I BUY all my games. I even have games that were only installed for an hour or less and are sitting on my shelf. This DRM crap, these accusations, this treating the customer as a criminal is fucking outrageous. I bought Far Cry 2. I could have downloaded it at least a week before it was even released. And, yet, me--the legal customer doing the right thing--has all these stupid DRM restrictions. I can accept that. If worse comes to worse I will get a pirated version of the SAME GAME, because I paid for the damn thing and I will play it on my computer any damn way I fuc*ing feel like. Why am *I* being punished for giving the game companies money? It's one of the most ridiculous situations in the gaming society. My LEGAL copy of Doom 3 I cannot play online 'cause someone (probably using a keygen) has MY serial number. I am sick of it. I am sick of the game companies hiding behind this masquerade. I am sick of being treated like a 2nd class citizen because I do the right thing.
No. I paid for the game. I bought it. If I choose to say that the game is a piece of shit, then so be it. Nobody has the right the revoke my ability to play a game just because I say it's a piece of shit.
Well it's not f**cking false at all. The person in quesiton said it. It's on record. The fact that he put some lame "clarification" up on the web does not negate his initial statement; the clarification was wiping his ass to save his job most likely.
Come off it. Yesterday I was in the left hand lane that was practically stopped. I could see the reason it was stopped... about 1.5km up the road the traffic was also stopped (because of an accident). The left land was slow because lots of people were trying to exit the motorway to avoid the congestion.
When a small opportunity arose, I changed into another lane. I did not accelerate to 110km/hr because I could see that 1.5 km further on I'd be stuck anyway. What happened? I got wankers on their horns 'cause I did not go 110km/hr for the next 1.5km... This is the problem on the road: people somehow cannot see more than one car ahead. This is how I judge people. A LOT of people cannot think mid- to long-term. A lot of these same people make critical business decisions. No WONDER the economies of the world are in bad shape.
Just for the record, I ended up further along the road than those fools behind me,giving me grief, dodging in-and-out of traffic, and not thinking beyond the next 2 seconds. If more people thought ahead things would BE BETTER. But, alas, the first car in front (for these fools) is always the one at fault. And they extend this stupid mentanility to all aspects of their life. The hare and the tortoise. We need more turtles
And that is the sad state of affairs. I voted for Rudd because I thought he was the lesser of two evils. He spun the whole press comments and somehow made it an advantage; I think that the whole affair turned out in his favour. It's no secret that a lot of Australians like beer. The fact that he was drunk and went to a strip joint but couldn't rememeber doing it, at the time, made him connect with lots of Australian voters I think--it made him more "human".
In retrospect it does not make him less of a hypocrite though. I would also like to admit that I don't look at porn (shock, horror!) but I can see that filtering the internt will degrade MY connection. At the end of the day internet filtering is not going to protect the kiddies anyway. When I was in school it (and still is) was illegal for minors to view pornography but we still, somehow, got hold of it. And the issue goes further. The proposal stipulates prohibiting "illegal material". I can understand and would support prohibiting viewing illegal stuff such as child porn (just using an example here). What I don't understand is why the government needs to block this. If someone accesses child porn they are ALREADY breaking the law. Throw them in jail. What next? The government will try to "filter" jealousy. Jealosy causes many crimes--abuse, violence and murder for example. But that would be stupid. You cannot filter jealosy.
Punish a crime when it has been committed. I think the same think should apply to the internet. Punish crimes. Don't try and prevent them through censorship (the real criminals will get around it anyway). The whole thing is unworkable, but the AU government seems hell bent on implementing it anyway.
Well, mostly Australia is filled with vast areas that remain empty because of the harsh environment. The places that have an easy going environment, and regular rain, fringe the coastlines. The interior is harsh and brutal but, at the same time, beautiful. Along Australia's eastern coastline there is subtropical rainforest (both temperate and cool-temperate). Further north there is true tropical rainforest. Along the coasts there are huge areas of coastal heath. In the mountains and in place where rainforest is absent (mostly on rhyolitic soils) there is montane heath. Further south there is the montane snow fields. In Western Australia there is vast plains of heath like vegetation. In the centre where it is HOT and very dry, plants still thrive.
