My guess is that if you look deep down into the policy the US government has around classified information, you probably aren't legally allowed to sell media that at some point came into contact with classified information.
Trouble is, much like gun control, not everyone listens. Much like death, information sharing is irreversable, with exception to the latter often closes the former. Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead, and all that.
I think in a lot of ways the saying is true - information wants to be free. If the government has a particular piece of knowledge they don't want shared, maybe it's time to start reconsidering what information we develop and gather in the first place. The best way to prevent rogue countries from developing a nuclear bomb would have been to never invent it. The best way to keep them from stealing one would be to not own one. Yet, we still spend billions each year, learning about newer more effective ways to kill people, ultimately dooming ourselves to one day facing enemies with the same deadly and devasting arsenal.
In the light of the current credit crisis, it is often stated that we have to bail out our financial market, or terrible things will happen. Can you help us understand, in terms of human lives lost per dollar saved, the decisions behind Katrina, universal health care, Iraq, immigration reform, and the bailout of the financial sector?
Yea yea, I violated the one question per post rule, but I doubt they'd post these anyways.
Absolutely correct. But I think at least he/she understands that it's not the government's place, nor the place of those acting in public office, to advocate any particular religous position.
As an independent (not affiliated with either major political party), I'm often told that by not voting for one of the two candidates from the two major parties, I'm throwing away my vote. At the same time, it is often the thin margin of independent and undecided voters that turn a presidential election. Do you think the current political system is fair to independents? If not, what would you do, and have you done, to change it?
"In the meantime, the only fix is to disable browser scripting and plugins. We realize this doesn't give people much technical detail to go on, but it's the best we can do right now. "
What's one malicious/annoying script from another? I turned them all off, years ago, and magically problems with trojans, annoying popups, and flashy/dodgy adverts all went away.
At work, I put CNN on my restricted sites list to explicitly prohibit the site from running scripts. I'll take my biased news without the long page loads to pay your sponsors, thanks.
Glad to hear that I patched out this zero day exploit well over 700 days ago.
Oh, but in some ways, twisted ways, he's right. This post has seen 250+ comments, while what I might consider a more worthy one below it, discussing the best of independent game development, has a piddly 20.
They're using the classic idea of beta - free, use at your own risk, subject to change without notice. And they slapped advertising on it (quick, an obvious idea, call the patent office!). And they've achieved a great deal of attention for innovation and growth as a result.
I don't know what you're talking about, this game entertained my seven year old for hours.
I think we were all just expecting some kind of harder game mode option where slapping together the optimal chassis for your preferred strategy took more thought.
It should also not be completely acceptable to impose regulation such that you can't take toothpaste on the airplane, and then jack the price of toothpaste sold by your kiosks on the other side of the flight.
I'm all for market forces - if someone just forgets to bring toothpaste and you pocket an extra dollar for saving his ass, great. But forcing everyone on one side to dispose their hygene products, then upcharging them on the other side, that's CRIMINAL. The government needs to regulate price gouging on items it deems unsafe to fly with.
It's EULAs and TOS like this that, in my opinion, make personal piracy a completely moral decision. When a company chooses to force it's customers to sign away any trace of consumer protections they ought to be granting, I lose all concern for that company or its employee's ability to turn a profit.
INSERT INTO slashdot
SELECT *
FROM minority_report
WHERE reference CONTAINS ('one_liner, 'Tom_Cruise')
Director Burgess: Who's the victim? John Anderton: Somebody. Director Burgess: Who? John Anderton: [trying to remember the name] Somebody. Leo Crow. Director Burgess: Who is he? John Anderton: I have no idea! I've never heard of him! But I'm supposed to kill him in less than thirty-six hours.
Exactly. Trace the gold back, ban the account, pocket the profit. I did notice gold in warhammer is selling at prices like when wow was first released. More humorous, some of the warhammer goldsellers still advertise WOW gold sales.
