You sound like you run a quality "local business" built on trust, and that's commendable, especially in this age. Incidentally, do you run a video store and pizza shop in the same store? I've never heard of such a thing!
Anyway, yes, that's my point too. These huge companies just become faceless.
But (not wishing to poke flames, but) I think maybe the top parent was referring to our usual Slashdot staple of the really huge companies which can afford to not even consider their customers because they make so much money from monopolies and serving other corporate interests - we all know who I'm talking about. It's those companies who are getting the "Internet backlash" I think, and hope it will continue.
No, I didn't, and I'm angry at myself for not doing so.
I trusted Blizzard unconditionally. Their previous three expansions (Brood War, Lord of Destruction and Frozen Throne; the last one in particular) were the three most comprehensive and revolutionary expansion products I have ever used. They were simply a phenomenal company, and everything they released was gold.
While I was disappointed with WoW, I felt compelled to explore Draenor in the expansion and had no reason not to trust that Blizzard would deliver another great expansion. Sadly, it was misplaced.
5) "Method for presenting clickable text which navigates a web browser to a new URL" 6) "Method for requesting a document resource on a remote server" 7) "Method to allow a consumer to designate desire to purchase products remotely"
But I'm only level 26... and I'm tired of this game. (But, didn't know about Ashenvale being the Grom place...)
You don't have to be ridiculously high level to see a lot of the lore in WoW, you just have to know where to look.
It's just that if this was any normal game (eg. Diablo II or Warcraft III), I'd have finished by now - seen all of the lore.
As for the lack of low level expansion content, think about it from a business sense.
OK well, I have never played a game before which has to be rationalised with "There's nothing wrong with the game if you think about it in a business sense". The business sense should not affect the game design. It should be the funnest game possible, period.
And this is the first Blizzard game where you really do have to justify it with money. Why can't they let me explore Draenor, for example, from level 20 (or 1), maybe have a noob zone in Draenor, but restrict maybe half of it to high level players? No, but it's more profitable if people have to play longer to get there. If you give people what they want early, they give up faster.
Well I for one would rather play a great game for one month (and finish it), than play the game with the exact same content, stretched out so it takes me four months to finish it. Of course, Bliz would rather me play for four months than one.
You don't order dinner when you've barely started on breakfast.
Yeah... I know but I thought when I bought the expansion I was ordering a larger breakfast menu, not dinner. (It turns out it's got two extra items on the breakfast menu, and then an epic dinner). Well unfortunately I didn't make it through brunch.
And if you're not willing to keep playing, that tells me you simply do not like the gameplay.
I was never really a fan of the gameplay - it's very stretched out and repetitive. But I was willing to put up with it to get to experience the Warcraft lore. But the more this game goes on, the harder it is to level, and there's only so many "kill x baddies" quests I can take.
As I said in previous posts, I was, before WoW, the most hardcore of Blizzard fans. I see this as a big sellout - the first time Blizzard has put money over customers.
Right. I know you don't need to play a bajillion hours a week to get to 60. Still, when you say you played for a couple of hours a day, for a couple of months, well that sounds about right for me. I did about the same, and ended up with 2 chars, 26/23.
Always playing with the idea that "I'll be able to meet Rexxar one day" or "I'll be able to go to Blackrock Spire" or "I'll be able to visit the site of Grom's death" and all the wonderful things you hear about. (Keeping in mind, I'm coming at this game as a big time Warcraft 1/2/3 fan, and the #1 thing to me in WoW is the game world history, story, races and locations - hence why I'm not too keen on the game being predominantly about levelling).
And eventually, you play for 3 months or so (the time frame where in any usual game, ie. Warcraft III, you'd be completely done). And then you get to the realisation that, you're only on level 25. Levels do go up exponentially. And you're just kidding yourself if you think you're ever going to see any of this stuff, when you're playing a game clearly designed with so much "filler" that I just don't care about.
