Apart from Blum being Spike's American dub voice, if you GIS for his picture, you'll find that he looks a whole hell of alot better-suited to the part of Spike than Ted "Theodore" Logan.
I suppose that one could say I spend a rather generous amount of my time on the 'Net. But am I addicted? I think not. Someone might consider it an addiction, given how much I use it, but I don't see it as such.
If anything, the Internet is an important part of my life's social structure. Not only does it serve as a source for information (used to wow friends later on at parties), but also as a sort of replacement for more "traditional" methods of networking and communication.
Through IM services, my local friends and I can keep in near constant contact, and not just on the one-on-one level that telephones are limited to. At any given time, we can all jump into a single conference room and shoot the proverbial shiznit. What's more, it's used to synch up our schedules. So, when we leave the machines behind and go out into the world, we're all on the same page.
While I spend the better portion of my days attached at the fingertips to my mouse and keyboard, I also spend the remaining portion out and about with friends, heading to this bar or that club, socializing, interacting; You know, human stuff. Sometimes, I'll pay visits to friends who lack computers and Internet access simply to get away from the machine for a while.
While there are some who's addictions are in fact unhealthy, there are also those of us who have managed to blend the Internet into our daily lives on a safe and healthy level. We've figured out how to manage it and use it to our social advantage, making sure it doesn't dominate our lives.
MMO games aren't really an issue for me, since my machine is nowhere near strong enough to even think about running them. This eliminates the "Evercrack" value from the equasion, since I'm not putting in the hours required to have even an average character in those worlds.
But then again, too. I'm posting this on Slashdot. That alone might trump everything above, if only for the sheer geek-itude of the fact.
Think about it for a second. People are spending insane amounts of money on what? Ringtones. They're paying at least $1.50 for a credit, and all they get is a MIDI copy. Spend two credits and yes, you can get the real audio sample, but it's still only a sample, not the whole song. That's around $3 for a twenty second clip if you're lucky. When you think about that for a moment, $2.50 doesn't really seem all that demonic.
Then you take into account what your network charges you to be online and downloading, and the ringtone becomes relatively cheap again. Know what? It's all way too expensive, and should be avoided until prices normalize (when the RIAA/MPAA gets their heads out of their collective arses).
Two words: Tax. Shelter. I've noticed that once or twice each year, Gates makes sizable contributions to this cause or that. Heck of a write-off if you ask me...
I certainly approve, but only of the consenting adult variety.
it's in the interests of both that industry and responsible parents (amongst others) to respect a separation between their material and that intended for more general consumption
There's the problem. Parents (not all, but a rather sizable portion) just aren't responsible these days. They rely on other people way too much to raise their kids and teach them important life... stuff. There does need to be a seperation, and the.xxx domain would have acheived that. But no...
I have a problem with a nation that is run by the Christian Right and has a demonstrated problem with abusing its power making that kind of decision for the rest of the world, many of whom don't share the Christian Right's views on the subject.
You're absolutely right. It sucks. The Christian Right doesn't deserve the power it has, just like Radical Islam doesn't deserve the power it holds over people. I, too, have a problem with the Religious Whackos wanting to force their moral values on the rest of us. Yet another reason that the Internet shouldn't be totally controlled by the US.
If they maintain control, and the Right assumes power and starts tampering, they can inflict all sorts of damage on the flow of information the Internet provides. At their own discression, and acting on the so-called "Will of God," they could wipe porn from the net, sure. But what's more frightening is they could take total control and use the 'Net as their own perosnal Evangelistic tool. Imagine: Wiping out mentions of Darwin, Science that doesn't agree with "God's Plan;" Anything they don't want us to read/know/think about would go bye bye, all in the name of some fairy tale deity (sorry, I'm Atheist, that's my opinion, don't mean to offend).
On the other hand, though, an Interactive "Choose Your Own Adventure" Bible would be neato keen! Then you could make Jeebus shack up with Magdaline, Noah going down like the Titanic, etc. That'd be fun...
Not that hard to deduce. Let's say the US maintains control like they want to. This would put the world's access to anything Internet (including DNS servers) at the mercy of the greedy bastards who run this country and their corporate cronies.
ICANN hands out domain name registry contracts. It costs money to register a domain. If the US had total control, they could jack up the prices at will. After all, the C stands for "Corporation," meaning business, meaning they want money. Done something to piss the US Government/ICANN off? They'll cut you off.
In short, it's too much power for one country to have. Personally, I think the Internet should be free as in speech and beer. But as long as there are greedy old farts with majority shares in these super-conglomerates, and they have majority control of this particular resource, that won't happen. Handing it over to an international consortium would be at least one step closer to that ideal.
The US wants to keep control for purely financial reasons. They want to gouge other countries for access, and allow the big telecoms to maintain their control on the flow of information at asinine prices.