Every inch is inhabited by fauna that adapted and diversified over time to deal with the diverse conditions. Along the north-eastern coast there is the Great Barrier Reef which caused Captain Cook no end of grief--living "rocks".
So to answer your question: I think that Australia is full of life. Hope that helps.
I don't believe you Anonymous Coward--I've seen you post millions of times. Funnily enough though, I didn't realise that your real name was Eliminatrix until now. Pleased to meet you.
This is deeply worrying. Not only is it insane, it's, ultimately, Kevin Rudd (the Prime Minister) being a damn hypocrite. Just before the federal election the news media made a big deal of "catching" him visiting an adult bar (strip joint) in Japan or something. His response was something along the lines of he is an adult and can make choices and it was harmless. Now that he is in government there is this insane vendetta to censor the internet. Further, censor anyone who is critical of the plan. The Minister in charge of this (Stephen Conroy) is clueless. Unfortunately the rest of the elected government seems just as clueless and agrees with his recommendations. I don't think that it's been said, but I would guess that circumventing the draconian filters may also be made illegal (or at least the attempt might be made). We already have shitty broadband; what the fuck is mandatory filtering going to do to our already inflated prices and absurd monthly download limits?/rant
My last comment is obviously wrong. All that can be said is that it's NOT A and NOT B. But my original meaning still stands... they can infer NOT, and I can imagine the research easily implenting the NOT operator.
I don't know if they need a cell either. What I find interesting is that this may become a way of monitoring cell processes. I.e. a way of monitoring that can do more than we currently can. You said it:
But there's a more interesting aspect to it: your body usually uses proteins for that, and DNA/RNA is just a way to encode a protein which will actually do the matching. E.g., those enzymes I mentioned, are proteins. They do all the heavy duty chemistry, from processing the cell's "food", to regulating what goes in or out, to destroying all chemicals which are non-polar and pass right through the cell wall instead of being regulated by the protein valves on the wall, to movement, to DNA repairs, to regulating what other proteins are built and where do they go.
_That_ is what I am interested in seeing elucidated more than current technology can. I don't know if this research can do it, but it, certainly, seems like it's along the right path.
If this can (after more research) be used as a basis for cell 'monitoring', that, in itself would be amazing
Our ability to transmit information to and from living systems, and to process and act on information inside cells
From that quote I would guess that, yes, it can be extended; but I am at home and cannot read the whole Science article. More interesting is the possibility of cell manufacturing... factories that churn out cells with particular attributes and particular reactions on demand. That might be a bit far into the future though and the process may need to branch and include DNA. Nonetheless, this research is very interesting to me. The thought that we can create RNA that behaves in a known way given a certain stimulus (or set of stimuli) is incredible.
Can the research be expanded to include all the logical operators? (At this point I'd have to guess the answer is yes). I am not sure what this implies... it's exciting though.
Piracy adversely affects the PC Game industry by providing a disincentive to publishers to publish on the PC platform, and indirectly affects the lives of game company employees whose companies receive lower revenues due to pirated copies
As you said yourself: no substantial data exists. If you believe that you're getting paid less because of piracy then it may just be because your employer wants you to believe that. An employer who doesn't pay you what your worth? That's unheard of. And, no disrepect, but to even guess that "30-40% of pirated copies are lost sales" is just that... a guess. My personal guess would be about 1%. So, who's right?
I agree with that proposed causal relationship, and I certainly understand that not every stolen copy is a lost sale actually, almost everyone I've talked to in the business agrees
and
It's a real problem out there.
What is the problem? You said it yourself that it's not a problem and then turned around and said it was.
I stand corrected AceOfASpades19. I should not have mentioned Slackware at all. As I said, I've never used it. It was unfair of me to judge it and lump it into my comment.
