-1 Flamebait? Ack! Sorry! I guess I should have thought this one out a little more...
All I meant was, I think you can purposefully 'infect' your computer (or yourself though I don't know why). It can still be an infection even though he did it on purpose... but I confess to not having fininshed TFA. The pictures wouldn't load, and I couldn't tell what the point really was... so I don't actually know what he was loading up on. If it was malware, I would still call that infection.
Re:Is it really an infection if...
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IE7 Toolbar Mayhem
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Is it an infection if you hang around sick people and don't wash your hands to get sick on purpose?
Honestly, it's not an excessive fondness for acronyms, but the tendency for the actual names to be confusing. So these people don't know what HTML means, or RAM. So what? Would 'Hyper Text Markup Language' make more sense to a non-geek? If you tell someone they should have more Random Access Memory, would they understand it any better? I would guess 'no'. All it would do would be to waste that extra second or two, every single time you want to say 'RAM'. Over the years... that could mean a major difference in the speed of technological development. -note to self: put funny or sarcastic closing comment here BEFORE clicking submit! DON'T FORGET!!
My initial response was to think "Wow, this guy must have a lot of free time." But then I RTFA and LATFP (looked at the fucking pictures), after which I came up with these revised sentiments:
I don't even particularly like GTA. But, would you consider The Godfather, or whatever similar movie, to be art? At least, the argument could be made. I can't think of any element of GTA that would exclude it from being 'art', other than the fact that is is a video game, which is the whole discussion here.
Really, if one is to think of video games as capable of being 'art', one should be just as willing to accept the possibility of GTA as 'art'. Again, just to reiterate what many have said so far, it's not neccissarily good art, but that is almost as subjective as the definition of 'art' in the first place.
I can agree with the idea that 'art is art because its audience thinks it is', but that just means that the status of anything as 'art' will change every time it is observed. For instance, if you take a famous Van Gogh painting to the middle of the jungle, and show it to a group of people who have never been outside their village, they might not even know what it is, let alone assingn it any abstract significance like saying it is 'art' and therefore important. However, they will doubtless have their own form of 'art', which might be unrecognizable to anyone else in the world.
In conclusion: Who cares if GTA is art? Who cares if Final Fatasy or Katamari Damacy or Half-Life 2 is art? If you like GTA, play GTA. If you think GTA is art, take a moment every once in a while and think to yourself, "wow, this is great art I'm playing." If you like Half-Life 2, play Half-Life 2. If you don't think Half-Life 2 is art, you are an uncultured buffoon, and you have no taste.
although it does not follow directly from this discovery, is the question: If you could change the balance at any point, what would it mean to be able to choose between heightened risk of cancer and some of the worse effects of old age? What a choice to have to make. (AFAIK, this is not even an issue, just something I thought of after hearing of it. I did not RTFA, but I heard this same discovery reported on the news recently.)
Ads on the clothing could be used to reduce the price so people actually wear it.
Oh god. NOOOOOO! I can't stand it... I don't want to see FLASHING! AD! BANNERS! on people!! I got away from them on the internet (firefox + adblock) but there is no way to protect yourself from throngs of joggers wearing DISCOUNT ELECTRONICS and FREE ONLINE GAMBLING etc.... I know, I know, but it's still a terrible idea. Advertising will always want to be flashy and eye-catching in some way. Hopefully people will have enough sense to stay away from the whole idea... but I wonder... by providing free clothing to the homeless, Corpoation X gets free ad space in return! Actually, that's kind of sad, now that I think of it.
More importantly, you mean people don't wear clothing unless they have some sort of price incentive? Where do you live? Thousands of slashdot geeks have to know!
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! That is so NOT correct! Let me direct you to this handy flow-chart:
Fear -> Anger -> Hate -> Dark Side -> Disfigurement -> ????? -> Profit
...record labels might as well require artists to release only two songs at a time, instead of longer albums.
That's a bit extreme, but think about it.