Or, they want to keep control for moral reasons. Remember, Alberto "Gonzo" Gonzales has started his Porn Squad (not to attack only kiddie porn sites, but consenting adult sites as well) in some sort of twisted moral crusade. Well, there is a buttload of porn on the net, isn't there. If we keep control, he can stamp it out...
Another reason could be "National Security," though I'm pretty sure they already spend an asinine amount of money to keep sensitive stuff off of the 'Net to begin with. The Internet is no longer a super-secret Pentagon project, and has been publicly available for over a decade. I remember reading somewhere that works of the Government are in the Public Domain. Dunno if that applys to just images and text, or to secret, non-military projects like the Internet (again, now that it's been made public, not prior).
I say we share control with the world at large. Except with the French. The French are too weird. And most certainly not with the UN, corrupt an organisation as that is. It should be a seperate, international consortium with equal power for all countries involved. There shouldn't be one "regulator," and especially not the United States.
If anything, the RIAA is a mafia-style group on its own these days, so it really doesn't need any backing from the more "traditional" mob. Their hitmen? Lawyers. Their Dons? The heads of each of the member conglomerates. Their scheme? Racketeering: the lawsuits pretty much amount to "You pay us protection money or we'll make your life miserable."
They've been counter-sued using RICO (pops, Wikipedia ish teh awesome), which is probably the best defense against them right now. As long as people know about the RICO defense, there's hope for us yet.
But, I agree with you 100%. As long as people keep buying this crap, they keep validating the RIAA's corrupt business model, encouraging them to continue with the shady practices.
As a musician, hearing that my music is a "disposable commodity" is pretty disheartening. You want your tunes to connect with people (no matter how few or how many) and stay with them their entire lives. It used to be that bands had the ability to do this, and have become timeless powerhouses that last 20 years or more (Pink Floyd, Beatles, Aerosmith, KISS, etc.).
But now, people have the musical attention span of a cashew. The industry is eager to forcefeed us what they think is the "next big thing," and the majority of the listening population (mostly teenagers without a shred of good taste) are eating it up, chewing it up, and spitting it out almost as fast as the industry can spew it forth.
In other words, listeners have ADHD.
They're validating the industry's asinine practice of "more more more, hell with the quality." Especially with today's dime-a-dozen rappers. There's no integrity in music anymore.
The Credibility of the ESRB has indeed been undermined. They've gone from "protecting minors from bad content" to the need to call for a Waaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance every time someone gripes about a wee bit of nudity.
News Flash: WE'RE NAKED! WE DO THE HORIZONTAL MAMBO! IT'S NATURE! Holy crap! How hard is this to understand? Nudity isn't indecent, it's our natural state of existance.
Now, you tell me: What teenage kid _hasn't_ stolen his dad's copy of Hustler at least once? Why aren't those dads in jail/being persecuted for undermining the "moral fiber" of society? Because it's asinine. And this debaucle is asinine.
Kids without a firm grasp of what is and isn't reality should honestly not play this game. That's a given. But you can't keep your kids "innocent" forever, and censoring a game isn't going to help that ideal along, either. Teenagers are going to learn about, and constantly think about, sex. That's life, that's growing up, that's part of BEING HUMAN. Let the kids have their fun.
Hell, they're probably fornicating right under their parents' noses, anyway...
First, FTA: A lot of those shows are shot with budgets not much more than half of what ou(r) budgets are
Besides the obvious typo, I highly doubt that ST:E's budget is all that much bigger than any of SciFi's original programming. Example? SG-1. If SG-1 has an operating budget of even half of ST:E's, yet still produces high-quality programming, then the whole budget issue isn't a problem, and pretty much amounts to Berman blowing smoke up our asses.
SG-1 has quite a number of CGI sequences, like ST:E. Beyond the relatively simple animation of the gate itself and a few weapons, there are quite a number of ships (including the complex Goa'uld ships, Asgard cruisers, etc.), the Replicators (simple at first, then growing more complex), and the usual space scenes such as planets, stars, nebulae and more, not to mention the minor alterations to the Canadian landscape for location shots. Now, either Gekko/Double Secret/SciFi have found a way to render these scenes (which look pretty damn good) on the cheap, or Berman is using it as an excuse, one of many.
Second: I think the decline of Star Trek can be directly attributed to Berman himself, who started taking the franchise downhill not long after the death of Gene Roddenberry. Creative control, honestly, should have been given to Majel Barret-Roddenberry. After all, she was married to Gene, and it'd be impossible to think that some of his genius wouldn't have rubbed off on her during thier marriage. Berman was responsible for the lesser series DS9 and VGR, and obviously, those didn't do as well as TOS and TNG did, both in the ratings and creatively.
