At least not until North Korea is defeated and South Korea is left with the unhappy task of trying to integrate their economies and cultures.
Germany faced a similar problem when the Communist Bloc collapsed and East and West Germany were re-united, but at least that unification didn't start with open warfare and didn't require them to undo three generations of increasingly strident anti-Seoul propoganda. Plus, they still had Poland as a buffer between them and Russia (which was facing its own set of problems at the time, too). But it's economy was weakened and pushed into a deep recession before it finally recovered
A unified Korea, though, will have all sorts of problems in the beginning. It might end up - in twenty years - as an amazing economic superpower but the interim is likely to be quite painful. At least the Germany's economies were similar (both were highly industrialized). What does North Korea have to offer South Korea except for problems? Millions of untrained, starving peasants bred to hate their cousins? A decaying infrastructure that will soon be a century out of date? A border with the century's next superpower? Such a task might not just ruin the south's economy; it might push it over into an abyss causing enough chaos from which alternatives like the Kim's long regime seem sane in comparison.
I don't envy South Korea, I really don't. Their options seem equally shitty at the moment: either live with an increasingly unpredictable madman to the north, or junk their economy for half a generation. And sadly, no matter which they way they chose, it still seems as if they may face a massive loss of life. I imagine at this point their sole hope is that Kim family gets thrown out and replaced by a more sensible group who are willing to gradually integrate the two countries into a unified natio Alas, the likelihood of that happening - especially without the massive loss of life - seems increasingly slim.
Says the guy with a UID almost three times bigger than mine (I kid, I kid; it's not as if my six-digit UID is anything to boast about either)
Actually, I was referring more to the hyperbole in the original article (well, video since the website with the article was slashdotted when I tried to view it) more than the usual over-the-top claims made in the Slashdot summary.
With the former, it's (unfortunately) expected; however, as the Swede in question obviously has engineering skills, I had hoped he would be more appreciative of accuracy over wild and unfounded claims.
Although it's great to see such enthusiasm and effort poured into such a quintessentially geeky hobby.
Nonetheless, the public perception - perhaps encouraged by Sony - is that customers will be able to resell Playstation 4 games unrestrictedly, whereas on the XBoxNewest, used game sales will be impossible. Therefore, everyone should buy the PS4 and avoid Microsoft's latest offering as the PS4 is the only viable alternative if you are interested in selling your old game.
But the likely reality is that the publishers will limit used game sales regardless of the platform so long as they can do so, and this sort of restriction will be possible on the PS4. Thus, customers will get screwed regardless of what platform they chose. If Sony were truly interested in protecting their customers, they would create a policy that the publishers/can't/ require online registration to lock a game to a particular user: they pointedly are/not/ doing so. Sony is creating a false impression to its customer base about the expected reality by trying to wiggle out of the responsibility: "it's not/us/ that's doing this, it's the publishers!", even though they are in the unique position of stopping it from happening.
And mark my words, the publishers will take advantage of these new features, whether they are built into the hardware - as with XBoxNextGen - or merely aided by policy and functionality already in the machine, as with the PS4 (on a related note, there's nothing to stop XBox360+1 game publishers from allowing their games to be re-registered to a new XBox if re-sold but I wouldn't hold my breath). They know that their customers, as a general rule, do not care enough about this issue at purchase time, nor do they full understand the implications of what they are giving up. And that their slick advertising campaign will so dazzle them with the new shiny that any niggling doubts will be drowned out with fast talking and impressive graphics.
The alternative is not simply to chose Playstation 4 over XBoxNext. The alternative is to make it clear to console developers and publishers that this sort of behavior is not welcome. Similarly, the purpose of my original objection was not to claim superiority of any one platform over the other (anyway, we all know hardware peaked with the Amiga, right, so what's the point in arguing any further over these johnny-come-latelies?) but to simply point out that none of the platforms are really offering the freedom-to-resell that we have come to expect from earlier consoles, no matter how they are arranging this restruction. The PS4 may be the lesser of evils, but it is still evil.
Plus, Sony does not have a good record in this area so any promises made regarding this topic should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
Related question - what would make a good fundamental "minimum altitude" to say "space"?
From SpaceWatch(the website I linked to in my parent post): "The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), formed 107 years ago and widely recognised as the governing body for aeronautics, astronautics and related activities, puts the beginning of space at 100km. This is now sometimes dubbed the Kármán line after the person who calculated that aerodynamic lift was impossible at higher levels without attaining orbital velocity. "
Also see "The Kármán line, or commonly simply Karman line, lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth's sea level, and is commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space."
I think these are both workable definitions.
Mind you, none of this pedantic bickering is to take away from Windestål's accomplishment; it's great and he should be proud of what he has done. I eagerly await hearing about further successes from him. It's just that he's nowhere near space, by any accepted definition of the word.
Well, perhaps not/surprised/ since, as it's a country, one might expect it to have its own TLD. But it never crossed my mind to wonder what it might be.
