will get in the future.
*Equating* Bush with Hitler is bad, yes. However, comparing a leader to Hitler isn't, as it allows us to identify ways that they are similar -- if the rise to power is similar, or the strategies of dealing with "how the rules apply to me", etc, is similar, that should at least throw up some warning flags and make one take a closer look.
I am not saying Bush is like Hitler.
However, Bush's absolute insistence on secrecy, his claims that all (or nearly all) is justified in the name of "fighting terror", the fact that he has lied about reasons to go to war (in Iraq -- I have no problems that I can think of with Afghanistan), these are all scary. The way he is reported to talk about people who disagree with him, even in his own staff, is very scary.
How can we expect his view/strategy/plan to make sense, or be a good course of action, if he doesn't tolerate criticism, or alternate scenarios? This is very similar to the way dictators have often run. THAT is why it's scary -- it's too similar to Stalin and Hitler's modus operandi.
A local business where I live actually has this as their phone number, and advertises it on the radio (complete with jingle). Amusing and jarring at the same time.
It appears from this article that SCO believes its only hope would seem to be to bait the judge into saying or doing something stupid, like Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case a few years back.
... can they really be that dumb? (Yes, probably :))
;)
This strikes me as a very very stupid strategy, if it is indeed SCO's plan. I would be very hesitant (whether as a lawyer or any other party to the case) to risk being found by the judge to have been deliberately trying to cheese her off. I mean
Feel free to Mod this (+1 Obvious).
As the parent said, Hawaii is hit hard by foreign species, also. However, it's not just animals. Kauai's being overrun by foreign plants, which are out-competing indigenous plant life.
starts with the unproved assumption that marriage must be good and beneifical, and so creates results to fit that hypothesis.
:)
... yeah, of all the marriages that get started, it seems that a minority of them will last. However, this seems (to me) to be a product of our society's attitude towards marriage. It's considered OK to marry, decide it's not for you, and quit, and then try again. This is a VERY different attitude than what prevailed a century ago, when people were often nearly pariahs if they divorced.
... I think that the proportion of marriages which are "happy" may be larger than it used to be, in that we now have an escape clause if we feel it's warranted.
:)
That's a very interestnig possiblity; I'm sure that several have done exactly that. Good point about people not wanting to challenge something that claims that "Marriage is good".
The majority of marriages are not healthy, and not because people intend to enter unhealthy marriages. It's because they make decisions based on their emotions instead of actually thinking it through like I advocate.
I agree with your reasons for the existence of many bad marriages. Too many leap before looking, so to speak. However, ARE the majority of marriages unhealthy? I have never really looked at this.
Hmm... thinking at the keyboard, I am, now...
Of those people who get divorced, I think we can assume it's because they were not happy or satisfied in their relationship. Whether they were mistaken in their expectations ("work? why should it need work?"), immature, just not well-suited to their partner, or even abused, I imagine that at least one of the parties is happier un-married, or at least NOT married to the other person. I don't think that many of those (if any) would have been a "happy" marriage.
Of marriages that do not end in divorce (or have not yet), it seems that they either are satisfied and happy, OR consider themselves "unable" to divorce -- whether because of religion, social pressure, the kids, etc.
So
So
On the other hand, what does "happy" mean? We probably define it very differently now. Our ideas of family roles are different, and many people want to feel entertained, pampered, adored, and haev that "in-love" feeling, whereas in decades past, people were more accepting of the idea that it takes work and sacrifice to get the good stuff. The "in-love" feeling is mainly chemical, it's up to us to do the work to keep a relationship healthy and alive past two years.
I recommend a book called "the 5 love languages", or something like that -- it's an interesting read for those who want to have lasting relationships. It really taught me a lot, hehe.
A great example of how correlation is not causation.
;-)
h ips/articles/marriage_myths.html
;)) indicates that a commitment to marriage has real, tangible benefits to both parties.
... yeah. Of course it erquires work, but if you are willing to do so, the benefits are real.
There IS a correlation. Whether this is caused by being married, I don't know. It's not that correlative indices are NEVER causally related, just that they are NOT NECESSARILY causally related. I haven't read the book, and know nothing about their research. But, "studies found that married people have these benefits" seems to have a pretty clear message that a healthy marriage is NOT all bad.
What about the hypothesis that couples smart enough and happy enough to have long, successful marriages tend to be successful at other things as well, like budgeting and having a healthy lifestyle?