I am very glad to see mythic taking action on this issue immediately, instead of waiting for years. Obviously they couldn't code a solution in 3 days, but they're using their GMs to make a public assault on the behavior. If they maintain that sense of urgency for making the players happy, they'll nail one of the most important points that WOW let slip by.
He's got my Presidential Nomination
on
Cthulhu Claus
·
· Score: 1
"Imagine a bill were to be proposed which legalized marijuana, allowed for gay marriage, forbade "abstinence-only" sex-ed and created a federal mandate against teaching ID in science classrooms, created reasonable constraints on domestic surveillance, and placed tight limits on political lobbying... but also happened to legalize curb-stomping puppies."
You're doing it wrong - the analogy has to involve a moral dilemma.
I kid...
I am pretty upset with the ground the democrats have repeatedly given up to pass things in the Congress though. Telecom immunity ultimately means they can just take and then dump accountability that should have been placed on the executive branch. The funding for the war in Iraq should have mandated set milestones and timetables for completion. Instead the Congress rolled over on both issues. Maybe that's why an elected body of representatives is running such a terrible approval rating.
The product comes with an account, which is essentially what you are paying for. The company at best refuses to recognize, at worst actively prohibits the sales of accounts. How do you resell the game?
"It seems absurdly simple, but it is quite foreign to meteorology on our planet to have an impact crater affecting the global climate and weather patterns."
Finance is only a part of it. So long as we run a single, winner take all election in each state, 3rd parties really don't have much of a chance. I'd much rather see each state have at least 2 elections - one to narrow the focus down to 2 candidates, and then a final competition between the two for that elected office. The concept of primaries, when controlled by the democratic and republican political parties, is a very poor substitute for this.
The fewer real candidates running for an office, the uglier the competition becomes. In a race of 10+ candidates, each would be forced to run primarily on his own merits, and sparingly attack other candidates. In a 2 man race, it is often vote for dollar a superior bet to take a dump on the opponent. And thus the horrible media circus that ensues every november and the months leading up to. It's also BS that in order to effectively voice my opposition to the current administration and its policies, I have to rally my vote behind "the other party" - regardless if there might be a better candidate running.
This wouldn't even have to truly require 2 elections - you could simply rank the contenders in a single ballot, so if your #1 choice didn't win, your vote counted to your runner up choice, instead of being abandoned.
But of course, this notion is laughable, because the people in power aren't going to push for a reform that could remove them from power. They like the two party system, the less competition the better.
At the end of all this, I would strongly encourage people to vote for the candidate they really want to win, regardless of the popularity. And if Republican or Democrat alike would like to tell you you're wasting your vote, they've both had majorities that would give them opportunity to provide a better system where you wouldn't have to in order to voice your true opinion come election time. Both parties have decided that when it comes to running the country, they don't want competition.
"Should investors loose all of their money because a panic induced mob crashed prices?"
The stock price of a real company is the sum of its assets, and its ability to make more money. If your company's entire business plan involves risky loans, then yes, there naturally exists the possibility that those risky loans will become bad debts instead of fulfilled ones, and your company's investors will suffer.
This is completely off-topic, but an important enough discussion that I think it's worth chiming in anyways.
Yes, many will feel the pain either way. However, I think the most fair and equitable distribution of pain and accountability follows the plan of letting those investors that propped up AIG take the fall for its bad business practices.
I feel much the same way about bailing out fmae and fmac. Sure, people are losing thousands of dollars in their home "values" and their retirement investments. However, the drops in home prices are a natural market balance that reflects a lowered ability to pay. More accurately, it better represents the real ability to pay, when the mortgage balloon game is ended. Today thousands of homes sit on the foreclosure market, rotting away from the inside out and developing crippling mold issues that ultimately can completely destroy the value of a home. Yet, the banks refuse to unload these homes at a price that would move them off the market immediately, choosing instead to let them rot to maintain their inflated prices. Let us not forget that from 2000 -> 2005, home prices DOUBLED. Their prices prior to this "collapse" were in fact inflated, are still inflated, and taking out the exhorbitant mortgages to purchase them at their inflated value, was a mistake.