I have to admit, once I learned that its TLD was.GL, the first thing I did was check to see if Open.GL was taken (it is). I can't imagine I was the only one to do so; I wonder how much extra traffic that site is getting today...
Not to dismiss this guy's accomplishments, but saying his model plane reached the "edge of space" is sort of like saying I've reached the "edge of the ocean" when I'm at Times Square in New York City.
Typically, the "edge of space" is 100km up (the United States is a bit more lenient, and puts it at at around 80km up and you get astronaut wings if you make it that high).
He hasn't even made it a third of the way there.
Still neat, but it could have done without the hyperbole.
That's when you visit a site like this to see what sort of crappy knock-offs are available, and get one of those for the kid.
"Daaa-aaaad! I want an X-Box!" "What's wrong with the eXtreme Box I got you last year? It's the same thing ain't it, except it comes with a light gun!"
Phhht. I ain't got no sympathy for the kids. I mean, all I had was a Coleco Telestar, while everyone else had a Playstation. "It's the same thing, ain't it, except it comes with a light gun!"
The Playstation 4 is only "unrestricted" in so much that Sony is not making always-on DRM a requirement for games to play on their system (at least, right now; Sony has a habit of changing their minds about stuff like this). The Playstation 4 will, however, allow always-online DRM and you can bet that the publishers will be making use of it just as readily as they do on the PC (and are moving as far forwards with as they can on the consoles).
I bet there's a team of accountants in Sony somewhere crunching numbers hard trying to figure out how much money the ability to resell games earns them (not directly of course, but the ability to resell games is a valued feature to many customers) and how much it would cost them to cut out retailers like Gamestop (who survive on resales). If they feel the PS4 will be profitable and successful without that feature, you can bet it will be dropped because the publishers - and retailers like Amazon or Walmart - prefer not having to compete with used products.
Pedant: That part is in Earth Dome, an artificial city where access to the surface is forbidden. It isn't unbelievable to assume that they have pressure differentials in there as well.
Of course, this is clutching at straws to explain a special effects failure but isn't that half the fun of watching sci-fi?
I wonder if they'll bring back the tight leather pants that were so close-fitting actors couldn't even sit down without assistance. And not just the female leads, either. Let's just say some costumes left/nothing/ to the imagination.
When I first glanced at this morning's Slashdot headlines, my brain parsed this as "Margaret Weiss Dies at 87" and thought, "oh what a terrible start to the day; I used to quite love her books. I didn't know she was so old!"
But on re-reading, well... I was too young to be (directly) effected by Thatcher's politics but I can understand some of the anger. Still, at least she had a sense of humor
Playstation 2 games will be supported via emulation,/if/ you buy and download them from the Playstation store (so no, you can't just pop in a PS2 disc and expect it to work; you need to buy the game again).
In other words, for full backwards compatibility you need all three devices.
Me too, except my family were Seventh Day Advent Hoppists. They believed that every Sunday should be spent hopping. They would hop to church, hop through the service, then hop back home again. See, they took the Bible literally. Adam and Eve; the snake and the apple... Took it word for word. Unfortunately, their version had a misprint. It was all based on 1 Corinthians 13, where it says "Faith, hop and charity, and the greatest of these is hop." So that's what they did. Every seventh day. I tell you, Sunday lunchtimes were a nightmare. Hopping round the table, serving soup -- we all had to wear sou'esters and asbestos underpants.
(with apologies to Grant & Naylor, although it does bring up an interesting point:/which/ version of Genesis is being used for this contenst? Lexham English Bible? King James? Old Latin? The original Greek? The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon? There are subtle differences between them all.)
I don't see the problem. Problems like these have already been considered by the experts
When the pigeons become a pest, we just release some Bolivian tree lizards. If those become a nuisance, we simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. If you have a problem with snakes, well, we've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. And the beautiful part of/that/ plan is, when wintertime rolls around the gorillas simply freeze to death!
See? Nature will find a way! So clone, my little mad scientists, clone like you have never cloned before!
Since we're well off in the realms of the hypothetical...
Why not just let it happen? What is so terrifying about human sexuality that that our precious snowflakes must be protected from learning about it?
Past generations had the kids in the same room - sometimes in the same bed - with their parents whilst the latter were involved in coitus (separate bedchambers for the younglings is a fairly new invention). And - as the majority of Americans were rural until just a few generations back - imagine what they saw the animals doing on the farm! I'd wager most of those kids grew up just fine.
So two people want to start fucking near a kindergarten? I say fine, let them. Let the kids stand, stare, point and snicker at the odd poses and noises the adults are making. Odds are it'll be far more traumatic for the adults than the children.
Arguably, it is to the supplier's advantage if the phone is locked and can never be unlocked because then that phone is irrevocably tied to one carrier. If the end-user wants to go to another carrier, they/have/ to buy a new phone; they can't unlock their existing phone and take it with them. This means an additional sale for the supplier.
