I have always wondered why Microsoft is so concerned about Linux and its puny 3% market share. I really think Microsoft has much bigger competitors for their products. What is Microsoft afraid of?
A propaganda campaign against Linux for computer vendors seems pointless. People who want Linux in their computer will want Linux in their computer. They want it for a reason, and some propaganda is not going to change their mind. The rest of the people are content with whatever comes with the computer by default (iow. Windows).
What on earths name would their legal justifications be?
I'm certainly not a lawyer, but the line between fair use and copyright infringement is quite fuzzy, and not really something you want to mess with.
Making a review, commentary or parody of a copyrighted work falls under fair use, but you nevertheless should only use relatively short segments of the original work. The more of the original work you use, the more it starts probing the borders of fair use.
I don't know if a video showing a complete playthrough falls under fair use or can be considered copyright infringement, but I wouldn't be surprised of the latter (especially if the video cannot be considered a review or commentary of the game).
And this has nothing to do with whether the infringer is making money out of it or not. That is inconsequential. (The only thing which it might affect is the willingness of the copyright holder to react.)
Ads on a site are totally fine, then it would be illegal to have ads on this site as well as we provide videos showing game footage. Hell, SDA even puts several ads on their games pages, dont you think they checked the legal circumstances beforehand?
I don't know if they have checked their legal status, but I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't. AFAIK tasvideos.org hasn't, so why should they have?
If SDA is pulling it out, then it can work as evidence that maybe game companies don't mind, but it would in no way be a defense for us.
Well, TASVideos isn't a multimillion company... it's about making maybe a few hundred bucks to keep the server running...
But there are tons of examples of copyright holders (including very especially gaming companies) sending cease&desist notices to hobbyists who aren't even making any money from it. How much likely it would be if they actually are making money out of it, no matter how little?
Also, wouldn't at most the particular movie with the adds be removed from that particular youtube account?
The problem I see is that it might draw attention to the tasvideos.org website. The game company who demanded the removal of the video from youtube might start looking at the originating website to see if there's more copyright being infringed there.
Bisqwit had a "making of" video of his semi-TAS of Chrono Cross, where he showed how he grinded a short segment over and over, perfecting it little by little, and then the video shows the final result.
I think that would make a good demonstration video: Show the actual creation of a short segment of some TAS, how it's done and redone again and again using savestates and frame advance, getting small perfected subsegments slowly done, and after that the final result is shown in its entirety.
There is theoretical harm in trying.
Until now copyright owners have not noticed or cared about tasvideos.org. By blatantly infringing their copyright for commercial purposes we might draw their attention not only to those videos, but to the entire website.
When the first "cease and desist" notice drops into some tasvideos.org admin email box from some overprotective copyright holder who has so far not noticed us, that's when the harm will have been done.
I don't know how relevant this is, but take into account that Sega Corporation owns the copyrights for the graphics and music of that game, and putting entire playthrough videos of the game on youtube is redistribution which is most probably beyond fair use. I assume Sega Corporation doesn't mind, but if you start making money out of it, that might change.
No, it doesn't. Evolution is happening all the time. Every offspring is different from its parents, and different from every other living being. That's evolution happening.
nobody argues that variations happen (because it's a fact). what i meant is of course that 6000 years is not enough time for a single celled organism to change into a human.
So what you are basically saying is that "evolution happens but it doesn't happen". Way to go.
Why do I have to believe that? Who is forcing me? Certainly not the theory of evolution.
the theory of evolution forces you to believe that life comes from nonliving material, because how else could life have come into being?
No, it doesn't. The theory of evolution does not say how life came to be. If anything "forces" me to believe that life came from nonliving material, it would be something else than the theory of evolution (eg. a conviction of atheism).
The theory of evolution is not atheist nor theist. It doesn't force you into believing anything, especially not something which it isn't even trying to explain.
Your mistake is to think that the theory of evolution has been invented to explain a universe without God, and thus if you believe in evolution you must believe that no God exists. They are completely unrelated things. Just because the majority of atheists consider the theory of evolution to be the truth doesn't imply that everybody who considers evolution to be truth must be atheist.
The theory of evolution exists to explain observations. It's that simple. It takes no stance on theism or the origin of life.
it sounds strange to think that god would snap his fingers and create the first living things, and then let evolution take over. evolution makes god superfluous. it explains too much about the origin of species/lifeforms.
