...let this come out on the Wii. Couldn't RTFA because the site's blocked at work. I'll go back to salivating over the awesomeness that could be the grappling hook/Wiimote...
So it appears that the issue is whether or not these companies have the right, or for that matter the legal obligation, to not answer questions before this congressional comittee (I always spell that word wrong, apologies). This breaks it down to DoJ versus the House and Senate Intelligence Com(see note above)ees. As I understand it, federal agencies using FISA to secure telco records don't have to answer to Congress, but does that protect the companies which release those records? IANAL, but I work for some, and it seems like this could be analogized to a case where the defense attorney is Congress, the phone companies are witnesses, and DoJ is, well, the state. If the defense asks for a subpoena for records from the phone companies, then the DoJ as the attorney for the state can request a motion to deny the subpoena if those records are protected by law, or at the very least make it so that the defense can only see the records in camera, or in private (the judge's chambers in keeping with the analogy). Assuming this to be the case, aren't the phone companies within their rights? Wouldn't congress have to take this before the court to progress any further? Anyone who knows more about this feel free to shed some light.
I just finished pulling about one ream of paper out of the guts of the Xerox machine at my office. Why SURE I trust the Xerox to redact documents while I'm getting more coffee! What could go wrong??
I've noticed the AI in rts games like Age of Mythology has a general path it will take if left to its own devices, basically build up resources, develop tech a bit, start cranking out low-level infantry/cavalry to harass and probe, and either turtle up or wait till it has a large force to attack with. If the player raids, the AI will start building units to counter. One of the easiest ways to overwhelm AI opponents, especially in the Age of... games, is to feint with one type of unit in a raid, wait a little while, and then come in with a large group of whatever the AI counter unit is weak against. One of the qualities of the "neurotic" AI was apparently to switch strategies frequently and for illogical reasons (or at least as logical responses to inaccurate data) which would put the default AI on its heels.
Reading that quote about the kids and their fancy gadgets all I could think about was my grandparents being frustrated with their cable remote and asking me to show them how to use their cell phones. It also reminded me of a class I had in elementary school with the somewhat vague title "Computer Class". I'm not totally sure what this class was meant to teach, but two days a week we'd march our butts down to the computer room (which, mind you, had one computer in it) and play "educational" games on an Apple IIe, or watch our teacher do something with Logo involving a "turtle". The most I got out of that class was a tremendous ability to find Carmen Sandiego.
Around middle school an uncle of mine who works in IT gave me his old 286, some manuals, and some software, and turned me loose. I learned more about computers by repeatedly breaking and fixing that thing than I ever did in elementary school.
What's my point? I guess I've got two, really. The first point is that a computer is just a tool. School administrators seem to think along the same lines as hillbillys, luddites, or the old and uninformed; to be "good at computers" in some vague and shadowy way means that one is technologically savvy, possesses sharp analytical skills, and is a good problem-solver. By putting computers in schools they hope to make kids technologically skilled through some sort of sympathetic magic, much in the same way shamanic belief systems might make amulets of bear teeth to confer that strength to the wearer. The idea that because kids can play video games and text message each other they can propel the nation in to technological advancement is like saying that anyone who can drive a car should be equally good a designing and building one.
The second point I would make is that, while I wasn't thrilled with school when I was a student and I would like to see a more free-form system of education, the point of school is not primarily academic learning. School teaches you to work within an institution. Anyone can crack a book open or mess around with an engine. Formal education teaches you how to interact with a social structure similar to what one would find in most workplaces. (Similar, mind you, not identical.) That's not a worthless skill. Our society is structure, there is authority, there are rules. Whether you want to change that or not, that's the game as it stands and you need to know how to work within it.