In actuality, I'd guess that the number of end-users who actually DO bring their phones with them to a new carrier is such an insignificant amount that it's not worth them getting involved.
I'm not entirely sure what the advantage to the carrier is, however. The end-user is already tied to the carrier by a contract and the costs of said contract more than subsidize the cost of the phone. Is it the worry that at the end of the contract the end-user will take the (over)paid-for phone and switch to another carrier? The fact that the phone is already locked doesn't seem to be stopping this; anecdotally, I know people who purposely switch (or take a new contract with the same carrier) just to/get/ new phones. I'd reckon most people who stick with a carrier past the length of the initial contract do so because of a lack of viable options or because the inconvenience of switching outweighs the benefits.
Or is there a significant number of people who exit the initial contract prematurely (either paying off the fine or trying to get out of it entirely), signing up/only/ to get a "cheap" phone? Frankly, given how upset so many of the customers are over this issue, this would be an easy way for the carriers to garner some good will; announce that in future all cell phones are unlocked from the start (with appropriate small-text notice that, yes, you are still liable for the cost of the phone if you try to sneak out of your contract).
Does the public DESERVE to see that important WAR decisions are made based on grade school playground spats. ABSOLUTELY. Did he violate his employers trust, absolutely as well.
Some might argue - and I'm not sure I'd be amongst them - that ultimately his "employers" are the citizens and taxpayers of the United States of America, and the superior officers - up to and including the President of the United States - are just middle managers. As such, Manning was working for the good of his "employers" by reporting other, problematic employees.
Still, the whole idea of equating public service to basic employment - essentially, reducing a country so it is just another large corporation - is somewhat disquieting to me. I know the concept of patriotism is oft times spurned on Slashdot but - in moderation - I think it is a worthy thing. A country is, after all - more than just a material thing; it incorporates (or it should) the beliefs and philosophy of its people. Saying "I respect that and I'll support those goals and beliefs" is honorable. Patriotism only becomes a problem when it is blindly given and assigned to individuals (politicians, military leaders) without leaving room to question whether those individuals are supportive of the philosophy behind the country. I'd rather we look at public servants in that light than simply equate them to the hirelings of a corporate master, and judge them not on their "efficiency" but whether they are standing true to the ideals of the nation.
The question with Manning truly boils down to his motive; whether he released the documents based on an earnest belief that it was necessary for the citizens of the United States to have this information, or if it was the result of his personal issues spiraling out of control. Sadly, it more and more looks as if it was the latter and - necessary as his actions may have been - they were not taken with adequate judgement or forethought. As such, discipline does not seem an outrageous expectation, although the punishments suggested do seem excessive, given the beneficial (for the citizenry, not the politicians) results of the leak.
The comment is still there but somebody moderated it as -1 Flamebait for some reason. It now has a score of 0 so does not show up for anyone reading with the default threshhold of 1 or higher. I'm not sure why this comment was down-modded as you basically said provided the same information as I did (and you said it about an hour earlier than I did; had I noticed it I probably wouldn't have bothered to post my snippy comment either). If I had any points I'd mod it up for you. Hopefully somebody else reading this particular thread with points will pop it up for you. Its not a particularly insightful comment (neither was mine) but it doesn't deserve to be downmodded.
Slashdot as a general rule does not delete comments;the few times that it did has deleted comments were exceptional and publicly disclaimed.
I wonder if the police from New Rome found a new place to live after his previous community was dissolved by the court for being nothing more than an excuse for the cops to ticket passing motorists.
It does seem similar; just a blip of a town along a major highway. I doubt they are issuing that many tickets to locals.
Hopefully this ruling can be used as precedent for future rulings against these cameras.
I've been reading books on handhelds and tablets since the late '90s, starting with Palm devices and moving later to IOS and Android machines. I've owned a Kindle but it saw the least use of all the devices.
Frankly, I didn't find the text all that impressive. Oh, it was sharp but not significantly more so than that of the LCD screens of the other devices. It didn't make reading any more comfortable or faster; it was, at least in my opinion, pretty much the same as an LCD display (at least as far as text was concerned). And the Kindle lacked all the other options - no color, limited apps, no back-light - that I took for granted on the other devices. Plus, it was too tightly tied to Amazon for my liking. The only feature that/really/ impressed me was the battery life, an artifact of the eInk technology but - since I rarely drained the battery on any of the LCD-devices in a single day - that was not that vital of an advantage.
I struggled with the Kindle for about two months before giving it up as a lost hope; it didn't do what I wanted and it's few strengths were just not enough to overcome the disadvantages. The Kindle now collects dust in a corner and aside from occasionally powering it up for nostalgia never gets any use.
