Glad to see it, but when I posted what I said it had a score of 3. After I wrote my post, and others wrote similar ones, it was moderated down. Coincidence perhaps. Or maybe not.
Wow, I never realized how easy it was to be a karma whore. All it takes is to C&P some part of the US constitution to arise political fervor in the moderators, and you're coasting your way to fame and fortune with no actual thoughts necessary.
I'll bet when you grow up, you'll be a big shot advertising executive too. You've got quite a career ahead of you. Congratulations!
I hate to break it to you, but the internet is a global network. All the FBI can do by installing Carnivore systems at American ISPs is piss off a lot of Americans.
And I won't even touch how completely ridiculous the idea is in the first place... well okay I will. Why in the WORLD would the FBI try to shut down internet connectivity for the US? And why would they need these boxes to do it? If they don't have the legal right to do so, ISPs and their well-payed laywers wouldn't let it happen (guess what, ISP technicians can unhook the Carnivore box and go about their business). If somehow the FBI did initiate some digital martial law where they had the right to do this, why would they need the boxes? They could just walk into the ISP with their nice shiny guns and start unplugging ATM cables.
These Weekly World News/. news bits are great fun, but please don't take them seriously.
I think this is a case of mistaking fine craftsmanship for art. Art strives to express something through it's medium. Good craftsmanship can be beautiful, but it does not strive to express anything - it strives to elegantly achieve its needed functionality.
These lines have blurred mainly through the use of the term architecture IMO. True architecture (the design of buildings) has a tone of art to it, because it can incorporate visual ideas and concepts into its functionality. While people talk of computer architecture and software architecture, the same sense of art really can't apply there. There's no way to express an idea through software code, other than through direct I/O implementing true visual, textual, or audio artwork.
Take a look at WorldForge, a fully open-source development project creating a massively multiplayer online gaming system. They already have a very large team of volunteer artists as well as volunteer coders and managers. While discussion has gone on within the project as to what license to use, they are implementing copyright licenses for artwork which allow both reusability, distribution, and editing.
It's been a while since I've had time to watch the development more closely, but it's still a superb example of the potential of open source game development. It's a very highly ambitious project which looks like it can pull off it's goals.
I'm sure you've all heard of neural nets in AI programming. Is it just me or does this sound like simply a neural net embedded in a circuit?
I'm almost a little disappointed to read this coming from MIT, because when I left the University of Manitoba (Canada) a similar project was being given as a thesis project for fourth year students. The prof coordinating it has been doing research on building neural nets with semiconductors instead of software constructs for a while now. Granted, this bit from MIT might be more complex, or introduce new functionality to the neural net (such as the voice recognition system that incorporated time delays in the calculations last year). But it still seems to me that something is only big news if one of the 'big' colleges works on it. Bleah.
When I finish this internship and go back to finish my fourth year, I'll be proud to go to my hometown U. It's obviously keeping up with the rest of the world - the only thing lagging behind is the media's perception.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
Re:Very nice review! Must argue one point though .
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
·
· Score: 1
Yeah but wasn't that show ALL cg animation? My point here is that the style of animation (extra-jerky CG) was very interesting, in the context of this largely hand-drawn animated film. It had little to do with the static, visual look of the aliens as it did with the way they moved, and the way the movement seemed less smooth and very out of place, in a sense.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
Very nice review! Must argue one point though ...
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
·
· Score: 2
*SPOILERS*
I didn't see anything slow about Corseau's transformation into the bitter traitor. That was the one character of the movie which I was disappointed with actually. He's HeroMan through and through, no cracks in his behavior, then suddenly he's caught talking to the leader of the Dredge? Okay, plot twist is good, but then he snaps in the most exaggerated way possible, leave them behind... and then turns back into Mr Nice Guy all of a sudden when Cale saves him? At that point I didn't see a character left in Corseau, just a device used to throw in a plot twist and bring it predictably back around in the end.
Fun movie, for sure. But saying that this movie had good characterization just goes to show what state Hollywood is in these days. This was pretty corny stuff most of the time.
Oh, and the Dredge were the most visually cool enemies I've ever seen in a cartoon for a long time. Very creative animation style used on them, gave them a very out-of-reality impression.
I stand corrected. However, what qualifies 'unpriviledged'? The employer hired the security company to give information like this - does that make them priviledged?
I still think a liability claim would have a better chance. The security company failed at their job, and because of it someone lost potential income. Makes more sense to me. Aw heck, throw both of them at them.
If the company who was hired to do the background check failed to do their job properly, then they can be liable for their mistake. The real question is, who are they liable to?
The person trying to get the job did not hire the security company to do the background check. The company doing the hiring did. This means that it would be fairly easy for the hiring company to claim liability against the security firm. However, for the security firm to be liable to the applicant, you have to prove that the security company had a duty to the applicant to perform their job correctly.
