It's quite amusing to think of all the games and sci-fi plots that have been based around alien life forms landing on a planet and taking it over in the context of this theory, because, well, if true, then we're those alien life forms, the only thing we're missing from most plots is a hive mind!
They do what they already do, join BitTorrent swarms, note down the IP addresses in the swarm, see which ISPs they belong to, if the ISPs are UK ISPs, contact them to get their details, or get them via court order, then they sue.
The problem is that BitTorrent is by default weak to this type of attack - you have to connect to a public tracker for a specific piece of content.
If you use USENET to just download off of newsgroups on foreign servers using SSL then you should be safe to all government legislation and attempts to crack down on piracy, unless they take it to the extreme of making ISPs perform man in the middle attacks on SSL connections to see what is being transferred and catch you that way, but I don't think even Labour would go that far- it would have too many side effects, such as reducing confidence in online shopping and banking at UK firms if it was known that encrypted connections were being snooped.
Realistically I think if these laws go ahead a lot of people who don't understand the vulnerabilities of P2P systems like BitTorrent do leave them open to getting caught. Personally I do not believe an IP address connected to a tracker is an acceptable level of evidence of a crime as it's so fundamentally flawed, but unfortunately it seems people in government do believe it's acceptable. This catching of large amounts of people will go one of three ways, either it will kill off British file sharing (but leave other methods like burning CDs for mates, direct downloads, USENET etc. intact), it'll lead to a cat and mouse game where technology (such as anonymous networks built for file sharing) arise to work around the inherent vulnerabilities of bittorrent or it'll lead to public discontent and political pressure will force the government to backtrack.
Either way, if you use P2P, it's going to be a bumpy road.
Because it only effects like, a few hundred people in the population.
You can almost certainly count the number of people with CCTV pointing into their houses on one hand. CCTV monitoring at work I've not heard about, but that's certainly going to full foul of laws against workplace bullying as it would clearly fall under excessive monitoring. Similarly the deal with encryption keys has effected how many people? 2, 3?
You see, I'm not defending any of this, it's entirely unacceptable and it pisses me off no end, but I do support both the Libertarian Party UK, Liberty and now The Pirate Party, but the other 59,999,990 people in the country who aren't affected? They have no reason to care because it doesn't effect them yet.
It will effect them, eventually. But this is what scares me most, it'll pick people off one by one, and people wont care whilst one or two people are being picked off here or there, until it hits them, but then it's too late because they're already a criminal.
Honestly, what I'm hoping for is that they trip, that they get too gutsy, and that they push a law that really does effect millions in one fell swoop. Only then do I think people will really start to care and take action.
I'd argue most countries are the same - Australians only stood up against the internet filtering plans for example because it was something that outright effected so many people in a single blow.
"given they're due for an election in less than a year I can't believe they'd go out of their way to alienate voters."
I guess you don't know much about British politics. The ruling Labour party has spent the last few years doing just that, this is why they've lost every local council election and took a severe blow in the European parliamentary elections in the last year or two.
They've been in power 12 years and lost sight of what the public care about, that doesn't matter to them anymore, they believe they're in power for good regardless and push their own agenda no matter the fact it's an absolute minority view.
Mandelson has also been caught lying on multiple occasions, in fact, he was kicked out the Labour party twice in the last 12 years for lying over something that was outright criminal. This is Mandelson, if he says he didn't do it, he's lying.
I dunno, I even found Syndicate Wars quite fun, although as you say it wasn't really Syndicate.
Being able to throw nuclear hand grenades in Syndicate Wars to dig holes in the ground which you could then surround with razor wire to make yourself a little trench was kinda fun. Just not as fun as indoctrinating about 100 civilians, jumping into a vehicle with them all, getting it blown up and watching them all run out of the vehicle in a nice circular ring of burning bodies.
Those were the days, when games weren't all just Call of Duty clones;)
If it's anything like England it's because there is a limit on the amount universities here can charge students to attend university.
There is however no limit for foreign students, so foreign students effectively subsidise native students in England.
As such universities here love foreign students and will go a long way to get them because it simply means more money for better resources and for better pay. It does in a way benefit native students then because they're going to universities that are better resourced than they normally would be.
It's worth pointing out that a new Wing Commander game was released just last year on XBox Live Arcade so I think you're probably right. They're just ensuring protection of existing trademarks I'd guess.
Still, I'd love a nice revamped 3D HD version of Desert Strike and Jungle Strike though personally! I wouldn't say no to a new Theme Park/Theme Hospital either. Oh, how about bringing Syndicate back whilst we're at it;) ?
i.e. if you're navigating around a document such as a bunch of source code with the cursor keys you wont necessarily find yourself in front of the problem, unless you waste extra time navigating to it. The section you want to delete wont necessarily be at the end of the line either so you can't depend on "End".
The point is, not all text that needs deleting needs to be deleted as you type, it's when you're editing, if something doesn't sound quite right. If you want to change the start of a line you can just hit "Home" and "Delete", rather than Home, right x20 then back space.