Then the expansion came out, with the promise of Draenor!!!! Such an epic and crucial place in the Warcraft backstory. For those who haven't played the previous games, Draenor was where the Orcs began, where they came through the Dark Portal in WC1. It's where the WC2 expansion was set, you travelled there to stop it from exploding and destroying Azeroth. It's where you returned to in WC3 expansion to seek refuge. It is such a crucial place in the WC backstory, and as much as I hated WoW by this point, I bought it anyway because Draenor was so important.
Thus, you can imagine my absolute heartbroken disappointment to realise that you needed to be 58 to go there at all. (I had assumed that the Dranei race would start in Draenor... silly me). And thus, I shall never see it in WoW.
I think it's great that Warcraft, my favourite game saga ever, has finally achieved mass popularity. But it's all about levelling, guilds, and powerful items, and that doesn't interest me. I feel cheated as a loyal (or, previously-loyal) True Warcraft Fan: that I should have paid Blizzard so much for this game, yet not be able to do anything promised on the back of the box without hours and hours and countless bloody hours of what can only be described as hard, monotonous work.
Which is why I will be first in line if/when Warcraft IV (the real-time strategy game) comes out. But I will never again play World of Warcraft.
The casual players have gotten a large injection of content that is both accessible and enjoyable to someone who doesn't have huge amounts of time to play.
I just have never understood this. I've never seen anyone besides myself complain about it. I'd like an answer here because I'm just so frustrated about it.
Firstly, define casual. The reviews (such as this one) tend to define casual as a play style - as someone who enjoys playing for quests and exploration rather than powerlevelling. But can someone please please redefine casual - maybe - as someone who actually isn't playing for 12 hours a day?
I cannot fathom the amount of hours of work it would take me to get to level 60. I'm a causal player - casual in the sense that - I basically want to spent about 150 hours total playing this game. Like a normal game. I'm not a big MMO fan but I am a huge huge Warcraft fan which is why I have continually given this game a shot. It's why I bought the Burning Crusade.
But I had no idea BC would add almost zero content until level 58. I thought it was insane, and I still just cannot begin to comprehend why they did this.
The casual players have gotten a large injection of content that is both accessible and enjoyable to someone who doesn't have huge amounts of time to play.
WHAT ABOUT SOMEONE WHO NEVER HAD HUGE AMOUNTS OF TIME TO PLAY, AND NEVER GOT ANYWHERE NEAR LEVEL 58??? What do we get from the expansion, or any of the new content coming into the game? Why did I give Blizzard $60 just so that hardcore people can enjoy this stuff?
I just never understood why no other review I've seen has ever said anything like "but you may want to hold off on this expansion unless you're level 58". Every review and everybody I've spoken to seems to assume that every WoW player is level 58. What about the true casuals, who spend their time in the 20s or 30s and are never going to see high levels?
I'll tell you what - like me, they all finally realised they had no hope of seeing any of this content, and quit. And they're not coming back.
I wish I had more time this morning to respond to everything, I might try to follow up if I get more time later. Just a few quick points.
Lol, you picked a lot;) Feel free to write more later...
Ok, first the sources I cited that created outrage original are NOT OSS. JAVA, PDF, etc...
Hmm, this whole part of your response seems to think I'm advocating Open Source Software. Which I do advocate, but in this particular instance, I was talking about Open Standards. There's a big difference - Ogg is an Open Standard, it can be read by software such as MediaMonkey which is Closed Source Software.
Java is an Open Language (as demonstrated by the GCJ open source Java compiler), but the core implementation of Java itself is closed (though that's about to change any week now, Sun is GPLing Java, hooray). I don't know where PDF stands, I assume it's almost but not entirely open.
OpenXML is contentiously an "open standard", while nobody is claiming that Office is OSS.
However, your own definition of Open doesn't even hold in the OSS world. It is a great ideal, it just does not exist.