How do you, the consumer, know which individual songs you like and want to download before you hear them? Radio stations have only ever played the 1-2 songs per album most likely to be popular, so it's unlikely that most people will have heard anything else from a new album. Many of my favorite songs have never been played on the radio, and some of them I didn't even like much at first. If people don't download whole albums, the only songs that will be significant (read: highly profitable for the label) will be the 2 or occasionally 3 songs that get stuck in your head the easiest. I think that's a bad thing.
I like the idea of a dicounted rate (80 cents/song?) if the album is purchased as a whole. Good incentive for people to take a risk on music they haven't heard which might be amazing, while still allowing for the option of buying just the one song they like and ignoring the rest.
while the Wii, xBox360, and PS3 all have online capability (or can add it), there is no guarantee a player will have a high-speed net connection needed for such upgrades, so it needs to work out of the box.
And, you know, it's difficult to update your game disc, being as it's a disc. You know?
Ok, so in that example, what is the purpose of the government? A gov't is supposedly in place for the sake of the people- to benefit the people. How can that be accomplished at the expense of the same people? So, is its goal simply to maintain its own existance? If so, why should it exist in the first place? Why should the people put up with something the only function of which is to protect itself (which it does by hurting the people)?
Sorry, I got distracted while I was writing. I was replying to both of you, telling you I don't think you understood his reply to your comment, and just throwing in my two cents. I also made one post out of what should hav been two, because I didn't have time... I should have more clearly separated the two different trains of thought.
Also, sorry if I sounded hostile or rude.
You're the one getting confused here. He said Gandhi did not try to hide the things that he did. Nothing had anything to do with Gandhi invading aomeone else's privacy. In other words, he feels that being constantly observed and recorded is acceptable because... I'm not sure why. But that you can work to reform the government while being observed, because you should have nothing to hide.
What makes you think that just and compassionate laws are in any way necssary for fair application of total observation?
What makes you think that total observation won't lead to just and compassionate laws?
Ghandi and King both worked in the open against unjust laws, and they won--by being in the open. If you're too cowardly to do whatever it is that you do out in the open, then you shouldn't be doing it.
Also, they were both assassinated (note: I'm not saying either was neccessarily done in by their gov't). This doesn't change the fact that they were both excellent human beings, but get serious. Critisizing the gov't can be a dangerous thing, aspecially when it knows everything about you. Privacy is necessary for the safety and security of the citizens. (Think of, I don't know, Soviet Russia, Iran...)
I would not want to be observed even if the gov't was the most competent and benevolent the world has ever known.
Don't you see? We have finally developed a precise, specific way of rating games! No more of those 'fuzzy' ratings. Now you can know at a glance exactly how violent a game is- ANY game! If the same process was used for other factors, it would only be better.
Here's an example to use as a guide:
Resident Evil 4
--
71% Violent
16% Interaction With Shady Unexplained Weapons Dealer
8% Drug Use
5% Typewriter Use
--
Half-Life Episode One
--
68% Violent
24.5% Dark
6% Crawling in Air Ducts
1.5% Sexually Suggestive
--
Pac-Man (revised)
--
50% Violent
25% Overeating
15% Scary Ghosts
10% Floating Fruit
--
I agree with you. However, it's even more petty than that.
Even taking the fact that they are uploading it back to others into consideration, that still is not more that (in all practicality) a dozen to a hundred people.
Most people stop the task not long after it finishes downloading. So 80% of people who are guilty, could arguably be responsible for (about) 2 - 2.5 copies.
On the other, more hypothetical, hand, even if the 'damaged' party were to persue reparations in this way, they'd be after twice as much money as they 'lost': person A acquires one copy and distibutes 1-ish, and person B does the same, and suddenly there are 4 items involved instead of 2. In the case of digital media, even this doesn't quite make sense, because the 'loss' is the loss of a potential sale in the first place. No physical object has been stolen or damaged. If you steal a DVD, the store might get it back, but used, broken, etc., maybe you had to break a display case, whatever. You could make five-hundred copies of Meet the Fokkers and no one would know the difference.