So lets summarize - banks are holding houses they aren't willing to sell for what the market will bear, plenty of people need homes and don't have them, and the government solution is we need to bail out the poor, poor bank at the expense of said non-homeowners?
NO.
One can argue how taxes should or should not be used, but I think we can mostly agree taxes should not be used to redistribute wealth to the wealthy.
I think things are fine. This clearance sale on housing is bringing the price of a home back into the range that a young couple starting a family may be able to afford one on a real income. When the next generation can buy homes, the price will stabilize. And maybe the younger generation, which is currently piddling away all their money the Middle East, will learn something from the older generation, which did the same thing in the Far East, and instead invest their money here at home, so that when it's time to retire we don't have to resort to robbing our children.
Hell, in the case of certain DRM laden games users aren't even willing to front the 50 bucks for the original box. Good luck selling add-ons.
I see a certain onset of chicken-egg circle. Users aren't willing to lay out money for games that offer no new experience. Developers/Publishers aren't willing to lay out money on a market that doesn't deliver. PC Gaming saw a nice burst where rapidly advancing hardware enabled a lot of old ideas to be redone in 3d with bigger, shinier graphics, but I think we're all in a sort of "now-what?". I'm paying 30 bucks a month for 2 WOW subs (one for my son) while spending more of my online gaming time in a text based MUD, pass up playing the latest simcity to build civilizations in dwarf fortress in ascii.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is that if you look deep down into the policy the US government has around classified information, you probably aren't legally allowed to sell media that at some point came into contact with classified information.
Trouble is, much like gun control, not everyone listens. Much like death, information sharing is irreversable, with exception to the latter often closes the former. Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead, and all that.
I think in a lot of ways the saying is true - information wants to be free. If the government has a particular piece of knowledge they don't want shared, maybe it's time to start reconsidering what information we develop and gather in the first place. The best way to prevent rogue countries from developing a nuclear bomb would have been to never invent it. The best way to keep them from stealing one would be to not own one. Yet, we still spend billions each year, learning about newer more effective ways to kill people, ultimately dooming ourselves to one day facing enemies with the same deadly and devasting arsenal.
As the President of the United States, do you anticipate difficulty making ends meet on a 400,000 dollar salary?
or
How do you reconcile Congress's 25% approval rating with their yearly self appointed pay raise?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-01-09-Raise-me_N.htm
Do you expect a similar adjustment to their pay in the coming year?
here's one:
In the light of the current credit crisis, it is often stated that we have to bail out our financial market, or terrible things will happen. Can you help us understand, in terms of human lives lost per dollar saved, the decisions behind Katrina, universal health care, Iraq, immigration reform, and the bailout of the financial sector?
Yea yea, I violated the one question per post rule, but I doubt they'd post these anyways.
Absolutely correct. But I think at least he/she understands that it's not the government's place, nor the place of those acting in public office, to advocate any particular religous position.
Here's my question:
As an independent (not affiliated with either major political party), I'm often told that by not voting for one of the two candidates from the two major parties, I'm throwing away my vote. At the same time, it is often the thin margin of independent and undecided voters that turn a presidential election. Do you think the current political system is fair to independents? If not, what would you do, and have you done, to change it?
"In the meantime, the only fix is to disable browser scripting and plugins. We realize this doesn't give people much technical detail to go on, but it's the best we can do right now. "
What's one malicious/annoying script from another? I turned them all off, years ago, and magically problems with trojans, annoying popups, and flashy/dodgy adverts all went away.
At work, I put CNN on my restricted sites list to explicitly prohibit the site from running scripts. I'll take my biased news without the long page loads to pay your sponsors, thanks.
Glad to hear that I patched out this zero day exploit well over 700 days ago.
