Re:you can thank Patron Saint Orrin Hatch for this
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Trick or Treatment
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· Score: 1
Orrin Hatch and his 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act which did the following:
It expanded the types of products that could be marketed as "supplements." The most logical definition of "dietary supplement" would be something that supplies one or more essential nutrients missing from the diet. DSHEA went far beyond this to include vitamins; minerals; herbs or other botanicals; amino acids; other dietary substances to supplement the diet by increasing dietary intake; and any concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any such ingredients.
Since its passage, even hormones, such as DHEA and melatonin, are being hawked as supplements.
DSHEA also prohibits the FDA from banning dubious supplement ingredients as "unapproved food additives." Before DSHEA's passage, the FDA considered this strategy more efficient than taking action against individual manufacturers. Now the only way to banish an ingredient is to prove it is unsafe. Ingredients that are useless but harmless are protected. Nor is there any practical way for the FDA to ensure that the ingredients listed on product labels are actually in the products.
All of these quotes are pulled from Quackwatch but If you want to look up more information about it, it's pretty widely attacked for what it allows Supplement suppliers to pawn off as safe/effective. Another movie that mentions it is "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" (which is about steroids mostly) where they fill pills with sugar and trace amounts of compounds and then could legally sell it on the market without any real label information, other than "contains:".
To each his own. Until Apple decides that there is free sound floating through the air on radio waves and they probably should allow their player to receive those, I won't be getting another iPod (and considering my 3gen iPod's battery died faster than a 360 Game disc during an earthquake).
I also enjoy the subscription music service. The 3 Zune's in my family can listen to all the music they want for $15/mo total.
the Zune software is Just as bad as Itunes as bloatware, so that's a wash.
But the radio and music subscription are what I want, and most people don't care about, and that's fine, but other than those things, the players are highly similar.
I wonder whether some people would prefer a slight increase on the price of a console to include the ability to reorient it while a disk was playing inside without scratching the disc.
How dumb do they think teenagers are?
Hardhack: take said Jamming key to local Hardware store and have a copy made.
Hotswap: Ask friend in car for their cellphone.
Corrupted information: Hang up on every call from your parents and tell them "I don't know why I didn't get your call at 3:00 AM asking where I was didn't get through, must be that stupid key I'm using.."
The number of polygons in a game is not proportional to how fun the game is - no matter what the Microsoft and Sony marketing departments say.
Unless those polygons are directly proportional to the number of Enemies the system is able to generate/show. SEE: Dead Rising for Wii. A mall full of, say, 6 zombies just doesn't seem to have the same effect/gameplay possibilities.
There are some gameplay ideas/mechanics that require more advanced physics simulations and processing power to do. Do Physics = Fun? No, but processing power does allow for different gameplay possibilities.
If by stable, you mean "Because of the scope of game they made, we'll overlook the bugs, glitches, broken geometry, horrid gun controls, broken multiplayer etc. etc." The only time I cheated in GTA games was either because Friends wanted to cause mass mayhem, or I was stuck in geometry and required a Rocket Launcher to kill myself to get out.
GTA:SA was one of the more stable Rockstar games i've played, and GTAIV seemed to be a step backwards due to being next gen, some of the old GTA3 bugs came back.
When master tapes exist, and Harmonix can get the rights to use the song, they often use the master tapes. The announcement that the full "Who's Next" Who album was announced to be released in rock band, but because someone had lost a couple of the masters, they ended up releasing a random Who song pack with the songs they could find masters for and some live stuff. As a fan of the Audio Engineering on BloodSugarSexMagik, I bought the rock band album so I could hear some of the tracks isolated.
Depends. If they actually make a separate game, like the Rock Band AC/DC disc, they will kneecap their potential customers. Personally, I, being a younger fellow, had never really listened to many of the older songs in Rock Band 1&2. I had heard them, but only in the background. When you are forced to play the songs, and really listen (when they are actually good songs), you get an attachment to the songs. They need to give out 3 free Beatles songs and 3 free AC/DC songs as promotional material for the separate games, and they could sell these add ons no problem.
Me and my wife have been replaying Diablo 2 over lan over the past 2 months because the lag over Battle.net is too noticeable. So i guess if they get networking code as good as sitting in the same room as someone, it won't matter, but skeptical cat is skeptical.
His numbers may be off, but I think the idea is generally right, even if DRM is stupid, most people don't care/know about what spying techniques companies use or put on your computer. Most people don't know in 10 years some games will no longer work due to authentication servers going down.