Third, according to quite a number of folks, Berman's not an easy guy to deal with. Slashdot's own Wil Wheaton can attest to that personally, and does so in his books. Granted, working with someone (relatively) new will bring about changes, but from most accounts, Berman was almost the direct antithesis to Roddenberry.
And no, I'm not trying to kiss Wheaton's ass.
My point is, Berman is giving us every excuse under the sun (some work slightly, others don't hold water) as to why Star Trek is in its waning years, instead of owning up to the fact that he took Roddenberry's vision and drove it into the ground himself. The slow demise of Trek can be traced back to when he took the helm (no pun intended).
I agree that Trek does need a rest. Oversaturation does play a part, but not as great a part as Berman would like us to believe...
it should drastically improve browser performance in a short period of time
Bah. It's been how long since the first browser war? And IE is still a heaping pile of crap. And, what's worse, M$ doesn't seem to want to fix what they already have on the market. "Oh, we'll fix it with Longhorn." Yeah, so you'll have to spend more money on a whole new OS, just to fix these bugs that have been arond since at least version 5.
Granted, all browsers have their flaws. But at least most of these browsers have people working to patch whatever holes are found. M$ has been nothing more than lackluster with regards to their patch attempts, rarely releasing any fixes. And when they do release a fix, it sometimes breaks other stuff (a'la SP2).
Until M$ gets its head out of its ass, makes IE stand-alone (as in not intergrated into Windows), and gets with the program with regards to patching security risks in a timely manner, I'll stick with the competition. Firefox and Konqueror work just fine for me...
Wanna get technical? They're BOTH theories. One is based purely on faith and one book that says it's the way to go. The other has a little more scientific basis to go on, such as the Galapogos Islands.
Personally, I think Creationism is a bunch of crap...
Yes, holes are announced for Open Source OSs and Applications on a somewhat (but nowhere near just as) similar basis. But then again, consider this:
These holes are often patched within a short time frame in the Open Source world. Most times, a patch is released not long after the bug is discovered, and more often than not, some end users will write their own patches, resulting in not only timely but optional fixes.
Now, M$ took how long to release SP2? And it did what? Sure, fixed a few holes, but a Windows XP Home Edition computer is still as easy a target as ever thanks to all sorts of new and wonderful exploits, and some that have been known of for months, if not a year or two. And when are they going to fix these holes?
Well, a new major release for IE has been pushed back a few years, and Longhorn (aka LongWait, LongOff, TakingTooLonghorn) is quite a ways off itself. Microsoft has said that it won't release another patch until Longhorn is released.
Which means XP users are fucked until Microsoft decides to descend from the heavens with their miraculous new piece of ill-planned garbage that promises to make it all better.
Meanwhile, us Linux users wait maybe a few months for a good patch, which more often than not works, and continue about our business in a much safer environment.
Of course Congress won't let them. Nor with the executive branch, for that matter. And the Supreme Court has "more pressing issues" like allowing God back in schools to worry about NASA.
One of the big hurdles that everyone here has mentioned is greed. The current system allows for a slight bit of corruption, a-la Halliburton/Iraq (and yes, the "slight bit" was pure sarcasm). Congresspeople often have a personal interest in which companies get what contracts for which components of whatever project NASA has going.
How many members of Congress represent districts wherein exist aerospace-related plants? How many of them possibly have ties to these companies in some odd form or another (lobby, maybe family inside, maybe they sit on the board)? The argument they use is bringing/keeping jobs, and it does hold some water. But when personal interest takes over for politicians, they want a certain measure of control.
X-Prize competitors, however, are independant business people, tech gurus, and what not. I'm willing to bet that a great majority of them, while they see dollar signs for their results, also have a firm belief in what they're doing. They have a love of the game, as it were. They want to be a part of the betterment of Human kind through technology, in this case going into space.
The "chosen few" in Washington lose all control when the middle segment of the general population, with funding from some of the more "in-tune" of the higher-ups, begins working independantly with more level-minded intentions in mind.
I'm willing to bet that the Government wants to keep a sort of control on space activity because they see a great tactical value up there. Up there, we can hit any target we want, and intercept anything that's coming our way (in theory at least). They don't harbor the same "For The Good of Mankind" vision as alot of us do. They see it as a race to gain control of the stars, to make themselves into the ultimate superpower.
And it can only end one way. None of us want to really talk about that, do we...
There need to be more X-Prizes. Corporations have spent the last 25 years amassing a fortune for themselves. It's time to put that money to good use and get mankind moving forward again. Not for military power, but for the (not-so-)simple advancment of the species. We have the capability to visit worlds other than our own. It's time we went out there and asserted ourselves among the heavens. Start small, colonize the Moon. As technology advances, maybe we CAN make it to Mars.
