It seems a little more relevant that the guy was living in Florida when they said he was infringing in Michigan. And yet this seems to be of little consequence in the summary and article.
I like the part of the article that says "Although the defendant... had notified the RIAA that he had not engaged in any copyright infringement" Because you know, if you tell them you're innocent they're supposed to just say "Sorry" and leave you alone.
So let me get this straight. In response to a story about a scientist complaining that he's being compared to holocaust deniers for questioning global warming someone posts comparing him to a holocaust denier. This then gets modded +5 insightful? Way to prove the author's point slashdot!
It's impossible to do business with the public and not piss people off. Even if you bend over backwards, some people are either too stupid or too big of an ass to get it. And they get on the internet and spout off about it. Satisfied people don't generally run to the computer to tell the world how great their experience was. Consequently if you go to do your "trivial" checkup about a company, any company, what you find is a stinking pile of crap. The same goes for product reviews. Read the reviews on amazon, or god help you, the feedback on ebay. 7 people think it's the greatest thing in the world and 3 people think it's an utter piece of garbage. That helps a lot. Or 700 idiotic positive feedbacks likes "A+++++++ SUPER SELLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and 5 "No response to emails No item WORST SELLER EVER". Okay then. You are then left trying to determine which reviewers have a clue. Granted it's easy enough to filter out those who cannot grasp the purpose of the capslock key, but it seems like more often than not you're no better off than when you started.
A system that dynamically governs your car's speed has not been invented.
Eh? What is cruise control if not optional dynamic speed governing?
If we're ever going to have autopiloted cars then we're going to have to have a way of telling the car how fast it should be going on whatever road its on. I believe they've done tests on such a thing with special lanes with something embeddded in the road, I don't know if it was RFID or what.
But getting back to the gp's point. Of course any legislature loves to go on about stupid things as if the world is going to end while doing nothing about things that would save lives but be unpopular. This is not new.
Atlantis was moved to the pad on Feb 15th for a March 15th launch. What is it that they need to do with the shuttle once it's at the launchpad that they can't do in the VAB that takes a month to do? Roll it out there, kick the tires and light the fires.
This situation different. If the material is not released in any pay format, the content producer cannot possibly suffer any negative consequences by banned groups' piracy.
Just because they haven't released it YET doesn't mean there's no potential harm. If they can't get the content in a timely fashion and everyone has already watched it off bt, then why bother releasing it late? You don't get to decide when and how they have to release the content.
The reality is that we have a global audience now. Aussies can get on the net (except for the Tassies that are still working on that whole fire thing) and want to talk with other fans of the show, but it's impossible for them to do so because the dominate online presence is a year ahead of them. The content providers have to do a better job releasing things everywhere at as close to the same time as is reasonable or else human nature is going to take over.
Well then I would have expected that the improvements to the rovers ability to navigate to have happened at about the same time its responsibility for its own navigation was increased. Preferrably beforehand so someone would be looking over its shoulder.
And yeah, I did kind of figure that if we went to the trouble of putting a rover on mars that we might bother to keep a dish pointed at it all the time. When we send people there is it going to be too much trouble too? "Sorry Bob, didn't mean to keep you waiting. We were checking out this freaky nebula over in alpha quadrant the last couple days."
That's what I was thinking, and then I went on to thinking how these rovers can have been running around up there for three years without an algorithm that's been around since the 60s. I can understand being conservative about how much autonomy to give the rover at the start, but they could have three years worth of data on what the robot thought would have been a good path to review.
And as a side note, they left the rover stuck in front of a rock for an hour and a half? Was everyone playing counterstrike or something?
I always knew that a geek would make a great husband
Sure it turned out handy this one freak incident, but wait till there's smoke in the house and he looks back and forth between the plasma screen and the laptop a couple times, finally grabs the laptop and is out the door without so much as a look in her direction.