Meanwhile, I'm back to more my Apple iTouch for reading ebooks / novels (and its rich ecosystem means I can read far more formats than on the Kindle), and an Android tablet for PDFs and magazines. They have rich color, robust application support, the pages turn much faster and I can read them in the dark (e.g, on the bus on my commute) without needing a clip-on lamp. And the text is crisp, clear and has never caused me a headache or eyestrain. So as far as I am concerned, they are not just a good replacement for an e-Ink screen, they are/far/ superior.
i'm glad they're fixing it, and i'm glad they took the time to do it right.
How do you know they "did it right" this time?
Are you merely assuming that it was coded correctly because it took them so long to issue the fix or have you seen the code? Or do you simply have that much faith in Apple (the very company that thought it was a good idea to send the information over plain HTTP in the first place)?
In fact, if you read the article, "SSL Labs, a report card system from security firm Qualys that rates the quality of websites' HTTPS protections, gives Apple's App Store a failing grade" despite the update.
Get real: the people on that list are stone-cold psychopath murderers, leading cadres of stone-cold murderers, most of them trying to murder Americans. The President would be in remiss if he didn't have list of them titled "exterminate on sight."
Which is only/one/ of the problems with this sort of list.
And frankly, outside of military action - which this is definitely/not/ - the idea of "exterminate on sight" sickens me. It should be "arrest and then presented to a full jury to determine his guilt in a speedy trial on sight".
Because otherwise we have abrogated a significant fraction of the citizen's power to nameless authority which has no oversight.
Even the most villainous deserves a chance to plead his case. That's what rule by law is all about.
Why is my first reaction to this article, "I wonder what the name was of the politician/judge/rich guy who had his device grabbed by the DHS because it had a passworded file on it?"
Because, sadly, recent court rulings have left me so jaded and cynical that I can't believe that they would side with the people on a matter of rights unless one our Elite masters had been affected by it first.
Of course, not that it matters much. Cops have been known to ignore unfavorable rulings. Just look how often cops still get in a snit when they catch somebody filming them doing their job, despite repeated rulings that it is perfectly legal. Who watches the watchmen? Increasingly, nobody.
What's not so funny is that you have to do 95% into this discussion before anyone even mentions this important point.
Yes, talking about sex is popular but these attempts at restricting pornography come and go. They are usually thrown down because it is difficult to define and as difficult to enforce.
Blocking messages because "members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens" is something I find altogether more interesting - and abhorrent. It is a behavior of a professional ruling caste that no longer feels obligated to its citizenry; in fact, they consider those citizens a nuisance or threat to their profession.
Dear EU members of parliament (or any politician in a representative democracy): you are supposed to REPRESENT us, assholes! That means you need to listen to what your electorate says, which in turn means reading any messages sent to you. If you get a lot of messages because of a particular issue, that's probably because it is an important issue to them. Your job - the reason you were put into power, and the reason you get a salary at the taxpayer's expense - is to read those damn messages,
None of this is news, of course. Politicians have always screwed over the common man. What/is/ new is how, increasingly, the politician caste is blatantly,/obviously/ open about ignoring its responsibilities. They make no attempt to hide their own corruption, that they are either serving only themselves or some other master than the citizenry they swore to represent./This/ is a topic that needs far more discussion than the titillating sexual mores that have inspired this proposal and so far otherwise dominated the conversation.
Ubisoft is schizophrenic when it comes to DRM; they zoom wildly from one extreme to the next.
Case in point: Ubisoft originally was a major user of Starforce copy protection (e.g., Splinter Cell 2, Prince of Persia Sands of Time, and many others) and defended its use even as the software increasingly came under fire for compatibility and security issues.
Then suddenly, it dropped Starforce altogether and announced it would be releasing its wares without copy protection (Prince of Persia (2008), Assassin's Creed).
Followed by even more restrictive DRM using SecuROM on Assassin's Creed II (and other), requiring always-online DRM and an insistence that this would never be changed because that was the only way to deal with piracy on the PC platform.
Later followed up by a loosening of their grip with one-time online-activation scheme, and later its UPlay store and its associated DRM.
It's therefore hard to say that consumer backlash has ever had any affect on its decisions whether or not to use DRM; whenever it chose to use the copy-protection software, it stood by its decision long until after the uproar had dissipated to a glowering fury by consumers too tired to keep up the argument. It has always been fiery in defense of its choice of copy protection software, rebutting all arguments presented by its critics. Since Ubisoft does not seem to care what gamers say about its choices about DRM so its decisions to stop using it (or switch to another type of copy protection) likely have more to do with internal politics. Thus, using it not the best example to use about how consumer choice can affect the industry.
None of this piracy would be possible without the aiding and abetting of the entertainment industry themselves. After all, if they didn't make the movies, pirates wouldn't have anything to steal! So bang goes the gavel on the CEOs of Universal, Columbia, Paramount, etc.
While we're at it, if it wasn't for the Congress-critters, these laws wouldn't exist to be broken in the first place. Judge, I think you know what must be done...
Slashdot Mirror
At least not until North Korea is defeated and South Korea is left with the unhappy task of trying to integrate their economies and cultures.
