So the movie it's like is not Back to the Future, but Contact (that rather ho-hum Jodie Foster/ Carl Sagan vehicle) where the aliens just send us a message and we build the machines. Suggests that time travel will be worthy but dull.
I agree -- however, it appears that this Mk 1 version would be very easy to fool. The examples shown seem to just be simple detection of "a person moving". The soldiers make no attempt to hide themselves or create false positives. What if the soliders were camouflaged and also released some form of moving "scarecrows" to confuse the device? Still, no doubt Samsung are working on it -- and may already have it sorted, they just don't want to say so on their public video.
Why don't most women want to play games involving shooting/ hunting/ fighting? Simple: they don't need them to express their inner feelings, desires and predilections. But a lot of men do.
In a bit more detail, and please forgive the generalisations for the sake of argument...
* Our brains are the same as they were 10,000 years ago, when most humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, where (as is the case with such societies today, on the whole) men tended to do hunting, jobs requiring bursts of strength and a bit of fighting, and women tended to do gathering and child raising. The brains of males and females were to some extent hard-coded to allow individuals to do their respective jobs more effectively.
* Cut, like the 2001 bone/spaceship shot, to the present day. We still have the same brains with the same hard coding.
- In modern Western culture, women can still do the things for which nature predisposes them: gathering, child raising, working co-operatively in groups.
- But men, by contrast, find many of their innate predispositions largely useless. You can hunt for fun, (provided you avoid the Vice President); you can go to the gym and do your feats of strength; you can get into fights in the street and end up in jail; and you can join the army and fight -- but these are choices with many obvious drawbacks.
- Normal life for most of us is the life of Dilbert. Many of those instinctive aptitudes of men which relate to hunting and fighting are pretty much useless; but the traditional skills of women are as relevant as they ever were, and now carry much greater rewards in the co-operation based modern office.
* This is why men play games: to enter in the imagination a world where their natural hunting and fighting skills are vital.
* This is why most women don't play typical console games: they don't need a game to experience childbirth, or child raising, or socialising, or co-operative working. They get that from real life.
* Lastly: some exceptions that prove the rule...
- The Sims works as a game for women because, as dolls have done since the year dot, it's a game which dramatises socialising.
- There are of course huge differences between different individuals of all genders; but I think the generalisations above are valid for most males and most females.
- Of course men have aptitudes other than hunting and fighting, such as problem solving -- a skill still very useful today in the real world, and of course there are many puzzles that involve solving puzzles. But there are few games where you can play at being, say, a software developer or a chip designer -- because if that's what turns you on, and you're good enough at it, you can just go and do it for real...
I agree with you that the "ohmigoshtheUSisbehind" angle of the story is silly. However, there is another angle which may be perhaps of interest. Here in the UK, increasing numbers of people who would once have had to live in London to make a living are now moving to the country. They can only do this because the little villages they're moving to have broadband (the UK, as a small, densely-populated coutry has high bb penetration). If broadband were reliably and cheaply available throught the US (e.g. via Satellite) it might make it a lot easier for people to live and work in remote parts of the country.
Bless them, father, for they know not what they are talking about: God designed bottoms to be cleaned with water; toilet paper is an invention of Beelzebub.
I lived in Indonesia for a few years, and came to realise that the natural, healthy, comfortable way to clean one's bum is with water. In Indonesia, you have these wonderful hosepipe things which you use to squirt yourself with. Japanese smart toilets (and the ones in TFA) are a way to bring this delightful way of doing things to an urban enivronment where (unlike Indonesia) you can't rely on tropical heat to dry your bottom.
Water cleaining is much cleaner and more comfortable than paper, and think of the environmental benefits -- the entire toilet paper industry could cease to exist! I propose we start a green movement of proud water-jet-toilet-users, who could go around wearing t-shirts proclaiming I DON'T USE TOILET PAPER.
This is very useful for people who show their emotions as clearly as Marcel Marceau (that white-face French mime guy). As for the rest of us, how often does someone who is feeling down pull an extreme grimace like the one shown in the article? Basically, never - except perhaps when in combat, or on seeing a film as bad as "Vera Drake"... but suffice to say, at such moments of crisis we're unlikely to want to look at any paintings, let alone paintings that are liable to change make us angrier. Most people in galleries walk around with an neutral expression of detached interest. Thus for non-mimes the system will be unable to detect mood, and thus it won't work.
