I think police dash cameras are allowed as people can not reasonably expect privacy in public spaces (on the street, for instance).
So should police expect privacy when they storm into your house without a warrant and refuse to leave?
If police can put a camera in a public place, you should be able to put one in your home. Especially since you are really only sacrificing your own privacy if you make it public. In this case, however, its reporting the VIOLATION of their privacy by police entering their home illegally.
I'm not 100% sure what the law is over there, but a wiretap or eavesdrop would normally be something completely different since it involves someone else planting a recording device in his home or tapping his phone without him knowing about it.
There is one REALLY good title for 360 which will easily give you over 100+ hours of gameplay: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Right now it's only on 360 and PC and it looks AMAZING and so far there are no plans for the PS3 that have been publically announced. Not only does it look good, the gameplay is amazing as well and will have you hooked. This could be one of Microsoft's killer app, at least until Halo 3 comes out. FYI, I am not a fan of Halo 1/2 but it is something everybody else is waiting for.
There doesn't seem to be anything equivelant that Sony has lined up, except maybe Final Fantasy which has, quite frankly, been a terrible game and I think that after 10 or 20 sequels, Sony needs something different.
I'd like to see what Nintendo puts out thought, with Red Steel and other games which utilize the new controller.
One major factor as to why Silicon Valley is so successful is due to the fact that when the area was first being developed, land was CHEAP. I know that this is no longer the case, but it was at the beginning. Leland Stanford, who donated large amounts of land to Stanford university, put in a condition that his land could not be sold. So instead, when the university ran into troubles in the early 50's, it signed 99 year leases with major companies such as Kodak, GE, HP, etc. The smart move on the part of the university is that it limited the leases to High Tech companies which, as someone mentioned earlier, helped both the university and the companies (of course this benefited institutions such as Berkeley University as well).
However, many of those companies probably wouldn't have settled there if the university didn't lease the land at such low prices. Of course, today Silicon Valley is one of the most expensive places to live in California.
Having the high tech companies present attracted more companies and thus a cycle was formed which keeps companies there to this day.
Universities are still doing this today abeit on a much smaller scale and with mixed results. Time will only tell if any of these initiatives prove to be as successful.
If you're looking for a broad approach to video game (and movie and music) reviews, check out: www.metacritic.com
They take reviews from many sites, "equalize" them (puts them on a 100point scale), then produces a weighted average (based on biases which the editors feel the reviewers make that need to be compensated for-ie if a reviewer generally gives favorable reviews to most games his/her score will be adjusted).
I tend to find that this produces fairly good results. Your mileage may vary but its worth checking out.
Come off it. Most of this aspartame-is-lethal crap is due to an internet hoax email and a bunch of unscrupulous "alternative therapy practitioners". Your link goes to holisticmed.com! Funny how it's all "energy flow" and "meridians" and "magnetism" and "special chinese herbs" and "homeopathy" until they want to scare someone off something - then they pull out the list of scary chemical names of poisons, because scared people tend not to engage their brain. Hmm.
The fact that the site I quoted is from holisticmed.com, does not invalidate the arguments presented. They provide references in the articles they write and even post other articles from well respected members of the medical community. By the way holistic medicine isn't just homeopathy, herbal therapy etc. Even I am skeptical about those kinds of treatments. Its ignorant to discredit a site just because you associate them with such things. Its funny how you say "scared people tend not to engage their brain", yet you discredit loads of valuable research simply because a holistic medicine site posts it.
They pull out the list of "scary chemicals", because they are scary. SOOORRY for mentioning both methanol AND formaldehyde. But the fact is that both of those compounds do exist in your body simulatneously for some time even though one motabolizes into the other. Besides, mentioning Formaldehyde is "scary" enough on its own. You don't need to mention methanol to push people into a panic.
Also, if you know how to use google, you'll find that there is plenty of other reliable research online on the matter.
As for the quantities, I have not verified your claims of the content in cola so I cannot comment on that. However, even a small quantity of methanol (eventually formaldehyde) is widely accepted by most of the medical community as being highly toxic and potentially lethal.
It may not cause cancer.
Then again it might, seeing as when aspartame motabolizes in your body it produces methanol and formaldehyde (highly toxic in humans and animals).
Who cares if it causes cancer (even though it probably does)? Formaldehyde is likely to kill you one way or another.
a Jackass. More importantly, he is CEO(or president or both) of Rogers Communications/Wireless which is the cell phone provider which handed Ms.Drummond the $12k bill
Not sure if you are aware of this, but the idea of a patent is to show the details of your invention (which can be seen as opening up the standard in this case) and register it with the US patent office(or whichever patent office) to protect it. Now the fact that they are declaring it as a standard format is irrelevant, they do own the patent and can do whatever the law says they can with it.
http://developers.slashdot.org/users.pl
Create an Account
Many patented standards have been documented for public use but are still protected by patents and thus require licensing. The CDMA cell phone network is a good example of this. All the low level signal specifications and circuitry requirements for digital communication between CDMA devices is well known and thoroughly documented. It's widely recognized as one of the larger cell phone network standards. However, you still cannot develop CDMA devices without first getting a license from Quallcomm which owns the patents. Just recently in fact, Quallcomm was suing Nokia for developing CDMA devices without the proper licensing.