Germany faced a similar problem when the Communist Bloc collapsed and East and West Germany were re-united, but at least that unification didn't start with open warfare and didn't require them to undo three generations of increasingly strident anti-Seoul propoganda. Plus, they still had Poland as a buffer between them and Russia (which was facing its own set of problems at the time, too). But it's economy was weakened and pushed into a deep recession before it finally recovered
A unified Korea, though, will have all sorts of problems in the beginning. It might end up - in twenty years - as an amazing economic superpower but the interim is likely to be quite painful. At least the Germany's economies were similar (both were highly industrialized). What does North Korea have to offer South Korea except for problems? Millions of untrained, starving peasants bred to hate their cousins? A decaying infrastructure that will soon be a century out of date? A border with the century's next superpower? Such a task might not just ruin the south's economy; it might push it over into an abyss causing enough chaos from which alternatives like the Kim's long regime seem sane in comparison.
I don't envy South Korea, I really don't. Their options seem equally shitty at the moment: either live with an increasingly unpredictable madman to the north, or junk their economy for half a generation. And sadly, no matter which they way they chose, it still seems as if they may face a massive loss of life. I imagine at this point their sole hope is that Kim family gets thrown out and replaced by a more sensible group who are willing to gradually integrate the two countries into a unified natio Alas, the likelihood of that happening - especially without the massive loss of life - seems increasingly slim.
Says the guy with a UID almost three times bigger than mine
(I kid, I kid; it's not as if my six-digit UID is anything to boast about either)
Actually, I was referring more to the hyperbole in the original article (well, video since the website with the article was slashdotted when I tried to view it) more than the usual over-the-top claims made in the Slashdot summary.
With the former, it's (unfortunately) expected; however, as the Swede in question obviously has engineering skills, I had hoped he would be more appreciative of accuracy over wild and unfounded claims.
Although it's great to see such enthusiasm and effort poured into such a quintessentially geeky hobby.
Nonetheless, the public perception - perhaps encouraged by Sony - is that customers will be able to resell Playstation 4 games unrestrictedly, whereas on the XBoxNewest, used game sales will be impossible. Therefore, everyone should buy the PS4 and avoid Microsoft's latest offering as the PS4 is the only viable alternative if you are interested in selling your old game.
But the likely reality is that the publishers will limit used game sales regardless of the platform so long as they can do so, and this sort of restriction will be possible on the PS4. Thus, customers will get screwed regardless of what platform they chose. If Sony were truly interested in protecting their customers, they would create a policy that the publishers /can't/ require online registration to lock a game to a particular user: they pointedly are /not/ doing so. Sony is creating a false impression to its customer base about the expected reality by trying to wiggle out of the responsibility: "it's not /us/ that's doing this, it's the publishers!", even though they are in the unique position of stopping it from happening.
And mark my words, the publishers will take advantage of these new features, whether they are built into the hardware - as with XBoxNextGen - or merely aided by policy and functionality already in the machine, as with the PS4 (on a related note, there's nothing to stop XBox360+1 game publishers from allowing their games to be re-registered to a new XBox if re-sold but I wouldn't hold my breath). They know that their customers, as a general rule, do not care enough about this issue at purchase time, nor do they full understand the implications of what they are giving up. And that their slick advertising campaign will so dazzle them with the new shiny that any niggling doubts will be drowned out with fast talking and impressive graphics.
The alternative is not simply to chose Playstation 4 over XBoxNext. The alternative is to make it clear to console developers and publishers that this sort of behavior is not welcome. Similarly, the purpose of my original objection was not to claim superiority of any one platform over the other (anyway, we all know hardware peaked with the Amiga, right, so what's the point in arguing any further over these johnny-come-latelies?) but to simply point out that none of the platforms are really offering the freedom-to-resell that we have come to expect from earlier consoles, no matter how they are arranging this restruction. The PS4 may be the lesser of evils, but it is still evil.
Plus, Sony does not have a good record in this area so any promises made regarding this topic should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
Related question - what would make a good fundamental "minimum altitude" to say "space"?
From SpaceWatch(the website I linked to in my parent post):
"The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), formed 107 years ago and widely recognised as the governing body for aeronautics, astronautics and related activities, puts the beginning of space at 100km. This is now sometimes dubbed the Kármán line after the person who calculated that aerodynamic lift was impossible at higher levels without attaining orbital velocity. "
Also see
"The Kármán line, or commonly simply Karman line, lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth's sea level, and is commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space."
I think these are both workable definitions.
Mind you, none of this pedantic bickering is to take away from Windestål's accomplishment; it's great and he should be proud of what he has done. I eagerly await hearing about further successes from him. It's just that he's nowhere near space, by any accepted definition of the word.
I have to admit, I was surprised by this too.
Well, perhaps not /surprised/ since, as it's a country, one might expect it to have its own TLD. But it never crossed my mind to wonder what it might be.