However, you could make a mildly amusing game using the system, kind of like a crazy mirror in an old funfair, where you would pull all sorts of weird faces and be vaguely amused amused by the way the picture changes colour as a result.
If you want a statement from a Sony exec which suggests that indeed they may be considering blocking used-game sales, check out this from last week's story "Sony Talks PS3 E-Distribution Initiative"...
"As part of Sony's plans for the launch of its next-gen PlayStation 3 console later this year, the company has started planning the PS3 E-Distribution Initiative...Gamasutra got a chance to talk to the project's John Hight... (who said) "On the business side, it also lowers our cost of sales and eliminates inventory risk. It should help curtail used
game sales and piracy."
The way he puts it in this interview - "curtail used game sales and piracy" - implies that used game sales and piracy are kind of the same thing without actually saying so. Perhaps preparing the ground for the big change...
...and to top it off, 'New York congressman Peter King said... "This is ongoing, that's why I've said nothing about it until now. It would have been better if this had not been disclosed."' Cut to Mr. King weeping with disappointment about all the great press he's been getting.
As they say of the Miami affair, "that plan was described by the deputy FBI director John Pistole as aspirational, rather than operational." Like my plan to marry Pamela Anderson and Keira Knightley...
So I'm watching the movie the first time and I'm sitting next to someone listening to the commentary on their ipod? Yes, it could truly achieve the impossible - and make me hate Clerks II even than I hated Clerks I...
A number of separate issues are being fudged in some of these posts...
Q1: Are working conditions in countries such as China perfect by our standards?
A: Obviously not, too strict.
Q2&3: Are working conditions good enough by their standards? Are working conditions better than, for example, working on a peasant farm? A: Yes, otherwise why would they work there? There's plenty of peasant farms in China -- people are leaving them in droves.
Q3: Will working in such standards help raise the wealth of China so that in years hence they can afford to have our standard of living -- along with real unions, health care, etc.
A: Yes - globalisation in East Asia has brought about the greatest mass liberation from poverty in the history of the planet. For interesting data, check out: http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/
Click on Human development trends 2005 NEW !
Q4: How would China be without globalisation?
A: Check out Burma or North Korea, both of which are following their own roads to paradise.
Q5: Is the rise of such factories a challenge to labour in developed countries?
A: Yes of course - globalisation is not a zero sum game -- it does make all coutnries better off -- but jobs will go where they can be done cheapest. And that does include a lot of skilled tech jobs.
Q6: Is the rise of China accompanied by extra pollution?
A: You bet.
However, I believe it's worth it overall -- a country as big as China is never going to be raised from poverty through our charity. It needs industry. This will be accompanied, as it was in the West, by pollution, and also by job losses. But everyone reading this has reaped the benefits of industrialisation (computers don't grow on trees), now it's their turn.
"long ago... serfs were forced to work without pay and without the right to property"...completely unlike musicians who are forced now to see their work and their intellectual property being enjoyed by thousands without payment ; )
Don't worry, I'm kidding, and I also think the RIAA is going too far, but IMHO there is an important point here.
This is a power struggle between content producers and content consumers. We tech-savvy content consumers like to portray ourselves as powerless Robin Hoods, as opposed to the Sheriffs and Kings of the RIAA who have all the power. But actually we consumers are riding the wave of a vast amount of power -- generated by technological innovation.
Obviously the solution is compromise and change -- but let's not kid ourselves we're the powerless peasants here. They've only got the slings and arrows of the law -- we've got the b-52s of technological inevitability on our side...
Problem is, MySpace's defence will collapse when the prosecution points out one fact: "I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how can this site claim to protect minors when it is owned by a man 38 years older than his wife..."
One of the great problems/drivers of humanity has always been that there just aren't enough sexy people to go round. And even if you do manage to get one, fairly soon they cease to be sexy - through age/ over-familiarity.
Previous solution: the oldest profession. Works in some ways, but lots of downsides. Much attacked by moralists, e.g. in the Judeo-Christian tradition, for good reasons of wasting lives/ disease etc.
But as soon as sex robots offer the hope of a solution which avoids many of these downsides, moralists such as the appropriately-named Dr. Christensen attack them before they even exist!
I for one welcome our new robot overlords/ slaves/ whatever we feel like on a given day...
They were also taking about putting television content down the line as well... I don't know when they were thinking of trying to get this sytem out but it sounded interesting
BT's TV-down-a-wire project is called BT vision, info at http://www.btvision.bt.com/
The clever thing about it is that is integrates video-on-demand coming down a wire with on-air content via Freeview ("Freeview" is the UK's name for digital terrestrial TV).