But for now, it's a political buzzword, and not something our Government wants to see right away. At least not until they're sure they can keep tabs on everything above us, first...
As shown by our last election, it's a Moral Values thing, or so alot of us Americans have been conned into thinking. Forget our sons and daughters dying for Oil in a desert, forget the fact that jobs are being shipped overseas at an alarming rate, forget the fact that gas prices are going up up up. The most important thing on people's minds is Moral Values?
The problem here is this "New Religious Revolution" thing we have going on here. Emboldened by a President who walks around professing his faith, starts "Faith-based initiatives" to skirt Constitutional seperation of Church and State, and tries to force his view of the concept of Marriage by trying to write discrimination into the Constitution banning Gay Marriages/Unions...
Let's see here, where to begin. OK, so I didn't provide hard links and raw data on what SP2 helps and harms in Windows XP. And yes, I am a Microsoft hater, but only after at least a decade of pain-in-the-neck practices, just to get their OS to work. Finally, I run Mandrake 10.0, which automatically puts me at odds with MS either way.
If you want hard data, just search Slashdot's archives. I'm sure you'll find write-ups regarding all of Microsoft's service packs for all it's OS products. And I'm sure you'll find something that SP2 for XP breaks. Hell, it was even said that it broke MS' own software in some cases. Vague, yes. Unsupported, well, find that out for yourself, because I'm SURE I read that somewhere online, and it's not just on a personal opinion blog or similar, but on/. or similar.
Here's my beef: Why did Microsoft wait so damn long to release SP2? Because, as they claimed, they wanted to make sure it was as comprehensive as possible. They wanted to more or less make it as close to a cure-all as they could. They took their sweet time, while virii and such ran rampant, exploiting the holes SP2 was meant to fix while they still could. I'm sure a side by side look at virii v. SP2 release timelines will show that.
Come on. You're a nerd like me, do a little research.
But why would they NEED to release something as major as SP2? Could it be because their code is SEVERELY FLAWED? Now, granted, no code is 100% secure, perfect, etc. But DAMN! There are so many holes in Windows code, Swiss Cheese is turning green, not with mold, but with envy.
Granted, my "precious" Linux code isn't perfect. But holy hell. If something is shown to have a pretty serious vulnerability, it's usually patched rather quickly as compared to Windows, and in some cases, patched in several ways by several different people/groups, if not by the original author(s).
Waiting for that "miracle cure" (or, to be fair, even a low-level cure) is one thing. But when flaws continue to be found on such a grand scale that they affect, what, the 90% of the compter market that MS has a handle on? And they're flaws of such a serious nature that the sensitive data on these 90% of computers is in jeopardy? Hmmm. I think we have a problem here, Houston.
When you think about how most of the machines out there are home machines with average citizens using them, and you figure that about half of those average citizens are completely computer inept and couldn't tell SP2 from T2:Judgment Day, that gets to be a pretty big problem, wouldn't you say? Why has MyDoom been such a problem? Hmm? Didn't MyDoom proliferate and get worse AFTER the release of SP2? And didn't it exploit yet another major IE/Outlook flaw?
Why isn't there an SP3? or SP4? Or SP5?
Why is Microsoft knowingly releasing severely flawed software that jeopardizes a user's entire hard drive? Don't you think that, instead of hurrying an OS to market, they'd make sure it is at least as secure as possible? Why are these flaws being found and exploited so quickly?
Microsoft is a BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATION. They have more money than God. Their only financial rival is most likely the Vatican, and they're under the Holy Tax Shelter (TM)(C)(R). If they have all this dinero at their disposal, don't you think they could roll some of it into not only development (plus Billy and Steve's pocket books), but into some heavy duty testing as well? I think they can afford to hire some hackers to pick apart the OS and report vulnerabilites back to the hive mind...
Give me a fucking break. Linux is free, and is maintained by a loose-knit band of geeks from around the world. In most cases, vulnerabilities are reported and patched in a relatively timely and speedy manner. Yeah, some fall through the cracks. But hell, these people VOLUNTEER this shit. They're not paid. They do it because they love the machine, they love the code, they LOVE THE GAME (yeah, IBM commercial, blah blah blah, but it's TRUE).
Slashdot Mirror
Apart from Blum being Spike's American dub voice, if you GIS for his picture, you'll find that he looks a whole hell of alot better-suited to the part of Spike than Ted "Theodore" Logan.
I suppose that one could say I spend a rather generous amount of my time on the 'Net. But am I addicted? I think not. Someone might consider it an addiction, given how much I use it, but I don't see it as such.
If anything, the Internet is an important part of my life's social structure. Not only does it serve as a source for information (used to wow friends later on at parties), but also as a sort of replacement for more "traditional" methods of networking and communication.