I have to admit, once I learned that its TLD was .GL, the first thing I did was check to see if Open.GL was taken (it is). I can't imagine I was the only one to do so; I wonder how much extra traffic that site is getting today...
Not to dismiss this guy's accomplishments, but saying his model plane reached the "edge of space" is sort of like saying I've reached the "edge of the ocean" when I'm at Times Square in New York City.
Typically, the "edge of space" is 100km up (the United States is a bit more lenient, and puts it at at around 80km up and you get astronaut wings if you make it that high).
He hasn't even made it a third of the way there.
Still neat, but it could have done without the hyperbole.
That's when you visit a site like this to see what sort of crappy knock-offs are available, and get one of those for the kid.
"Daaa-aaaad! I want an X-Box!"
"What's wrong with the eXtreme Box I got you last year? It's the same thing ain't it, except it comes with a light gun!"
Phhht. I ain't got no sympathy for the kids. I mean, all I had was a Coleco Telestar, while everyone else had a Playstation. "It's the same thing, ain't it, except it comes with a light gun!"
The Playstation 4 is only "unrestricted" in so much that Sony is not making always-on DRM a requirement for games to play on their system (at least, right now; Sony has a habit of changing their minds about stuff like this). The Playstation 4 will, however, allow always-online DRM and you can bet that the publishers will be making use of it just as readily as they do on the PC (and are moving as far forwards with as they can on the consoles).
I bet there's a team of accountants in Sony somewhere crunching numbers hard trying to figure out how much money the ability to resell games earns them (not directly of course, but the ability to resell games is a valued feature to many customers) and how much it would cost them to cut out retailers like Gamestop (who survive on resales). If they feel the PS4 will be profitable and successful without that feature, you can bet it will be dropped because the publishers - and retailers like Amazon or Walmart - prefer not having to compete with used products.
Pedant: That part is in Earth Dome, an artificial city where access to the surface is forbidden. It isn't unbelievable to assume that they have pressure differentials in there as well.
Of course, this is clutching at straws to explain a special effects failure but isn't that half the fun of watching sci-fi?
I wonder if they'll bring back the tight leather pants that were so close-fitting actors couldn't even sit down without assistance. And not just the female leads, either. Let's just say some costumes left /nothing/ to the imagination.
When I first glanced at this morning's Slashdot headlines, my brain parsed this as "Margaret Weiss Dies at 87" and thought, "oh what a terrible start to the day; I used to quite love her books. I didn't know she was so old!"
But on re-reading, well... I was too young to be (directly) effected by Thatcher's politics but I can understand some of the anger. Still, at least she had a sense of humor
The Playstation 4 will not be backwards compatible with Playstation 3 games.
Playstation 2 games will be supported via emulation, /if/ you buy and download them from the Playstation store (so no, you can't just pop in a PS2 disc and expect it to work; you need to buy the game again).
In other words, for full backwards compatibility you need all three devices.
Me too, except my family were Seventh Day Advent Hoppists. They believed that every Sunday should be spent hopping. They would hop to church, hop through the service, then hop back home again. See, they took the Bible literally. Adam and Eve; the snake and the apple... Took it word for word. Unfortunately, their version had a misprint. It was all based on 1 Corinthians 13, where it says "Faith, hop and charity, and the greatest of these is hop." So that's what they did. Every seventh day. I tell you, Sunday lunchtimes were a nightmare. Hopping round the table, serving soup -- we all had to wear sou'esters and asbestos underpants.
(with apologies to Grant & Naylor, although it does bring up an interesting point: /which/ version of Genesis is being used for this contenst? Lexham English Bible? King James? Old Latin? The original Greek? The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church canon? There are subtle differences between them all.)
I don't see the problem. Problems like these have already been considered by the experts
When the pigeons become a pest, we just release some Bolivian tree lizards. If those become a nuisance, we simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. If you have a problem with snakes, well, we've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. And the beautiful part of /that/ plan is, when wintertime rolls around the gorillas simply freeze to death!
See? Nature will find a way! So clone, my little mad scientists, clone like you have never cloned before!
Since we're well off in the realms of the hypothetical...
Why not just let it happen? What is so terrifying about human sexuality that that our precious snowflakes must be protected from learning about it?
Past generations had the kids in the same room - sometimes in the same bed - with their parents whilst the latter were involved in coitus (separate bedchambers for the younglings is a fairly new invention). And - as the majority of Americans were rural until just a few generations back - imagine what they saw the animals doing on the farm! I'd wager most of those kids grew up just fine.
So two people want to start fucking near a kindergarten? I say fine, let them. Let the kids stand, stare, point and snicker at the odd poses and noises the adults are making. Odds are it'll be far more traumatic for the adults than the children.
Arguably, it is to the supplier's advantage if the phone is locked and can never be unlocked because then that phone is irrevocably tied to one carrier. If the end-user wants to go to another carrier, they /have/ to buy a new phone; they can't unlock their existing phone and take it with them. This means an additional sale for the supplier.