Translation: if you want to watch a movie on demand, it comes down your ADSL line. But if you want to watch the FA cup live with 10 billion other Britons, it goes through the air, thus reducing the network congestion issues you get with webcasting. Both forms of content are controlled from the same integrated electronic programme guide. Or that's the plan anyway...
Re: "infusing technology into Liberal Arts courses", I'm all for any educational initiative that helps show students that to be "technical" and to be "creative" are not mututally exclusive.
Indeed, in a medium which is rapidly changing (e.g. the web) to be truly creative you must have some technical knowledge.
Will seem obvious to most/.ers, but in my work (interactive videos for bb use) I constantly meet graduates of Liberal Arts courses who ask if I'm technical or creative; to which of course the ideal answer is "yes"...
at least the patent system will live on...
on
Back to the Bunker
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"Moreover, since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the definition of what constitutes an "essential" government function has been expanded so ridiculously beyond core national security functions -- do we really need patent and trademark processing in the middle of a nuclear holocaust? -- that the term has become meaningless."
Just before the blastwave hits, as I put my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye, my final thought can be "maybe I'll be dead but at least the patent system will live on..."
If you want to read what IMHO is a really interesting interactive book for grown-ups, try: Combat Team: The Captains' War - An Interactive Exercise in Company Level Command in Battle by John F. Antal (and two others in the same series by the same guy).
Vastly more effective dramatically than any other interactive book I've read, because it tries to simulate a real-world situation, not tell a story.
Antal is (or was) in the US Army. What he does with his books is try to simulate an actual battle, with a combination of choices you have to make and dumb luck (done via dice throws). If you get blown to pieces (which you often do), you think "hmm, well that's war", and try again. And obviously from doing thousands of excercises, Antal has a huge range of good choice-and-consequence sets up his sleeve. (I'm not trying to comment on the politics/ethics of these books, just saying they work dramatically).
By contrast, most choose your own adventure books that I have read are in a slightly conflicted position: trying to tell a traditional story, but one that can go in a huge number of ways. Of course this is tricky, because stories told round the camp fire since time immemorial may have been customised to their listeners - but they rarely involve the listeners making choices, because that tends to break suspension of disbelief. This is of course amplified with a medium where you can actually see the other paths of the story on paper as with books.
Still, have got lots of great leads from these posts, so maybe will find some stories to prove me wrong. Need something to distract me from the news as Rumsfeld et al turn the pages of their own real-life interactive army adventure book and find - damn it! - they can't turn back to the last choice point and try again...
MIT guy: And check out my wired dorm! Playing "feel the energy"!
Girls: Collapse in helpless laughter
MIT guy: Wait! you can't laugh at me! Think of my huge earning potential!
-- 2 seconds utter silence --
Girls: Collapse in even more hysterical laughter...
...but no, you're right of course, they'd come round... but I'm not sure the room will really help... and anyway, who's to say the Korean robot chick isn't a better long-term bet?
While they're at it, they'd better install that Korean female robot wearing something slinky - because they'll never get any real women in there... and at least she won't collapse in hysterics when told to "feel the energy"...
Okay, so this story seems to be an urban fairytale. Like the one that Sony faked the BluRay demo a couple of weeks back.
But together these stories reflect something real and very scary for Sony: that since Rootkitgate or maybe E3, they've fallen into every PR guy's worst nightmare - a black hole where people resent a company so much that they believe anything bad they hear about it. This is the real story, and Sony needs to be very worried about it...
My guess-translation of this chap's ravings are that...
* the EU set the spec for GSM phones, hence texting, hence SMS?
* the EU funded CERN, hence Berners-Lee, hence the web, hence e-mail? ...hence all your texts and emails are belong to us. or rather eu.
I know this is crazy stuff, don't worry (God bless DARPAnet etc). But why stop with internal taxation within the EU? The Roman Empire invented Latin script, which many foreign countries are using. So after this, expect royalty charges on that too. And don't even get me started on what the EU is going to charge the USA for the licence to use the English language...
Absurd, obviously, but gives American/.ers a chance to see that, though Federal Goverment is young in the EU it's doing its best to grow into something far more warped than the Feds in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
So the movie it's like is not Back to the Future, but Contact (that rather ho-hum Jodie Foster/ Carl Sagan vehicle) where the aliens just send us a message and we build the machines. Suggests that time travel will be worthy but dull.