This doesn't mean it's impossible - it just means that if you really want recourse taken, you should talk to a lawyer. Chances are there's previous ruling of this sort which you could use to show that the security company did in fact have a duty to the applicant to present correct information on them.
As for libel, which someone else mentioned, I don't think this would hold up. AFAIK, libel involves published statements and published statements only, which obviously wouldn't be the case here.
The only good thing you can say about Battlefield Earth is that it wasn't connected with original author L. Ron Hubbard's other source of frightening cultural influence, Scientology.
Or at least that's what devout follower John Travolta assures us. Sure, there were no DIRECT references... anyone want to play that movie back frame by frame? Of course you don't... the subliminal messages told you not to...
EverQuest had a long and someone detailed EULA, but it wasn't (and still isn't) excessively restrictive.
The only 'controversial' parts of its EULA would be the ones set in place to protect their ability to police their game world, plus the restriction on selling EQ "property" for real cash. They need to have the right to ban people, or else jerks can ruin the game for everyone. They tell people not to sell EQ characters and items on eBay and the like - and I think that's a great idea. Buying a powerful character in a game is, to me and many others, cheating. I don't like cheating, and neither does Verant.
That's not to mention the headaches that happen when you get scammed in a sale for a character or items. Instead of having to deal with the hundreds of people who would get scammed and complain to Verant for retribution, they decided to avoid the hassle and ban it outright.
There are also restrictions against modifying their client software to run on emulated servers, and some other restrictions of the sort. Some might see this as a problem, I guess. I see it as a reasonable protection of their ability to offer a supported online service. Since most software has restrictions on modifying it at all, this really isn't anything new. Of course, this isn't very enforcable anyway if you know what you're doing when you modify the client. Just have a copy that doesn't contact an official EQ server at all, including the patch server. Whoopie, they'll never see it.
Now, they DID have a problem where they were scanning people's systems to see if they were running any packet-sniffing 'cheats'. They had changed the EULA to allow them to do this at the time. However, based on the fact that 20% of their user base was against this in an in-game survey, they dropped it and apologized. Note: ONLY 20% said they had a problem with this. These guys obviously listen to their customers, this wasn't even near the majority and yet they put a stop to it.
No one is planning to prevent Debian users from using non-free software. They aren't even going to prevent people from making.deb packages for non-free software. They simply don't want to PROMOTE non-free by including it in their Debian distributions and archives.
If the Debian group doesn't want to promote commercial software through their charitable organization, so be it. They exist to support Free Software, not to offer every choice available under the sun.
To take your argument seriously, they'd be including Windows with their next distribution as a matter of freedom of choice.:P
I forgot, it was 'SUCK IT DOWN', not 'SUCK IT'. I can't believe I forgot it - after all, they did trademark the phrase. (Damn you Old Man Murray... you don't have the story in your archive for me to link to.)
Add to all this the fact that the death of Looking Glass must be avenged. It's official, Ion Storm must die.
I don't care how long it took him, or how much work he put into it, or how it's his heart and soul and he's going to get a complex because his game gets bashed. He called us his bitch. He threw down the gauntlet years ago. Now his game is out, and 99% of the gaming population thinks it sucks shit. We have EVERY right to pick that gauntlet back up and beat the hell outta him with it.
Lesson to the game industry: If you're going to insult the gaming public with your desires for oral sex, you DAMN WELL better make the best game EVER.
Oh so true ... and re:Matrix ...
on
Essential Anime
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· Score: 2
Akira and Ghost in the Shell are exactly what I was going to mention. I haven't even seen a lot of Anime yet, but these two are just mind-bogglingly good (and even I know that they're classics). Akira pretty much melted my brain, in a really really good way.
As for the Matrix... if you haven't seen the DVD version and all it's extras, do so. There's a lot of stuff featuring interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff with the writer/directors of the movie. These guys basically took some anime movies (didn't say which ones) to the producers, and said "We want to do this with live action." I thought that was just freakin' amazing. Plus, they actually look like real guys, the kind of fun-luvin' geeks who would go crazy over anime and scifi and the Matrix in general.:)
You might not be transmitting an actual Metallica song, perhaps you just uploaded your own metal single with the title "My Rockin' Tune (soundz like Metallica and Pantera)".
Metallica runs their search, they spot your song along with the millions of actual Metallica singles being passed around, they mark you to be removed by Napster. You complain, naturally, since you haven't actually been distributing their music.
Oops, but you just used their copyrighted (oand probably trademarked) name, "Metallica", on your distribution. Guess what, they've now got reason to send the legal spawn after your Napster account anyway.
It might not be as real an offence as actually distributing their music, but don't expect that to slow them down when they decide to step on pirate distribution. You don't have a legal leg to stand on.