Through IM services, my local friends and I can keep in near constant contact, and not just on the one-on-one level that telephones are limited to. At any given time, we can all jump into a single conference room and shoot the proverbial shiznit. What's more, it's used to synch up our schedules. So, when we leave the machines behind and go out into the world, we're all on the same page.
While I spend the better portion of my days attached at the fingertips to my mouse and keyboard, I also spend the remaining portion out and about with friends, heading to this bar or that club, socializing, interacting; You know, human stuff. Sometimes, I'll pay visits to friends who lack computers and Internet access simply to get away from the machine for a while.
While there are some who's addictions are in fact unhealthy, there are also those of us who have managed to blend the Internet into our daily lives on a safe and healthy level. We've figured out how to manage it and use it to our social advantage, making sure it doesn't dominate our lives.
MMO games aren't really an issue for me, since my machine is nowhere near strong enough to even think about running them. This eliminates the "Evercrack" value from the equasion, since I'm not putting in the hours required to have even an average character in those worlds.
But then again, too. I'm posting this on Slashdot. That alone might trump everything above, if only for the sheer geek-itude of the fact.
Think about it for a second. People are spending insane amounts of money on what? Ringtones. They're paying at least $1.50 for a credit, and all they get is a MIDI copy. Spend two credits and yes, you can get the real audio sample, but it's still only a sample, not the whole song. That's around $3 for a twenty second clip if you're lucky. When you think about that for a moment, $2.50 doesn't really seem all that demonic.
Then you take into account what your network charges you to be online and downloading, and the ringtone becomes relatively cheap again. Know what? It's all way too expensive, and should be avoided until prices normalize (when the RIAA/MPAA gets their heads out of their collective arses).
Two words: Tax. Shelter. I've noticed that once or twice each year, Gates makes sizable contributions to this cause or that. Heck of a write-off if you ask me...
approval or otherwise of pornographic material
.xxx domain would have acheived that. But no...
I certainly approve, but only of the consenting adult variety.
it's in the interests of both that industry and responsible parents (amongst others) to respect a separation between their material and that intended for more general consumption
There's the problem. Parents (not all, but a rather sizable portion) just aren't responsible these days. They rely on other people way too much to raise their kids and teach them important life... stuff. There does need to be a seperation, and the
I have a problem with a nation that is run by the Christian Right and has a demonstrated problem with abusing its power making that kind of decision for the rest of the world, many of whom don't share the Christian Right's views on the subject.
You're absolutely right. It sucks. The Christian Right doesn't deserve the power it has, just like Radical Islam doesn't deserve the power it holds over people. I, too, have a problem with the Religious Whackos wanting to force their moral values on the rest of us. Yet another reason that the Internet shouldn't be totally controlled by the US.
If they maintain control, and the Right assumes power and starts tampering, they can inflict all sorts of damage on the flow of information the Internet provides. At their own discression, and acting on the so-called "Will of God," they could wipe porn from the net, sure. But what's more frightening is they could take total control and use the 'Net as their own perosnal Evangelistic tool. Imagine: Wiping out mentions of Darwin, Science that doesn't agree with "God's Plan;" Anything they don't want us to read/know/think about would go bye bye, all in the name of some fairy tale deity (sorry, I'm Atheist, that's my opinion, don't mean to offend).
On the other hand, though, an Interactive "Choose Your Own Adventure" Bible would be neato keen! Then you could make Jeebus shack up with Magdaline, Noah going down like the Titanic, etc. That'd be fun...
Not that hard to deduce. Let's say the US maintains control like they want to. This would put the world's access to anything Internet (including DNS servers) at the mercy of the greedy bastards who run this country and their corporate cronies.
ICANN hands out domain name registry contracts. It costs money to register a domain. If the US had total control, they could jack up the prices at will. After all, the C stands for "Corporation," meaning business, meaning they want money. Done something to piss the US Government/ICANN off? They'll cut you off.
In short, it's too much power for one country to have. Personally, I think the Internet should be free as in speech and beer. But as long as there are greedy old farts with majority shares in these super-conglomerates, and they have majority control of this particular resource, that won't happen. Handing it over to an international consortium would be at least one step closer to that ideal.
A few thoughts:
The US wants to keep control for purely financial reasons. They want to gouge other countries for access, and allow the big telecoms to maintain their control on the flow of information at asinine prices.
Or, they want to keep control for moral reasons. Remember, Alberto "Gonzo" Gonzales has started his Porn Squad (not to attack only kiddie porn sites, but consenting adult sites as well) in some sort of twisted moral crusade. Well, there is a buttload of porn on the net, isn't there. If we keep control, he can stamp it out...