Wow, that's a new one. "The theory is too good because it explains too well how life evolved. Thus it must be false, because it would leave too little for God to do." This is the first time I hear the argument of the theory of evolution being too good to be true.
Just because you don't accept the proof doesn't mean it isn't there.
there is also proof for many things that religions claim (afterlife, for example). i know you don't accept the proof, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Now you are deliberately confusing the colloquial word "proof" with the scientific word "proof", which are two different things.
Scientific proof (or more precisely, scientific evidence, as "proof" is more related to mathematics than to physics) is something which can be observed, measured, repeated, corroborated by third-parties and be subjected to extensive peer review.
In colloquial parlance "proof" is a much looser term, meaning any anecdotal evidence that has no scientific weight nor validity. You just have to take it at face value without seeing for yourself.
Of course you probably know this, but choose to confuse the two usages anyways, just for the sake of argument.
Now you are being hilarious.
if you believe in evolution, it's hilarious to think that there could have been scientists in the past who knew more about the world than modern scientists.
I don't even understand what your argument is here.
evolution says that we had less knowledge about the world before
Evolution says no such thing. Evolution is all about how lifeforms change over time. No more, no less.
Or are you going to claim that some Christians believe that the Heaven will be full of sheep? There are certain instances in the bible
where the word "lamb" is used metaphorically, not literally, and every single Christian in existence understands and accepts that.
when i talk about biblical literalists i mean people who take the bible literally, except when it's obvious that it's metaphorical, as in the case of lambs.
But there's already a subjective interpretation right there. What is "obvious" to someone might not be so obvious to someone else.
As I said, nobody takes the bible literally. Every single person has an interpretation of it. There's no such a thing as a "biblical literalist". There are only interpretations.
And even if we assumed for a moment that the universe was really just 6000 years old, how does that prove that evolution doesn't happen?
because evolution needs more time than 6000 years.
No, it doesn't. Evolution is happening all the time. Every offspring is different from its parents, and different from every other living being. That's evolution happening.
the bible says that animals bring forth after their kind
Where exactly?
If we assume for a moment that the story of creation in the bible is a parable and that the universe really is billions of years old, is there anything else in the bible that would contradict evolution?
i'm sure there is, but i can't come up with anything right now, and i don't have so much knowledge about this.
At least you admit that you have no idea what you are talking about.
There you go with the misconception that evolution is about how life came to be.
if you believe in evolution, then you also have to believe that life started from non-living matter.
Why do I have to believe that? Who is forcing me? Certainly not the theory of evolution.
Science requires proof. It's that simple.
science doesn't always require proof. look at the theory of big bang and evolution for example.
Just because you don't accept the proof doesn't mean it isn't there.
That's the difference between you and science: Science doesn't "believe" in things. Science observes, measures and presents hypotheses and theories to explain those observations. Science requires actual tangible evidence, not just folktales.
the things that religions and folktales talk about were discovered by ancient scientists.
if evolution is true, then the bible can't be taken literally. for example, the earth can't be 6000 years old. and if the bible can't be taken literally, then how can we follow the bible/word of god? how can we follow something that we can't even understand? who decides which interpretation is correct?
No Christian takes the entire bible literally. Not a single one.
Or are you going to claim that some Christians believe that the Heaven will be full of sheep? There are certain instances in the bible where the word "lamb" is used metaphorically, not literally, and every single Christian in existence understands and accepts that.
So no, the entire bible is not literal. There are metaphors, similes, figures of speech and parables. Not even you can deny that.
And even if we assumed for a moment that the universe was really just 6000 years old, how does that prove that evolution doesn't happen?
the reason people oppose the idea of evolution is because the theory of evolution opposes most religious scriptures. almost all religions say that we were created by gods and we were taught by beings who came down to earth.
I fail to see how evolution opposes scriptures. Evolution is only about how species change over time. Is there anything in the bible that contradicts this notion?
If we assume for a moment that the story of creation in the bible is a parable and that the universe really is billions of years old, is there anything else in the bible that would contradict evolution? Is the first chapter in the bible the only place that "contradicts" (in a way) evolution, if taken literally? Or are there any other places as well?
another reason to oppose evolution is that it's anti-intuitive. the world is too complex and big that it could have "created itself" by an ungodly unintelligent natural process.
There you go with the misconception that evolution is about how life came to be.
they believe that "matter" is the only thing that exists. they don't believe that there is a "spiritual" universe.