Of course, if the laptop started the fire then the choice is much easier
It's true that you generally have to be an idiot to die, but either the game is preventing you from wandering off or you are self-limiting. If you were to just strike out into a more difficult area you'd be dead. You start out with not much cash, and a limited number of healing potions. So you can't stray too far from a means to heal yourself. Contrast this with the end of the game where you are probably walking around with 99 of everything and can go wherever you want at will without really worrying about anything. Basically you're a god at the end of the game. I'm not saying you should start the game with that much power, but you don't have to start as an insignificant worm either.
If you want to split hairs on whether there's any difference how you number it, okay, it's all arbitrary. But if Level 1 for you != Level 1 for everything else then it's pretty meaningless. Sure you could shift everything, but then you have you at Level 1 and them at Level -30, and negative levels is not really something that makes sense to me. So I agree with you to a point. I still feel like there's a psychological difference between starting at 1 and 30.
I don't think we're getting anywhere here, but... in my example Aragorn or Gandalf aren't starting in a different area, they are in the same area as Frodo. Aragorn might be a level 30 and stay at that level for many hours of gameplay because he's just not involved in the same sorts of tasks that Frodo would be.
If you are starting off as Level 1 in a Level 1 world your primary concern is your immediate survival, secondary is leveling up so that you can actually do something, and somewhere below those two is the actual plot of the game. If you are a Level 30 in a Level 1 world survival just isn't an issue for you. So you have a very different experience at the start of the game.
But it is possible. You are starting from the assumption that the enemies must be on par with you at the beginning because if you were strong compared to them it would be boring and pointless. That is the assumption you have to give up to make something different. And really, even if you are on par with them it's still pretty boring and pointless.
To use a story everyone is familiar with, take LOTR. In a typical RPG you would be Frodo. But you could also be Aragorn, who could easily defeat just about any foe he might encounter around the Shire, but that would be counter-productive for him. Or you could be Gandalf, who's problem is not generally being able to win a particular battle but rather being in the right place at the right time.
Well yes, if you have levels you start at some level. But the level indicates to some extent your place in the world (Even though despite your being a level 99 badass that guard blocking the door still won't let you in until you talk to the king). If you start at level 1 you're a nobody. You have no power, and your job is likely going to be to play fetch for the ones who do have power. This is a good starting point for two reasons. You need to learn the story, rules and interface of the game. Throwing you into the deep end at the start is, at the very least, much harder to pull off successfully. And second, even in a non-linear game the story needs to be fairly constricted at the start. If your character has power, then a lot of the artificial roadblocks the game places in front of you are less believable.
There are a lot of interesting characters you run into in these worlds. It'd be nice to get to experience the story from some other perspective than the outcast loser. It might be harder to do, but it would be worth it.
As for the "Most RPGs start you off unimaginatively at the absolute lowest level" statement, that's really not fair, and I don't think it's true. One reason, assuming that a game involves gaining levels, you have to start at some level. Regardless of what that level is, it's the absolute lowest level. I mean, you can't start at a higher level or else that would be the new absolute lowest level.
Think outside the box. Instead of being the level 1 loser you could be the level 30 dude who gives the loser his first sword and teaches him fire 1. Maybe you have multiple losers you're sending out to help you with a complex task and you need to run around helping them when they get in trouble. Once you let go of that notion of you must start at level 1 a whole new range of possibilities opens up.
I've had someone bid on an auction of mine in $5 increments until they got the highest bid and then withdraw the last bid. And it took about 10 bids to get there. It looks terrible, but I swear it wasn't me or anyone I know. Why they did this I have no idea. Don't assume every strange bidding means there's fraud at work, there's a lot of strange/stupid bidders out there.
For each ballot question the voter is provided a color coded, different size ball bearing. Simply drop the ball into the hole next to the selected option. Oversize balls won't fit, undersized balls are sorted out and return back to the voter. At the end of the day weigh the boxes, instant vote count. All the "ballots" can be reused every year. You drop your balls and can't find them? Too &^*#ing bad. The boxes can be on scales to be monitored, with those monitoring not shown which box corresponds to which option.