The third and final point I would make, although probably better made by other posts, is that this guy is pointing out the problem with students, not schools. Speaking as a knee-jerk hedonist who acts to satisfy my every whim as they occur, it's not necessarily a good thing that an 8 year old can whip out a phone and text his friends in the middle of class, or that he can pull out a PSP and watch a movie or play a video game because geometry is boring. And, seriously, as intellectually curious as I am, if I got to choose my classes in school I would be utterly incapable of even the most basic arithmetic today. Sometimes, just sometimes, it's a good thing that someone who's priorities including eating as much cookies and cream ice cream as possible and watching Duck Tales is not calling the shots with his academic future. And before anyone starts in I know that there are 6 year olds who are super focused and mature for their age who might very well be able to make responsible decisions as to their education, I'm just making the point that, when you've lived fewer years than the lifespan of some pets you may not have the perspective to make good decisions. So maybe having someone who is trained in their academic field and in the skill of education in charge might not be a bad thing? Maybe, in this case, tradition is tradition for a reason?
...that phishers prefer Linux to Windows because of its greater stability? That's like a car thief walking through a parking lot of early 90's Fords to get to a Honda. (With apologies to Ford afficionados)
Amen to that. I just dumped Vista to dual boot Ubuntu and XP. I have a feeling that enough people are getting bitten by WGA to make even Microsoft notice. I also have a feeling that they're getting a little worried about the reception Vista has gotten.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and Half-Life 2 supposedly use the same engine, and they're both very different (and very good) games as a result of talented designers and developers. What I'm saying is that there ought to be a way that games using the same engine can be modularized where practical and adjust the pricing in such a way that game developers and publishers aren't losing out but consumers benefit from lower cost and a more efficient business model. I mean, to use an admittedly awkward example, you don't buy a separate drill for each diameter of hole you intend to create; you buy bits which fit in to the drill.
And again, I'm just saying this as Joe Blow consumer. My experience with the video game industry begins and ends at having purchased and played a whole lot of them. I don't know the details of how the business works, I'm just offering an idea.
The thing about this "stealth update" that riles me up is that it's indicative of the patronizing, "we know better than you" attitude that Microsoft has towards its customers. They just decided that anyone running Windows would get this update and that's that. Now, wonder of wonders, it's causing problems. Does anyone really think that they'll address this problem in a reasonable, responsible way? Or will they just release ANOTHER patch at 3:00 in the morning to fix the first one?
I reinstalled Half-Life 2 the other day and fired up Steam, and I'm finding that I really like the way it's set up, some small issues notwithstanding. I bought Episode One, and played through it while waiting for Bioshock, and I have to say I like the idea of episodic releases. The only problem is the cost. Half-Life 2 was about $60. Episode One ended up being around $20 or so. I would gladly pay $20 per 8-hour episode if the entry cost wasn't so high.
So here's an idea. Rather than sell a game like HL2 as-is at $60, for example, sell the engine with "Chapter 1", or whatever initial bit of the game plot for around $30 or so. Then, release subsequent episodes for $15, $20; for that matter, release different games using the same engine at the same pricing scheme. In other words, you buy the Unreal engine, for instance, with maybe a sampling of games, and then you buy the particular games that run on that engine separately. In the end, you're spending about as much as you would now, but there's modularity, and the business model is a little friendlier. If you buy Unreal and decide you don't like it, you're out $25 as opposed to $60. And let's say you don't like the game but the engine's nice, and a different game comes out using the same engine. All you spend is the $20-$30 for the new game which runs off the already-installed engine, rather than $60 for the whole thing.
It just occurs to me that it seems a little strange as a consumer to pay $60 for one game, and then pay $60 for another game that is using the exact same technology and is essentially a modification of existing software. By separating the two elements you can turn the somewhat daunting prospect of paying $60 for a game you might or might not like in to the much easier to swallow prospect of paying half of that for the guts of the game with the option to purchase the actual "game" parts that you want later. Consoles essentially work that way now, why not computer games?
Well, actually, their every e-move IS being documented, by Google, and people other than their parents DO control their lives, such as teachers, government officials, etc. I don't know how it is in the UK but in the US you don't really have much in the way of rights until you hit 18. But, that aside, how far do you take this? What about bullying outside of school? What about bullying when the kid's 20? IMO you do kids a great disservice by insulating them from the hard parts of life, such as the fact that some people are pricks. It's better to learn how to deal with that yourself at a young age than to learn to rely on your parents or the government to come to your rescue.
Well, I'm guessing that when the two lightsabers are in contact both wiimotes will rumble and make noise, which they do pretty well. But I'm also guessing that it's either going to come with or soon be followed by plastic lightsabers to pop the wiimote in to. Sort of like the steering wheel they've got: just a plastic shell for the 'mote.