That seems like a reasonable hypothesis. But, how would you test it? How do you know if someone is "smart enough/happy enough" to have a long, successful marriage, if they are not married? I can't even begin to imagine how one would conduct an experiment to verify or falsify this hypothesis.
how about the hypthesis that it's much easier to have a successful marriage when you're rich, healthy, and sexually compatible? Of course, that would ruin your magical fantasy because it implies that a successful marriage is a result - not the cause - of the factors you listed.
Thank you for referring to this as "my magical fantasy" -- that really added to the argument.
As for the hypothesis -- of course it seems that it would be easier to have a successful marriage if you're rich, healthy, etc. However, there are many that are rich, healthy, and sexually compatible (I assume) that have NOT had happy marriages. Again, I'm not sure how one would test this hypothesis.
All you seem to have done is present alternate hypotheses to what the psychologists I mentioned have proposed. You are free to do research and publish your findings when you disprove their work.
I am not saying that they ARE right, merely that they COULD be. Since they have done a lot more research into than I have (I assume, of course -- and I know assuming risks mistaken conclusions), it seems to me that their conclusions may have some weight.
You might be interested in Discovery Health's page on this:
http://health.discovery.com/centers/loverelations
It just seems that the majority of current research (as far as I can find via easy Google searches, of course
Now, if you're jsut getting married for the tax benefits, or on a "Why not?" basis, and are not willing to put the work in to keep it healthy (because it DOES require work), you are much more likely to have marital problems. So
I don't think I have presented "emotional" reasoning -- merely said "hey, several scientists believe this. Maybe it has some merit."
Why be married? You mean, aside from meeting someone and feeling you want to livetherest of your life with them?
l igher.html
http://www.psychpage.com/family/library/brwaitgal
Married people live longer.
Married people have stronger finances.
Married people have better mental health.
Married people (statisically) have more and better sex than single people.
And, interestingly, several of these did not really apply to couples that were merely cohabiting.
If it weren't for the talents of DVD2-D2, we would never have been able to decrypt the Death Star's plans.
Heres the plot.
... to be fair, the plot of MANY stories is similarly simplistic, when you boil it down. Check out the "tales for the l33t" flast videos, which reduce Shakespeare to some stick figures and IRC-esque lines.
t m
...) is similar.
Cloud turns up
Everyone turns up
Cloud owns everything
Sephiroth turns up
Cloud owns him
*chuckles*
http://uninteresting.myby.co.uk/noeffort/romjul.h
Ironically, I actually found it enjoyable entertainment -- and it did a VERY good job of capturing many core parts of the story.
The ascii star wars project (I forget the URL or name
Just because the plot can be simply summarized doesn't mean that the story can't be fun to watch. Heck, all the Robin Hood movies I've ever seen had very thin plots, which is evident when you see it a first or second time. But I still love them.
probably quite suddenly, public opinion will turn overwhelmingly against those seen to be supporting such measures. The technology companies will back away, and those who offered less offensive alternatives will profit greatly. The legislators will turn on the media companies like piranha on raw meat, and several will fall as they try to distance themselves from any pro-abusive-system laws they voted on previously.
:) Much as the birth of Tivo led to 'average' media consumers thinking about digital recording, and the necesity of commercials. Sounds good. :D
This sounds very optimistic -- but, I REALLY hope that this happens.
Remember that bus that IBM made, microchannel or something, that was suppose to be better than ISA. .... [A]long came a small company called Compaq and gave consumers what they wanted. Over the years I have watched this same scenerio play out over and over again with HD interfaces, Video cards, data file formats, you name it. Each time the open market solution natuarly won.
The main difference between the current DRM situation and what has happened in the past is that (to my knowledge) this is the first time that there has been a legislative push to accompany it. If those who are pushing DRM get their desires, it may be infeasible/illegal for the "open market solution" to exist. DMCA and similar laws are making it very difficult for people to cook up something that will play well with the DRM circus.
Hmm. It seems like an "open market solution" would work if hardware vendors kept selling a non-DRM alternative. However, I am sure that license agreements to be able to MAKE DRM hardware will forbid such competition. A "you agree to only make DRM stuff.." clause would probabyl be legally enforceable, or cost a LOT of money to fight.