Okay so we aren't designed to sit all day, but we are designed to stand up, aren't we? So how is sitting straight any different on your back than standing up? Whether the load stops at my butt or my feet shouldn't make any difference to my back.
Given that space telescopes seem to need more servicing than other satellites and we're retiring the shuttle that can service them, and even while still in service we don't seem to want to do it, would it make sense to make a Hubble replacement that's attached to, or in reach of, the ISS?
First, because calculators and computers will take Garbage In and give Garbage Out, and engineers who don't have an intuitive understanding of the approximate answers they should get are much less likely to catch simple software errors and user mistakes.
Do you really think becoming a rocket scientist today involves being handed a package of computer software and a 1-800 number to call for support if it blows up? Every engineer first learns the concepts and works the equations out by hand before going anywhere near the program that makes it easier.
Second, because most engineering problems are far more complicated than "what's 250 times 7" but involve many, many such simple arithmetic steps. If you have to turn to the calculator on every trivial step it makes solving the whole problem correctly much harder.
I hate to break this to you, but solving "many, many simple arithmetic steps" is sort of what we invented computers to do. And they're kind of good at it.
Let's suppose there's this company Foo that wants to compete with eBay. They've got some great ideas about how to make auctions better. They implement them and while they're barely a blip on the radar compared to eBay, they start carving out a niche for themselves. eBay takes notice. eBay offers a nice chunk of change for company Foo. Foo's owners turn it down. Shortly there after, eBay's pages start to look a whole lot like Foo's pages.
Are you saying there should be no way for Foo to protect itself from such a situation?
Just because something seems obvious after it's been done doesn't mean no one put any work into it. Isn't that the mark of a good idea? People wonder why didn't anyone think of that before, it's so obvious.
In this case it seems more like a bunch of people recognize the opportunity to have online auctions, and whoever gets the patents in first wins. That's not right. But at the same time how can anyone compete with the market dominator if they are allowed to copy everyone else's ideas?
For most office machines it's probably 55 seconds out of 60.
Kill the humans, gain 334 days a year. Then rewrite calendar to be nicely divided by ^2s to gain even more time.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems a little more relevant that the guy was living in Florida when they said he was infringing in Michigan. And yet this seems to be of little consequence in the summary and article.
I like the part of the article that says "Although the defendant... had notified the RIAA that he had not engaged in any copyright infringement" Because you know, if you tell them you're innocent they're supposed to just say "Sorry" and leave you alone.
So let me get this straight. In response to a story about a scientist complaining that he's being compared to holocaust deniers for questioning global warming someone posts comparing him to a holocaust denier. This then gets modded +5 insightful? Way to prove the author's point slashdot!
It's impossible to do business with the public and not piss people off. Even if you bend over backwards, some people are either too stupid or too big of an ass to get it. And they get on the internet and spout off about it. Satisfied people don't generally run to the computer to tell the world how great their experience was. Consequently if you go to do your "trivial" checkup about a company, any company, what you find is a stinking pile of crap. The same goes for product reviews. Read the reviews on amazon, or god help you, the feedback on ebay. 7 people think it's the greatest thing in the world and 3 people think it's an utter piece of garbage. That helps a lot. Or 700 idiotic positive feedbacks likes "A+++++++ SUPER SELLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and 5 "No response to emails No item WORST SELLER EVER". Okay then. You are then left trying to determine which reviewers have a clue. Granted it's easy enough to filter out those who cannot grasp the purpose of the capslock key, but it seems like more often than not you're no better off than when you started.
Eh? What is cruise control if not optional dynamic speed governing?
If we're ever going to have autopiloted cars then we're going to have to have a way of telling the car how fast it should be going on whatever road its on. I believe they've done tests on such a thing with special lanes with something embeddded in the road, I don't know if it was RFID or what.
But getting back to the gp's point. Of course any legislature loves to go on about stupid things as if the world is going to end while doing nothing about things that would save lives but be unpopular. This is not new.
Atlantis was moved to the pad on Feb 15th for a March 15th launch. What is it that they need to do with the shuttle once it's at the launchpad that they can't do in the VAB that takes a month to do? Roll it out there, kick the tires and light the fires.