Can you blame them for that? There's not a single piece of verifiable evidence showing otherwise. It's the goal of science to explain what can be seen and measured. What else are they going to say? Are they going to lie about the existence of a spiritual world even though they can't prove it nor show any evidence? Science requires proof. It's that simple.
furthermore, some christians don't like the idea that we evolved from slimy amoebas, and they don't want to believe that jesus was an ape.
That's a completely subjective emotional point of view, not rational. Science is not driven be emotions and by what we like or don't like. It's driven by measurable facts.
personally, i believe in the hindu and nazi mythology/theory which says that apes were created because some humans in atlantis turned into apes because they sinned.
That's the difference between you and science: Science doesn't "believe" in things. Science observes, measures and presents hypotheses and theories to explain those observations. Science requires actual tangible evidence, not just folktales. If something cannot be observed, it falls completely out of the realm of science.
evolution is heresy. if evolution is true, then many things in the bible must be false.
A metaphor is not "false". A metaphor is a metaphor. It's the message it's trying to convey that is true or false.
If Jesus calls his followers "lambs", that's not a lie, even though his followers are not literally lambs. It's a metaphor.
i doubt many creationists oppose species evolving into different species
You are wrong there. Many creationists strongly oppose the notion of species evolving into several new species. (I just don't understand why.)
I don't really understand why most creationists (and some other people) oppose the idea evolution. What is so scary about it, that it must be so strongly opposed?
Even when some creationists agree with the scientific definition of the term "evolution" (ie. evolution has nothing to do about how life came to be, and it certainly has nothing to do with how the universe came into existence, it only has to do with how species change over time), they still oppose it dogmatically. But why? Why is it so scary?
Is it because the theory of evolution states that humans and apes have a common ancestor species? Is that why the whole of evolution is so fiercely opposed? The idea of, for example, one species of lizard evolving over time to become two distinct species of lizard is fiercely opposed because the theory of evolution states that humans and apes have a common ancestor species? In other words, because creationists don't agree with one single statement in the theory, they fiercely oppose the entire theory and everything that it encompasses?
Even if creationists oppose the idea of humans having common ancestry with apes, for understandable reasons, I still don't understand why they oppose other species evolving into distinct new species. What's so scary about that? Is there something in that idea which is so abhorrent and heretic that it must be denied fiercely at all costs and against all evidence? Why? What exactly is so scary about it?
Creationists accept that species change over time due to, for example, natural adaptation or selective breeding. However, they maintain that these changes will never go so far as to make two isolated populations of the same species so different that they cannot interbreed anylonger, in which case they have become, by definition, two different species. That would mean that there's some kind of phenomenon or force stopping such changes from happening. That there's some law of nature, or something, which will always keep populations of the same species interbreedable regardless of how much they change due to natural adaptation. Exactly what is this force? Why should such a force even exist?
according to people like kent hovind, who take the bible very literally, the reason they are lying is because they want to follow their sin more than the bible, so they want to imagine that they are just animals (apes) who were created by a natural process without any intervention by god, and that they don't have to be judged for the things they have done.
Yes, that explanation sounds a lot more plausible than all scientist agreeing on the subject being the result of extensive peer reviewing and testing.
It's a physical impossibility to pass a lie to science and make all scientists either believe in it or agree to spread the lie further.
i doubt it would be an impossibility. scientists are not infallible. they are just humans.
That's why science is never on the hands of just one or a few people. That's why everything must be peer-reviewed and tested before it becomes accepted by the scientific community as a whole.
One person can make a mistake, or even try to deliberately create a hoax, but that won't pass extensive scrutiny by the scientific community.
Scientists will always raise objections and questions if they see problems. That's how the scientific mind works: It doesn't accept anything without scrutiny, even if that something would support one's own views. While certainly some scientists will be eager to accept seemingly positive evidence without question, not all of them do.
Many creationists equate evolution with the origin of life, and some even go so far as to bunch it with the origin of the entire universe.
Particularly when you factor in the fact that they do not have a beef just with evolution, but with geology in general, physics (cosmology and dating methods in particular), etc.
Many creationists equate evolution with the origin of life, and some even go so far as to bunch it with the origin of the entire universe. A very typical argument against evolution is that "there must have been a creator".
The evolution theory is in no way contradictory with the notion that there has been a sentient creator, yet most creationists make it sound like it was. They also make it sound like the sole motivation for coming up with the theory of evolution was to explain the universe without a creator (and thus the theory is artificial, contrived and created against evidence).