"Quality assurance"? Are you serious? What a load of cow pooh. What on Earth is "quality assurance" anyway? For quality assurance I would, at least, expect a Quality Management System. A certified (ISO) one. Debian does not have that. If there is not a quality management system, why should I belive that Debian offers "quality assurance"?
As far as I know, Yggrasil and MDE (interim linux) were the first "distros". Debian and Slackware followed soon after. For many years Debian was notorious for its "elitist" users (just an opinion!) Maybe it still is. Since about 2000 (i think) it started to fade. Sure, there were/are heaps of people who swear by debian, but I am pretty sure that it was around 2000 that the (stable) releases began to stagnate. Slink was 2000 I think. Then 3 years, for another "stable release". Then another 3(?) and then 2(?) for a release in 2008. Three years. Three years is an eternity. Can't comment on Slackware 'cause I've never used it.
Anyway, at this point in time I would be reluctant to say Debian and Slackware are "good" distros. In the past, yeah, they were king of the lab.
Really, I love KDE 4.x. The work they have done is magnificent and a great achievement. I cannot, however, use it (at the moment) day-to-day. At least Mandrake has waited for a while before including it (KDE 4). At the end of the day though how is it helping Linux? Supposing I was a new Linux user (I'm not, been using it since 1994 and Yggdrasil) I would have to assess Linux on it's "interface". Say I am interested: I will grab the latest "linux version" and install it. I will be presented with KDE4. As an average user, would I judge linux, overall, on the interface. Most LIKELY I WOULD. Distro's have to be current, yeah. But if we want to make linux attractive to joe six pack, we have to start deciding WHAT goes into a standard distro. Including unfinished stuff (IMO) is a show stopper.
This comment is not meant to detract from the great work the KDE people have done for 4.x. They are building a GREAT system and I admire their work.
Slashdot Mirror
I BUY all my games. I even have games that were only installed for an hour or less and are sitting on my shelf. This DRM crap, these accusations, this treating the customer as a criminal is fucking outrageous. I bought Far Cry 2. I could have downloaded it at least a week before it was even released. And, yet, me--the legal customer doing the right thing--has all these stupid DRM restrictions. I can accept that. If worse comes to worse I will get a pirated version of the SAME GAME, because I paid for the damn thing and I will play it on my computer any damn way I fuc*ing feel like. Why am *I* being punished for giving the game companies money? It's one of the most ridiculous situations in the gaming society. My LEGAL copy of Doom 3 I cannot play online 'cause someone (probably using a keygen) has MY serial number. I am sick of it. I am sick of the game companies hiding behind this masquerade. I am sick of being treated like a 2nd class citizen because I do the right thing.
No. I paid for the game. I bought it. If I choose to say that the game is a piece of shit, then so be it. Nobody has the right the revoke my ability to play a game just because I say it's a piece of shit.
Well it's not f**cking false at all. The person in quesiton said it. It's on record. The fact that he put some lame "clarification" up on the web does not negate his initial statement; the clarification was wiping his ass to save his job most likely.
Come off it. Yesterday I was in the left hand lane that was practically stopped. I could see the reason it was stopped... about 1.5km up the road the traffic was also stopped (because of an accident). The left land was slow because lots of people were trying to exit the motorway to avoid the congestion.
When a small opportunity arose, I changed into another lane. I did not accelerate to 110km/hr because I could see that 1.5 km further on I'd be stuck anyway. What happened? I got wankers on their horns 'cause I did not go 110km/hr for the next 1.5km... This is the problem on the road: people somehow cannot see more than one car ahead. This is how I judge people. A LOT of people cannot think mid- to long-term. A lot of these same people make critical business decisions. No WONDER the economies of the world are in bad shape.
Just for the record, I ended up further along the road than those fools behind me,giving me grief, dodging in-and-out of traffic, and not thinking beyond the next 2 seconds. If more people thought ahead things would BE BETTER. But, alas, the first car in front (for these fools) is always the one at fault. And they extend this stupid mentanility to all aspects of their life. The hare and the tortoise. We need more turtles
And that is the sad state of affairs. I voted for Rudd because I thought he was the lesser of two evils. He spun the whole press comments and somehow made it an advantage; I think that the whole affair turned out in his favour. It's no secret that a lot of Australians like beer. The fact that he was drunk and went to a strip joint but couldn't rememeber doing it, at the time, made him connect with lots of Australian voters I think--it made him more "human".