Using an extra key to get the functionality isn't great for usability or productivity as it means using both hands, rather than one for deleting, and the other for navigating/replacing.
So basically, you don't delete stuff only when you make mistakes, you delete stuff when you edit too.
The summary talks about a period of 0.5 to 1 billion years for the process to start, 0.5 billion years is a very long time.
To put it into context, the Earth is about 4.3 billion years old, basic cellular life estimated at around 3.8 billion years old, but here's the important point - animals at only around 0.44 billion years ago, and land animals at only around 0.36 billion years ago. Humans around 0.006, humans with basic tools much like modern monkeys have been found to use around 0.002 billion years ago.
So the point is this, in the time scale they're talking about, humans could evolve from near monkeys to humans capable of flying to the moon, building things like the internet between 85 to 500 times over.
The fact is, even if humans are alive by then, humans themselves will without a doubt be different, other creatures will be different, will adapt to the changing atmosphere. In half a billion years, water can't exist as a liquid? Well, in half a billion years whatever creatures are around wont need liquid.
Evolution is an extremely slow process from our point of view, but from a cosmological perspective as in TFA, it's pretty damn rapid. If in 0.006 of the minimum time (half a billion years) they are talking about humanity can turn from ape to space going species, then how can we possibly even begin to predict what humanity will be able to do or humans will even look like in well over 75 times that amount of time?
The summary using 0.5 to 1 billion years is rather vague to say the least when you consider that's the difference between a planet barren of all but the most simple cellular life and the world we live in today that's also seen mass extinction events like the dinosaurs to kick the process back a few 10s of millions years now and again.
I dare say, that in the times being spoken about, not only as you say would we have the skills and resources if we're still around, but perhaps we possibly even wouldn't need to, evolution and technology advances would mean we'd either long gone, or a warm up of 50 - 75 degrees C spread across half a billion years wouldn't be much of a big deal anyway.
"Come work in the EU: we understand what you say, pay overtime and have a acceptable climate."
Except Britain, which decided to keep it's working hours limit opt-out, but which isn't really an opt-out because the opt-out is always just embedded in your contract so you either sign your contract and can be made to work as many hours as your employer wants without overtime or you don't sign the contract and don't get a job.
Luckily, there are still lots of good firms in the UK that actually give a damn about their employees, so the real conditions aren't that bad for the most part, but there's still a danger in some companies and some sectors are prominent for abusing it. Most major clothing retail firms in the UK are quite bad in the way they treat retail managers for example.
I don't disagree with your point and I did indeed cancel my L4D2 pre-order because I do no longer have faith that Valve will provide value for money and as you say, I certainly wont be buying this DLC.
Regarding reviews though, the problem is they're not worth the bytes to download to your browser, some great games get slated, whilst crap games get high ratings. Part of it is of course subjectivity, but most reviews seem to be more about whose paid their protection money to the reviewing protection racket. I do not believe you can judge the real quality of a game on reviews. Averaged user ratings that some sites have seem much better now, but even then without the raw data for them being published there's no way to know if they can really be trusted.
Similarly Demos aren't much help, they give no idea of the amount and quality of content in the final product, only the general style of gameplay (which I actually really liked).
I understand the certification costs but the reason most people seem uptight over L4D (and why I personally wasn't keen on it after I played it a fair bit) was because it was such a small game to start with, it really felt like little more than an HL2 mod but was priced as a full priced title.
If re-certification makes creation of content unfeasible, then perhaps Valve should reconsider the idea of releasing low-content games with the promise of providing much content later on and go back to footing the development bill for a full sized game and waiting for the income to roll in on release like pretty much all other companies do?
The crux of the problem seems to be Valve's attempt at pushing different financing models for the development of games to maximise profit, the problem is the consumer is the one falling victim to the flaws in these attempts such as in this case possibly realising that releasing parts of the game later on leads higher certification costs than if they'd just delayed the game a year to produce all the content in a single release and got it certified all in one pack.
IIRC there was a story a few weeks back about Valve (or someone elses, I can't remember) idea of gamers financing game development and so far the L4D drama seems to be an example of why that isn't ideal - as with episodic content, it seems it costs the consumer more in the long run, yet they get nothing more for it and have no idea when they may see the rest of their game arrive, if at all as was the case with SiN episodes.
No it's not, it's a result of an EU directive. The IPRED name is still distinct to Sweden I believe. Certainly here in the UK we have no IPRED, but we do have similar laws or attempts at such laws.
The EU directive just states what must be done in the local country, IPRED is the local name for their local implementation of the directive (and then some more above and beyond the directive i believe).
I see, so because Greenpeace used the kind of tactics needed to get heard in the modern world just like any other organisation they're not worth listening too? Why wouldn't they be after publicity? Publicity helps further their cause.