The irony is that numerous evolutionary scientists are bible-believing christians themselves. I assume that the young earth creationists will say they are heretics.
I find it rather amusing that the only people who claim there is no evidence for macroevolution (which is in itself a term invented by creationists, not by scientists) and no transitional species are people who oppose evolution as a matter of principle. There are no scientists who say "granted, there is no evidence for macroevolution, nor are there any transitional species, but I still believe the theory of evolution to be correct".
Thus what the opposition is basically claiming is that all scientists are lying. That the hundreds of thousands (if not even millions) of scientists in the entire world who consider the theory of evolution to be correct, are all lying when they claim to have real, tangible evidence.
This is, at its core, a conspiracy theory. While opposers might not state it directly, they are basically saying that all the hundreds of thousands of scientists around the world are in a huge conspiracy to lie to the world and to deny the truth (ie. that there really is no evidence nor transitional species).
Of course that's not how science works. Science doubts, tests and verifies every claim. Everything is tested, re-tested, and re-re-tested to death. Everything is peer-reviewed. It's a physical impossibility to pass a lie to science and make all scientists either believe in it or agree to spread the lie further. That's not how science and the scientific community works. It's a physical impossibility. You cannot make hundreds of thousands of people of different cultures, religions and ethical backgrounds to agree to spread the same lie. It's impossible.
But that's what the opposers are claiming.
because they don't actually have evidence, they just say they have, so it's anecdotal evidence.
Except the evidence is readily available for anyone else to confirm.
Just try, oh I don't know, searching?
Trying to convince someone that the theory of evolution is a scientifically valid theory with valid evidence (and here I'm using the word "theory" as it is used in science, not as used in common parlance where it is usually used to mean something like "blind guess", or more technically "conjecture", which has nothing to do with the scientific definition of the word) is a futile endeavor if that someone is convinced otherwise. Opposition to the evolution theory is a dogma, and dogmas cannot be refuted.
One has to first understand the scientific foundation onto which the theory of evolution is based on before one can accept the evidence supporting it. Most people who oppose the theory do not understand this foundation, and usually not even how science works. They have a completely made-up misconception of what science is, how it works, and how the scientific community works.
Do you know what could also be interesting? A "making of" page for certain TASes.
With this I mean more or less detailed descriptions of how the current TAS came to be, from the very first attempts, which techniques and tricks were discovered along the way (and which published movies first showcased them), what kind of background work was done, what kind of tools were created, and so on. All this chronologically categorized.
Rockman, Legend of Zelda and Super Metroid are superb examples of TASes with a huge amount of work behind them, a lot more than can be seen from the latest publication, and I think it could be interesting to read about it.
um... where did i say that anecdotal evidence is evidence? read what i wrote more carefully. i didn't say anything about evidence in the entire post. i don't even know if astral projection is real because i haven't had one yet. it's just something i believe in.
At least you have the courage to admit that you believe in things without any kind of evidence.
bisqwit, i've been trying to do an astral projection (going out of your body). what's your opinion about astral projection? those who have experienced it often say that their body and soul is connected by a silver cord (kinda like the spiritual equivalence of the umbilical cord) and if this cord is severed, you die. the bible seems to mention the silver cord in Ecclesiastes 12:6-7.
i've heard that it's possible that a hacker might get into your body and possess you while you are away from your body. some say that astral projection isn't even real, that it's just some kind of dream. the experiences that i've had so far are much like lucid dreams, except that it starts from my bed and i experience leaving my body, so i don't think i've had a real projection yet. i tried to test if it was a dream by looking how much the clock was, but the clock didn't match the time in reality so it was probably a dream.
I think it's sad that you don't realize that anecdotal evidence is not evidence at all. At most it can be incentive for further study, but in no way a proof of anything.
sounds like nonsense to me. infinity by definition is... infinite... so it can't become larger.
That's why there should always be an avi alternative.
While we are at it, many people still have trouble playing any h264 material, so for them we should also offer a regular old mpeg4-encoded alternative. Preferably in a WMV file so that Windows Media Player will be directly able to show it without problems.
But of course there are people who don't have Windows nor WMP, and thus may be unable to play WMV files, not to talk about mpeg4 videos in the first place. For them we should also offer, as an alternative, an mpeg1-encoded version of the video. Those will surely play everywhere.