Oh, but in some ways, twisted ways, he's right. This post has seen 250+ comments, while what I might consider a more worthy one below it, discussing the best of independent game development, has a piddly 20.
It's kinda like my sig.
They've just figured out how to monetize it.
They're using the classic idea of beta - free, use at your own risk, subject to change without notice. And they slapped advertising on it (quick, an obvious idea, call the patent office!). And they've achieved a great deal of attention for innovation and growth as a result.
I don't know what you're talking about, this game entertained my seven year old for hours.
I think we were all just expecting some kind of harder game mode option where slapping together the optimal chassis for your preferred strategy took more thought.
It should also not be completely acceptable to impose regulation such that you can't take toothpaste on the airplane, and then jack the price of toothpaste sold by your kiosks on the other side of the flight.
I'm all for market forces - if someone just forgets to bring toothpaste and you pocket an extra dollar for saving his ass, great. But forcing everyone on one side to dispose their hygene products, then upcharging them on the other side, that's CRIMINAL. The government needs to regulate price gouging on items it deems unsafe to fly with.
It's EULAs and TOS like this that, in my opinion, make personal piracy a completely moral decision. When a company chooses to force it's customers to sign away any trace of consumer protections they ought to be granting, I lose all concern for that company or its employee's ability to turn a profit.
echo on
INSERT INTO slashdot
SELECT *
FROM minority_report
WHERE reference CONTAINS ('one_liner, 'Tom_Cruise')
Director Burgess: Who's the victim?
John Anderton: Somebody.
Director Burgess: Who?
John Anderton: [trying to remember the name] Somebody. Leo Crow.
Director Burgess: Who is he?
John Anderton: I have no idea! I've never heard of him! But I'm supposed to kill him in less than thirty-six hours.
Exactly. Trace the gold back, ban the account, pocket the profit. I did notice gold in warhammer is selling at prices like when wow was first released. More humorous, some of the warhammer goldsellers still advertise WOW gold sales.
I am very glad to see mythic taking action on this issue immediately, instead of waiting for years. Obviously they couldn't code a solution in 3 days, but they're using their GMs to make a public assault on the behavior. If they maintain that sense of urgency for making the players happy, they'll nail one of the most important points that WOW let slip by.
I think I may have read it here, but:
Why choose a lesser evil?
"Imagine a bill were to be proposed which legalized marijuana, allowed for gay marriage, forbade "abstinence-only" sex-ed and created a federal mandate against teaching ID in science classrooms, created reasonable constraints on domestic surveillance, and placed tight limits on political lobbying ... but also happened to legalize curb-stomping puppies."
You're doing it wrong - the analogy has to involve a moral dilemma.
I kid...
I am pretty upset with the ground the democrats have repeatedly given up to pass things in the Congress though. Telecom immunity ultimately means they can just take and then dump accountability that should have been placed on the executive branch. The funding for the war in Iraq should have mandated set milestones and timetables for completion. Instead the Congress rolled over on both issues. Maybe that's why an elected body of representatives is running such a terrible approval rating.
Don't most MMOs already do this?
The product comes with an account, which is essentially what you are paying for. The company at best refuses to recognize, at worst actively prohibits the sales of accounts. How do you resell the game?
"It seems absurdly simple, but it is quite foreign to meteorology on our planet to have an impact crater affecting the global climate and weather patterns."
Tell that to the dinosaurs...
No, go deeper. Support election reform.
Finance is only a part of it. So long as we run a single, winner take all election in each state, 3rd parties really don't have much of a chance. I'd much rather see each state have at least 2 elections - one to narrow the focus down to 2 candidates, and then a final competition between the two for that elected office. The concept of primaries, when controlled by the democratic and republican political parties, is a very poor substitute for this.
The fewer real candidates running for an office, the uglier the competition becomes. In a race of 10+ candidates, each would be forced to run primarily on his own merits, and sparingly attack other candidates. In a 2 man race, it is often vote for dollar a superior bet to take a dump on the opponent. And thus the horrible media circus that ensues every november and the months leading up to. It's also BS that in order to effectively voice my opposition to the current administration and its policies, I have to rally my vote behind "the other party" - regardless if there might be a better candidate running.