Similarily, Microsoft can open up the internal details of their office format (they have to do this to patent their format anyways) and still require developers license their format if they wish to use it.
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If police can put a camera in a public place, you should be able to put one in your home. Especially since you are really only sacrificing your own privacy if you make it public. In this case, however, its reporting the VIOLATION of their privacy by police entering their home illegally.
I'm not 100% sure what the law is over there, but a wiretap or eavesdrop would normally be something completely different since it involves someone else planting a recording device in his home or tapping his phone without him knowing about it.
There is one REALLY good title for 360 which will easily give you over 100+ hours of gameplay:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Right now it's only on 360 and PC and it looks AMAZING and so far there are no plans for the PS3 that have been publically announced. Not only does it look good, the gameplay is amazing as well and will have you hooked. This could be one of Microsoft's killer app, at least until Halo 3 comes out. FYI, I am not a fan of Halo 1/2 but it is something everybody else is waiting for.
There doesn't seem to be anything equivelant that Sony has lined up, except maybe Final Fantasy which has, quite frankly, been a terrible game and I think that after 10 or 20 sequels, Sony needs something different.
I'd like to see what Nintendo puts out thought, with Red Steel and other games which utilize the new controller.
Well said.
One major factor as to why Silicon Valley is so successful is due to the fact that when the area was first being developed, land was CHEAP. I know that this is no longer the case, but it was at the beginning. Leland Stanford, who donated large amounts of land to Stanford university, put in a condition that his land could not be sold. So instead, when the university ran into troubles in the early 50's, it signed 99 year leases with major companies such as Kodak, GE, HP, etc. The smart move on the part of the university is that it limited the leases to High Tech companies which, as someone mentioned earlier, helped both the university and the companies (of course this benefited institutions such as Berkeley University as well).
However, many of those companies probably wouldn't have settled there if the university didn't lease the land at such low prices. Of course, today Silicon Valley is one of the most expensive places to live in California.
Having the high tech companies present attracted more companies and thus a cycle was formed which keeps companies there to this day.
Universities are still doing this today abeit on a much smaller scale and with mixed results. Time will only tell if any of these initiatives prove to be as successful.
Source for some of this information: http://www.netvalley.com/svhistory.html
If you're looking for a broad approach to video game (and movie and music) reviews, check out: www.metacritic.com
They take reviews from many sites, "equalize" them (puts them on a 100point scale), then produces a weighted average (based on biases which the editors feel the reviewers make that need to be compensated for-ie if a reviewer generally gives favorable reviews to most games his/her score will be adjusted).
I tend to find that this produces fairly good results. Your mileage may vary but its worth checking out.
They pull out the list of "scary chemicals", because they are scary. SOOORRY for mentioning both methanol AND formaldehyde. But the fact is that both of those compounds do exist in your body simulatneously for some time even though one motabolizes into the other. Besides, mentioning Formaldehyde is "scary" enough on its own. You don't need to mention methanol to push people into a panic.
Also, if you know how to use google, you'll find that there is plenty of other reliable research online on the matter.
As for the quantities, I have not verified your claims of the content in cola so I cannot comment on that. However, even a small quantity of methanol (eventually formaldehyde) is widely accepted by most of the medical community as being highly toxic and potentially lethal.
It may not cause cancer. Then again it might, seeing as when aspartame motabolizes in your body it produces methanol and formaldehyde (highly toxic in humans and animals). Who cares if it causes cancer (even though it probably does)? Formaldehyde is likely to kill you one way or another.
Yet!
a Jackass. More importantly, he is CEO(or president or both) of Rogers Communications/Wireless which is the cell phone provider which handed Ms.Drummond the $12k bill
Not sure if you are aware of this, but the idea of a patent is to show the details of your invention (which can be seen as opening up the standard in this case) and register it with the US patent office(or whichever patent office) to protect it. Now the fact that they are declaring it as a standard format is irrelevant, they do own the patent and can do whatever the law says they can with it. http://developers.slashdot.org/users.pl Create an Account Many patented standards have been documented for public use but are still protected by patents and thus require licensing. The CDMA cell phone network is a good example of this. All the low level signal specifications and circuitry requirements for digital communication between CDMA devices is well known and thoroughly documented. It's widely recognized as one of the larger cell phone network standards. However, you still cannot develop CDMA devices without first getting a license from Quallcomm which owns the patents. Just recently in fact, Quallcomm was suing Nokia for developing CDMA devices without the proper licensing. Similarily, Microsoft can open up the internal details of their office format (they have to do this to patent their format anyways) and still require developers license their format if they wish to use it.