Greenpeaces biggest mistake was probably not realising how bad the worst zealots in the Apple community can be, these are people who would rather spread propaganda and defend Apple than realise that Greenpeace has a point, and that they could still have their iPods and iMacs but have them greener too. Unfortunately this would mean accepting that Apple and it's products aren't the most perfect entities in the universe, something that is beyond the most rabid of Apple fans.
But here's a question, if Greenpeace had singled out Microsoft instead, would we still be seeing these blistering attacks here against Greenpeace? I'm guessing the answer is almost certainly not.
Yes, Greenpeace has some nuts, but so does any large organisation. It's not like other political movements from the British Labour party to the US Democrats and Republicans don't also have more than their fair share of nuts and extremists - I mean, George Bush got into power and Sarah Palin was a VP candidate, it takes some pretty extreme views to think that either of them were a good idea and amongst the talk of Greenpeace dishonesty how many other large organisations aren't also guilty of the exact same thing to make their point from Microsoft to Apple to the Democrats to the Republicans.
That doesn't stop them having a point, just as despite the fact Bush and Palin are probably two of the biggest laughing stocks in politics in the last 50 years, McCain was mostly pretty reasonable and had some good points and good ideas. Most the work they do is done in a relatively mature manner - their work against whaling is fairly tame compared to Sea Sheperd which rams Japanese ships with their boat called the Steve Irwin whilst flying the jolly roger and throwing acid on the deck of the Japanese ships. Greenpeace on the other hand just gets in the way whilst being sprayed with water cannons by the Japanese whalers.
My point is this, I'm not defending fringe nutcases, but I'm pointing out they exist everywhere, and we shouldn't let them detract from more moderate, sensible people and the good work that they do. Suggesting Greenpeace shouldn't exist anymore is really stupid because at the end of the day they do still do a lot of good work. After all, Apple did change their policy in the end:
Realise that even if Greenpeace went, the fringe nutcases amongst the Greens would still exist regardless, just as with any organisation or political movement. You'd still have them lobbying against nuclear power without understanding it's actually probably our best option for green energy and bad policy being made as a result of that.
The biggest worry if anything should be the fact many people are more interested in shouting down Greenpeace than accepting that there is a lot more we could do to produce more green electronic products. Finally, for those decrying Greenpeace's lack of scientific method, see here, most the points raised in the comments are covered:
You're right, the title is awful, they've cancelled 7 planes.
$1.75bn for 7 planes in the middle of an economic crisis when you already have 187 of the things or will have shortly?
It's a smart move period, 7 aircraft really aren't going to have any net impact for the country. The jobs impact isn't even likely to be a big deal, as the summary pointed out, the same company makes the F35, and that's exportable, so the amount of manpower needed to build F35s is going to be far and above that needed for the F22 creating far more jobs in the long run if they concentrate on it.
If the need arises for F22s nothing about this decision will prevent them being built at a later date, Lockheed is going to be ever more financially solvent with the F35 so they aint going anywhere.
For what it's worth I don't think by the definition of the data protection act he can have obtained this information legally.
The Data Protection Act governs the transfer of data as well as the storage of it, and I'm pretty sure that there is no legal reason an entity can have for transferring this much personal information to this guy because he has no legitimate need or reason to have this data under the DPA.
So under the DPA, not only is him holding this data illegal, but whoever transferred it to him is almost certainly in breach of the law too.
It sets a nasty precedent too if he is allowed to get away with it.
For all we know the £160k costs he has incurred could've gone straight to the fraudsters to buy the data in the first place with the goal of reaping back the cash and more by his afformentioned business model of charging for it.
Depending on how much he charges it's a stupid business model anyway, you could just do a data protection act request if you really wanted to and the amount he can charge for that is capped quite low.
lol yeah okay then. If there's a specific threat against a specific plane and airport security is aware of it, no one is going to be getting a bomb on that plane. No additional costs are incurred because security will be doing their job anyway, perhaps just being told to be more alert for that day and be alert for a specific person. Have you ever actually been to an airport in recent years?
You've got a poor understanding of costs involved in these things if you think a simple low ranking police stakeout is more expensive than an arrest, interrogation, the paper work that goes with it, referal to the FBI, the FBI investigation that's now going on and the costs at the US attorneys office to investigate whether charges should be brought. If they are, there's the cost of the case itself too.
I see you conveniently ignore the point that in the event this was a real threat that this would be the worst possible way to go about handling it because it could potential send a cell underground or disrupt evidence gathering?
No, the fact is everything about how it handled was amateurish. As a result it was little more than a waste of money. It could've been handled much better, much more professionally, and ultimately with lower costs.
You do not appear to understand the extent of the costs this will have drawn and similarly do not seem to understand the logistics required for the type of attack the kid was claiming. You also do not seem to understand the sorts of profiles attached to people who do bomb planes - hint: they're not people who blurt it out on World of Warcraft on a public channel. This is partly related to the resources required for the attack - again, no one is going to spend all that time, planning and money simply to blurt it out on WoW.