Those were all problems after the fact, however. Prior to landfall those options were open, and even moving from New Orleans to, say, a Motel 6 in East Texas would greatly improve your situation in that scenario, moving you out of the path of the eye. Besides which, once the storm hit, it would be as difficult to buy those bottles as it would be to get transportation. Buying the bottles beforehand presumes an attitude of preparedness that I don't think was there, or else you would have seen more evacuation prior to the storm making landfall, or going back even further strengthening of the levee system.
That's a good point. If they could get production streamlined enough to knock the price down I could see these as a good temporary solution for natural disasters, i.e. airlifting a few crates of these suckers to disaster areas to tide people over while rescue efforts were under way.
Fantastic idea, except for the fact that anyone in the path of Katrina who could have afforded a $385 water bottle could have afforded a $90 plane ticket, $35 bus ride, or $27 tank of gas.
I'm going to go home tonight and read that EULA I breezed through when I installed Vista. By way of an analogy, by the terms of my lease the company that manages my apartment complex can pop in to my apartment to fix stuff or for inspections, but only after having given me notice and only during normal business hours. This would be like coming back home from a bar at 2:00 AM and finding a couple guys in my apartment touching up the paint on the door. Why Update would need to be updated like this instead of as a part of the normal update process, as it has been in the past, or why Update would need to be updated on computers where the user has turned it off, is beyond me. Either they're changing the Update site and don't want to leave any legacy access, even a link to download the upgrade, or it has something to do with the WGA/Black Screen of Pirate Death stuff. Regardless, I'm definitely going to be looking in to finding a Linux distro that is a viable pc gaming platform rather than suffer the tender mercies of Microsoft and the WGA.
"Oh, no reason. Say, do me a favor and hop on this train..."
Repeat as necessary.
This guy can't really believe that banning nasty words from the internet will prevent genocidal shitheads from popping up now and again. Now I'm not normally a big "black helicopter" kind of guy but this smells like a first step toward trying to entrench a censorship body of some kind, with the idea that bureaucracies are impossible to get rid of once they're formed (case in point: the IRS). My guess is that the list will go from four words to eight, maybe starting with "IED" and progressing to "parliament" or "voting record." This same guy apparently wants to ban violent video games because of the damage they do to young european minds. Because there obviously wasn't violence in Europe prior to the Playstation.
"From what little I know about copyright law, it's meant to prevent one person from profiting from the sale of another person's intellectual property...
Obviously false, or there wouldn't be any CD or phonograph record retailers."
I phrased that wrong on second reading. In the case of retailers they either purchase the products they intend to sell from the producer wholesale, or they receive the goods on consignment. Either way the initial copy has been legally obtained from the copyright holder. What I should have said was that infringement occurs if someone distributes music (for example) that they haven't first legally obtained from the copyright holder, for instance if I were to download a CD image illegally and then went on to sell or distribute copies. In that example each copy distributed illegally represents a loss for the licensed distributor (which makes some false presumptions, but that's the argument).
"Nothing in copyright law -- at least not as interpreted by the courts under the First Sale Doctrine -- prevents you from legally giving away a CD or record for free, or even from selling it for personal or commercial profit. You just can't legally keep a copy for yourself. (Otherwise used CD/record stores would be in clear violation of the law.)"
Right, but electronic distribution a la KaZaA, etc., violates that by retaining a copy, right? In the example of ripping songs off a CD for a friend who owns the CD there is a distinction without a difference. Both parties own a legally obtained copy of the same CD and making a copy for personal, noncommercial use is covered under the AHRA (more or less). Maybe it technically violates copyright law (and judging by the RIAA I'm sure they think it does) but I'd hazard a guess that a reasonable judge wouldn't weigh to strongly against the defendant in such a case.
Seriously, the LA Times publishing an article about a study which at least from reading TFA seems roughly equivalent to Cosmopolitan attempting to determine whether blondes really DO have more fun is not that surprising to me. The motivation behind the study is dubious at best, and the methodology is bunk; if I had tried to pass this off as research in college I would've been kicked out. But my favorite part of the article is this little gem:
"Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."