In retrospect it does not make him less of a hypocrite though. I would also like to admit that I don't look at porn (shock, horror!) but I can see that filtering the internt will degrade MY connection. At the end of the day internet filtering is not going to protect the kiddies anyway. When I was in school it (and still is) was illegal for minors to view pornography but we still, somehow, got hold of it. And the issue goes further. The proposal stipulates prohibiting "illegal material". I can understand and would support prohibiting viewing illegal stuff such as child porn (just using an example here). What I don't understand is why the government needs to block this. If someone accesses child porn they are ALREADY breaking the law. Throw them in jail. What next? The government will try to "filter" jealousy. Jealosy causes many crimes--abuse, violence and murder for example. But that would be stupid. You cannot filter jealosy.
Punish a crime when it has been committed. I think the same think should apply to the internet. Punish crimes. Don't try and prevent them through censorship (the real criminals will get around it anyway). The whole thing is unworkable, but the AU government seems hell bent on implementing it anyway.
Yes, there is. Here
BTW the strip club was in New York (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22268123-2,00.html [news.com.au])
Well, I knew it was somewhere :-) Thanks for the link.
Well, mostly Australia is filled with vast areas that remain empty because of the harsh environment. The places that have an easy going environment, and regular rain, fringe the coastlines. The interior is harsh and brutal but, at the same time, beautiful. Along Australia's eastern coastline there is subtropical rainforest (both temperate and cool-temperate). Further north there is true tropical rainforest. Along the coasts there are huge areas of coastal heath. In the mountains and in place where rainforest is absent (mostly on rhyolitic soils) there is montane heath. Further south there is the montane snow fields. In Western Australia there is vast plains of heath like vegetation. In the centre where it is HOT and very dry, plants still thrive.
Every inch is inhabited by fauna that adapted and diversified over time to deal with the diverse conditions. Along the north-eastern coast there is the Great Barrier Reef which caused Captain Cook no end of grief--living "rocks".
So to answer your question: I think that Australia is full of life. Hope that helps.
Hi, First time posting a reply so be kind :)
I don't believe you Anonymous Coward--I've seen you post millions of times. Funnily enough though, I didn't realise that your real name was Eliminatrix until now. Pleased to meet you.
One of the best summaries of the situation I've read. Thank-you.
This is deeply worrying. Not only is it insane, it's, ultimately, Kevin Rudd (the Prime Minister) being a damn hypocrite. Just before the federal election the news media made a big deal of "catching" him visiting an adult bar (strip joint) in Japan or something. His response was something along the lines of he is an adult and can make choices and it was harmless. Now that he is in government there is this insane vendetta to censor the internet. Further, censor anyone who is critical of the plan. The Minister in charge of this (Stephen Conroy) is clueless. Unfortunately the rest of the elected government seems just as clueless and agrees with his recommendations. I don't think that it's been said, but I would guess that circumventing the draconian filters may also be made illegal (or at least the attempt might be made). We already have shitty broadband; what the fuck is mandatory filtering going to do to our already inflated prices and absurd monthly download limits? /rant
Well I have to agree (mostly). What on Earth is "hand-coded" C? And why is it better than... wait... what other kind of C is there?
My last comment is obviously wrong. All that can be said is that it's NOT A and NOT B. But my original meaning still stands... they can infer NOT, and I can imagine the research easily implenting the NOT operator.
I would imagine that NOT is implicit already (i.e. if A || B == false then it's !A and !B)
But there's a more interesting aspect to it: your body usually uses proteins for that, and DNA/RNA is just a way to encode a protein which will actually do the matching. E.g., those enzymes I mentioned, are proteins. They do all the heavy duty chemistry, from processing the cell's "food", to regulating what goes in or out, to destroying all chemicals which are non-polar and pass right through the cell wall instead of being regulated by the protein valves on the wall, to movement, to DNA repairs, to regulating what other proteins are built and where do they go.