I know the Bush administration have spent the last few years fear mongering telling you there's a terrorist at every corner, but christ, there are people that actually fall for it? Prior to 9/11 this kid would not have been arrested, this would hence not be news, but one attack in the last decade on US soil means everyone's a terrorist? talk about a paranoid nation.
"Don't forget there's been several cases recently where postings were made on the internet shortly before somebody like this kid DID go on a killing spree. I'm sure you remember that right? There is precedent for people boasting about serious crimes that will result in loss of life in their chosen favorite online hang-out before the fact."
There isn't a precedent for terrorist attacks on aircraft being announced on World of Warcraft, or in fact anywhere, before they happen. Large well funded terrorist groups can't even pull it off nowadays even with extremely small sleeper cells as their actors, so what makes you think a lone kid announcing it beforehand on a computer game could? At best we have a precendent of bomb attacks on buildings being announced to the police beforehand, not on World of Warcraft.
"I completely fail to see how you could think that if he was a terrorist that the response was idiotic."
That's because you appear to only be capable of irrational thought.
"What would YOU have done? Sent somebody to observe him, when the threat was he would be blowing up a plane the NEXT MORNING? I'm sorry? Fact of the matter is, he singled out a specific plane and a specific time, and that crosses the threshold from throw-away threat in to actual threat."
How do you think he was going to get past airport security? Particularly if they were aware there was a threat against the plane?
The kid was no threat regardless, a lone kid just does not have the resources to pull off the kind of terrorist plot being implied here.
But what if it wasn't a lone kid? what if he was part of a network? Sure, go and arrest him - good luck finding the other people in the network after that though.
Real terrorists are now well aware (although they probably were anyway) that communication via WoW isn't safe, real terrorists will now not be caught out this way.
Many more kids will try this stunt as a joke on WoW and various other places on the internet. Security services will be tied up with countless wastes of time that they need to investigate to be sure (although presumably they've learnt their lesson so wont waste quite as many resources on it and will be a bit more tactful now) and in general, all they have achieved in arresting this kid is a massive home goal.
"Iran's policy is VERY bad for business - who seem to really WANT their people to be poor and unemployed."
Why wouldn't they? The smart educated ones are the ones that want change, the poor, uneducated dumb fools are the ones that support Ahmadinejad and make up his militias, the police and so on.
The Iranian regime has a vested interest in keeping the populace as dumb as possible as they ignorantly believe the regime is good.
"I'm all in favor of accountability. I'd like to think the press would be competent enough to figure do some serious investigation of this and that the US government would make sure any companies involved were exposed as such to the public as well as subjected to punishments for doing business there (at least being unavailable for US contracts for a few years)"
The problem with this is that the US government doesn't do it fairly.
Look at the Senators who complained about Nokia/Siemens selling stuff to Iran under the guise that they care about how the technology maybe infringing people's freedoms there, yet fail to realise Cisco and many other US tech companies are selling exactly the same type of kit for exactly the same reasons to China.
All that will happen is the investigation will try to dent foreign companies whilst ignoring equally immoral sales and actions by US companies - look how they handled (or rather, didn't handle) Halliburton and it's abuses in Iraq, putting even US contractors lives in danger for no reason other than to get another invoice for the US tax payers to pay for example.
That's just the start of it though, because if the US does do it that way, which ultimately they will (they tried to be difficult about BAE, a major British arms manufacturer supposedly paying bribes to Saudi to get contracts, whilst again, ignoring the fact US companies do the exact same things), eventually other areas will respond - Europe will impose sanctions against US companies whilst favouring European companies like Nokia/Siemens for example and the whole thing will just turn into a protectionist farce.
That's not to say I disagree with your point, accountability would be great, but I don't see how it'd happen without being sidelined for alternative political purposes as it is already with the senators who complained about Nokia/Siemens. The problem is that the US has trade embargos on the likes of Iran, North Korea and Burma to make itself look like the great moral defender, and like it can complain when other nations sell to these, whilst simultaneously not having sanctions on equally cruel repressive regimes like China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and so on.
Accountability can only ever work if it's done in a fair manner, a good example of an international system that attempts to bring accountability is the ICC thanks to peple like Luis-Moreno Ocampo, but even they're faced with countries like China and nations like many of those in Africa pulling out excuses as to why they shouldn't support it, when the reality is merely alternate vested political interests.
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It's quite amusing to think of all the games and sci-fi plots that have been based around alien life forms landing on a planet and taking it over in the context of this theory, because, well, if true, then we're those alien life forms, the only thing we're missing from most plots is a hive mind!
They do what they already do, join BitTorrent swarms, note down the IP addresses in the swarm, see which ISPs they belong to, if the ISPs are UK ISPs, contact them to get their details, or get them via court order, then they sue.
The problem is that BitTorrent is by default weak to this type of attack - you have to connect to a public tracker for a specific piece of content.