Just because they haven't released it YET doesn't mean there's no potential harm. If they can't get the content in a timely fashion and everyone has already watched it off bt, then why bother releasing it late? You don't get to decide when and how they have to release the content.
The reality is that we have a global audience now. Aussies can get on the net (except for the Tassies that are still working on that whole fire thing) and want to talk with other fans of the show, but it's impossible for them to do so because the dominate online presence is a year ahead of them. The content providers have to do a better job releasing things everywhere at as close to the same time as is reasonable or else human nature is going to take over.
Well then I would have expected that the improvements to the rovers ability to navigate to have happened at about the same time its responsibility for its own navigation was increased. Preferrably beforehand so someone would be looking over its shoulder.
And yeah, I did kind of figure that if we went to the trouble of putting a rover on mars that we might bother to keep a dish pointed at it all the time. When we send people there is it going to be too much trouble too? "Sorry Bob, didn't mean to keep you waiting. We were checking out this freaky nebula over in alpha quadrant the last couple days."
That's what I was thinking, and then I went on to thinking how these rovers can have been running around up there for three years without an algorithm that's been around since the 60s. I can understand being conservative about how much autonomy to give the rover at the start, but they could have three years worth of data on what the robot thought would have been a good path to review.
And as a side note, they left the rover stuck in front of a rock for an hour and a half? Was everyone playing counterstrike or something?
Sure it turned out handy this one freak incident, but wait till there's smoke in the house and he looks back and forth between the plasma screen and the laptop a couple times, finally grabs the laptop and is out the door without so much as a look in her direction.
Of course, if the laptop started the fire then the choice is much easier
It's true that you generally have to be an idiot to die, but either the game is preventing you from wandering off or you are self-limiting. If you were to just strike out into a more difficult area you'd be dead. You start out with not much cash, and a limited number of healing potions. So you can't stray too far from a means to heal yourself. Contrast this with the end of the game where you are probably walking around with 99 of everything and can go wherever you want at will without really worrying about anything. Basically you're a god at the end of the game. I'm not saying you should start the game with that much power, but you don't have to start as an insignificant worm either.
If you want to split hairs on whether there's any difference how you number it, okay, it's all arbitrary. But if Level 1 for you != Level 1 for everything else then it's pretty meaningless. Sure you could shift everything, but then you have you at Level 1 and them at Level -30, and negative levels is not really something that makes sense to me. So I agree with you to a point. I still feel like there's a psychological difference between starting at 1 and 30.
I don't think we're getting anywhere here, but... in my example Aragorn or Gandalf aren't starting in a different area, they are in the same area as Frodo. Aragorn might be a level 30 and stay at that level for many hours of gameplay because he's just not involved in the same sorts of tasks that Frodo would be.
If you are starting off as Level 1 in a Level 1 world your primary concern is your immediate survival, secondary is leveling up so that you can actually do something, and somewhere below those two is the actual plot of the game. If you are a Level 30 in a Level 1 world survival just isn't an issue for you. So you have a very different experience at the start of the game.
But it is possible. You are starting from the assumption that the enemies must be on par with you at the beginning because if you were strong compared to them it would be boring and pointless. That is the assumption you have to give up to make something different. And really, even if you are on par with them it's still pretty boring and pointless.
To use a story everyone is familiar with, take LOTR. In a typical RPG you would be Frodo. But you could also be Aragorn, who could easily defeat just about any foe he might encounter around the Shire, but that would be counter-productive for him. Or you could be Gandalf, who's problem is not generally being able to win a particular battle but rather being in the right place at the right time.
Well yes, if you have levels you start at some level. But the level indicates to some extent your place in the world (Even though despite your being a level 99 badass that guard blocking the door still won't let you in until you talk to the king). If you start at level 1 you're a nobody. You have no power, and your job is likely going to be to play fetch for the ones who do have power. This is a good starting point for two reasons. You need to learn the story, rules and interface of the game. Throwing you into the deep end at the start is, at the very least, much harder to pull off successfully. And second, even in a non-linear game the story needs to be fairly constricted at the start. If your character has power, then a lot of the artificial roadblocks the game places in front of you are less believable.