Another reason could be "National Security," though I'm pretty sure they already spend an asinine amount of money to keep sensitive stuff off of the 'Net to begin with. The Internet is no longer a super-secret Pentagon project, and has been publicly available for over a decade. I remember reading somewhere that works of the Government are in the Public Domain. Dunno if that applys to just images and text, or to secret, non-military projects like the Internet (again, now that it's been made public, not prior).
I say we share control with the world at large. Except with the French. The French are too weird. And most certainly not with the UN, corrupt an organisation as that is. It should be a seperate, international consortium with equal power for all countries involved. There shouldn't be one "regulator," and especially not the United States.
But that's just me, and I don't count...
Organized crime? Eh, possibly, but doubtful.
If anything, the RIAA is a mafia-style group on its own these days, so it really doesn't need any backing from the more "traditional" mob. Their hitmen? Lawyers. Their Dons? The heads of each of the member conglomerates. Their scheme? Racketeering: the lawsuits pretty much amount to "You pay us protection money or we'll make your life miserable."
They've been counter-sued using RICO (pops, Wikipedia ish teh awesome), which is probably the best defense against them right now. As long as people know about the RICO defense, there's hope for us yet.
But, I agree with you 100%. As long as people keep buying this crap, they keep validating the RIAA's corrupt business model, encouraging them to continue with the shady practices.
Boycott, anyone?
FTA: music is a disposable commodity, anyway.
That sucks.
As a musician, hearing that my music is a "disposable commodity" is pretty disheartening. You want your tunes to connect with people (no matter how few or how many) and stay with them their entire lives. It used to be that bands had the ability to do this, and have become timeless powerhouses that last 20 years or more (Pink Floyd, Beatles, Aerosmith, KISS, etc.).
But now, people have the musical attention span of a cashew. The industry is eager to forcefeed us what they think is the "next big thing," and the majority of the listening population (mostly teenagers without a shred of good taste) are eating it up, chewing it up, and spitting it out almost as fast as the industry can spew it forth.
In other words, listeners have ADHD.
They're validating the industry's asinine practice of "more more more, hell with the quality." Especially with today's dime-a-dozen rappers. There's no integrity in music anymore.
And that's very, very sad...
The Credibility of the ESRB has indeed been undermined. They've gone from "protecting minors from bad content" to the need to call for a Waaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance every time someone gripes about a wee bit of nudity.
News Flash: WE'RE NAKED! WE DO THE HORIZONTAL MAMBO! IT'S NATURE! Holy crap! How hard is this to understand? Nudity isn't indecent, it's our natural state of existance.
Now, you tell me: What teenage kid _hasn't_ stolen his dad's copy of Hustler at least once? Why aren't those dads in jail/being persecuted for undermining the "moral fiber" of society? Because it's asinine. And this debaucle is asinine.
Kids without a firm grasp of what is and isn't reality should honestly not play this game. That's a given. But you can't keep your kids "innocent" forever, and censoring a game isn't going to help that ideal along, either. Teenagers are going to learn about, and constantly think about, sex. That's life, that's growing up, that's part of BEING HUMAN. Let the kids have their fun.
Hell, they're probably fornicating right under their parents' noses, anyway...
It's got a nice Orwellian ring to it, doesn't it...
"We are... Watching you..." -- Tim Curry, Congo
First, FTA: A lot of those shows are shot with budgets not much more than half of what ou(r) budgets are
Besides the obvious typo, I highly doubt that ST:E's budget is all that much bigger than any of SciFi's original programming. Example? SG-1. If SG-1 has an operating budget of even half of ST:E's, yet still produces high-quality programming, then the whole budget issue isn't a problem, and pretty much amounts to Berman blowing smoke up our asses.
SG-1 has quite a number of CGI sequences, like ST:E. Beyond the relatively simple animation of the gate itself and a few weapons, there are quite a number of ships (including the complex Goa'uld ships, Asgard cruisers, etc.), the Replicators (simple at first, then growing more complex), and the usual space scenes such as planets, stars, nebulae and more, not to mention the minor alterations to the Canadian landscape for location shots. Now, either Gekko/Double Secret/SciFi have found a way to render these scenes (which look pretty damn good) on the cheap, or Berman is using it as an excuse, one of many.
Second: I think the decline of Star Trek can be directly attributed to Berman himself, who started taking the franchise downhill not long after the death of Gene Roddenberry. Creative control, honestly, should have been given to Majel Barret-Roddenberry. After all, she was married to Gene, and it'd be impossible to think that some of his genius wouldn't have rubbed off on her during thier marriage. Berman was responsible for the lesser series DS9 and VGR, and obviously, those didn't do as well as TOS and TNG did, both in the ratings and creatively.
Third, according to quite a number of folks, Berman's not an easy guy to deal with. Slashdot's own Wil Wheaton can attest to that personally, and does so in his books. Granted, working with someone (relatively) new will bring about changes, but from most accounts, Berman was almost the direct antithesis to Roddenberry.