If you use USENET to just download off of newsgroups on foreign servers using SSL then you should be safe to all government legislation and attempts to crack down on piracy, unless they take it to the extreme of making ISPs perform man in the middle attacks on SSL connections to see what is being transferred and catch you that way, but I don't think even Labour would go that far- it would have too many side effects, such as reducing confidence in online shopping and banking at UK firms if it was known that encrypted connections were being snooped.
Realistically I think if these laws go ahead a lot of people who don't understand the vulnerabilities of P2P systems like BitTorrent do leave them open to getting caught. Personally I do not believe an IP address connected to a tracker is an acceptable level of evidence of a crime as it's so fundamentally flawed, but unfortunately it seems people in government do believe it's acceptable. This catching of large amounts of people will go one of three ways, either it will kill off British file sharing (but leave other methods like burning CDs for mates, direct downloads, USENET etc. intact), it'll lead to a cat and mouse game where technology (such as anonymous networks built for file sharing) arise to work around the inherent vulnerabilities of bittorrent or it'll lead to public discontent and political pressure will force the government to backtrack.
Either way, if you use P2P, it's going to be a bumpy road.
Because it only effects like, a few hundred people in the population.
You can almost certainly count the number of people with CCTV pointing into their houses on one hand. CCTV monitoring at work I've not heard about, but that's certainly going to full foul of laws against workplace bullying as it would clearly fall under excessive monitoring. Similarly the deal with encryption keys has effected how many people? 2, 3?
You see, I'm not defending any of this, it's entirely unacceptable and it pisses me off no end, but I do support both the Libertarian Party UK, Liberty and now The Pirate Party, but the other 59,999,990 people in the country who aren't affected? They have no reason to care because it doesn't effect them yet.
It will effect them, eventually. But this is what scares me most, it'll pick people off one by one, and people wont care whilst one or two people are being picked off here or there, until it hits them, but then it's too late because they're already a criminal.
Honestly, what I'm hoping for is that they trip, that they get too gutsy, and that they push a law that really does effect millions in one fell swoop. Only then do I think people will really start to care and take action.
I'd argue most countries are the same - Australians only stood up against the internet filtering plans for example because it was something that outright effected so many people in a single blow.
"given they're due for an election in less than a year I can't believe they'd go out of their way to alienate voters."
I guess you don't know much about British politics. The ruling Labour party has spent the last few years doing just that, this is why they've lost every local council election and took a severe blow in the European parliamentary elections in the last year or two.
They've been in power 12 years and lost sight of what the public care about, that doesn't matter to them anymore, they believe they're in power for good regardless and push their own agenda no matter the fact it's an absolute minority view.
Mandelson has also been caught lying on multiple occasions, in fact, he was kicked out the Labour party twice in the last 12 years for lying over something that was outright criminal. This is Mandelson, if he says he didn't do it, he's lying.
Yeah but my point is that it still used the Wing Commander IP meaning they had to keep their trademark valid. I get what you're saying though :)
I dunno, I even found Syndicate Wars quite fun, although as you say it wasn't really Syndicate.
Being able to throw nuclear hand grenades in Syndicate Wars to dig holes in the ground which you could then surround with razor wire to make yourself a little trench was kinda fun. Just not as fun as indoctrinating about 100 civilians, jumping into a vehicle with them all, getting it blown up and watching them all run out of the vehicle in a nice circular ring of burning bodies.
Those were the days, when games weren't all just Call of Duty clones ;)
If it's anything like England it's because there is a limit on the amount universities here can charge students to attend university.
There is however no limit for foreign students, so foreign students effectively subsidise native students in England.
As such universities here love foreign students and will go a long way to get them because it simply means more money for better resources and for better pay. It does in a way benefit native students then because they're going to universities that are better resourced than they normally would be.
It's worth pointing out that a new Wing Commander game was released just last year on XBox Live Arcade so I think you're probably right. They're just ensuring protection of existing trademarks I'd guess.
Still, I'd love a nice revamped 3D HD version of Desert Strike and Jungle Strike though personally! I wouldn't say no to a new Theme Park/Theme Hospital either. Oh, how about bringing Syndicate back whilst we're at it ;) ?
When you're not in front of the mistake.
i.e. if you're navigating around a document such as a bunch of source code with the cursor keys you wont necessarily find yourself in front of the problem, unless you waste extra time navigating to it. The section you want to delete wont necessarily be at the end of the line either so you can't depend on "End".
The point is, not all text that needs deleting needs to be deleted as you type, it's when you're editing, if something doesn't sound quite right. If you want to change the start of a line you can just hit "Home" and "Delete", rather than Home, right x20 then back space.
Using an extra key to get the functionality isn't great for usability or productivity as it means using both hands, rather than one for deleting, and the other for navigating/replacing.
So basically, you don't delete stuff only when you make mistakes, you delete stuff when you edit too.
Actually, there's a more interesting point here.
