1) The CPCC decides who gets paid and not, and they simply won't pay non-Canadian performers, though they graciously pay non-Canadian songwriters and record companies, for what it's worth. I believe there's an application process for smaller Canadian artists, but don't know how fairly the levy is distributed.
2) It's a bit odd, but you can receive an exemption to the levy only if you have some sort of disability, or are an organization buying on behalf of the disabled.
This may seem to blatantly disregard notions of just taxation, but I don't think they maintain any delusion that this is a fair system. They are not a governmental organization, and are not beholden to democratically reviewable notions like "fair play" or "common decency."
Here's one FAQ on this. The independent non-profit that collects the levy, the CPCC, has some additional information.
This levy: a) penalizes non-infringers and discourages fair use b) only compensates a select group who are harmed by illegal copying c) is managed by a group with no democratic oversight d) is confusing so as to encourage double-taxation e) only taxes a select group of infringers, those who copy to certain types of media f) is easily avoided through poor construction (you can legally self-import all your CD-Rs and avoid the levy) g) other reasons?
I'd definitely rather be playing, so don't get me wrong here...
But when we were playing SoFII on some of the better teams' servers, watching them scrim was actually really rewarding. Watching the little clever tricks people use, or watching their skill, the drama of seeing two opponents cautiously approaching the same corner from opposite sides, seeing the matches where the last man on a team actually manages to chew through half of the other team and win the round...
There are some good things to see flying around as a ghost.
HOWEVER, almost all the televised gaming competitions I've seen miss all the action. They stay on follow mode, and either constantly hop through players looking for action, or have to have an announcer point out all the stuff you've missed.
Good cameramen will make or break this. I would recommend they record a follow mode for every player, and then have several floating camera points, maybe some static at key hotspots on a level, and then a floater or two. They should then cut these together after the match, using splitscreens and zooms when it adds to the experience.
If they're willing to discard the absurd requirement of live broadcast, and want to put together an interesting watchable product, this could be really good.
1) I'm going to have to learn a new OS anyway; 2) Maybe I'm getting old, but stealing OS's just doesn't excite me like it used to; 3) Planned obsolence (they're dropping support for XP, right?) and market segmentation speak volumes about the commitment to a low TCO. 4) No matter how much they want me to, I still don't trust them.
By aiding China, Google is as guilty in the issue as the Chinese government.
Google's not aiding the Chinese government here, they're undermining it.
The Chinese government wants Google to either leave or let their services continue to be crippled, to pave the way for Baidu or other search engines that don't care about restricting the flow of information. Google fought for disclosure of censored searches, and they got it. That's an important first step, the next one might be setting up an unfiltered google.cn for government or academic use. Baby steps and compromise will free information China, not hardliners and reactionaries.
Maybe we should be praising Google, not villifying them.
Why is Google the bad guy again? As I understand it:
1) Google's results are being censored by the government, typically by simply not allowing their traffic through, making it appear to be a technical malfunction.
2) There's no way for Google to avoid the censorship.
3) Google comes up with a way to disclose the censorship.
4) Alternatively, Google could walk, leaving Chinese search engines to filter results without any disclosure.
So if Google made the wrong decision, which one was better? Walking and leaving the Chinese with no awareness of the situation? Ignoring the situation and sticking with the status quo? Filtering results without disclosure? How would these steps help Tibet?
This is like boycotting Zhang Yimou's films because they attack the Chinese government through metaphor, rather than railing against it overtly and getting him imprisoned or killed.
The Chinese government is the problem, attacking Google is a huge waste of resources; how about a letter writing campaign to Beijing?
Some DMs care about consistency, and some will constantly fudge the rules to arbitrarily reward or punish their players. I prefer the former.
A lot of D&D players are obnoxiously and stubbornly argumentative. That's certainly no virture. But a lot of D&D players resent people who know the rules, because it reminds them that they really just want a game where they're omnipotent and the challenges are meaningless.
As it turns out, the wall was built by Cisco, allegedly for the "protection" of the citizens within, though some historians suspect more sinister motives.
I do not care if you are using e-mail, IM or SMS, use that period and use that apostrophe. Use appropriate and proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling and grammar, else I'm simply not talking to you.
Even if I was 100% sure that the world would be destroyed tomorrow, I'd never ever bet a dollar on it. It would do me no good since I'd be dead when the time comes to collect my gains.