They extensively quote a totally unrelated researcher (not a professor, incidentally) from Berkeley (not UCLA, where the study was conducted) who broke out the thesarus to say what amounts to, "this proves that conservatives are big, dumb, stupid ol' dummies." This has about as much credibility as Oral Roberts University performing the same study but swapping out "homosexual" or "atheist" for "conservative." If you wonder why people believe there is bias in the media, wonder no longer.
And meanwhile, cancer hasn't been cured yet, right? Isn't there more important research to do?
IANAL either, but I work for some. From what little I know about copyright law, it's meant to prevent one person from profiting from the sale of another person's intellectual property, as well as to prevent them from interfering with that person's ability to profit. In the music case, I can't play someone else's music and charge money for it without permission from the copyright holder, nor can I give it away for free since that interferes with the holder's ability to profit. So if both you and your friend own the same CD and all you're doing is basically helping him change formats, that should be perfectly legal. After all, the same effect could be had if your friend brought his copy to your computer and ripped the songs off his own CD using your equipment.
I assume they're doing the study using the latin alphabet. It would be interesting to see if the process changes at all using a symbolic system like Chinese or Korean (forgot the name, Hanguk or something like that I think).
Are you seriously comparing PvP combat in a video game to rape? There is just a slight difference, is all. Between people getting fussy about being killed in a videogame called "World of WARcraft" (emphasis added) and a person being sexually assaulted, I mean.
Similar thing happened in WoW with a funeral. I think it was an in-game funeral for someone's character who allegedly died IRL, but I'm not sure. The video's floating around on YouTube I believe. Point is, not only was it hilarious, but it's kind of the nature of the beast. If you are on a PvP server, where the rules dictate that you can be attacked and killed while you're in certain areas at any time, you have to expect that someone might actually do it. In this case, the funeral folks were whining that the group who attacked them wasn't role-playing, that they were griefers, etc. but the real reason they were upset is because they couldn't impose their sense of gravitas, their way of enjoying the game, on the other people playing. Remember when you were a kid and a girl wanted your GI Joe's to be in her My Little Pony wedding, whereas you wanted to launch rockets at the ponies? Same deal. You can't make people have your fun.
So how does this relate to the topic? Well, the way I see it, MMORPG's are basically like IRC with fighting and kewl graphics. You get attached to your character, you get in to the game because you have fun playing it, but you also are interacting with other people, and you definitely do form relationships of a sort. And no doubt you can form friendships which are totally valid, and they might even translate to the real world. But that's because you're sharing something in common with the real person you're communicating with. If you're friends with someone you've met in a game, you're friends with the scruffy twentysomething who's in to football and listens to metal, not the 45th level undead rogue he's playing.
If you actually are falling in love with a 20th level paladin, you need to go outside.
It was Charles Rangel from NY who sponsored the bill, and he actually did it once before in 2003. His reasoning was and has been that the "fighting" ranks of the military are disproportionately formed by the working class and/or minorities, whereas military action is instigated by priveleged WASPS. By calling for a universal draft, he was trying to make the point that the people in power should have to face the prospect of their own sons and daughters dying in combat if they're going to make the decision to send other people's kids off to fight; the poor shouldn't have to fight wars for the rich, in other words. Interestingly enough, he actually voted against his own bill the first time around. Point being, he didn't actually want a draft, he just wanted to send a message. (I believe the second time around he suggested something along the German model, however, with civic service being an alternative to military service.) I don't have the reference handy but if you check the congressional record, or wikipedia.org, you'll see his voting record.
My point is that his problem was with the war in Iraq, and he used the possibility of mandating the involvment of every able-bodied American to demonstrate that the war wasn't worth fighting. Basically, if you're not for a draft to fight in Iraq, then you either think it's someone else's responsibility to die for your own beliefs, or you don't think any of our troops should be there at all, according to Rangel's argument. He dropped it after the 2006 elections because most of the folks voted in came in on an anti-Iraq-war message. Anyway, that's why I used that as an example.
Slashdot Mirror
...let this come out on the Wii. Couldn't RTFA because the site's blocked at work. I'll go back to salivating over the awesomeness that could be the grappling hook/Wiimote...