The main problem with his thesis though, is that the smaller percentage (up to about 40-50% of gamers though, not.2%) are the ones who care about it. They are also the ones who are knowledgeable enough to Know how to use a torrent and how to navigate the pirate webs. So, you put dumb DRM schemes in a game, they WILL utilize the Torrent instead of purchasing the full game. I can't tell you how many CD-cracks i've used on Valid games i've bought because of a scratched cd not authenticating or annoying authentication. Yes, most people don't know what DRM scheme you are using on the latest SIMS expansion, so why intrude on these people?
DRM doesn't do what they think it does. It encourages Piracy (by making valid copies less than their pirated versions) and spies on people who have no intent on pirating your game anyway or breaking any DRM.
Three things come up in my head from this story:
1. Wasn't everyone ok with the takedown/repost way that Youtube handled other potential copyrighted videos a few months back? Yes, it sucks that they take them down, but they go back up eventually. With the volume of videos going through youtube, 10 days is pretty damn fast to investigate potential copyright infringement. (as if a fragmented pixellated 320x240 10 minute flash video could be considered infringement, but that's neither here nor there for this conversation)
2. So McCain's camp wants special hosting treatment from youtube for their campaign videos? If ANYTHING changes about DMCA coming from john mccain, it will be that Politicians get special treatment hosting their videos and a loophole for politicans to use that exempts them from the DMCA. John McCain has been a vocal supporter of the MPAA and RIAA and the new Copyright Czar. (even if he has used several campaign songs without permission from the owners.)
3. Is John McCain's Campaign really this hard up for cash? Sheesh man, when your campaign is relying on a free video hosting service to get your message out, you can't exactly bitch about not getting your money's worth. Pay for your own damned video bandwith if you want constant reliable service.
The World Bank and the IMF are infamous for requiring Countries to De-Nationalize resources, requiring that foreign Nationals can buy up once publicly owned companies, and turning social Democracies into lasse-faire capitalist countries in return for their "aid". See: Poland, Indonesia, Chili, Argentina, South America, etc. This usually causes real wages to fall, unemployment to increase, and the reduction of land ownership by locals.
Part of the problem came from the fact that people could buy CDO's against these subprime packages that they did not own.
I heard it yesterday put like this: Tom can get life insurance in case he dies, for a fee. Now, Tom is getting older and his neighbor decides to get life insurance against tom too, betting that Tom will die soon enough to make it worth his investment to the life insurance. Tom's entire town figures out tom is dying, and they all bet in tom's demise. Now, Nobody at the bank actually has to find out that Tom isn't the guy making all of these policies against his life, allowing gambling to run rampant on Tom's Life. When Tom dies, the insurance company pays out all of these policies, which most likely bankrupts the bank, due to their mismanagement of the policies and their 40-to-1 debt ratio they've been allowed to run, ever since that was overturned from the 10-to-1 that was set up in the 30's. The banks claim since they were allowed a 40-to-1 debt ratio, they weren't doing anything wrong. IANAFE (financial expert), but this is my understanding of the problem so far.
Woosh. Ok, I'll clarify since you missed the point... he refuses to rent games for $50. Sure if these DRM laiden stores let you rent a game for 2 weeks for $10, we'd be having a different discussion. But if these "bought" games verification servers are ever taken down, guess what, that $50 purchase just became a rental that you can no longer use.
I feel the same way. I'm lvl 18 and have 26 or so gold, which, for how much gold I use, is way too much. This is even with a 10% tax. The only expense you really have is your mount (no breaking gear! Thank jeebus). Who would buy gold in this game?
Agreed. However, If you aren't in a hurry (play some other holiday releases and complete them first) I would wait until around Christmas. The game is 90% good right now, but there are some glitches that should be ironed out soon. These aren't game breaking (well, for most people, some people still CTD and BSOD) but the game will be fantastic when these quirks are ironed out. Most of the quirks are things like animations and armor graphical glitches, but some things are infuriating, like the Chaos Sorceress' Root spell not working, while the Order's Bright Wizard's Root works a little too well (big deal for RVR.)
All of that said, i'm having SO much fun raiding keeps and PVPing my brains out.
So much of the final quality depends on the processing that the studio does that it's not a good idea to simply assume because it's Blu-Ray tha quality will be top-notch, so I always check things out first.
This is the reason why $30 is too much. If I have to consult a magazine or website to make sure a movie is good quality/good transfer, something is broken. 96% of movies I buy in the $5-10 range from major studios are of equal quality and have no major transfer problems. When you start buying dvd's that cost less than $4, you start getting the strange/horrible dvd transfers. If i'm paying 3x what a standard dvd costs, quality should be top notch.