Of course it does... again I'm talking about open standards. The specs for formats such as Ogg, ODF, HTML, XML, PNG, SVG, etc etc, are completely open. Pretty much all of these have OSS implementations (usually called "reference implementations", but they may also be unofficial OSS implementations because that's just what the OSS community will do whenever there's a standard to be implemented) - but these formats are NOT part of OSS to begin with. They are Open Standards.
Technically there should be no patents on these formats - in my opinion that is a prerequisite for an open standard. As far as I know all of the above formats are completely patent-free (which is why I didn't list the closest open video standard, XVID, since the wiki says it's potentially patent-encumbered).
If MS were to use MANY of the OSS world technologies, they would open themselves up to being required to provide the full source of everything they do. This is NOT their business model, although there are some internal advocates inside MS that are pushing OSS into the MS world.
No, that's not true at all. If MS wanted to use the reference implementations of technologies (where and only where these reference implementations were released under the GPL or a similar copyleft license), then they would open themselves up to having to GPL their wider codebase. I hate MS, but I think it's perfectly reasonable that they do not GPL their code.
However, it is still possible to implement Open Standards in proprietary software, and there is no license which can prevent it. You simply a) use the reference implementation, if it's not under a copyleft license (most reference implementations are released under the LGPL, which does not require you to GPL all of your code - but I doubt MS would be content using LGPL code either), or b) go back to the spec documents themselves (ie. the format itself, not the actual code), and write your own code to read the format spec.
Option b is hard and time-consuming, but really, proprietary companies cannot complain about being forced to implement an open standard without using the reference implementation, when when it goes the other way round, OpenXML for example, of course, has no reference implementation - just a confusing 6,000 page standard which OSS software has to write from scratch. In many other formats OSS has to reverse engineer it. So OSS gets the long end of the stick. There is no argument for proprietary developers that it is "hard" or "legally challenging" to implement Open Standards.
As you will note more OSS is coming out of MS in a free to use license with NO restrictions, even more open than GPL. But in the same note, less is being used internally as they do not want to jeopardize Windows o
A) Court says SW patents are unconstitutional. yeah right:-p.
Could happen?:-p
B) Court says SW patents are constitutional, MS wins and nothing changes too much.
Wrong. A lot changes. This confirms what has before only been thought - that SW is patentable. This is a bad thing. Guys, I think we have to suck up our collective hatred, and root for MS on this one. Just this once. We can overrun them with claims of hypocrisy and non-patent-encumbered GPL operating systems later, kk?
C) Court says a disc which is an installer is analogous to a "blueprint" and is not the same as a SW patent (and thus dodges the SW patent question). Everything explodes, GPL and non-GPL software living on the same installation CD (read: legal for nvidia drives to be distributed).
Whoaaa... hold on there.
The GPL does not prevent non-GPL software from living on the same disc as it. It simply prevents the linking of GPL and non-GPL programs (either statically or dynamically) into an executable, or the incorporation of non-GPL code into the same program as GPL code. It says nothing about the same disc, web server, etc.
In fact, the GPL allows GPL programs to call (ie. execute in a different address space) a non-GPL program, and vice versa (which is why Linux is allowed to run non-GPL code, and proprietary IDEs can call GCC).
I don't know where device drivers fall into this (I would have thought they were dynamically linked into the Linux executable, but apparently not), but it is perfectly legal for nVidia drivers to be preinstalled in Linux distros. Ubuntu does it. You just hear debate about it all the time because it isn't "a true OSS operating system" in that case - which is why many "pure OS" distros such as Debian refuse to incorporate proprietary drivers.
Scientists working in Cambridge have managed to make quantum encryption completely secure (registration required)
Do you reckon I can break in without registering?
Anyway the first thing you should never do in security is say "this is completely secure".
And how did the summary make the link from "completely private transmission of data" to DRM? It just highlights the fatal problem with DRM - even if we had quantum security, there'd be no way to make bits not copyable.
You're not making a distinction here between open formats and proprietary formats. (Where an "open" format is something which I consider to be unpatented, fully-documented, and (as I'll get to), truly portable).