And that reminds me of something else, too. Those 'anti-piracy' ads in theaters and on DVD's, the ones that compare illegal downloading (and then buying bootleg DVDs, as if they were the same thing) to stealing a car/purse/actual DVD? Who the hell are they targeted at? Certainly not people who just paid $8 for a ticket and another $8 for snacks/drinks. Not the people who paid $30 for a DVD. If you regularly download movies, you aren't going to be in the theater to see it. Those ads were meant to convince people who had nothing to do with it that the MPAA is in the right. That's all I can figure out, because unless you sneak in the theater or shoplift the DVD you are paying to watch it. And also RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT.
Measures that contain sperm, such as abstinence or condom use, extend the life of existing organisms because they ensure that new life does not compete for resources that could be used to sustain existing life. Define "propagation of life" precisely to help solve this dilemma. Is it the maximum number of organisms at any given moment? Is it the sum of the lifespans of all organisms? Is it just the number of diploid cells in existence at once?
Yeah, 'propagation of life' does not just mean 'continuing to breed'. We are most certainly in a position where we need to worry about overpopulation, which is way no-good. The instinct to reproduce doesn't take into account your being THE dominant species on the block. Mother Nature isn't hot enough shit to work that one out on the first try, I guess. Maybe 2 million rises/falls of humanity later, we'll be born with restraint and moderation.
assuming that you believe Darwin knew what he was talking about, it is our obligation as a species to continue the propogation of life.
That's the other thing. Natural selection is not a doctrine, no one has ever been commanded to follow its priciples, and it don't obligate anybody nothin'. That's like saying that if you belive in gravity, you are obligated to fall down.
That's how it always starts. A little logo in the corner, a 15 second ad, a twenty second ad, two ads, and then there's no hope. A new medium will only keep you safe for so long. Did you know that the idea behind cable TV, once upon a time, was that you would be paying extra to get TV without commercials? Think about that. It should almost make you laugh- with fear and loathing. Now ads are showing up in video games. Soon people won't even think twice about all those commercials wedged into their downloaded shows. We'll just suck it up and let all our content become stuffed to the brim with horrible ads and branding and other, more devious, forms of product placement. And it will all be YOUR FAULT.
I, for one, welcome our new, cool, refreshing, deliciously satisfying masters.
The story doesn't say it was picked up. The editor is implying that this should have happened in the "Global Frequency" situation- "where was this guy [when we needed someone to do this but no one did] last year?".
The impression I got - from reading the article, and from her public blog, which someone linked, - was that ahe did not reveal anything classified or secret, but revealed that she had seen it. That may still be a major no-no, and (I'm no expert) maybe still gets a body fired.
This deserves attention because it is an example of the idea that if information gets leaked, the person who did so is the problem, not the information leaked. Example: There's this issue of "our government is X", which conveniently becomes converted into "employee/journalist Y was not supposed to know/say Z", a problem which is easily and concisly dealt with. In this case X is "torturing people", Y is "Christine Axsmith", and Z is "that she read something confidential which happens to be an example of X".
I'll tell you what's really going on: Apple buying Nintendo? A ruse. Merely an excuse to finally drop the pretense that they were ever seperate companies. Apple is Nintendo.
If you hadn't noticed, the Wii (iWii?) controller is actually just an iPod shuffle.
And Steve Jobs? Satoru Iwata wearing a mask and a black turtleneck.
The expected release date may have changed since the last time I cared to take a look at PS3 info. For a while, the PS3 was scheduled for 2007. Now that I check, it does seem to have been moved back up to November '06. At any rate, it'll come down before the PS3 price does.
500 - 400 is indeed 100. 600 - 400 is 200. 500 - 250 is 250. 600 - 250 is Three-hundred-fifty dollars.
Not to mention that a) the price of the 360 will likely come down either before or not long after the PS3 is launched, and b) the Wii may even be less than $250.
Even if you only compare the PS3 'lite' with the 360, $100 more than 400 bucks does not in my book qualify as a good deal.