I guess you're right, nobody bets against himself in russian roulette. In any event, it's good to know we agree on one thing:
Oil might be running dry, but I wouldn't bet on it.
China and America have already begun investing in alternative sources of energy, all while new refineries are being built to increase supply. The futures market sees this as evidence that oil is heading for oversupply, just like it did in the mid to late 1990s.
If you're convinced that the market is mistaken, well, maybe you're right. But rather than argue with me, I have some simple advice for you: buy. Prove how convinced you are by putting your money where your mouth is, and if you're right, you'll amass a fortune. You can buy us all copies of Mad Max with the words "I told you so" painted on the front in sweet rare crude. Thales will tell you, there's nothing that says "I'm smarter than you" like money.
But if anyone was confident enough in their predictions of peak oil to bank on it, the futures market would adjust to reflect it. Why hasn't that happened?
It hasn't happened because this apocalyptic pessimism is shortsighted.
I'm sympathetic, it's easy to get worried when you're told something is finite, though its consumption is increasing. But in a market, if consumption is increasing, that's a good sign nothing's wrong. Consumption will increase only so long as it's unproblematic, then it will slow, a market is a proportional negative feedback system.
Before that, the exhaustion of coal was the fun thing to predict. While we're less reliant on coal these days, we still have mountains of it to mine. Cheap oil, not depletion, brought about the end of the coal era. And likewise, cheap x, not depletion, will bring the end of the oil era.
You're this testosterone spitting baddass with the biggest fucking gun in the universe, and you inevitably fail (in the first game), it's a hardcore tragedy and statement about man's impotence in the face of the inevitable.
ID is right: evolution can't produce a new species. Evolution merely creates teeming biodiversity. It takes man to divide it up into species.
They're wrong to suggest speciation requires God's involvement, of course. Species can be created and destroyed without God, they are allthetime.
Maybe there's something to this...
on
Uwe Boll Smash!
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
"Let's be realistic, what is House of the Dead? House of the Dead is a brainless shooter, where you shoot zombies into pieces. So what are you expecting from the movie, Schindler's List?"
He might be saying something insightful about disposal culture here. Maybe Uwe Boll is secretly a postmodern hero, this generation's Andy Warhol.
Of course, I never cared for Warhol much either.
He also says his movies are successful "Not because I make the best movies on earth, but I make movies for a minimal amount of budget compared to what major companies are spending.
This is pretty brilliant, and I'd hope other directors would start catching on.
Primer was made on only $6,000. If it didn't use film stock, if we encouraged digital production, it would've been less. Hopefully some directors with a little more interest in story will learn from Uwe just how easy it is to make films if you do so with a little mind for economy. If we economize film production, we'll democratize it, and in the end, get better films. Eventually. Unfortunately, along the way, we'll also get more Uwe Bolls - bad storytellers that the market can't seem to squash.
Unfortunately, soldiers who grew up playing games like "Fallout" insist upon fighting with BB Guns and Spears, and refuse to shoot unless they can get a bead on the eyes or the groin.
Seriously, it shouldn't be the government's job to keep kids away from porn. It should be their fucking parent's job.
I'm not sure it needs to be anybody's job to keep kids away from porn. I had plenty of access to porn when I was growing up, and now I'm an upstanding member of my community!
Slashdot Mirror
...the record reduction in violent crime we've seen beginning in the 1990s was probably due to the reduction in violent videogames.
Oh, wait...
Well, it's good to have modest goals.
I've been waiting for this from Umberto Eco.
Spoiler: Foucault's Pendulum is like The Da Vinci Code, except it's actually worth reading.
1) The CPCC decides who gets paid and not, and they simply won't pay non-Canadian performers, though they graciously pay non-Canadian songwriters and record companies, for what it's worth. I believe there's an application process for smaller Canadian artists, but don't know how fairly the levy is distributed.
2) It's a bit odd, but you can receive an exemption to the levy only if you have some sort of disability, or are an organization buying on behalf of the disabled.
This may seem to blatantly disregard notions of just taxation, but I don't think they maintain any delusion that this is a fair system. They are not a governmental organization, and are not beholden to democratically reviewable notions like "fair play" or "common decency."
See The CPCC homepage.
Also this CopyLevy FAQ.