First people were mad that MS had abandoned 'industry' standards by not shipping an MP3 ripper in WMP in Windows.
Now the main reason people got mad is because they foresook one patented proprietary format (MP3) for another patented proprietary format (WMA). (Yes WMA is patent-encumbered, look at what happened to VirtualDub with ASF).
The only difference is that MP3 is the de facto standard, and WMA is not. So MS were just as bad, but non-standard (which is par for the course).
Then when they do put MP3 ripping in, this is what happens?
And the reaction here is not so much "haha MS, you shouldn't have put MP3 in" as "haha MS, you got burned at your own game". If it happened to a company that didn't spread fear throughout the open source world that it's going to sue everyone for patent infringement, then we'd probably have more sympathy.
I don't blame them for using their own toys like OpenXML or anything else, every time they have tried to work with non-MS technology they get bit for it.
So every time, instead of using standard (or de facto standard) technology, they go ahead and come up with their own proprietary, locked down, and often patent-encumbered technology.
They get bit for it because of their intentions. Whenever they release something like this, their intentions are pretty clearly bent on monopolising. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
With OpenXML they tried something new: They recognised that people don't like having their documents in proprietary patent-encumbered document formats. So they came up with a format which would seem to be open. What's the perfect name for it? "Open" - that implies openness, freedom, and portability, and "XML" - the buzzword of the decade, implying interoperability and ease-of-implementation.
Unfortunately, what you'll find if you read the 6000-page format specification of OpenXML* is that it is little more than a confusingly-twisted XMLization of the proprietary Office format - designed exclusively for the Office suite and virtually impossible for any other suite to support fully (in fact the spec explicitly recommends against non-Office suites implementing certain features). So OpenXML is just another example of MS playing by its own rules for its own purposes (not to avoid patent issues or anything like that). (Also OpenXML was not MS's attempt to create their own standard to avoid patents - the only reason for OpenXML is to compete with OpenDocument).
So don't make MS out to be the victim here - they just got burned in their own game. That's why everyone is laughing at them. If they really wanted to go against the de facto standards to avoid patents (and not go after a monopoly position), they could choose established open formats like Ogg Vorbis instead of coming up with their own and patenting them.
So is anyone else ready to tell all things associated with MP3 and variants to shove it up their ass?
Yes.
* which I haven't, but I've read summaries and excerpts from it.
I think if more people started to use OGG it would make player manufacturers think about supporting it. We need to get more easy-to-use MP3 to OGG converters and easy-to-install codecs for Windows out there.
Yes, OGG is Good. (Or correctly, Ogg Vorbis). But as a friend pointed out, converting MP3 to OGG is painful, because you're recompressing an already-compressed format.
(Still, I'd do it just for the freedom of having Ogg). (Vorbis).
The solution is obvious: move Mars closer to Earth. It doesn't matter how ridiculous an amount of effort it would take, or that it might seriously fuck up the cosmos: There's money to be made here!
You know I think Microsoft should pay them in $20 bills. I mean..... we all know what 80 tonnes of coins would be like... just for once I want to see 80 tonnes of bills.... please?
(Plus, it'd be nice to see forklift operators making big money off these court disputes instead of lawyers all the time).
Wait, who are you replying to, me or Vicissidude? Because, your statement was an apt remark on the huge post above yours (which I agreed with). Vicissidude took your post and made a quite serious rant about America being a free market. And then I replied to him, finishing with a Matrix quote to show how geeky I am:P
So your comment seems more appropriate for Vicissidude's.
Probably because Vista has a bad balance of admin/user mode. I use Linux all the time. Here's what I need sudo for:
- Installing programs (including use of apt-get). - Configuring my network - Writing outside my home directory - Mount external drives
That's about it. Everything I do as part of my normal workflow, I contain within my home directory (as you're supposed to do in a UNIX security environment). I don't need sudo to work on files, move things around, browse the web, run applications, etc.