Major hardware vendors WILL go the DRM route, I expect. Why? Joe Sixpack and Grandpa. The average media consumer will want to go the route of least resistance. This is like the popularity of MS Office, or Windows : Everyone else has it, it's what they can buy at the store, etc.
When the new Disney videos come out, and are DRM'ed, who is going to tell their kids and grandkids, "Sorry, we aren't going to support the technology used in these"? At best, people might buy two players -- one for DRM content, and one for non-DRM; eventually, they will wonder why they have two media players.
When most of the people will buy/consume what is foisted upon them by media producers, vendors will see no reason NOT to go with DRM.
I really hope you're right, and that DRM is defeated in the long run by the open market solution -- but I'm worried that it won't.
And what would the Flying Spaghetti Monster say about making profits? :)
(I'm genuinely curious, actually)
I sincerely hope you get modded up Insightful. :) If I had mod points, I'd have done it.
In Wolfenstein, I don't think they imply that ALL germans are Nazis ... rather, you ar part of the war machine,and are facing german soldiers. The elite-trooper status of many higher level opponents means that they are usually SS, and thus Nazis, but I did always feel a little bad about killing the grunts.
A little. They were, after all, only sprites. Oh, and the "Mein Leben!" cracked me up occasionally.
I don't know that this is different from GUN, as I haven't played it. But I can sort of see where you're coming from.
Where is the line between "stereotyping an entire culture as bad guys", versus "all the bad guys you face are from this culture"? I think Wolfenstein has a small amount more leeway, since it's in a war setting.
If Google were to make it an opt-in (or out, even) service for news sites, and free, the smaller news sites might flock to it, ensuring publicity -- whereas the larger sites will simply opt out.
:)
But I'd rather see if this is ruled fair use.
[Half Life 2] is like an interactive waiting simulation - why the hell were there so many loading screens? Walk for a minute, load, walk for another minute, load...
;)), and then be willing to maybe visit it again when I had better hardware. I'd love to see CS:Source.
I thought PC games were past this kind of crap.
If you're a PC gamer, you owe it to yourself to invest in Good Hardware. "Minimum" system requirements almost NEVER are what we would consider "adequate".
I've played the HL2 demo, and it behaved the way you described. So did Far Fry, and the Doom3 demo (though that DID scale very well). Battlefield 2 takes over a minute to load a level on my machine. This bothers me, but I know that it is because my hardware is over a generation old.
Games like Half Life 2, Battlefield 2, and almost any "modern" game requires a Very Beefy machine to run in a snappy fashion. Don't blame the game makers -- they are specifically targetting that market.
If you were dissatisfied with Half Life 2's performance, a LARGE part of that is almost certainly the quality of your machine. You should have the equivalent of what would run you about $1400-$2000 in new-machine-specs (ie, if you were to spec out a new machine from NewEgg parts, or some vendor's prebuilt one) in order to get Very Good performance.
Our hobby is a performance-enthusiast culture. It requires either the money to get the Best Gear, or the willingness to tolerate suboptimal performance.
For what it's worth, my machine is NOT what I would consider top of the line:
AthlonXP 2200, 1 gig ram, Geforce 6600GT.
It runs World of Warcraft, but chugs a bit. I have to turn off some shader options to get the resolution I desire. Battlefield2, HalfLife 2, and Far Cry all run decently -- once things are loaded. They take Freakin' Forever to load. I'd play HL2 on my machine (if I had the money: See WoW addiction
who will take away the back pain I get from spending all day in front of my computer playing fighting and sports games?
I would say that regular exercise, perhaps even yoga, will be a good way to help prevent/diminish your pain. I know that as soon as I stopped working out regularly, my back started hurting.
But how does it compare to a year's supply of Vicodin? :)
My personal experience suggests that people purchased Internet access for information and communication purposes, and that for the most part it was sites like Amazon that brought us e-commerce.
.. I hate it but it was still clever) ;))
Information and communication are why many users started using the internet. However, think about some of the technologies used on the internet.
- streaming video
- multimedia-rich websites
- managing high bandwidth content distribution
- javascript abuse (ugh
- universally-accepted age verification (OK, I don't know where this is used outside the porn industry
Porn may not have invented these, and may even not have been the first to use it. However, they were some of the very first to use them in a widespread manner.
While the Internet's current success is heavily influenced by sites like Ebay and Amazon, the porn sites were around before, and laid a lot of the groundwork for the WWW as we currently know it.