Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of the three greatest games I have ever played, tied with Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. I feel like it's recognized for being a great, trendsetting game, but at the same time frequently forgotten. It's as if it's just on the periphery of our minds and it just takes a little nudge to go, "Oh yeah, that game *is* awesome." Yes, it borrowed a lot from Super Metroid(hence the common term for nearly all of the 2D Castlevania games to follow: Metroidvania), but it added a ton of polish, plenty of twists and merged a number of genres together flawlessly. Add in some gorgeous visuals, a kick ass sound track and some voice acting that's admittedly a little over the top and you've got a game that still stands out as a masterpiece today. You know, that masterpiece that's collecting dust in the corner that you forget is there?
I hate to break it to you, but no matter what the size of the company, if you hand over your data to someone else, it's only as secure as one person. All it takes is one person with the access to have a really bad day. The exact risks aren't the same, sure but that doesn't mean that you aren't at risk of losing your data with a large company, even in spite of the checks they put in place.
You know, when i read this article I couldn't help but think that if there's anything a group of white-hat hackers should be doing for the common good, it would be stepping in on situations like this.
That Spider-man video is just awesome. My day is now complete.
If you really want to be technical, you can't even play an MP3 without making a temporary copy of a portion of it.
Given the usage of the word copy in the original statement, they are talking about any copy made after the original purchase, so even though the original purchase is actually a copy, they are treating it as an original file for legal purposes. Still, it is possible to sell a drive loaded with the original and no copies have been made.
"The label claimed that it is impossible to sell used digital music files without copying them..."
Really? So there is absolutely no way that someone can obtain digital file of music without copying it from another source and no way to sell it without making another copy?
So purchasing music online and then selling the drive that contains it is impossible? Or selecting the file, pressing CTRL+X selecting an external location and pressing CTRL+V is impossible? Comparing two instances of a file that already exist, verifying that they are the same and then deleting one instance of it is also impossible?
I'll grant that the people making this specious claim are not creative or technically savvy, and so they may not have personally come up with any of these scenarios, but given that this is a legal matter, being discussed in court, maybe they could actually do some amount of investigation and make claims that are actually factual. The amount of misinformation pushed by the RIAA and its lobbyists is staggering and insulting in its attempt to combat perceived piracy. What's infuriating is the distinct lack of anyone in the judicial system that has enough knowledge to actually call them on it, which just ends up perpetuating the myths.
I disagree. I think that very point was made in the opening statements of the article.
I've always examined phobias in a more philosophical light. I think that while rational fears serve a purpose, to preserve our lives, irrational fears also serve a purpose which is direction of personal growth. These irrational fears always seemed to me that they stemmed from arousal(not sexual, just something that grabs your attention) combined with a bit of fear that pushes that response towards the "flight" end of the spectrum. I've found that given a chance to examine those fears I've found aspects of the object of my fears to be appealing, or that some element of them holds an important lesson that I needed to learn to become a bit more balanced emotionally. It's as if some part of my subconscious says, "This is important, you need to deal with it," but behaviors and ego stepped into the way as if to say, "you haven't dealt with it so far, no reason to start now."
For one reason or another, the cases you describe can be considered rational fears. If the first one feared a wading pool, or the second one feared a snakeskin patterned tie these we qualify as phobias because there is a clear irrational aspect to the fears.
I absolutely *loved* these stories as a kid. I could not get enough of them. I was never frightened by them, I always had too much perverse pleasure in reading the twisted stories and seeing the eerie drawings. It makes me wonder how much these books shaped me growing up, because to this day, Halloween is my favorite holiday, I absolutely love scaring the crap out of people and I'm good at it, I frequently have the reputation of having the scariest house to visit on Halloween and I even proposed to my wife on that day. I pride myself on having grown men and teenagers run from my house(often without their bags of candy).
I always have twisted ideas to try out for decorations(some are too elaborate or expensive to put together for just a single day's use). For example, I really want to have a wooden skeleton made, and then wrap it with pork and throw it on a fire. People would be attracted to the smell of the meat cooking and horrified when they discover the source.
I'm a bad, bad man.
Thank you for posting this, you've shared several of my thoughts. I agree that they could do better, but they really don't strike me as even remotely as delusional as BlockBuster.
Huh, and I was expecting all of the comments to mention Nyan Cat. I'm impressed that this is not the case.
It has meaning to her.
Comparing the inside of a star to the surface of a planet seems like a dubious way to start off your argument. I think expecting anything to survive inside an active nuclear reaction is unreasonable, and that's not considering temperature at all. So no, I do not believe that there is life inside a star, but I will happily accept being wrong if it can be proven.
The rest of your statements about the Habitable Zone are all based on life on Earth in some way or another, which is the very premise that I rejected as being too limited in the first place.
I personally think that we should examine a planet and observe it in great detail over a course of time. There are changes that will take place over that period that can be explained by non-living forces: atmospheric winds, solar winds, tectonic activity, gravity and logical chemical processes(that work towards equilibrium). Any changes that cannot be explained by these processes should be examined further, particularly unbalanced chemical reactions. That's the essence of life, isn't it? Chemical processes that work to maintain activity, rather than acheiving a state of rest?
You could just look at it from a greater distance. I'm just sayin'.
I'm a firm believer that every planet has some form of life on it. What I don't believe is that we know what we are looking for at this point. Our entire understanding of biology is limited to one planet and so far we keep looking for something that matches our current understanding. This is not an objective method. I don't know what to expect, but I do believe we are being too limited in our scope.
Savvy torrent hunters have found good sources and go to them directly, rather than digging through several versions of a single movie.
At least, that's what I believe savvy torrent hunters would do.
Digital distribution is a mixed bag for me. I love it in terms of acquiring music with one caveat: I always back it up. If I download an album in its entirety I burn a copy of it immediately. If I puy a handle ful of singles, I'll put all of them on one disc. Sometimes I'll also send them to some cloud service, sometimes I'll create data DVD's as backups, but I always back it up. I don't really do this with videos anymore, with the exception of videos that may be hard to replace. Popular videos are easy enough to find in one for or another with minimal cost.
Video games are another issue entirely. What I like about systems like Steam and Amazon's App Store is that I don't have to keep everything backed up. What worries me about these same systems is that it's in someone else's hands, relying on market trends and economic success. That alone tells me that there is this invisible expiration date, after which, all of that content that I purchased will be gone, if I don't already have a copy installed, and even then, I might not be able to access it.
I'm a fan of horror movies in general. The gore trend that american films are taking in this genre lately doesn't grab me, I'm more a fan of the creeping, cerebral horror that affects your emotions and doesn't just go for shock value. I've really enjoyed the run of asian horror movies that have been coming over to the U.S. in the last decade(the originals and the remakes). In particular, I love the Korean-made film, "The Host." I think it's absolutely brilliant in this genre. I had a horrible sinking feeling in my gut when I saw on a bookshelf a few years ago the words "Stephanie Meyer" and "The Host" on one cover and feared that the day would come that people would overlook the brilliant Korean film because the literary equivalent of a boy band would become more popular. Ugh.
I have 26 friends on Facebook. I think that's a good number.
Maybe you could mention that this video is NSFW?