Yet I'm secure because the guts of my system (which Linux, unlike Windows, isn't writing to all the time) is outside my home. It's simply a better security model.
Combine this with the fact that Vista's UAC is prompt prompt prompt. That gets annoying for the user, you request an action, you get a prompt, you have to press OK.
In Linux, everything I use sudo for is on the command line. I used to get annoyed by the "You need to be root to do that", but of course after awhile you learn when you need sudo and you just type those four letters "sudo". It's ridiculously easy, and it gives you full control, with less irritation. (Like the perfect shave).
How does me deleting or archiving emails change the amount of time I'll spend on them? I don't see that as part of "addiction", any more than having a step to quitting smoking being to clean up your cigaratte butts vs leave them in the ash tray.
I use gmail, and I delete emails that are crap, spam or useless. (Or slashdot replies:)) Everything else, I keep permanently.
How's this for a new approach to email: Don't see it as a waste of time, but a powerful tool, a personal repository. My inbox is so comprehensive I can now search it for people's addresses, helpful advice, code snippets, etc. Deleting emails makes them a waste of time.
Slashdot Mirror
You sound like you run a quality "local business" built on trust, and that's commendable, especially in this age. Incidentally, do you run a video store and pizza shop in the same store? I've never heard of such a thing!
Anyway, yes, that's my point too. These huge companies just become faceless.
But (not wishing to poke flames, but) I think maybe the top parent was referring to our usual Slashdot staple of the really huge companies which can afford to not even consider their customers because they make so much money from monopolies and serving other corporate interests - we all know who I'm talking about. It's those companies who are getting the "Internet backlash" I think, and hope it will continue.
Which of the 6 links is TFA?
*mindblown*
No, I didn't, and I'm angry at myself for not doing so.
I trusted Blizzard unconditionally. Their previous three expansions (Brood War, Lord of Destruction and Frozen Throne; the last one in particular) were the three most comprehensive and revolutionary expansion products I have ever used. They were simply a phenomenal company, and everything they released was gold.
While I was disappointed with WoW, I felt compelled to explore Draenor in the expansion and had no reason not to trust that Blizzard would deliver another great expansion. Sadly, it was misplaced.
5) "Method for presenting clickable text which navigates a web browser to a new URL"
6) "Method for requesting a document resource on a remote server"
7) "Method to allow a consumer to designate desire to purchase products remotely"
And this is the first Blizzard game where you really do have to justify it with money. Why can't they let me explore Draenor, for example, from level 20 (or 1), maybe have a noob zone in Draenor, but restrict maybe half of it to high level players? No, but it's more profitable if people have to play longer to get there. If you give people what they want early, they give up faster.
Well I for one would rather play a great game for one month (and finish it), than play the game with the exact same content, stretched out so it takes me four months to finish it. Of course, Bliz would rather me play for four months than one.Yeah... I know but I thought when I bought the expansion I was ordering a larger breakfast menu, not dinner. (It turns out it's got two extra items on the breakfast menu, and then an epic dinner). Well unfortunately I didn't make it through brunch.I was never really a fan of the gameplay - it's very stretched out and repetitive. But I was willing to put up with it to get to experience the Warcraft lore. But the more this game goes on, the harder it is to level, and there's only so many "kill x baddies" quests I can take.
As I said in previous posts, I was, before WoW, the most hardcore of Blizzard fans. I see this as a big sellout - the first time Blizzard has put money over customers.
Right. I know you don't need to play a bajillion hours a week to get to 60. Still, when you say you played for a couple of hours a day, for a couple of months, well that sounds about right for me. I did about the same, and ended up with 2 chars, 26/23.
... silly me). And thus, I shall never see it in WoW.