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Orrin Hatch and his 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act which did the following:
It expanded the types of products that could be marketed as "supplements." The most logical definition of "dietary supplement" would be something that supplies one or more essential nutrients missing from the diet. DSHEA went far beyond this to include vitamins; minerals; herbs or other botanicals; amino acids; other dietary substances to supplement the diet by increasing dietary intake; and any concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any such ingredients.
Since its passage, even hormones, such as DHEA and melatonin, are being hawked as supplements.
DSHEA also prohibits the FDA from banning dubious supplement ingredients as "unapproved food additives." Before DSHEA's passage, the FDA considered this strategy more efficient than taking action against individual manufacturers. Now the only way to banish an ingredient is to prove it is unsafe. Ingredients that are useless but harmless are protected. Nor is there any practical way for the FDA to ensure that the ingredients listed on product labels are actually in the products.
All of these quotes are pulled from Quackwatch but If you want to look up more information about it, it's pretty widely attacked for what it allows Supplement suppliers to pawn off as safe/effective. Another movie that mentions it is "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" (which is about steroids mostly) where they fill pills with sugar and trace amounts of compounds and then could legally sell it on the market without any real label information, other than "contains:".
To each his own. Until Apple decides that there is free sound floating through the air on radio waves and they probably should allow their player to receive those, I won't be getting another iPod (and considering my 3gen iPod's battery died faster than a 360 Game disc during an earthquake).
I also enjoy the subscription music service. The 3 Zune's in my family can listen to all the music they want for $15/mo total.
the Zune software is Just as bad as Itunes as bloatware, so that's a wash.
But the radio and music subscription are what I want, and most people don't care about, and that's fine, but other than those things, the players are highly similar.
Fixed that for /.
How dumb do they think teenagers are?
Hardhack: take said Jamming key to local Hardware store and have a copy made.
Hotswap: Ask friend in car for their cellphone.
Corrupted information: Hang up on every call from your parents and tell them "I don't know why I didn't get your call at 3:00 AM asking where I was didn't get through, must be that stupid key I'm using.."
Unless those polygons are directly proportional to the number of Enemies the system is able to generate/show. SEE: Dead Rising for Wii. A mall full of, say, 6 zombies just doesn't seem to have the same effect/gameplay possibilities.
There are some gameplay ideas/mechanics that require more advanced physics simulations and processing power to do. Do Physics = Fun? No, but processing power does allow for different gameplay possibilities.
If by stable, you mean "Because of the scope of game they made, we'll overlook the bugs, glitches, broken geometry, horrid gun controls, broken multiplayer etc. etc." The only time I cheated in GTA games was either because Friends wanted to cause mass mayhem, or I was stuck in geometry and required a Rocket Launcher to kill myself to get out.
GTA:SA was one of the more stable Rockstar games i've played, and GTAIV seemed to be a step backwards due to being next gen, some of the old GTA3 bugs came back.
When master tapes exist, and Harmonix can get the rights to use the song, they often use the master tapes. The announcement that the full "Who's Next" Who album was announced to be released in rock band, but because someone had lost a couple of the masters, they ended up releasing a random Who song pack with the songs they could find masters for and some live stuff. As a fan of the Audio Engineering on BloodSugarSexMagik, I bought the rock band album so I could hear some of the tracks isolated.
Depends. If they actually make a separate game, like the Rock Band AC/DC disc, they will kneecap their potential customers. Personally, I, being a younger fellow, had never really listened to many of the older songs in Rock Band 1&2. I had heard them, but only in the background. When you are forced to play the songs, and really listen (when they are actually good songs), you get an attachment to the songs. They need to give out 3 free Beatles songs and 3 free AC/DC songs as promotional material for the separate games, and they could sell these add ons no problem.
Metallica and Aerosmith say yes, video games are the future of music. So using that, I would say No, it's not.
Apparently, Keeping a website from being slashdotted IS HARDER than rocket science.
Delayed PS3 game + angry gamers + Anon. internet forums + Western distrust of Islam = A lot of wasted /. Moderator points slaying trolls.
[ed. Minitrue: This post did not conform to the community standards of Austrailia. Have a nice day.]
You would think they could have predicted that changing "feign death" to "Quadruple your aggro" would have caused problems.
Me and my wife have been replaying Diablo 2 over lan over the past 2 months because the lag over Battle.net is too noticeable. So i guess if they get networking code as good as sitting in the same room as someone, it won't matter, but skeptical cat is skeptical.
I ran into Everybody. Level 70 warlock on icecrown.
His numbers may be off, but I think the idea is generally right, even if DRM is stupid, most people don't care/know about what spying techniques companies use or put on your computer. Most people don't know in 10 years some games will no longer work due to authentication servers going down.