There are a lot of interesting characters you run into in these worlds. It'd be nice to get to experience the story from some other perspective than the outcast loser. It might be harder to do, but it would be worth it.
Think outside the box. Instead of being the level 1 loser you could be the level 30 dude who gives the loser his first sword and teaches him fire 1. Maybe you have multiple losers you're sending out to help you with a complex task and you need to run around helping them when they get in trouble. Once you let go of that notion of you must start at level 1 a whole new range of possibilities opens up.
Please refrain from impugning our client regarding this incident, or we will be forced to take action against you.
Sincerely,
The Law Offices of Fluffy, Lightning, and Mr Jingles
I've had someone bid on an auction of mine in $5 increments until they got the highest bid and then withdraw the last bid. And it took about 10 bids to get there. It looks terrible, but I swear it wasn't me or anyone I know. Why they did this I have no idea. Don't assume every strange bidding means there's fraud at work, there's a lot of strange/stupid bidders out there.
For each ballot question the voter is provided a color coded, different size ball bearing. Simply drop the ball into the hole next to the selected option. Oversize balls won't fit, undersized balls are sorted out and return back to the voter. At the end of the day weigh the boxes, instant vote count. All the "ballots" can be reused every year. You drop your balls and can't find them? Too &^*#ing bad. The boxes can be on scales to be monitored, with those monitoring not shown which box corresponds to which option.
Okay so we aren't designed to sit all day, but we are designed to stand up, aren't we? So how is sitting straight any different on your back than standing up? Whether the load stops at my butt or my feet shouldn't make any difference to my back.
the "school principle" wasn't his pal.
And 200K? For 200 I could do the same thing: a home-depot motion sensor, a voice chip with loudspeaker, and a handful of fertilizer/oil land mines.
Yeah, but when yours gets hit by lightning will Ally Sheedy be able to dance with it? I think not.
Given that space telescopes seem to need more servicing than other satellites and we're retiring the shuttle that can service them, and even while still in service we don't seem to want to do it, would it make sense to make a Hubble replacement that's attached to, or in reach of, the ISS?
First, because calculators and computers will take Garbage In and give Garbage Out, and engineers who don't have an intuitive understanding of the approximate answers they should get are much less likely to catch simple software errors and user mistakes.
Do you really think becoming a rocket scientist today involves being handed a package of computer software and a 1-800 number to call for support if it blows up? Every engineer first learns the concepts and works the equations out by hand before going anywhere near the program that makes it easier.
Second, because most engineering problems are far more complicated than "what's 250 times 7" but involve many, many such simple arithmetic steps. If you have to turn to the calculator on every trivial step it makes solving the whole problem correctly much harder.
I hate to break this to you, but solving "many, many simple arithmetic steps" is sort of what we invented computers to do. And they're kind of good at it.
What about their plan to produce deadly flammable methane gas on the plane?
Let's suppose there's this company Foo that wants to compete with eBay. They've got some great ideas about how to make auctions better. They implement them and while they're barely a blip on the radar compared to eBay, they start carving out a niche for themselves. eBay takes notice. eBay offers a nice chunk of change for company Foo. Foo's owners turn it down. Shortly there after, eBay's pages start to look a whole lot like Foo's pages.
Are you saying there should be no way for Foo to protect itself from such a situation?
Just because something seems obvious after it's been done doesn't mean no one put any work into it. Isn't that the mark of a good idea? People wonder why didn't anyone think of that before, it's so obvious.
In this case it seems more like a bunch of people recognize the opportunity to have online auctions, and whoever gets the patents in first wins. That's not right. But at the same time how can anyone compete with the market dominator if they are allowed to copy everyone else's ideas?
For most office machines it's probably 55 seconds out of 60. Kill the humans, gain 334 days a year. Then rewrite calendar to be nicely divided by ^2s to gain even more time.