In actuality, I'd guess that the number of end-users who actually DO bring their phones with them to a new carrier is such an insignificant amount that it's not worth them getting involved.
I'm not entirely sure what the advantage to the carrier is, however. The end-user is already tied to the carrier by a contract and the costs of said contract more than subsidize the cost of the phone. Is it the worry that at the end of the contract the end-user will take the (over)paid-for phone and switch to another carrier? The fact that the phone is already locked doesn't seem to be stopping this; anecdotally, I know people who purposely switch (or take a new contract with the same carrier) just to /get/ new phones. I'd reckon most people who stick with a carrier past the length of the initial contract do so because of a lack of viable options or because the inconvenience of switching outweighs the benefits.
Or is there a significant number of people who exit the initial contract prematurely (either paying off the fine or trying to get out of it entirely), signing up /only/ to get a "cheap" phone? Frankly, given how upset so many of the customers are over this issue, this would be an easy way for the carriers to garner some good will; announce that in future all cell phones are unlocked from the start (with appropriate small-text notice that, yes, you are still liable for the cost of the phone if you try to sneak out of your contract).
Does the public DESERVE to see that important WAR decisions are made based on grade school playground spats. ABSOLUTELY. Did he violate his employers trust, absolutely as well.
Some might argue - and I'm not sure I'd be amongst them - that ultimately his "employers" are the citizens and taxpayers of the United States of America, and the superior officers - up to and including the President of the United States - are just middle managers. As such, Manning was working for the good of his "employers" by reporting other, problematic employees.
Still, the whole idea of equating public service to basic employment - essentially, reducing a country so it is just another large corporation - is somewhat disquieting to me. I know the concept of patriotism is oft times spurned on Slashdot but - in moderation - I think it is a worthy thing. A country is, after all - more than just a material thing; it incorporates (or it should) the beliefs and philosophy of its people. Saying "I respect that and I'll support those goals and beliefs" is honorable. Patriotism only becomes a problem when it is blindly given and assigned to individuals (politicians, military leaders) without leaving room to question whether those individuals are supportive of the philosophy behind the country. I'd rather we look at public servants in that light than simply equate them to the hirelings of a corporate master, and judge them not on their "efficiency" but whether they are standing true to the ideals of the nation.
The question with Manning truly boils down to his motive; whether he released the documents based on an earnest belief that it was necessary for the citizens of the United States to have this information, or if it was the result of his personal issues spiraling out of control. Sadly, it more and more looks as if it was the latter and - necessary as his actions may have been - they were not taken with adequate judgement or forethought. As such, discipline does not seem an outrageous expectation, although the punishments suggested do seem excessive, given the beneficial (for the citizenry, not the politicians) results of the leak.
The comment is still there but somebody moderated it as -1 Flamebait for some reason. It now has a score of 0 so does not show up for anyone reading with the default threshhold of 1 or higher. I'm not sure why this comment was down-modded as you basically said provided the same information as I did (and you said it about an hour earlier than I did; had I noticed it I probably wouldn't have bothered to post my snippy comment either). If I had any points I'd mod it up for you. Hopefully somebody else reading this particular thread with points will pop it up for you. Its not a particularly insightful comment (neither was mine) but it doesn't deserve to be downmodded.
Slashdot as a general rule does not delete comments;the few times that it did has deleted comments were exceptional and publicly disclaimed.
I wonder if the police from New Rome found a new place to live after his previous community was dissolved by the court for being nothing more than an excuse for the cops to ticket passing motorists.
It does seem similar; just a blip of a town along a major highway. I doubt they are issuing that many tickets to locals.
Hopefully this ruling can be used as precedent for future rulings against these cameras.
I've been reading books on handhelds and tablets since the late '90s, starting with Palm devices and moving later to IOS and Android machines. I've owned a Kindle but it saw the least use of all the devices.
Frankly, I didn't find the text all that impressive. Oh, it was sharp but not significantly more so than that of the LCD screens of the other devices. It didn't make reading any more comfortable or faster; it was, at least in my opinion, pretty much the same as an LCD display (at least as far as text was concerned). And the Kindle lacked all the other options - no color, limited apps, no back-light - that I took for granted on the other devices. Plus, it was too tightly tied to Amazon for my liking. The only feature that /really/ impressed me was the battery life, an artifact of the eInk technology but - since I rarely drained the battery on any of the LCD-devices in a single day - that was not that vital of an advantage.
I struggled with the Kindle for about two months before giving it up as a lost hope; it didn't do what I wanted and it's few strengths were just not enough to overcome the disadvantages. The Kindle now collects dust in a corner and aside from occasionally powering it up for nostalgia never gets any use.