I agree -- however, it appears that this Mk 1 version would be very easy to fool. The examples shown seem to just be simple detection of "a person moving". The soldiers make no attempt to hide themselves or create false positives. What if the soliders were camouflaged and also released some form of moving "scarecrows" to confuse the device? Still, no doubt Samsung are working on it -- and may already have it sorted, they just don't want to say so on their public video.
Why don't most women want to play games involving shooting/ hunting/ fighting? Simple: they don't need them to express their inner feelings, desires and predilections. But a lot of men do.
In a bit more detail, and please forgive the generalisations for the sake of argument...
* Our brains are the same as they were 10,000 years ago, when most humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, where (as is the case with such societies today, on the whole) men tended to do hunting, jobs requiring bursts of strength and a bit of fighting, and women tended to do gathering and child raising. The brains of males and females were to some extent hard-coded to allow individuals to do their respective jobs more effectively.
* Cut, like the 2001 bone/spaceship shot, to the present day. We still have the same brains with the same hard coding.
- In modern Western culture, women can still do the things for which nature predisposes them: gathering, child raising, working co-operatively in groups.
- But men, by contrast, find many of their innate predispositions largely useless. You can hunt for fun, (provided you avoid the Vice President); you can go to the gym and do your feats of strength; you can get into fights in the street and end up in jail; and you can join the army and fight -- but these are choices with many obvious drawbacks.
- Normal life for most of us is the life of Dilbert. Many of those instinctive aptitudes of men which relate to hunting and fighting are pretty much useless; but the traditional skills of women are as relevant as they ever were, and now carry much greater rewards in the co-operation based modern office.
* This is why men play games: to enter in the imagination a world where their natural hunting and fighting skills are vital.
* This is why most women don't play typical console games: they don't need a game to experience childbirth, or child raising, or socialising, or co-operative working. They get that from real life.
* Lastly: some exceptions that prove the rule...
- The Sims works as a game for women because, as dolls have done since the year dot, it's a game which dramatises socialising.
- There are of course huge differences between different individuals of all genders; but I think the generalisations above are valid for most males and most females.
- Of course men have aptitudes other than hunting and fighting, such as problem solving -- a skill still very useful today in the real world, and of course there are many puzzles that involve solving puzzles. But there are few games where you can play at being, say, a software developer or a chip designer -- because if that's what turns you on, and you're good enough at it, you can just go and do it for real...
I agree with you that the "ohmigoshtheUSisbehind" angle of the story is silly. However, there is another angle which may be perhaps of interest. Here in the UK, increasing numbers of people who would once have had to live in London to make a living are now moving to the country. They can only do this because the little villages they're moving to have broadband (the UK, as a small, densely-populated coutry has high bb penetration). If broadband were reliably and cheaply available throught the US (e.g. via Satellite) it might make it a lot easier for people to live and work in remote parts of the country.
okay, I agree, good point...
should be a 5 - funny
okay, so it doesn't really relate to the article, but it's the funniest post I've read on slashdot in a while -- nice sig too...
Bless them, father, for they know not what they are talking about: God designed bottoms to be cleaned with water; toilet paper is an invention of Beelzebub.
I lived in Indonesia for a few years, and came to realise that the natural, healthy, comfortable way to clean one's bum is with water. In Indonesia, you have these wonderful hosepipe things which you use to squirt yourself with. Japanese smart toilets (and the ones in TFA) are a way to bring this delightful way of doing things to an urban enivronment where (unlike Indonesia) you can't rely on tropical heat to dry your bottom.
Water cleaining is much cleaner and more comfortable than paper, and think of the environmental benefits -- the entire toilet paper industry could cease to exist! I propose we start a green movement of proud water-jet-toilet-users, who could go around wearing t-shirts proclaiming I DON'T USE TOILET PAPER.
Of course it might be misunderstood...
This is very useful for people who show their emotions as clearly as Marcel Marceau (that white-face French mime guy). As for the rest of us, how often does someone who is feeling down pull an extreme grimace like the one shown in the article? Basically, never - except perhaps when in combat, or on seeing a film as bad as "Vera Drake"... but suffice to say, at such moments of crisis we're unlikely to want to look at any paintings, let alone paintings that are liable to change make us angrier. Most people in galleries walk around with an neutral expression of detached interest. Thus for non-mimes the system will be unable to detect mood, and thus it won't work.