... because if they do, there's no way in hell they'd survive the backlash and neither would said law. The average person might not give a rip about Apogee's games, but they'll care about their right to read nasty articles about them after the newspapers have picked this up. Even your average butt-kissing mainstream news media will scream bloody murder if they are afraid that their own right to free speech can be limited by some corporate BS. Reminds me of the stupidity MS has reached in its own recent censorship... let the big corps try too hard, they'll kick themselves in the arse eventually. You can only step on so many little guys before you stub the wrong person's toe and get your butt whipped.
... it's about preventing a monopoly from hurting the economy. Microsoft has used it's monopoly in the OS market to push its other products onto vendors. It's done this to an extent which is illegal, as it gives them a foothold in the software market which has nothing to do with the value of their product to the consumer. Breaking up MS would make it impossible for the market strength of Windows to be used to pressure vendors into distributing MS applications as well.
I agree that there are other alternatives that could be better for the software industry as a whole. Unfortunately, the courts will be more concerned with what MS has done wrong and how they should be punished and prevented from doing so again. Their primary concern probably won't be the overall welfare of the industry.
Looking at Stallman's article, he quickly writes off exactly what the US courts will be most concerned with. "The latter (breaking up MS) would mainly help others proprietary application developers compete, which would only offer users alternative ways to let go of their freedom." Sure those are alternate ways for users to buy into secrecy - but that's exactly what this trial is about, competition in a capitalist market. He then goes on to give alternative measures which would benefit FREE SOFTWARE - not what a court in the capitalistic USofA is likely to care much about.
This court case isn't about freedom to the US gov, even if advocates of free software wish it were.
What would we do if a robot became an Iron Chef?? Japanese cooks would be up in arms! Iron Chef Namek would go on a rampage! The pun police would charge in with riot gear and destroy Kitchen Stadium!
How big of a slice of the CPU pie does good voice recognition take? Despite improvements across the board in game tech, better framerates are still lusted after in any kind of 3D sim or action game. If I have to sacrifice the game's framerate from 40fps to 25fps just so I can bark Klingon commands to my crew, I'll pass (and chances are, so will a LOT of people).
Slashdot Mirror
You know what to do with the HELLO.
I'll bet when you grow up, you'll be a big shot advertising executive too. You've got quite a career ahead of you. Congratulations!
You know what to do with the HELLO.
And I won't even touch how completely ridiculous the idea is in the first place ... well okay I will. Why in the WORLD would the FBI try to shut down internet connectivity for the US? And why would they need these boxes to do it? If they don't have the legal right to do so, ISPs and their well-payed laywers wouldn't let it happen (guess what, ISP technicians can unhook the Carnivore box and go about their business). If somehow the FBI did initiate some digital martial law where they had the right to do this, why would they need the boxes? They could just walk into the ISP with their nice shiny guns and start unplugging ATM cables.
These Weekly World News /. news bits are great fun, but please don't take them seriously.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
These lines have blurred mainly through the use of the term architecture IMO. True architecture (the design of buildings) has a tone of art to it, because it can incorporate visual ideas and concepts into its functionality. While people talk of computer architecture and software architecture, the same sense of art really can't apply there. There's no way to express an idea through software code, other than through direct I/O implementing true visual, textual, or audio artwork.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
It's been a while since I've had time to watch the development more closely, but it's still a superb example of the potential of open source game development. It's a very highly ambitious project which looks like it can pull off it's goals.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
I'm almost a little disappointed to read this coming from MIT, because when I left the University of Manitoba (Canada) a similar project was being given as a thesis project for fourth year students. The prof coordinating it has been doing research on building neural nets with semiconductors instead of software constructs for a while now. Granted, this bit from MIT might be more complex, or introduce new functionality to the neural net (such as the voice recognition system that incorporated time delays in the calculations last year). But it still seems to me that something is only big news if one of the 'big' colleges works on it. Bleah.
When I finish this internship and go back to finish my fourth year, I'll be proud to go to my hometown U. It's obviously keeping up with the rest of the world - the only thing lagging behind is the media's perception.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
I didn't see anything slow about Corseau's transformation into the bitter traitor. That was the one character of the movie which I was disappointed with actually. He's HeroMan through and through, no cracks in his behavior, then suddenly he's caught talking to the leader of the Dredge? Okay, plot twist is good, but then he snaps in the most exaggerated way possible, leave them behind ... and then turns back into Mr Nice Guy all of a sudden when Cale saves him? At that point I didn't see a character left in Corseau, just a device used to throw in a plot twist and bring it predictably back around in the end.
Fun movie, for sure. But saying that this movie had good characterization just goes to show what state Hollywood is in these days. This was pretty corny stuff most of the time.
