Light-sensitive genes... ok.

However, I'll start worrying if tomorrow they come up with something that provokes serious mutations when fed after midnight.

which is pretty sad :(

I mean, whatever judge (or whoever) decided that streaming something to -one- person is broadcasting clearly has a few concepts mixed up.

When I go to a store and buy a CD, I don't sign any lease (or any other kind of) contract. I BUY A COPY which I'm free to use as I see fit within the limits of copyright law (which in essence means: no public showings, no redistribution without permission).
If they want to lease music under specific extra-copyright restrictions, they should clearly state so and not make everyone think they're buying something. Copyright doesn't give IP owners the right to impose conditions on usage other than those which are accounted for in copyright law. after a sale has been made. All this shenanigans about "licensing" is relatively new, and has been completely overdone in the software industry in particular.

Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.

Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."

        -- Crowley is a demon, in case you don't know (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

yeah, I like PTerry's work :D

Funny how, depending on what's more convenient at the moment, they argue that they actually "license" the content (say, a song) to you, so you don't own a copy, you're just paying for the right to listen to the song, yet when you say "ok, then I'll just copy it to every player I have so I can listen to it on my car, my mp3 player, my home HiFi setup, my computer, etc" they go "no, wait! you actually bought one copy! on CD! if you want an mp3 you have to buy it again!"

Fuck them

Rather sounds like a job for Neil Gaiman =P

Also, it kinda makes me think of the movie "pirates of silicon valley"

FTFY

Now something must be done about vengeance, a badge and a gun.

great song :)

It's not about good graphics but nostalgia, I think. Sadly, I don't have my spectrum nor my MSX around anymore but I got a compaq presario cds 524, still working with win95, but I'm planning on installing either some DOS (if I can get some floppys to get the images on) or (if I can manage it) some very small linux distro. On win95 it's already running carmen sandiego and some other oldies :D

So you're agreeing that the parent is right: that student's copy of 3DSMax is NOT a lost sale?

You know, there are a lot of other types of "worth", not just monetary.
A pacemaker literally saves someone's life. Does that mean the price should be everything the patient has and/or can manage to cough up?

Just because someone gets a copy of something without paying the official price for it doesn't mean it's devoid of any kind of value.

As Stephen J. Gould put it:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981

You work at IBM? we had Symantec AV running on the ubuntu image when I worked there. I guess that could be a good solution for these people, they seem to be looking for that kind of corporate 'I-feel-safer-and-dont-mind-to-pay" av solution.

Persons who buy the new versions that don't explode, work quite sliently, flash them to play pirated games (sorry, you meant that as a downside??), and use their own DX-bought hard drives on it, for half the price of a ps3.

Oh, and don't care about online gaming :)

Here you go

http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

Have fun :)