Meanwhile, I'm back to more my Apple iTouch for reading ebooks / novels (and its rich ecosystem means I can read far more formats than on the Kindle), and an Android tablet for PDFs and magazines. They have rich color, robust application support, the pages turn much faster and I can read them in the dark (e.g, on the bus on my commute) without needing a clip-on lamp. And the text is crisp, clear and has never caused me a headache or eyestrain. So as far as I am concerned, they are not just a good replacement for an e-Ink screen, they are /far/ superior.
i'm glad they're fixing it, and i'm glad they took the time to do it right.
How do you know they "did it right" this time?
Are you merely assuming that it was coded correctly because it took them so long to issue the fix or have you seen the code? Or do you simply have that much faith in Apple (the very company that thought it was a good idea to send the information over plain HTTP in the first place)?
In fact, if you read the article, "SSL Labs, a report card system from security firm Qualys that rates the quality of websites' HTTPS protections, gives Apple's App Store a failing grade" despite the update.
Get real: the people on that list are stone-cold psychopath murderers, leading cadres of stone-cold murderers, most of them trying to murder Americans. The President would be in remiss if he didn't have list of them titled "exterminate on sight."
Yeah, just like this guy, right?
Which is only /one/ of the problems with this sort of list.
And frankly, outside of military action - which this is definitely /not/ - the idea of "exterminate on sight" sickens me. It should be "arrest and then presented to a full jury to determine his guilt in a speedy trial on sight".
Because otherwise we have abrogated a significant fraction of the citizen's power to nameless authority which has no oversight.
Even the most villainous deserves a chance to plead his case. That's what rule by law is all about.
Why is my first reaction to this article, "I wonder what the name was of the politician/judge/rich guy who had his device grabbed by the DHS because it had a passworded file on it?"
Because, sadly, recent court rulings have left me so jaded and cynical that I can't believe that they would side with the people on a matter of rights unless one our Elite masters had been affected by it first.
Of course, not that it matters much. Cops have been known to ignore unfavorable rulings. Just look how often cops still get in a snit when they catch somebody filming them doing their job, despite repeated rulings that it is perfectly legal. Who watches the watchmen? Increasingly, nobody.
What's not so funny is that you have to do 95% into this discussion before anyone even mentions this important point.
Yes, talking about sex is popular but these attempts at restricting pornography come and go. They are usually thrown down because it is difficult to define and as difficult to enforce.
Blocking messages because "members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens" is something I find altogether more interesting - and abhorrent. It is a behavior of a professional ruling caste that no longer feels obligated to its citizenry; in fact, they consider those citizens a nuisance or threat to their profession.
Dear EU members of parliament (or any politician in a representative democracy): you are supposed to REPRESENT us, assholes! That means you need to listen to what your electorate says, which in turn means reading any messages sent to you. If you get a lot of messages because of a particular issue, that's probably because it is an important issue to them. Your job - the reason you were put into power, and the reason you get a salary at the taxpayer's expense - is to read those damn messages,
None of this is news, of course. Politicians have always screwed over the common man. What /is/ new is how, increasingly, the politician caste is blatantly, /obviously/ open about ignoring its responsibilities. They make no attempt to hide their own corruption, that they are either serving only themselves or some other master than the citizenry they swore to represent. /This/ is a topic that needs far more discussion than the titillating sexual mores that have inspired this proposal and so far otherwise dominated the conversation.
Ubisoft is schizophrenic when it comes to DRM; they zoom wildly from one extreme to the next.
Case in point: Ubisoft originally was a major user of Starforce copy protection (e.g., Splinter Cell 2, Prince of Persia Sands of Time, and many others) and defended its use even as the software increasingly came under fire for compatibility and security issues.
Then suddenly, it dropped Starforce altogether and announced it would be releasing its wares without copy protection (Prince of Persia (2008), Assassin's Creed).
Followed by even more restrictive DRM using SecuROM on Assassin's Creed II (and other), requiring always-online DRM and an insistence that this would never be changed because that was the only way to deal with piracy on the PC platform.
Later followed up by a loosening of their grip with one-time online-activation scheme, and later its UPlay store and its associated DRM.
It's therefore hard to say that consumer backlash has ever had any affect on its decisions whether or not to use DRM; whenever it chose to use the copy-protection software, it stood by its decision long until after the uproar had dissipated to a glowering fury by consumers too tired to keep up the argument. It has always been fiery in defense of its choice of copy protection software, rebutting all arguments presented by its critics. Since Ubisoft does not seem to care what gamers say about its choices about DRM so its decisions to stop using it (or switch to another type of copy protection) likely have more to do with internal politics. Thus, using it not the best example to use about how consumer choice can affect the industry.
None of this piracy would be possible without the aiding and abetting of the entertainment industry themselves. After all, if they didn't make the movies, pirates wouldn't have anything to steal! So bang goes the gavel on the CEOs of Universal, Columbia, Paramount, etc.
While we're at it, if it wasn't for the Congress-critters, these laws wouldn't exist to be broken in the first place. Judge, I think you know what must be done...