So it appears that the issue is whether or not these companies have the right, or for that matter the legal obligation, to not answer questions before this congressional comittee (I always spell that word wrong, apologies). This breaks it down to DoJ versus the House and Senate Intelligence Com(see note above)ees. As I understand it, federal agencies using FISA to secure telco records don't have to answer to Congress, but does that protect the companies which release those records? IANAL, but I work for some, and it seems like this could be analogized to a case where the defense attorney is Congress, the phone companies are witnesses, and DoJ is, well, the state. If the defense asks for a subpoena for records from the phone companies, then the DoJ as the attorney for the state can request a motion to deny the subpoena if those records are protected by law, or at the very least make it so that the defense can only see the records in camera, or in private (the judge's chambers in keeping with the analogy). Assuming this to be the case, aren't the phone companies within their rights? Wouldn't congress have to take this before the court to progress any further? Anyone who knows more about this feel free to shed some light.
I just finished pulling about one ream of paper out of the guts of the Xerox machine at my office. Why SURE I trust the Xerox to redact documents while I'm getting more coffee! What could go wrong??
I've noticed the AI in rts games like Age of Mythology has a general path it will take if left to its own devices, basically build up resources, develop tech a bit, start cranking out low-level infantry/cavalry to harass and probe, and either turtle up or wait till it has a large force to attack with. If the player raids, the AI will start building units to counter. One of the easiest ways to overwhelm AI opponents, especially in the Age of... games, is to feint with one type of unit in a raid, wait a little while, and then come in with a large group of whatever the AI counter unit is weak against. One of the qualities of the "neurotic" AI was apparently to switch strategies frequently and for illogical reasons (or at least as logical responses to inaccurate data) which would put the default AI on its heels.
Reading that quote about the kids and their fancy gadgets all I could think about was my grandparents being frustrated with their cable remote and asking me to show them how to use their cell phones. It also reminded me of a class I had in elementary school with the somewhat vague title "Computer Class". I'm not totally sure what this class was meant to teach, but two days a week we'd march our butts down to the computer room (which, mind you, had one computer in it) and play "educational" games on an Apple IIe, or watch our teacher do something with Logo involving a "turtle". The most I got out of that class was a tremendous ability to find Carmen Sandiego.
Around middle school an uncle of mine who works in IT gave me his old 286, some manuals, and some software, and turned me loose. I learned more about computers by repeatedly breaking and fixing that thing than I ever did in elementary school.
What's my point? I guess I've got two, really. The first point is that a computer is just a tool. School administrators seem to think along the same lines as hillbillys, luddites, or the old and uninformed; to be "good at computers" in some vague and shadowy way means that one is technologically savvy, possesses sharp analytical skills, and is a good problem-solver. By putting computers in schools they hope to make kids technologically skilled through some sort of sympathetic magic, much in the same way shamanic belief systems might make amulets of bear teeth to confer that strength to the wearer. The idea that because kids can play video games and text message each other they can propel the nation in to technological advancement is like saying that anyone who can drive a car should be equally good a designing and building one.
The second point I would make is that, while I wasn't thrilled with school when I was a student and I would like to see a more free-form system of education, the point of school is not primarily academic learning. School teaches you to work within an institution. Anyone can crack a book open or mess around with an engine. Formal education teaches you how to interact with a social structure similar to what one would find in most workplaces. (Similar, mind you, not identical.) That's not a worthless skill. Our society is structure, there is authority, there are rules. Whether you want to change that or not, that's the game as it stands and you need to know how to work within it.
The third and final point I would make, although probably better made by other posts, is that this guy is pointing out the problem with students, not schools. Speaking as a knee-jerk hedonist who acts to satisfy my every whim as they occur, it's not necessarily a good thing that an 8 year old can whip out a phone and text his friends in the middle of class, or that he can pull out a PSP and watch a movie or play a video game because geometry is boring. And, seriously, as intellectually curious as I am, if I got to choose my classes in school I would be utterly incapable of even the most basic arithmetic today. Sometimes, just sometimes, it's a good thing that someone who's priorities including eating as much cookies and cream ice cream as possible and watching Duck Tales is not calling the shots with his academic future. And before anyone starts in I know that there are 6 year olds who are super focused and mature for their age who might very well be able to make responsible decisions as to their education, I'm just making the point that, when you've lived fewer years than the lifespan of some pets you may not have the perspective to make good decisions. So maybe having someone who is trained in their academic field and in the skill of education in charge might not be a bad thing? Maybe, in this case, tradition is tradition for a reason?