There is no free choice under a god. When you die, in religion, you go to a Good Place or Bad Place depending on your actions. I cannot choose to go to Heaven. I have to relinquish my free will and do what the god wants.
That's where you are wrong: It is a choice. If your choice is that you don't want it, then nobody is forcing you. It's your choice.
Or let's do something else. God is all-loving, and unconditionally loves everyone. He is all powerful. If he is all loving, he wants everyone to be happy. If he is all powerful, everyone can be happy. Therefore, everyone should be happy.
Wanting something and forcing it are two completely different things. Some people don't want to be happy. It's their choice. God's not going to force it on anybody.
I've always demonstrated you really can't have free will under a god
You didn't demonstrate anything. You just made an uncorroborated claim.
but even if you could, what point then is there in a god who loves everyone, can fix everything, but does not?
Yes it is. God made everything exactly the way it is. If anything behaves badly, it is God's fault for making it that way.
Or maybe people behave badly because they choose to behave badly? Is it God's doing if people choose to do the bad thing?
One could argue that why God made people so that they could choose to do the bad thing. However, there is no such a thing as free choice if there is nothing to choose from. If people could only behave in a certain way, they would not have free choice, and thus they would not be making choices at all. Is that what you would prefer?
Maybe God thought it would be nice to give people free choice. True free choice, not just an illusion of it.
I'd like you to check this one out. The bible is made of epic fails.
I wonder what people mean when they say "I'm studying the bible"... If they were really paying attention wouldn't they notice this sooner or later?
Some practicing atheists just love building strawmen by simplifying things to the point where they sound ridiculous.
Compare it to this: The Allies killed quite a lot of civilians, including women an children, whey attacked Germany at the end of World War II. Can we thus unequivocally say that the Allies attacking Germany was the wrong thing to do, and that they were evil killers and murderers?
Or was there a higher reason for them to do that? How many lives were saved precisely because the Allies attacked Germany? Would we be living in democratic peace if they hadn't done that?
So you see, it's not always so black and white. Sometimes people get killed, but there may be a higher purpose.
It's easy to blame God and build straw men several thousands of years after the fact, especially when you don't know the real circumstances that caused the situation to unfold. How do you know that the Israelis didn't simply get rid of a contemporary nazi regime which was slaughtering people?
Of course these practicing atheists want to give the image that those people were just living there their everyday lives, minding their own business and doing harm to nobody, when suddenly these fanatics come and slaughter them for no reason.
I've been using Ubuntu on a VM for some days now, and I mostly like it, but.. While all the super duper security in su, root, chmod etc is nice for a server, it's incredibly annoying for a desktop. I've typed my password and chmod +x so many times my hands are sore.
I honestly don't understand what is it that you are doing that requires constant root privileges.
I was a Sparc/Solaris user for almost 10 years, with no root privileges (because it was not my computer, but the school's) and never had a problem. I have now used OpenSuse Linux in my home computer for over 5 years, and I seldom need to manually execute anything as root. About the only thing I have to execute as root is when I need to install ATI's properietary display driver (being properietary, it's obviously not found in OpenSuse's official repository), and if I want to tail /var/log/apache2/access_log. (I could give myself privileges to read it directly, but I watch it so rarely that I haven't bothered.)
I also seem to find important config files in crazy paths like (exaggerated example) /sys/bus/fs/ecryptfs/kernel/dev/proc/block/usr/var/lib/socket9/etc/opt/firm/initrd.
Either you are using the wrong distro (which sounds a bit surprising to me, as I have heard Ubuntu should be rather user-friendly), or you are using it in the wrong way.
With OpenSuse I seldom need to edit any config file by hand. OpenSuse's system management tool Yast takes care of about everything with a couple of mouse clicks (it parses those cryptic config files somewhere in the innards of the system, presents their contents graphically in a clear simple format, and automatically saves any changes). I can even fully configure apache directly from Yast. Managing software (installation, upgrading, deinstallation) can be done graphically and easily with the mouse. I don't even need to go to the command line to install anything, if it can be found in the repositories (although I'm certainly not afraid of the command line). There are very few things which cannot be done with Yast and I don't even remember the last time I had to edit some system config file directly.
Can someone convince me these are not problematic? Otherwise I'm going back to Windows.
Maybe try OpenSuse next time? And when you get it installed, first thing is to launch Yast2 to see what's there.