The summary talks about a period of 0.5 to 1 billion years for the process to start, 0.5 billion years is a very long time.
To put it into context, the Earth is about 4.3 billion years old, basic cellular life estimated at around 3.8 billion years old, but here's the important point - animals at only around 0.44 billion years ago, and land animals at only around 0.36 billion years ago. Humans around 0.006, humans with basic tools much like modern monkeys have been found to use around 0.002 billion years ago.
So the point is this, in the time scale they're talking about, humans could evolve from near monkeys to humans capable of flying to the moon, building things like the internet between 85 to 500 times over.
The fact is, even if humans are alive by then, humans themselves will without a doubt be different, other creatures will be different, will adapt to the changing atmosphere. In half a billion years, water can't exist as a liquid? Well, in half a billion years whatever creatures are around wont need liquid.
Evolution is an extremely slow process from our point of view, but from a cosmological perspective as in TFA, it's pretty damn rapid. If in 0.006 of the minimum time (half a billion years) they are talking about humanity can turn from ape to space going species, then how can we possibly even begin to predict what humanity will be able to do or humans will even look like in well over 75 times that amount of time?
The summary using 0.5 to 1 billion years is rather vague to say the least when you consider that's the difference between a planet barren of all but the most simple cellular life and the world we live in today that's also seen mass extinction events like the dinosaurs to kick the process back a few 10s of millions years now and again.
I dare say, that in the times being spoken about, not only as you say would we have the skills and resources if we're still around, but perhaps we possibly even wouldn't need to, evolution and technology advances would mean we'd either long gone, or a warm up of 50 - 75 degrees C spread across half a billion years wouldn't be much of a big deal anyway.
"Come work in the EU: we understand what you say, pay overtime and have a acceptable climate."
Except Britain, which decided to keep it's working hours limit opt-out, but which isn't really an opt-out because the opt-out is always just embedded in your contract so you either sign your contract and can be made to work as many hours as your employer wants without overtime or you don't sign the contract and don't get a job.
Luckily, there are still lots of good firms in the UK that actually give a damn about their employees, so the real conditions aren't that bad for the most part, but there's still a danger in some companies and some sectors are prominent for abusing it. Most major clothing retail firms in the UK are quite bad in the way they treat retail managers for example.
I don't disagree with your point and I did indeed cancel my L4D2 pre-order because I do no longer have faith that Valve will provide value for money and as you say, I certainly wont be buying this DLC.
Regarding reviews though, the problem is they're not worth the bytes to download to your browser, some great games get slated, whilst crap games get high ratings. Part of it is of course subjectivity, but most reviews seem to be more about whose paid their protection money to the reviewing protection racket. I do not believe you can judge the real quality of a game on reviews. Averaged user ratings that some sites have seem much better now, but even then without the raw data for them being published there's no way to know if they can really be trusted.
Similarly Demos aren't much help, they give no idea of the amount and quality of content in the final product, only the general style of gameplay (which I actually really liked).
Valve must've known the costs before hand though?
I understand the certification costs but the reason most people seem uptight over L4D (and why I personally wasn't keen on it after I played it a fair bit) was because it was such a small game to start with, it really felt like little more than an HL2 mod but was priced as a full priced title.
If re-certification makes creation of content unfeasible, then perhaps Valve should reconsider the idea of releasing low-content games with the promise of providing much content later on and go back to footing the development bill for a full sized game and waiting for the income to roll in on release like pretty much all other companies do?
The crux of the problem seems to be Valve's attempt at pushing different financing models for the development of games to maximise profit, the problem is the consumer is the one falling victim to the flaws in these attempts such as in this case possibly realising that releasing parts of the game later on leads higher certification costs than if they'd just delayed the game a year to produce all the content in a single release and got it certified all in one pack.
IIRC there was a story a few weeks back about Valve (or someone elses, I can't remember) idea of gamers financing game development and so far the L4D drama seems to be an example of why that isn't ideal - as with episodic content, it seems it costs the consumer more in the long run, yet they get nothing more for it and have no idea when they may see the rest of their game arrive, if at all as was the case with SiN episodes.
"Just to note here before the bitching starts, 360 version costs because MS wants it."
Got a source for that?
There has been plenty of additional free in game content for other games in the past. In fact, even the last L4D DLC was free.
No it's not, it's a result of an EU directive. The IPRED name is still distinct to Sweden I believe. Certainly here in the UK we have no IPRED, but we do have similar laws or attempts at such laws.
The EU directive just states what must be done in the local country, IPRED is the local name for their local implementation of the directive (and then some more above and beyond the directive i believe).
I think the biggest flaw with your amendments is that you didn't also paint the FBI as clueless.
I see, so because Greenpeace used the kind of tactics needed to get heard in the modern world just like any other organisation they're not worth listening too? Why wouldn't they be after publicity? Publicity helps further their cause.