.2%) are the ones who care about it. They are also the ones who are knowledgeable enough to Know how to use a torrent and how to navigate the pirate webs. So, you put dumb DRM schemes in a game, they WILL utilize the Torrent instead of purchasing the full game. I can't tell you how many CD-cracks i've used on Valid games i've bought because of a scratched cd not authenticating or annoying authentication. Yes, most people don't know what DRM scheme you are using on the latest SIMS expansion, so why intrude on these people?
The main problem with his thesis though, is that the smaller percentage (up to about 40-50% of gamers though, not
DRM doesn't do what they think it does. It encourages Piracy (by making valid copies less than their pirated versions) and spies on people who have no intent on pirating your game anyway or breaking any DRM.
Three things come up in my head from this story:
1. Wasn't everyone ok with the takedown/repost way that Youtube handled other potential copyrighted videos a few months back? Yes, it sucks that they take them down, but they go back up eventually. With the volume of videos going through youtube, 10 days is pretty damn fast to investigate potential copyright infringement. (as if a fragmented pixellated 320x240 10 minute flash video could be considered infringement, but that's neither here nor there for this conversation)
2. So McCain's camp wants special hosting treatment from youtube for their campaign videos? If ANYTHING changes about DMCA coming from john mccain, it will be that Politicians get special treatment hosting their videos and a loophole for politicans to use that exempts them from the DMCA. John McCain has been a vocal supporter of the MPAA and RIAA and the new Copyright Czar. (even if he has used several campaign songs without permission from the owners.)
3. Is John McCain's Campaign really this hard up for cash? Sheesh man, when your campaign is relying on a free video hosting service to get your message out, you can't exactly bitch about not getting your money's worth. Pay for your own damned video bandwith if you want constant reliable service.
Na, if MS wanted to do that, they would have called it "Windows NINE" and watched the flood of posts trying to explain it crash /. as retribution.
With the history of "Czars" in this country, I imagine we will see the words "Former RIAA head" or "Former MPAA Head.." in the near future.
The World Bank and the IMF are infamous for requiring Countries to De-Nationalize resources, requiring that foreign Nationals can buy up once publicly owned companies, and turning social Democracies into lasse-faire capitalist countries in return for their "aid". See: Poland, Indonesia, Chili, Argentina, South America, etc. This usually causes real wages to fall, unemployment to increase, and the reduction of land ownership by locals.
Part of the problem came from the fact that people could buy CDO's against these subprime packages that they did not own.
I heard it yesterday put like this: Tom can get life insurance in case he dies, for a fee. Now, Tom is getting older and his neighbor decides to get life insurance against tom too, betting that Tom will die soon enough to make it worth his investment to the life insurance. Tom's entire town figures out tom is dying, and they all bet in tom's demise. Now, Nobody at the bank actually has to find out that Tom isn't the guy making all of these policies against his life, allowing gambling to run rampant on Tom's Life. When Tom dies, the insurance company pays out all of these policies, which most likely bankrupts the bank, due to their mismanagement of the policies and their 40-to-1 debt ratio they've been allowed to run, ever since that was overturned from the 10-to-1 that was set up in the 30's. The banks claim since they were allowed a 40-to-1 debt ratio, they weren't doing anything wrong. IANAFE (financial expert), but this is my understanding of the problem so far.
Woosh. Ok, I'll clarify since you missed the point... he refuses to rent games for $50. Sure if these DRM laiden stores let you rent a game for 2 weeks for $10, we'd be having a different discussion. But if these "bought" games verification servers are ever taken down, guess what, that $50 purchase just became a rental that you can no longer use.
I feel the same way. I'm lvl 18 and have 26 or so gold, which, for how much gold I use, is way too much. This is even with a 10% tax. The only expense you really have is your mount (no breaking gear! Thank jeebus). Who would buy gold in this game?
Agreed. However, If you aren't in a hurry (play some other holiday releases and complete them first) I would wait until around Christmas. The game is 90% good right now, but there are some glitches that should be ironed out soon. These aren't game breaking (well, for most people, some people still CTD and BSOD) but the game will be fantastic when these quirks are ironed out. Most of the quirks are things like animations and armor graphical glitches, but some things are infuriating, like the Chaos Sorceress' Root spell not working, while the Order's Bright Wizard's Root works a little too well (big deal for RVR.)
All of that said, i'm having SO much fun raiding keeps and PVPing my brains out.
This is the reason why $30 is too much. If I have to consult a magazine or website to make sure a movie is good quality/good transfer, something is broken. 96% of movies I buy in the $5-10 range from major studios are of equal quality and have no major transfer problems. When you start buying dvd's that cost less than $4, you start getting the strange/horrible dvd transfers. If i'm paying 3x what a standard dvd costs, quality should be top notch.