...that phishers prefer Linux to Windows because of its greater stability? That's like a car thief walking through a parking lot of early 90's Fords to get to a Honda. (With apologies to Ford afficionados)
Amen to that. I just dumped Vista to dual boot Ubuntu and XP. I have a feeling that enough people are getting bitten by WGA to make even Microsoft notice. I also have a feeling that they're getting a little worried about the reception Vista has gotten.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and Half-Life 2 supposedly use the same engine, and they're both very different (and very good) games as a result of talented designers and developers. What I'm saying is that there ought to be a way that games using the same engine can be modularized where practical and adjust the pricing in such a way that game developers and publishers aren't losing out but consumers benefit from lower cost and a more efficient business model. I mean, to use an admittedly awkward example, you don't buy a separate drill for each diameter of hole you intend to create; you buy bits which fit in to the drill.
And again, I'm just saying this as Joe Blow consumer. My experience with the video game industry begins and ends at having purchased and played a whole lot of them. I don't know the details of how the business works, I'm just offering an idea.
The thing about this "stealth update" that riles me up is that it's indicative of the patronizing, "we know better than you" attitude that Microsoft has towards its customers. They just decided that anyone running Windows would get this update and that's that. Now, wonder of wonders, it's causing problems. Does anyone really think that they'll address this problem in a reasonable, responsible way? Or will they just release ANOTHER patch at 3:00 in the morning to fix the first one?
I reinstalled Half-Life 2 the other day and fired up Steam, and I'm finding that I really like the way it's set up, some small issues notwithstanding. I bought Episode One, and played through it while waiting for Bioshock, and I have to say I like the idea of episodic releases. The only problem is the cost. Half-Life 2 was about $60. Episode One ended up being around $20 or so. I would gladly pay $20 per 8-hour episode if the entry cost wasn't so high.
So here's an idea. Rather than sell a game like HL2 as-is at $60, for example, sell the engine with "Chapter 1", or whatever initial bit of the game plot for around $30 or so. Then, release subsequent episodes for $15, $20; for that matter, release different games using the same engine at the same pricing scheme. In other words, you buy the Unreal engine, for instance, with maybe a sampling of games, and then you buy the particular games that run on that engine separately. In the end, you're spending about as much as you would now, but there's modularity, and the business model is a little friendlier. If you buy Unreal and decide you don't like it, you're out $25 as opposed to $60. And let's say you don't like the game but the engine's nice, and a different game comes out using the same engine. All you spend is the $20-$30 for the new game which runs off the already-installed engine, rather than $60 for the whole thing.
It just occurs to me that it seems a little strange as a consumer to pay $60 for one game, and then pay $60 for another game that is using the exact same technology and is essentially a modification of existing software. By separating the two elements you can turn the somewhat daunting prospect of paying $60 for a game you might or might not like in to the much easier to swallow prospect of paying half of that for the guts of the game with the option to purchase the actual "game" parts that you want later. Consoles essentially work that way now, why not computer games?
Well, actually, their every e-move IS being documented, by Google, and people other than their parents DO control their lives, such as teachers, government officials, etc. I don't know how it is in the UK but in the US you don't really have much in the way of rights until you hit 18. But, that aside, how far do you take this? What about bullying outside of school? What about bullying when the kid's 20? IMO you do kids a great disservice by insulating them from the hard parts of life, such as the fact that some people are pricks. It's better to learn how to deal with that yourself at a young age than to learn to rely on your parents or the government to come to your rescue.
Well, I'm guessing that when the two lightsabers are in contact both wiimotes will rumble and make noise, which they do pretty well. But I'm also guessing that it's either going to come with or soon be followed by plastic lightsabers to pop the wiimote in to. Sort of like the steering wheel they've got: just a plastic shell for the 'mote.