Slashdot Mirror
-1 Flamebait? Ack! Sorry! I guess I should have thought this one out a little more... All I meant was, I think you can purposefully 'infect' your computer (or yourself though I don't know why). It can still be an infection even though he did it on purpose... but I confess to not having fininshed TFA. The pictures wouldn't load, and I couldn't tell what the point really was... so I don't actually know what he was loading up on. If it was malware, I would still call that infection.
Is it an infection if you hang around sick people and don't wash your hands to get sick on purpose?
Honestly, it's not an excessive fondness for acronyms, but the tendency for the actual names to be confusing. So these people don't know what HTML means, or RAM. So what? Would 'Hyper Text Markup Language' make more sense to a non-geek? If you tell someone they should have more Random Access Memory, would they understand it any better? I would guess 'no'. All it would do would be to waste that extra second or two, every single time you want to say 'RAM'. Over the years... that could mean a major difference in the speed of technological development. -note to self: put funny or sarcastic closing comment here BEFORE clicking submit! DON'T FORGET!!
"Wow, this guy must have really big pockets."
Really, if one is to think of video games as capable of being 'art', one should be just as willing to accept the possibility of GTA as 'art'. Again, just to reiterate what many have said so far, it's not neccissarily good art, but that is almost as subjective as the definition of 'art' in the first place.
I can agree with the idea that 'art is art because its audience thinks it is', but that just means that the status of anything as 'art' will change every time it is observed. For instance, if you take a famous Van Gogh painting to the middle of the jungle, and show it to a group of people who have never been outside their village, they might not even know what it is, let alone assingn it any abstract significance like saying it is 'art' and therefore important. However, they will doubtless have their own form of 'art', which might be unrecognizable to anyone else in the world.
In conclusion: Who cares if GTA is art? Who cares if Final Fatasy or Katamari Damacy or Half-Life 2 is art? If you like GTA, play GTA. If you think GTA is art, take a moment every once in a while and think to yourself, "wow, this is great art I'm playing." If you like Half-Life 2, play Half-Life 2. If you don't think Half-Life 2 is art, you are an uncultured buffoon, and you have no taste.
although it does not follow directly from this discovery, is the question: If you could change the balance at any point, what would it mean to be able to choose between heightened risk of cancer and some of the worse effects of old age? What a choice to have to make. (AFAIK, this is not even an issue, just something I thought of after hearing of it. I did not RTFA, but I heard this same discovery reported on the news recently.)
'An' abacus? 'Or two'?? That would be very low-res.
Errgh... yeah. Hey! That's not a conclusion at all! It's a question!
Oh god. NOOOOOO! I can't stand it... I don't want to see FLASHING! AD! BANNERS! on people!! I got away from them on the internet (firefox + adblock) but there is no way to protect yourself from throngs of joggers wearing DISCOUNT ELECTRONICS and FREE ONLINE GAMBLING etc.... I know, I know, but it's still a terrible idea. Advertising will always want to be flashy and eye-catching in some way. Hopefully people will have enough sense to stay away from the whole idea... but I wonder... by providing free clothing to the homeless, Corpoation X gets free ad space in return! Actually, that's kind of sad, now that I think of it.
More importantly, you mean people don't wear clothing unless they have some sort of price incentive? Where do you live? Thousands of slashdot geeks have to know!
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! That is so NOT correct! Let me direct you to this handy flow-chart: Fear -> Anger -> Hate -> Dark Side -> Disfigurement -> ????? -> Profit
...record labels might as well require artists to release only two songs at a time, instead of longer albums. That's a bit extreme, but think about it. How do you, the consumer, know which individual songs you like and want to download before you hear them? Radio stations have only ever played the 1-2 songs per album most likely to be popular, so it's unlikely that most people will have heard anything else from a new album. Many of my favorite songs have never been played on the radio, and some of them I didn't even like much at first. If people don't download whole albums, the only songs that will be significant (read: highly profitable for the label) will be the 2 or occasionally 3 songs that get stuck in your head the easiest. I think that's a bad thing. I like the idea of a dicounted rate (80 cents/song?) if the album is purchased as a whole. Good incentive for people to take a risk on music they haven't heard which might be amazing, while still allowing for the option of buying just the one song they like and ignoring the rest.