Here's one FAQ on this.
The independent non-profit that collects the levy, the CPCC, has some additional information.
This levy:
a) penalizes non-infringers and discourages fair use
b) only compensates a select group who are harmed by illegal copying
c) is managed by a group with no democratic oversight
d) is confusing so as to encourage double-taxation
e) only taxes a select group of infringers, those who copy to certain types of media
f) is easily avoided through poor construction (you can legally self-import all your CD-Rs and avoid the levy)
g) other reasons?
I think Apple's DRM is awful and represents a major step back for us all.
Got something better[1]? If so, don't just bitch...do it!
[1] Something that meets the needs of both the user/consumer and the creator/owner.
How about eMusic? They provide mp3s DRM-free, and their creator/owners are still cashing the royalty checks.
I'd definitely rather be playing, so don't get me wrong here...
But when we were playing SoFII on some of the better teams' servers, watching them scrim was actually really rewarding. Watching the little clever tricks people use, or watching their skill, the drama of seeing two opponents cautiously approaching the same corner from opposite sides, seeing the matches where the last man on a team actually manages to chew through half of the other team and win the round...
There are some good things to see flying around as a ghost.
HOWEVER, almost all the televised gaming competitions I've seen miss all the action. They stay on follow mode, and either constantly hop through players looking for action, or have to have an announcer point out all the stuff you've missed.
Good cameramen will make or break this. I would recommend they record a follow mode for every player, and then have several floating camera points, maybe some static at key hotspots on a level, and then a floater or two. They should then cut these together after the match, using splitscreens and zooms when it adds to the experience.
If they're willing to discard the absurd requirement of live broadcast, and want to put together an interesting watchable product, this could be really good.
(But I'm no optimist.)
1) I'm going to have to learn a new OS anyway;
2) Maybe I'm getting old, but stealing OS's just doesn't excite me like it used to;
3) Planned obsolence (they're dropping support for XP, right?) and market segmentation speak volumes about the commitment to a low TCO.
4) No matter how much they want me to, I still don't trust them.
Maybe it'll be a good time to switch.
By aiding China, Google is as guilty in the issue as the Chinese government.
Google's not aiding the Chinese government here, they're undermining it.
The Chinese government wants Google to either leave or let their services continue to be crippled, to pave the way for Baidu or other search engines that don't care about restricting the flow of information. Google fought for disclosure of censored searches, and they got it. That's an important first step, the next one might be setting up an unfiltered google.cn for government or academic use. Baby steps and compromise will free information China, not hardliners and reactionaries.
Maybe we should be praising Google, not villifying them.
Why is Google the bad guy again? As I understand it:
1) Google's results are being censored by the government, typically by simply not allowing their traffic through, making it appear to be a technical malfunction.
2) There's no way for Google to avoid the censorship.
3) Google comes up with a way to disclose the censorship.
4) Alternatively, Google could walk, leaving Chinese search engines to filter results without any disclosure.
So if Google made the wrong decision, which one was better? Walking and leaving the Chinese with no awareness of the situation? Ignoring the situation and sticking with the status quo? Filtering results without disclosure? How would these steps help Tibet?
This is like boycotting Zhang Yimou's films because they attack the Chinese government through metaphor, rather than railing against it overtly and getting him imprisoned or killed.
The Chinese government is the problem, attacking Google is a huge waste of resources; how about a letter writing campaign to Beijing?
Some DMs care about consistency, and some will constantly fudge the rules to arbitrarily reward or punish their players. I prefer the former.
A lot of D&D players are obnoxiously and stubbornly argumentative. That's certainly no virture. But a lot of D&D players resent people who know the rules, because it reminds them that they really just want a game where they're omnipotent and the challenges are meaningless.
(IANARL)
As it turns out, the wall was built by Cisco, allegedly for the "protection" of the citizens within, though some historians suspect more sinister motives.
a big black hole is headed your way
Best... crank first contact... ever!
I do not care if you are using e-mail, IM or SMS, use that period and use that apostrophe. Use appropriate and proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling and grammar, else I'm simply not talking to you.
Have you heard of a comma splice?
Read about and download M.U.L.E. here.
This explains why all the greatest human discoveries were made by the comatose.
Why didn't we realize this sooner?
Ok, sedate me, I'm gonna go cure cancer.