It seems dishonest to suggest Greenpeace had no beef with Apple, they did have a beef with Apple: http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/. In fact, Apple still ranks quite badly according to them: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/how-the-companies-line-up hardly a company they "have no beef with" then.
Greenpeaces biggest mistake was probably not realising how bad the worst zealots in the Apple community can be, these are people who would rather spread propaganda and defend Apple than realise that Greenpeace has a point, and that they could still have their iPods and iMacs but have them greener too. Unfortunately this would mean accepting that Apple and it's products aren't the most perfect entities in the universe, something that is beyond the most rabid of Apple fans.
But here's a question, if Greenpeace had singled out Microsoft instead, would we still be seeing these blistering attacks here against Greenpeace? I'm guessing the answer is almost certainly not.
Yes, Greenpeace has some nuts, but so does any large organisation. It's not like other political movements from the British Labour party to the US Democrats and Republicans don't also have more than their fair share of nuts and extremists - I mean, George Bush got into power and Sarah Palin was a VP candidate, it takes some pretty extreme views to think that either of them were a good idea and amongst the talk of Greenpeace dishonesty how many other large organisations aren't also guilty of the exact same thing to make their point from Microsoft to Apple to the Democrats to the Republicans.
That doesn't stop them having a point, just as despite the fact Bush and Palin are probably two of the biggest laughing stocks in politics in the last 50 years, McCain was mostly pretty reasonable and had some good points and good ideas. Most the work they do is done in a relatively mature manner - their work against whaling is fairly tame compared to Sea Sheperd which rams Japanese ships with their boat called the Steve Irwin whilst flying the jolly roger and throwing acid on the deck of the Japanese ships. Greenpeace on the other hand just gets in the way whilst being sprayed with water cannons by the Japanese whalers.
My point is this, I'm not defending fringe nutcases, but I'm pointing out they exist everywhere, and we shouldn't let them detract from more moderate, sensible people and the good work that they do. Suggesting Greenpeace shouldn't exist anymore is really stupid because at the end of the day they do still do a lot of good work. After all, Apple did change their policy in the end:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/tasty-apple-news-020507
Realise that even if Greenpeace went, the fringe nutcases amongst the Greens would still exist regardless, just as with any organisation or political movement. You'd still have them lobbying against nuclear power without understanding it's actually probably our best option for green energy and bad policy being made as a result of that.
The biggest worry if anything should be the fact many people are more interested in shouting down Greenpeace than accepting that there is a lot more we could do to produce more green electronic products. Finally, for those decrying Greenpeace's lack of scientific method, see here, most the points raised in the comments are covered:
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/archives/2007/12/nintendo_ranking_creates_a_sti.html
You're right, the title is awful, they've cancelled 7 planes.
$1.75bn for 7 planes in the middle of an economic crisis when you already have 187 of the things or will have shortly?
It's a smart move period, 7 aircraft really aren't going to have any net impact for the country. The jobs impact isn't even likely to be a big deal, as the summary pointed out, the same company makes the F35, and that's exportable, so the amount of manpower needed to build F35s is going to be far and above that needed for the F22 creating far more jobs in the long run if they concentrate on it.
If the need arises for F22s nothing about this decision will prevent them being built at a later date, Lockheed is going to be ever more financially solvent with the F35 so they aint going anywhere.
He's also patron saint of Palestine amongst other places but I bet there aren't many Georges there! -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George
There's a St. George's Basilica in the Czech republic too as well as the information listed there.
St. George certainly got around, even if his name didn't!
For what it's worth I don't think by the definition of the data protection act he can have obtained this information legally.
The Data Protection Act governs the transfer of data as well as the storage of it, and I'm pretty sure that there is no legal reason an entity can have for transferring this much personal information to this guy because he has no legitimate need or reason to have this data under the DPA.
So under the DPA, not only is him holding this data illegal, but whoever transferred it to him is almost certainly in breach of the law too.
It sets a nasty precedent too if he is allowed to get away with it.
For all we know the £160k costs he has incurred could've gone straight to the fraudsters to buy the data in the first place with the goal of reaping back the cash and more by his afformentioned business model of charging for it.
Depending on how much he charges it's a stupid business model anyway, you could just do a data protection act request if you really wanted to and the amount he can charge for that is capped quite low.
"Bombs can be snuck on to planes"
lol yeah okay then. If there's a specific threat against a specific plane and airport security is aware of it, no one is going to be getting a bomb on that plane. No additional costs are incurred because security will be doing their job anyway, perhaps just being told to be more alert for that day and be alert for a specific person. Have you ever actually been to an airport in recent years?
You've got a poor understanding of costs involved in these things if you think a simple low ranking police stakeout is more expensive than an arrest, interrogation, the paper work that goes with it, referal to the FBI, the FBI investigation that's now going on and the costs at the US attorneys office to investigate whether charges should be brought. If they are, there's the cost of the case itself too.
I see you conveniently ignore the point that in the event this was a real threat that this would be the worst possible way to go about handling it because it could potential send a cell underground or disrupt evidence gathering?