Ok, so in that example, what is the purpose of the government? A gov't is supposedly in place for the sake of the people- to benefit the people. How can that be accomplished at the expense of the same people? So, is its goal simply to maintain its own existance? If so, why should it exist in the first place? Why should the people put up with something the only function of which is to protect itself (which it does by hurting the people)?
Sorry, I got distracted while I was writing. I was replying to both of you, telling you I don't think you understood his reply to your comment, and just throwing in my two cents. I also made one post out of what should hav been two, because I didn't have time... I should have more clearly separated the two different trains of thought. Also, sorry if I sounded hostile or rude.
Don't you see? We have finally developed a precise, specific way of rating games! No more of those 'fuzzy' ratings. Now you can know at a glance exactly how violent a game is- ANY game! If the same process was used for other factors, it would only be better. Here's an example to use as a guide: Resident Evil 4 -- 71% Violent 16% Interaction With Shady Unexplained Weapons Dealer 8% Drug Use 5% Typewriter Use -- Half-Life Episode One -- 68% Violent 24.5% Dark 6% Crawling in Air Ducts 1.5% Sexually Suggestive -- Pac-Man (revised) -- 50% Violent 25% Overeating 15% Scary Ghosts 10% Floating Fruit --
That's how it always starts. A little logo in the corner, a 15 second ad, a twenty second ad, two ads, and then there's no hope. A new medium will only keep you safe for so long. Did you know that the idea behind cable TV, once upon a time, was that you would be paying extra to get TV without commercials? Think about that. It should almost make you laugh- with fear and loathing. Now ads are showing up in video games. Soon people won't even think twice about all those commercials wedged into their downloaded shows. We'll just suck it up and let all our content become stuffed to the brim with horrible ads and branding and other, more devious, forms of product placement. And it will all be YOUR FAULT. I, for one, welcome our new, cool, refreshing, deliciously satisfying masters.
The story doesn't say it was picked up. The editor is implying that this should have happened in the "Global Frequency" situation- "where was this guy [when we needed someone to do this but no one did] last year?".
The impression I got - from reading the article, and from her public blog, which someone linked, - was that ahe did not reveal anything classified or secret, but revealed that she had seen it. That may still be a major no-no, and (I'm no expert) maybe still gets a body fired. This deserves attention because it is an example of the idea that if information gets leaked, the person who did so is the problem, not the information leaked. Example: There's this issue of "our government is X", which conveniently becomes converted into "employee/journalist Y was not supposed to know/say Z", a problem which is easily and concisly dealt with. In this case X is "torturing people", Y is "Christine Axsmith", and Z is "that she read something confidential which happens to be an example of X".
I'll tell you what's really going on: Apple buying Nintendo? A ruse. Merely an excuse to finally drop the pretense that they were ever seperate companies. Apple is Nintendo. If you hadn't noticed, the Wii (iWii?) controller is actually just an iPod shuffle. And Steve Jobs? Satoru Iwata wearing a mask and a black turtleneck.
The expected release date may have changed since the last time I cared to take a look at PS3 info. For a while, the PS3 was scheduled for 2007. Now that I check, it does seem to have been moved back up to November '06. At any rate, it'll come down before the PS3 price does.
Looks like YOU need help with math...
We'll round up $1 to make it simpler.
PS3= $500 *OR* $600
360= $400
Wii= $250
500 - 400 is indeed 100.
600 - 400 is 200.
500 - 250 is 250.
600 - 250 is Three-hundred-fifty dollars.
Not to mention that a) the price of the 360 will likely come down either before or not long after the PS3 is launched, and b) the Wii may even be less than $250.
Even if you only compare the PS3 'lite' with the 360, $100 more than 400 bucks does not in my book qualify as a good deal.