You should hear my theory about "Need For Speed" being a thinly veiled metaphor for drug addiction. :)
Even if I was 100% sure that the world would be destroyed tomorrow, I'd never ever bet a dollar on it. It would do me no good since I'd be dead when the time comes to collect my gains.
I guess you're right, nobody bets against himself in russian roulette. In any event, it's good to know we agree on one thing:
Oil might be running dry, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Despite all this noise about peak oil, oil futures remain reasonable, and oil prices are coming down in light of new supplies, suggesting that our access to oil isn't nearly as stripped as doomsayers want us to believe.
China and America have already begun investing in alternative sources of energy, all while new refineries are being built to increase supply. The futures market sees this as evidence that oil is heading for oversupply, just like it did in the mid to late 1990s.
If you're convinced that the market is mistaken, well, maybe you're right. But rather than argue with me, I have some simple advice for you: buy. Prove how convinced you are by putting your money where your mouth is, and if you're right, you'll amass a fortune. You can buy us all copies of Mad Max with the words "I told you so" painted on the front in sweet rare crude. Thales will tell you, there's nothing that says "I'm smarter than you" like money.
But if anyone was confident enough in their predictions of peak oil to bank on it, the futures market would adjust to reflect it. Why hasn't that happened?
It hasn't happened because this apocalyptic pessimism is shortsighted.
I'm sympathetic, it's easy to get worried when you're told something is finite, though its consumption is increasing. But in a market, if consumption is increasing, that's a good sign nothing's wrong. Consumption will increase only so long as it's unproblematic, then it will slow, a market is a proportional negative feedback system.
To further allay any fears, keep in mind the imminent end of oil has been predicted routinely for the last 125 years.
Before that, the exhaustion of coal was the fun thing to predict. While we're less reliant on coal these days, we still have mountains of it to mine. Cheap oil, not depletion, brought about the end of the coal era. And likewise, cheap x, not depletion, will bring the end of the oil era.
Even if all this analysis is wasted breath, if peak oil has certainly and suddenly hit and we're all staring at a future of expensive oil, even then, I'm still not worried. [R]ising oil prices are... an invitation to corn and coal and hydrogen. For anyone with a fresh idea, expensive oil is as good as a subsidy. Expensive oil only means we shift to something else, probably something cleaner, and I'm fine with that too.
Well, I've defended Doom's story before:
c id=13853260
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166027&
You're this testosterone spitting baddass with the biggest fucking gun in the universe, and you inevitably fail (in the first game), it's a hardcore tragedy and statement about man's impotence in the face of the inevitable.
ID is right: evolution can't produce a new species. Evolution merely creates teeming biodiversity. It takes man to divide it up into species.
They're wrong to suggest speciation requires God's involvement, of course. Species can be created and destroyed without God, they are all the time.
"Let's be realistic, what is House of the Dead? House of the Dead is a brainless shooter, where you shoot zombies into pieces. So what are you expecting from the movie, Schindler's List?"
He might be saying something insightful about disposal culture here. Maybe Uwe Boll is secretly a postmodern hero, this generation's Andy Warhol.
Of course, I never cared for Warhol much either.
He also says his movies are successful "Not because I make the best movies on earth, but I make movies for a minimal amount of budget compared to what major companies are spending.
This is pretty brilliant, and I'd hope other directors would start catching on.
Primer was made on only $6,000. If it didn't use film stock, if we encouraged digital production, it would've been less. Hopefully some directors with a little more interest in story will learn from Uwe just how easy it is to make films if you do so with a little mind for economy. If we economize film production, we'll democratize it, and in the end, get better films. Eventually. Unfortunately, along the way, we'll also get more Uwe Bolls - bad storytellers that the market can't seem to squash.
I've heard he's just going to have Chuck Norris deliver it to his cortex with a precision roundhouse kick.
Unfortunately, soldiers who grew up playing games like "Fallout" insist upon fighting with BB Guns and Spears, and refuse to shoot unless they can get a bead on the eyes or the groin.
Seriously, it shouldn't be the government's job to keep kids away from porn. It should be their fucking parent's job.
I'm not sure it needs to be anybody's job to keep kids away from porn. I had plenty of access to porn when I was growing up, and now I'm an upstanding member of my community!
(Slashdot counts as a community, right?)