No, the fact is everything about how it handled was amateurish. As a result it was little more than a waste of money. It could've been handled much better, much more professionally, and ultimately with lower costs.
You do not appear to understand the extent of the costs this will have drawn and similarly do not seem to understand the logistics required for the type of attack the kid was claiming. You also do not seem to understand the sorts of profiles attached to people who do bomb planes - hint: they're not people who blurt it out on World of Warcraft on a public channel. This is partly related to the resources required for the attack - again, no one is going to spend all that time, planning and money simply to blurt it out on WoW.
I know the Bush administration have spent the last few years fear mongering telling you there's a terrorist at every corner, but christ, there are people that actually fall for it? Prior to 9/11 this kid would not have been arrested, this would hence not be news, but one attack in the last decade on US soil means everyone's a terrorist? talk about a paranoid nation.
"Don't forget there's been several cases recently where postings were made on the internet shortly before somebody like this kid DID go on a killing spree. I'm sure you remember that right? There is precedent for people boasting about serious crimes that will result in loss of life in their chosen favorite online hang-out before the fact."
There isn't a precedent for terrorist attacks on aircraft being announced on World of Warcraft, or in fact anywhere, before they happen. Large well funded terrorist groups can't even pull it off nowadays even with extremely small sleeper cells as their actors, so what makes you think a lone kid announcing it beforehand on a computer game could? At best we have a precendent of bomb attacks on buildings being announced to the police beforehand, not on World of Warcraft.
"I completely fail to see how you could think that if he was a terrorist that the response was idiotic."
That's because you appear to only be capable of irrational thought.
"What would YOU have done? Sent somebody to observe him, when the threat was he would be blowing up a plane the NEXT MORNING? I'm sorry? Fact of the matter is, he singled out a specific plane and a specific time, and that crosses the threshold from throw-away threat in to actual threat."
How do you think he was going to get past airport security? Particularly if they were aware there was a threat against the plane?
The kid was no threat regardless, a lone kid just does not have the resources to pull off the kind of terrorist plot being implied here.
But what if it wasn't a lone kid? what if he was part of a network? Sure, go and arrest him - good luck finding the other people in the network after that though.
Real terrorists are now well aware (although they probably were anyway) that communication via WoW isn't safe, real terrorists will now not be caught out this way.
Many more kids will try this stunt as a joke on WoW and various other places on the internet. Security services will be tied up with countless wastes of time that they need to investigate to be sure (although presumably they've learnt their lesson so wont waste quite as many resources on it and will be a bit more tactful now) and in general, all they have achieved in arresting this kid is a massive home goal.
"Iran's policy is VERY bad for business - who seem to really WANT their people to be poor and unemployed."
Why wouldn't they? The smart educated ones are the ones that want change, the poor, uneducated dumb fools are the ones that support Ahmadinejad and make up his militias, the police and so on.
The Iranian regime has a vested interest in keeping the populace as dumb as possible as they ignorantly believe the regime is good.
"I'm all in favor of accountability. I'd like to think the press would be competent enough to figure do some serious investigation of this and that the US government would make sure any companies involved were exposed as such to the public as well as subjected to punishments for doing business there (at least being unavailable for US contracts for a few years)"
The problem with this is that the US government doesn't do it fairly.
Look at the Senators who complained about Nokia/Siemens selling stuff to Iran under the guise that they care about how the technology maybe infringing people's freedoms there, yet fail to realise Cisco and many other US tech companies are selling exactly the same type of kit for exactly the same reasons to China.
All that will happen is the investigation will try to dent foreign companies whilst ignoring equally immoral sales and actions by US companies - look how they handled (or rather, didn't handle) Halliburton and it's abuses in Iraq, putting even US contractors lives in danger for no reason other than to get another invoice for the US tax payers to pay for example.
That's just the start of it though, because if the US does do it that way, which ultimately they will (they tried to be difficult about BAE, a major British arms manufacturer supposedly paying bribes to Saudi to get contracts, whilst again, ignoring the fact US companies do the exact same things), eventually other areas will respond - Europe will impose sanctions against US companies whilst favouring European companies like Nokia/Siemens for example and the whole thing will just turn into a protectionist farce.
That's not to say I disagree with your point, accountability would be great, but I don't see how it'd happen without being sidelined for alternative political purposes as it is already with the senators who complained about Nokia/Siemens. The problem is that the US has trade embargos on the likes of Iran, North Korea and Burma to make itself look like the great moral defender, and like it can complain when other nations sell to these, whilst simultaneously not having sanctions on equally cruel repressive regimes like China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and so on.
Accountability can only ever work if it's done in a fair manner, a good example of an international system that attempts to bring accountability is the ICC thanks to peple like Luis-Moreno Ocampo, but even they're faced with countries like China and nations like many of those in Africa pulling out excuses as to why they shouldn't support it, when the reality is merely alternate vested political interests.