And no, I'm not trying to kiss Wheaton's ass.
My point is, Berman is giving us every excuse under the sun (some work slightly, others don't hold water) as to why Star Trek is in its waning years, instead of owning up to the fact that he took Roddenberry's vision and drove it into the ground himself. The slow demise of Trek can be traced back to when he took the helm (no pun intended).
I agree that Trek does need a rest. Oversaturation does play a part, but not as great a part as Berman would like us to believe...
it should drastically improve browser performance in a short period of time
Bah. It's been how long since the first browser war? And IE is still a heaping pile of crap. And, what's worse, M$ doesn't seem to want to fix what they already have on the market. "Oh, we'll fix it with Longhorn." Yeah, so you'll have to spend more money on a whole new OS, just to fix these bugs that have been arond since at least version 5.
Granted, all browsers have their flaws. But at least most of these browsers have people working to patch whatever holes are found. M$ has been nothing more than lackluster with regards to their patch attempts, rarely releasing any fixes. And when they do release a fix, it sometimes breaks other stuff (a'la SP2).
Until M$ gets its head out of its ass, makes IE stand-alone (as in not intergrated into Windows), and gets with the program with regards to patching security risks in a timely manner, I'll stick with the competition. Firefox and Konqueror work just fine for me...
highly anticipated features including tabbed messaging and logging
Highly anticipated? Crap, we've had these features in GAIM for a while now.
Guess AOL is behind, as usual...
...then software boxes wouldn't have much room for product info and what not, what with all the patent numbers they'd have to print on it...
God is Love.
And Love is Blind.
Therefore, god is Stevie Wonder.
Thank you, I'm here all week, try the lambchops...
Wanna get technical? They're BOTH theories. One is based purely on faith and one book that says it's the way to go. The other has a little more scientific basis to go on, such as the Galapogos Islands.
Personally, I think Creationism is a bunch of crap...
Yes, holes are announced for Open Source OSs and Applications on a somewhat (but nowhere near just as) similar basis. But then again, consider this:
These holes are often patched within a short time frame in the Open Source world. Most times, a patch is released not long after the bug is discovered, and more often than not, some end users will write their own patches, resulting in not only timely but optional fixes.
Now, M$ took how long to release SP2? And it did what? Sure, fixed a few holes, but a Windows XP Home Edition computer is still as easy a target as ever thanks to all sorts of new and wonderful exploits, and some that have been known of for months, if not a year or two. And when are they going to fix these holes?
Well, a new major release for IE has been pushed back a few years, and Longhorn (aka LongWait, LongOff, TakingTooLonghorn) is quite a ways off itself. Microsoft has said that it won't release another patch until Longhorn is released.
Which means XP users are fucked until Microsoft decides to descend from the heavens with their miraculous new piece of ill-planned garbage that promises to make it all better.
Meanwhile, us Linux users wait maybe a few months for a good patch, which more often than not works, and continue about our business in a much safer environment.
And Christians are the punchline.
I'd sooner believe in little green men from Mars than God.
I'll second that :D
...by lobbing something utterly stupid at it?
In which case, we'd have plenty of ammo stockpiled in Washington, DC...
Of course Congress won't let them. Nor with the executive branch, for that matter. And the Supreme Court has "more pressing issues" like allowing God back in schools to worry about NASA.
One of the big hurdles that everyone here has mentioned is greed. The current system allows for a slight bit of corruption, a-la Halliburton/Iraq (and yes, the "slight bit" was pure sarcasm). Congresspeople often have a personal interest in which companies get what contracts for which components of whatever project NASA has going.
How many members of Congress represent districts wherein exist aerospace-related plants? How many of them possibly have ties to these companies in some odd form or another (lobby, maybe family inside, maybe they sit on the board)? The argument they use is bringing/keeping jobs, and it does hold some water. But when personal interest takes over for politicians, they want a certain measure of control.
X-Prize competitors, however, are independant business people, tech gurus, and what not. I'm willing to bet that a great majority of them, while they see dollar signs for their results, also have a firm belief in what they're doing. They have a love of the game, as it were. They want to be a part of the betterment of Human kind through technology, in this case going into space.
The "chosen few" in Washington lose all control when the middle segment of the general population, with funding from some of the more "in-tune" of the higher-ups, begins working independantly with more level-minded intentions in mind.
I'm willing to bet that the Government wants to keep a sort of control on space activity because they see a great tactical value up there. Up there, we can hit any target we want, and intercept anything that's coming our way (in theory at least). They don't harbor the same "For The Good of Mankind" vision as alot of us do. They see it as a race to gain control of the stars, to make themselves into the ultimate superpower.