However, you could make a mildly amusing game using the system, kind of like a crazy mirror in an old funfair, where you would pull all sorts of weird faces and be vaguely amused amused by the way the picture changes colour as a result.
If you want a statement from a Sony exec which suggests that indeed they may be considering blocking used-game sales, check out this from last week's story "Sony Talks PS3 E-Distribution Initiative"...
"As part of Sony's plans for the launch of its next-gen PlayStation 3 console later this year, the company has started planning the PS3 E-Distribution Initiative...Gamasutra got a chance to talk to the project's John Hight... (who said) "On the business side, it also lowers our cost of sales and eliminates inventory risk. It should help curtail used game sales and piracy."
The way he puts it in this interview - "curtail used game sales and piracy" - implies that used game sales and piracy are kind of the same thing without actually saying so. Perhaps preparing the ground for the big change...
...and to top it off, 'New York congressman Peter King said... "This is ongoing, that's why I've said nothing about it until now. It would have been better if this had not been disclosed."' Cut to Mr. King weeping with disappointment about all the great press he's been getting.
As they say of the Miami affair, "that plan was described by the deputy FBI director John Pistole as aspirational, rather than operational." Like my plan to marry Pamela Anderson and Keira Knightley...
So I'm watching the movie the first time and I'm sitting next to someone listening to the commentary on their ipod? Yes, it could truly achieve the impossible - and make me hate Clerks II even than I hated Clerks I...
A number of separate issues are being fudged in some of these posts...
Q1: Are working conditions in countries such as China perfect by our standards?
A: Obviously not, too strict.
Q2&3: Are working conditions good enough by their standards? Are working conditions better than, for example, working on a peasant farm?
A: Yes, otherwise why would they work there? There's plenty of peasant farms in China -- people are leaving them in droves.
Q3: Will working in such standards help raise the wealth of China so that in years hence they can afford to have our standard of living -- along with real unions, health care, etc.
A: Yes - globalisation in East Asia has brought about the greatest mass liberation from poverty in the history of the planet. For interesting data, check out:
http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/
Click on Human development trends 2005 NEW !
Q4: How would China be without globalisation?
A: Check out Burma or North Korea, both of which are following their own roads to paradise.
Q5: Is the rise of such factories a challenge to labour in developed countries?
A: Yes of course - globalisation is not a zero sum game -- it does make all coutnries better off -- but jobs will go where they can be done cheapest. And that does include a lot of skilled tech jobs.
Q6: Is the rise of China accompanied by extra pollution?
A: You bet.
However, I believe it's worth it overall -- a country as big as China is never going to be raised from poverty through our charity. It needs industry. This will be accompanied, as it was in the West, by pollution, and also by job losses. But everyone reading this has reaped the benefits of industrialisation (computers don't grow on trees), now it's their turn.
I want one for Xmas! Or \mas! Or /mas!
"long ago... serfs were forced to work without pay and without the right to property" ...completely unlike musicians who are forced now to see their work and their intellectual property being enjoyed by thousands without payment ; )
Don't worry, I'm kidding, and I also think the RIAA is going too far, but IMHO there is an important point here.
This is a power struggle between content producers and content consumers. We tech-savvy content consumers like to portray ourselves as powerless Robin Hoods, as opposed to the Sheriffs and Kings of the RIAA who have all the power. But actually we consumers are riding the wave of a vast amount of power -- generated by technological innovation.
Obviously the solution is compromise and change -- but let's not kid ourselves we're the powerless peasants here. They've only got the slings and arrows of the law -- we've got the b-52s of technological inevitability on our side...
Problem is, MySpace's defence will collapse when the prosecution points out one fact:
"I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how can this site claim to protect minors when it is owned by a man 38 years older than his wife..."
One of the great problems/drivers of humanity has always been that there just aren't enough sexy people to go round. And even if you do manage to get one, fairly soon they cease to be sexy - through age/ over-familiarity.
Previous solution: the oldest profession. Works in some ways, but lots of downsides. Much attacked by moralists, e.g. in the Judeo-Christian tradition, for good reasons of wasting lives/ disease etc.
But as soon as sex robots offer the hope of a solution which avoids many of these downsides, moralists such as the appropriately-named Dr. Christensen attack them before they even exist!
I for one welcome our new robot overlords/ slaves/ whatever we feel like on a given day...