Those were all problems after the fact, however. Prior to landfall those options were open, and even moving from New Orleans to, say, a Motel 6 in East Texas would greatly improve your situation in that scenario, moving you out of the path of the eye. Besides which, once the storm hit, it would be as difficult to buy those bottles as it would be to get transportation. Buying the bottles beforehand presumes an attitude of preparedness that I don't think was there, or else you would have seen more evacuation prior to the storm making landfall, or going back even further strengthening of the levee system.
That's a good point. If they could get production streamlined enough to knock the price down I could see these as a good temporary solution for natural disasters, i.e. airlifting a few crates of these suckers to disaster areas to tide people over while rescue efforts were under way.
Fantastic idea, except for the fact that anyone in the path of Katrina who could have afforded a $385 water bottle could have afforded a $90 plane ticket, $35 bus ride, or $27 tank of gas.
I'm going to go home tonight and read that EULA I breezed through when I installed Vista. By way of an analogy, by the terms of my lease the company that manages my apartment complex can pop in to my apartment to fix stuff or for inspections, but only after having given me notice and only during normal business hours. This would be like coming back home from a bar at 2:00 AM and finding a couple guys in my apartment touching up the paint on the door. Why Update would need to be updated like this instead of as a part of the normal update process, as it has been in the past, or why Update would need to be updated on computers where the user has turned it off, is beyond me. Either they're changing the Update site and don't want to leave any legacy access, even a link to download the upgrade, or it has something to do with the WGA/Black Screen of Pirate Death stuff. Regardless, I'm definitely going to be looking in to finding a Linux distro that is a viable pc gaming platform rather than suffer the tender mercies of Microsoft and the WGA.
"Hey there friend, you, uh, Jewish?"
"Why yes, yes I am. Why?"
"Oh, no reason. Say, do me a favor and hop on this train..."
Repeat as necessary.
This guy can't really believe that banning nasty words from the internet will prevent genocidal shitheads from popping up now and again. Now I'm not normally a big "black helicopter" kind of guy but this smells like a first step toward trying to entrench a censorship body of some kind, with the idea that bureaucracies are impossible to get rid of once they're formed (case in point: the IRS). My guess is that the list will go from four words to eight, maybe starting with "IED" and progressing to "parliament" or "voting record." This same guy apparently wants to ban violent video games because of the damage they do to young european minds. Because there obviously wasn't violence in Europe prior to the Playstation.
Here's a wiki on this clown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Frattini
"From what little I know about copyright law, it's meant to prevent one person from profiting from the sale of another person's intellectual property...
Obviously false, or there wouldn't be any CD or phonograph record retailers."
I phrased that wrong on second reading. In the case of retailers they either purchase the products they intend to sell from the producer wholesale, or they receive the goods on consignment. Either way the initial copy has been legally obtained from the copyright holder. What I should have said was that infringement occurs if someone distributes music (for example) that they haven't first legally obtained from the copyright holder, for instance if I were to download a CD image illegally and then went on to sell or distribute copies. In that example each copy distributed illegally represents a loss for the licensed distributor (which makes some false presumptions, but that's the argument).
"Nothing in copyright law -- at least not as interpreted by the courts under the First Sale Doctrine -- prevents you from legally giving away a CD or record for free, or even from selling it for personal or commercial profit. You just can't legally keep a copy for yourself. (Otherwise used CD/record stores would be in clear violation of the law.)"
Right, but electronic distribution a la KaZaA, etc., violates that by retaining a copy, right? In the example of ripping songs off a CD for a friend who owns the CD there is a distinction without a difference. Both parties own a legally obtained copy of the same CD and making a copy for personal, noncommercial use is covered under the AHRA (more or less). Maybe it technically violates copyright law (and judging by the RIAA I'm sure they think it does) but I'd hazard a guess that a reasonable judge wouldn't weigh to strongly against the defendant in such a case.
Seriously, the LA Times publishing an article about a study which at least from reading TFA seems roughly equivalent to Cosmopolitan attempting to determine whether blondes really DO have more fun is not that surprising to me. The motivation behind the study is dubious at best, and the methodology is bunk; if I had tried to pass this off as research in college I would've been kicked out. But my favorite part of the article is this little gem:
"Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."