_That_ is what I am interested in seeing elucidated more than current technology can. I don't know if this research can do it, but it, certainly, seems like it's along the right path.
If this can (after more research) be used as a basis for cell 'monitoring', that, in itself would be amazing
Our ability to transmit information to and from living systems, and to process and act on information inside cells
From that quote I would guess that, yes, it can be extended; but I am at home and cannot read the whole Science article. More interesting is the possibility of cell manufacturing... factories that churn out cells with particular attributes and particular reactions on demand. That might be a bit far into the future though and the process may need to branch and include DNA. Nonetheless, this research is very interesting to me. The thought that we can create RNA that behaves in a known way given a certain stimulus (or set of stimuli) is incredible.
Can the research be expanded to include all the logical operators? (At this point I'd have to guess the answer is yes). I am not sure what this implies... it's exciting though.
Piracy adversely affects the PC Game industry by providing a disincentive to publishers to publish on the PC platform, and indirectly affects the lives of game company employees whose companies receive lower revenues due to pirated copies
As you said yourself: no substantial data exists. If you believe that you're getting paid less because of piracy then it may just be because your employer wants you to believe that. An employer who doesn't pay you what your worth? That's unheard of. And, no disrepect, but to even guess that "30-40% of pirated copies are lost sales" is just that... a guess. My personal guess would be about 1%. So, who's right?
I agree with that proposed causal relationship, and I certainly understand that not every stolen copy is a lost sale actually, almost everyone I've talked to in the business agrees
and
It's a real problem out there.
What is the problem? You said it yourself that it's not a problem and then turned around and said it was.
I stand corrected AceOfASpades19. I should not have mentioned Slackware at all. As I said, I've never used it. It was unfair of me to judge it and lump it into my comment.
P.S. when will slashdot support long dash?! Renders my compose key useless...
You have asked the right person -- I have no idea.
"Quality assurance"? Are you serious? What a load of cow pooh. What on Earth is "quality assurance" anyway? For quality assurance I would, at least, expect a Quality Management System. A certified (ISO) one. Debian does not have that. If there is not a quality management system, why should I belive that Debian offers "quality assurance"?
I agree. I just don't think that distros should have included it.
As far as I know, Yggrasil and MDE (interim linux) were the first "distros". Debian and Slackware followed soon after. For many years Debian was notorious for its "elitist" users (just an opinion!) Maybe it still is. Since about 2000 (i think) it started to fade. Sure, there were/are heaps of people who swear by debian, but I am pretty sure that it was around 2000 that the (stable) releases began to stagnate. Slink was 2000 I think. Then 3 years, for another "stable release". Then another 3(?) and then 2(?) for a release in 2008. Three years. Three years is an eternity. Can't comment on Slackware 'cause I've never used it.
Anyway, at this point in time I would be reluctant to say Debian and Slackware are "good" distros. In the past, yeah, they were king of the lab.
By the way. I compile KDE 4.x weekly from svn. My comment above is really not meant to criticise the wonderful work the KDE programmers are doing.
Really, I love KDE 4.x. The work they have done is magnificent and a great achievement. I cannot, however, use it (at the moment) day-to-day. At least Mandrake has waited for a while before including it (KDE 4). At the end of the day though how is it helping Linux? Supposing I was a new Linux user (I'm not, been using it since 1994 and Yggdrasil) I would have to assess Linux on it's "interface". Say I am interested: I will grab the latest "linux version" and install it. I will be presented with KDE4. As an average user, would I judge linux, overall, on the interface. Most LIKELY I WOULD. Distro's have to be current, yeah. But if we want to make linux attractive to joe six pack, we have to start deciding WHAT goes into a standard distro. Including unfinished stuff (IMO) is a show stopper.
This comment is not meant to detract from the great work the KDE people have done for 4.x. They are building a GREAT system and I admire their work.