They were also taking about putting television content down the line as well... I don't know when they were thinking of trying to get this sytem out but it sounded interesting
BT's TV-down-a-wire project is called BT vision, info at http://www.btvision.bt.com/
The clever thing about it is that is integrates video-on-demand coming down a wire with on-air content via Freeview ("Freeview" is the UK's name for digital terrestrial TV).
Translation: if you want to watch a movie on demand, it comes down your ADSL line. But if you want to watch the FA cup live with 10 billion other Britons, it goes through the air, thus reducing the network congestion issues you get with webcasting. Both forms of content are controlled from the same integrated electronic programme guide. Or that's the plan anyway...
Re: "infusing technology into Liberal Arts courses", I'm all for any educational initiative that helps show students that to be "technical" and to be "creative" are not mututally exclusive.
/.ers, but in my work (interactive videos for bb use) I constantly meet graduates of Liberal Arts courses who ask if I'm technical or creative; to which of course the ideal answer is "yes"...
Indeed, in a medium which is rapidly changing (e.g. the web) to be truly creative you must have some technical knowledge.
Will seem obvious to most
"Moreover, since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the definition of what constitutes an "essential" government function has been expanded so ridiculously beyond core national security functions -- do we really need patent and trademark processing in the middle of a nuclear holocaust? -- that the term has become meaningless."
Just before the blastwave hits, as I put my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye, my final thought can be "maybe I'll be dead but at least the patent system will live on..."
If you want to read what IMHO is a really interesting interactive book for grown-ups, try:
Combat Team: The Captains' War - An Interactive Exercise in Company Level Command in Battle
by John F. Antal (and two others in the same series by the same guy).
Vastly more effective dramatically than any other interactive book I've read, because it tries to simulate a real-world situation, not tell a story.
Antal is (or was) in the US Army. What he does with his books is try to simulate an actual battle, with a combination of choices you have to make and dumb luck (done via dice throws). If you get blown to pieces (which you often do), you think "hmm, well that's war", and try again. And obviously from doing thousands of excercises, Antal has a huge range of good choice-and-consequence sets up his sleeve. (I'm not trying to comment on the politics/ethics of these books, just saying they work dramatically).
By contrast, most choose your own adventure books that I have read are in a slightly conflicted position: trying to tell a traditional story, but one that can go in a huge number of ways. Of course this is tricky, because stories told round the camp fire since time immemorial may have been customised to their listeners - but they rarely involve the listeners making choices, because that tends to break suspension of disbelief. This is of course amplified with a medium where you can actually see the other paths of the story on paper as with books.
Still, have got lots of great leads from these posts, so maybe will find some stories to prove me wrong. Need something to distract me from the news as Rumsfeld et al turn the pages of their own real-life interactive army adventure book and find - damn it! - they can't turn back to the last choice point and try again...
I can see it now...
...but no, you're right of course, they'd come round... but I'm not sure the room will really help... and anyway, who's to say the Korean robot chick isn't a better long-term bet?
MIT guy: And check out my wired dorm! Playing "feel the energy"!
Girls: Collapse in helpless laughter
MIT guy: Wait! you can't laugh at me! Think of my huge earning potential!
-- 2 seconds utter silence --
Girls: Collapse in even more hysterical laughter...
While they're at it, they'd better install that Korean female robot wearing something slinky - because they'll never get any real women in there... and at least she won't collapse in hysterics when told to "feel the energy"...
Could Sony/Japan take Microsoft/the USA to the WTO to stop Microsoft "dumping" 360's on the market at below cost price?
Okay, so this story seems to be an urban fairytale. Like the one that Sony faked the BluRay demo a couple of weeks back.
But together these stories reflect something real and very scary for Sony: that since Rootkitgate or maybe E3, they've fallen into every PR guy's worst nightmare - a black hole where people resent a company so much that they believe anything bad they hear about it. This is the real story, and Sony needs to be very worried about it...
My guess-translation of this chap's ravings are that...
...hence all your texts and emails are belong to us. or rather eu.
/.ers a chance to see that, though Federal Goverment is young in the EU it's doing its best to grow into something far more warped than the Feds in the US.
* the EU set the spec for GSM phones, hence texting, hence SMS?
* the EU funded CERN, hence Berners-Lee, hence the web, hence e-mail?
I know this is crazy stuff, don't worry (God bless DARPAnet etc). But why stop with internal taxation within the EU? The Roman Empire invented Latin script, which many foreign countries are using. So after this, expect royalty charges on that too. And don't even get me started on what the EU is going to charge the USA for the licence to use the English language...
Absurd, obviously, but gives American