They extensively quote a totally unrelated researcher (not a professor, incidentally) from Berkeley (not UCLA, where the study was conducted) who broke out the thesarus to say what amounts to, "this proves that conservatives are big, dumb, stupid ol' dummies." This has about as much credibility as Oral Roberts University performing the same study but swapping out "homosexual" or "atheist" for "conservative." If you wonder why people believe there is bias in the media, wonder no longer.
And meanwhile, cancer hasn't been cured yet, right? Isn't there more important research to do?
IANAL either, but I work for some. From what little I know about copyright law, it's meant to prevent one person from profiting from the sale of another person's intellectual property, as well as to prevent them from interfering with that person's ability to profit. In the music case, I can't play someone else's music and charge money for it without permission from the copyright holder, nor can I give it away for free since that interferes with the holder's ability to profit. So if both you and your friend own the same CD and all you're doing is basically helping him change formats, that should be perfectly legal. After all, the same effect could be had if your friend brought his copy to your computer and ripped the songs off his own CD using your equipment.
Browser-based OS...virtual computer...syncing data to various websites...why don't I think I'll be throwing my external harddrives away tonight?
I assume they're doing the study using the latin alphabet. It would be interesting to see if the process changes at all using a symbolic system like Chinese or Korean (forgot the name, Hanguk or something like that I think).
Are you seriously comparing PvP combat in a video game to rape? There is just a slight difference, is all. Between people getting fussy about being killed in a videogame called "World of WARcraft" (emphasis added) and a person being sexually assaulted, I mean.
Similar thing happened in WoW with a funeral. I think it was an in-game funeral for someone's character who allegedly died IRL, but I'm not sure. The video's floating around on YouTube I believe. Point is, not only was it hilarious, but it's kind of the nature of the beast. If you are on a PvP server, where the rules dictate that you can be attacked and killed while you're in certain areas at any time, you have to expect that someone might actually do it. In this case, the funeral folks were whining that the group who attacked them wasn't role-playing, that they were griefers, etc. but the real reason they were upset is because they couldn't impose their sense of gravitas, their way of enjoying the game, on the other people playing. Remember when you were a kid and a girl wanted your GI Joe's to be in her My Little Pony wedding, whereas you wanted to launch rockets at the ponies? Same deal. You can't make people have your fun.
So how does this relate to the topic? Well, the way I see it, MMORPG's are basically like IRC with fighting and kewl graphics. You get attached to your character, you get in to the game because you have fun playing it, but you also are interacting with other people, and you definitely do form relationships of a sort. And no doubt you can form friendships which are totally valid, and they might even translate to the real world. But that's because you're sharing something in common with the real person you're communicating with. If you're friends with someone you've met in a game, you're friends with the scruffy twentysomething who's in to football and listens to metal, not the 45th level undead rogue he's playing.
If you actually are falling in love with a 20th level paladin, you need to go outside.
It was Charles Rangel from NY who sponsored the bill, and he actually did it once before in 2003. His reasoning was and has been that the "fighting" ranks of the military are disproportionately formed by the working class and/or minorities, whereas military action is instigated by priveleged WASPS. By calling for a universal draft, he was trying to make the point that the people in power should have to face the prospect of their own sons and daughters dying in combat if they're going to make the decision to send other people's kids off to fight; the poor shouldn't have to fight wars for the rich, in other words. Interestingly enough, he actually voted against his own bill the first time around. Point being, he didn't actually want a draft, he just wanted to send a message. (I believe the second time around he suggested something along the German model, however, with civic service being an alternative to military service.) I don't have the reference handy but if you check the congressional record, or wikipedia.org, you'll see his voting record.
My point is that his problem was with the war in Iraq, and he used the possibility of mandating the involvment of every able-bodied American to demonstrate that the war wasn't worth fighting. Basically, if you're not for a draft to fight in Iraq, then you either think it's someone else's responsibility to die for your own beliefs, or you don't think any of our troops should be there at all, according to Rangel's argument. He dropped it after the 2006 elections because most of the folks voted in came in on an anti-Iraq-war message. Anyway, that's why I used that as an example.