This wouldn't even have to truly require 2 elections - you could simply rank the contenders in a single ballot, so if your #1 choice didn't win, your vote counted to your runner up choice, instead of being abandoned.
But of course, this notion is laughable, because the people in power aren't going to push for a reform that could remove them from power. They like the two party system, the less competition the better.
At the end of all this, I would strongly encourage people to vote for the candidate they really want to win, regardless of the popularity. And if Republican or Democrat alike would like to tell you you're wasting your vote, they've both had majorities that would give them opportunity to provide a better system where you wouldn't have to in order to voice your true opinion come election time. Both parties have decided that when it comes to running the country, they don't want competition.
"Should investors loose all of their money because a panic induced mob crashed prices?"
The stock price of a real company is the sum of its assets, and its ability to make more money. If your company's entire business plan involves risky loans, then yes, there naturally exists the possibility that those risky loans will become bad debts instead of fulfilled ones, and your company's investors will suffer.
This is completely off-topic, but an important enough discussion that I think it's worth chiming in anyways.
Yes, many will feel the pain either way. However, I think the most fair and equitable distribution of pain and accountability follows the plan of letting those investors that propped up AIG take the fall for its bad business practices.
I feel much the same way about bailing out fmae and fmac. Sure, people are losing thousands of dollars in their home "values" and their retirement investments. However, the drops in home prices are a natural market balance that reflects a lowered ability to pay. More accurately, it better represents the real ability to pay, when the mortgage balloon game is ended. Today thousands of homes sit on the foreclosure market, rotting away from the inside out and developing crippling mold issues that ultimately can completely destroy the value of a home. Yet, the banks refuse to unload these homes at a price that would move them off the market immediately, choosing instead to let them rot to maintain their inflated prices. Let us not forget that from 2000 -> 2005, home prices DOUBLED. Their prices prior to this "collapse" were in fact inflated, are still inflated, and taking out the exhorbitant mortgages to purchase them at their inflated value, was a mistake.
So lets summarize - banks are holding houses they aren't willing to sell for what the market will bear, plenty of people need homes and don't have them, and the government solution is we need to bail out the poor, poor bank at the expense of said non-homeowners?
NO.
One can argue how taxes should or should not be used, but I think we can mostly agree taxes should not be used to redistribute wealth to the wealthy.
I think things are fine. This clearance sale on housing is bringing the price of a home back into the range that a young couple starting a family may be able to afford one on a real income. When the next generation can buy homes, the price will stabilize. And maybe the younger generation, which is currently piddling away all their money the Middle East, will learn something from the older generation, which did the same thing in the Far East, and instead invest their money here at home, so that when it's time to retire we don't have to resort to robbing our children.
what with the hundreds of billions of dollars we're borrowing from China and all...
Nope, I'm familiar with all three, and none fit the bill. Lipstick on a turd stands.
Don't forget narrowly avoiding the swinging anamorphic appendages of a personified paperclip.
The games will all still suck, because we spend a billion dollars putting lipstick on a turd.
Integrity? In our moment of graft?
THIS IS MADNESS!
Hell, in the case of certain DRM laden games users aren't even willing to front the 50 bucks for the original box. Good luck selling add-ons.
I see a certain onset of chicken-egg circle. Users aren't willing to lay out money for games that offer no new experience. Developers/Publishers aren't willing to lay out money on a market that doesn't deliver. PC Gaming saw a nice burst where rapidly advancing hardware enabled a lot of old ideas to be redone in 3d with bigger, shinier graphics, but I think we're all in a sort of "now-what?". I'm paying 30 bucks a month for 2 WOW subs (one for my son) while spending more of my online gaming time in a text based MUD, pass up playing the latest simcity to build civilizations in dwarf fortress in ascii.