Oh, and the Dredge were the most visually cool enemies I've ever seen in a cartoon for a long time. Very creative animation style used on them, gave them a very out-of-reality impression.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
I still think a liability claim would have a better chance. The security company failed at their job, and because of it someone lost potential income. Makes more sense to me. Aw heck, throw both of them at them.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
The person trying to get the job did not hire the security company to do the background check. The company doing the hiring did. This means that it would be fairly easy for the hiring company to claim liability against the security firm. However, for the security firm to be liable to the applicant, you have to prove that the security company had a duty to the applicant to perform their job correctly.
This doesn't mean it's impossible - it just means that if you really want recourse taken, you should talk to a lawyer. Chances are there's previous ruling of this sort which you could use to show that the security company did in fact have a duty to the applicant to present correct information on them.
As for libel, which someone else mentioned, I don't think this would hold up. AFAIK, libel involves published statements and published statements only, which obviously wouldn't be the case here.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
Or at least that's what devout follower John Travolta assures us. Sure, there were no DIRECT references ... anyone want to play that movie back frame by frame? Of course you don't ... the subliminal messages told you not to ...
You know what to do with the HELLO.
The only 'controversial' parts of its EULA would be the ones set in place to protect their ability to police their game world, plus the restriction on selling EQ "property" for real cash. They need to have the right to ban people, or else jerks can ruin the game for everyone. They tell people not to sell EQ characters and items on eBay and the like - and I think that's a great idea. Buying a powerful character in a game is, to me and many others, cheating. I don't like cheating, and neither does Verant.
That's not to mention the headaches that happen when you get scammed in a sale for a character or items. Instead of having to deal with the hundreds of people who would get scammed and complain to Verant for retribution, they decided to avoid the hassle and ban it outright.
There are also restrictions against modifying their client software to run on emulated servers, and some other restrictions of the sort. Some might see this as a problem, I guess. I see it as a reasonable protection of their ability to offer a supported online service. Since most software has restrictions on modifying it at all, this really isn't anything new. Of course, this isn't very enforcable anyway if you know what you're doing when you modify the client. Just have a copy that doesn't contact an official EQ server at all, including the patch server. Whoopie, they'll never see it.
Now, they DID have a problem where they were scanning people's systems to see if they were running any packet-sniffing 'cheats'. They had changed the EULA to allow them to do this at the time. However, based on the fact that 20% of their user base was against this in an in-game survey, they dropped it and apologized. Note: ONLY 20% said they had a problem with this. These guys obviously listen to their customers, this wasn't even near the majority and yet they put a stop to it.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
If the Debian group doesn't want to promote commercial software through their charitable organization, so be it. They exist to support Free Software, not to offer every choice available under the sun.
To take your argument seriously, they'd be including Windows with their next distribution as a matter of freedom of choice. :P
You know what to do with the HELLO.
This one should be a good example, as it gives the company the power to restrain legitimate free speech by banning criticism through an EULA.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
Add to all this the fact that the death of Looking Glass must be avenged. It's official, Ion Storm must die.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
I don't care how long it took him, or how much work he put into it, or how it's his heart and soul and he's going to get a complex because his game gets bashed. He called us his bitch. He threw down the gauntlet years ago. Now his game is out, and 99% of the gaming population thinks it sucks shit. We have EVERY right to pick that gauntlet back up and beat the hell outta him with it.
Lesson to the game industry: If you're going to insult the gaming public with your desires for oral sex, you DAMN WELL better make the best game EVER.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
As for the Matrix
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
Metallica runs their search, they spot your song along with the millions of actual Metallica singles being passed around, they mark you to be removed by Napster. You complain, naturally, since you haven't actually been distributing their music.
Oops, but you just used their copyrighted (oand probably trademarked) name, "Metallica", on your distribution. Guess what, they've now got reason to send the legal spawn after your Napster account anyway.
It might not be as real an offence as actually distributing their music, but don't expect that to slow them down when they decide to step on pirate distribution. You don't have a legal leg to stand on.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
I agree that there are other alternatives that could be better for the software industry as a whole. Unfortunately, the courts will be more concerned with what MS has done wrong and how they should be punished and prevented from doing so again. Their primary concern probably won't be the overall welfare of the industry.
Looking at Stallman's article, he quickly writes off exactly what the US courts will be most concerned with. "The latter (breaking up MS) would mainly help others proprietary application developers compete, which would only offer users alternative ways to let go of their freedom." Sure those are alternate ways for users to buy into secrecy - but that's exactly what this trial is about, competition in a capitalist market. He then goes on to give alternative measures which would benefit FREE SOFTWARE - not what a court in the capitalistic USofA is likely to care much about.
This court case isn't about freedom to the US gov, even if advocates of free software wish it were.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
arg ... bad puns hurt.
You know what to do with the HELLO.
You know what to do with the HELLO.