Slashback: Pricedrops, Honor, Games

Slashback (below) is chock full of updates to recent (and not recent) Slashdot stories, including some good news for AMD fans, and a last drizzle of news from E3.

Making your computer worth even less. Acid-F1ux writes: "Advanced Micro Devices has slashed prices of its desktop and mobile Athlon processors just days after a similar move by rival Intel. The cuts range from 17 percent to 52 percent for mobile Athlon XP chips and between 11 percent and 32 percent for desktop Athlon XP chips. On Sunday, Intel dropped prices of its Pentium 4 processors by as much as 53 percent."

Progressive Education strikes a blow. darnellmc writes: "According to this Atlanta Journal-Constitution news article GA Tech had so many students violate the school's "honor code" that they have decided to change it.

"In the wake of the investigation, Tech officials have decided to allow students in introductory computer science courses to share information and collaborate on homework, previously prohibited under the school's academic honor code."

Of course code sharing also teaches the value of Open Source ;o) . Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."

How many letters will the next big threat have? matthew writes: "LWN is carrying the notes from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) conference (more info at the EFF). The BPDG is the body that will be suggesting future technological control measures; they make the DMCA and CBDTPA seem like trivial problems. The BPDG conference was last week and it was open to the public so anyone could call in. You can read about what the FSF's Bradley M. Kuhn digitalspeech.org's Jonathan Watterson thought of the conference. The basic summary is that we're screwed if people don't start fighting against this kind of injustice."

This is what's called taking license. infochuck writes "Back in January, this story on Slashdot focused on Borland's licensing PR fiasco, and how they promised to remedy the situation (in short, their license permitted them to search at any time any of your computers looking for stolen software). Well, here we are, five months later, and their license hasn't changed one bit - at least not the two most unreasonable clauses, 12 and 14.4, and not in the license included with the Windows version of the Personal Edition. Download for yourself to see, but be warned, you'll have to register, which involves many questions and no less than 5 checkboxes to uncheck, as well as at least a 25MB DL. I believe pr@borland.com is still the place to write..."

Playful is good. If the last month of pre-hype hype, pre-hype, actual hype and post-hype weren't enough, you'll be pleased to read that E3 coverage continues, at Gamespy (some cool reviews), Gamegal (good photos) and other sites beginning with "Game."

Comments

E3 Pictures

[eqteam]

I noticed others talking about the robots behind Sony, and haven't seen anyone post pictures. So here they are (along with some others):
http://www.eqteam.com/e3/

If you want to see something at higher rez, let me know...

Another person who hasn't read the GPL

[stevenj]

Sigh...the above comment was modded +4 "insightful?"

The GPL requires that:

• Modified copies must include "an appropriate copyright notice" (GPL Sec. 1). Note that the copyright notice is not the same thing as the license (the GPL)...it is something like: Copyright © yyyy name of author.

• "You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change." (GPL Sec. 2a.)

The original BSD license, in contrast, has an obnoxious clause requiring credit in any advertising, not just in the copyright notice and source code.