And it can only end one way. None of us want to really talk about that, do we...
There need to be more X-Prizes. Corporations have spent the last 25 years amassing a fortune for themselves. It's time to put that money to good use and get mankind moving forward again. Not for military power, but for the (not-so-)simple advancment of the species. We have the capability to visit worlds other than our own. It's time we went out there and asserted ourselves among the heavens. Start small, colonize the Moon. As technology advances, maybe we CAN make it to Mars.
But for now, it's a political buzzword, and not something our Government wants to see right away. At least not until they're sure they can keep tabs on everything above us, first...
As shown by our last election, it's a Moral Values thing, or so alot of us Americans have been conned into thinking. Forget our sons and daughters dying for Oil in a desert, forget the fact that jobs are being shipped overseas at an alarming rate, forget the fact that gas prices are going up up up. The most important thing on people's minds is Moral Values?
The problem here is this "New Religious Revolution" thing we have going on here. Emboldened by a President who walks around professing his faith, starts "Faith-based initiatives" to skirt Constitutional seperation of Church and State, and tries to force his view of the concept of Marriage by trying to write discrimination into the Constitution banning Gay Marriages/Unions...
I call it Pat Robertson Syndrome.
Noone ever said our leaders had common sense...
...Have you reversed the polarity of anything lately?
Right then.
/. or similar.
Let's see here, where to begin. OK, so I didn't provide hard links and raw data on what SP2 helps and harms in Windows XP. And yes, I am a Microsoft hater, but only after at least a decade of pain-in-the-neck practices, just to get their OS to work. Finally, I run Mandrake 10.0, which automatically puts me at odds with MS either way.
If you want hard data, just search Slashdot's archives. I'm sure you'll find write-ups regarding all of Microsoft's service packs for all it's OS products. And I'm sure you'll find something that SP2 for XP breaks. Hell, it was even said that it broke MS' own software in some cases. Vague, yes. Unsupported, well, find that out for yourself, because I'm SURE I read that somewhere online, and it's not just on a personal opinion blog or similar, but on
Here's my beef: Why did Microsoft wait so damn long to release SP2? Because, as they claimed, they wanted to make sure it was as comprehensive as possible. They wanted to more or less make it as close to a cure-all as they could. They took their sweet time, while virii and such ran rampant, exploiting the holes SP2 was meant to fix while they still could. I'm sure a side by side look at virii v. SP2 release timelines will show that.
Come on. You're a nerd like me, do a little research.
But why would they NEED to release something as major as SP2? Could it be because their code is SEVERELY FLAWED? Now, granted, no code is 100% secure, perfect, etc. But DAMN! There are so many holes in Windows code, Swiss Cheese is turning green, not with mold, but with envy.
Granted, my "precious" Linux code isn't perfect. But holy hell. If something is shown to have a pretty serious vulnerability, it's usually patched rather quickly as compared to Windows, and in some cases, patched in several ways by several different people/groups, if not by the original author(s).
Waiting for that "miracle cure" (or, to be fair, even a low-level cure) is one thing. But when flaws continue to be found on such a grand scale that they affect, what, the 90% of the compter market that MS has a handle on? And they're flaws of such a serious nature that the sensitive data on these 90% of computers is in jeopardy? Hmmm. I think we have a problem here, Houston.
When you think about how most of the machines out there are home machines with average citizens using them, and you figure that about half of those average citizens are completely computer inept and couldn't tell SP2 from T2:Judgment Day, that gets to be a pretty big problem, wouldn't you say? Why has MyDoom been such a problem? Hmm? Didn't MyDoom proliferate and get worse AFTER the release of SP2? And didn't it exploit yet another major IE/Outlook flaw?
Why isn't there an SP3? or SP4? Or SP5?
Why is Microsoft knowingly releasing severely flawed software that jeopardizes a user's entire hard drive? Don't you think that, instead of hurrying an OS to market, they'd make sure it is at least as secure as possible? Why are these flaws being found and exploited so quickly?
Microsoft is a BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATION. They have more money than God. Their only financial rival is most likely the Vatican, and they're under the Holy Tax Shelter (TM)(C)(R). If they have all this dinero at their disposal, don't you think they could roll some of it into not only development (plus Billy and Steve's pocket books), but into some heavy duty testing as well? I think they can afford to hire some hackers to pick apart the OS and report vulnerabilites back to the hive mind...
Give me a fucking break. Linux is free, and is maintained by a loose-knit band of geeks from around the world. In most cases, vulnerabilities are reported and patched in a relatively timely and speedy manner. Yeah, some fall through the cracks. But hell, these people VOLUNTEER this shit. They're not paid. They do it because they love the machine, they love the code, they LOVE THE GAME (yeah, IBM commercial, blah blah blah, but it's TRUE).