Always playing with the idea that "I'll be able to meet Rexxar one day" or "I'll be able to go to Blackrock Spire" or "I'll be able to visit the site of Grom's death" and all the wonderful things you hear about. (Keeping in mind, I'm coming at this game as a big time Warcraft 1/2/3 fan, and the #1 thing to me in WoW is the game world history, story, races and locations - hence why I'm not too keen on the game being predominantly about levelling).
And eventually, you play for 3 months or so (the time frame where in any usual game, ie. Warcraft III, you'd be completely done). And then you get to the realisation that, you're only on level 25. Levels do go up exponentially. And you're just kidding yourself if you think you're ever going to see any of this stuff, when you're playing a game clearly designed with so much "filler" that I just don't care about.
Then the expansion came out, with the promise of Draenor!!!! Such an epic and crucial place in the Warcraft backstory. For those who haven't played the previous games, Draenor was where the Orcs began, where they came through the Dark Portal in WC1. It's where the WC2 expansion was set, you travelled there to stop it from exploding and destroying Azeroth. It's where you returned to in WC3 expansion to seek refuge. It is such a crucial place in the WC backstory, and as much as I hated WoW by this point, I bought it anyway because Draenor was so important.
Thus, you can imagine my absolute heartbroken disappointment to realise that you needed to be 58 to go there at all. (I had assumed that the Dranei race would start in Draenor
I think it's great that Warcraft, my favourite game saga ever, has finally achieved mass popularity. But it's all about levelling, guilds, and powerful items, and that doesn't interest me. I feel cheated as a loyal (or, previously-loyal) True Warcraft Fan: that I should have paid Blizzard so much for this game, yet not be able to do anything promised on the back of the box without hours and hours and countless bloody hours of what can only be described as hard, monotonous work.
Which is why I will be first in line if/when Warcraft IV (the real-time strategy game) comes out. But I will never again play World of Warcraft.
Firstly, define casual. The reviews (such as this one) tend to define casual as a play style - as someone who enjoys playing for quests and exploration rather than powerlevelling. But can someone please please redefine casual - maybe - as someone who actually isn't playing for 12 hours a day?
I cannot fathom the amount of hours of work it would take me to get to level 60. I'm a causal player - casual in the sense that - I basically want to spent about 150 hours total playing this game. Like a normal game. I'm not a big MMO fan but I am a huge huge Warcraft fan which is why I have continually given this game a shot. It's why I bought the Burning Crusade.
But I had no idea BC would add almost zero content until level 58. I thought it was insane, and I still just cannot begin to comprehend why they did this.WHAT ABOUT SOMEONE WHO NEVER HAD HUGE AMOUNTS OF TIME TO PLAY, AND NEVER GOT ANYWHERE NEAR LEVEL 58??? What do we get from the expansion, or any of the new content coming into the game? Why did I give Blizzard $60 just so that hardcore people can enjoy this stuff?
I just never understood why no other review I've seen has ever said anything like "but you may want to hold off on this expansion unless you're level 58". Every review and everybody I've spoken to seems to assume that every WoW player is level 58. What about the true casuals, who spend their time in the 20s or 30s and are never going to see high levels?
I'll tell you what - like me, they all finally realised they had no hope of seeing any of this content, and quit. And they're not coming back.
With all respect, you aren't a giant patent-wielding litigation-happy overlord. It's those companies which cross the line of "consumer rights".
Lol, you picked a lot ;) Feel free to write more later...
Hmm, this whole part of your response seems to think I'm advocating Open Source Software. Which I do advocate, but in this particular instance, I was talking about Open Standards. There's a big difference - Ogg is an Open Standard, it can be read by software such as MediaMonkey which is Closed Source Software.
Java is an Open Language (as demonstrated by the GCJ open source Java compiler), but the core implementation of Java itself is closed (though that's about to change any week now, Sun is GPLing Java, hooray). I don't know where PDF stands, I assume it's almost but not entirely open.
OpenXML is contentiously an "open standard", while nobody is claiming that Office is OSS.
Of course it does ... again I'm talking about open standards. The specs for formats such as Ogg, ODF, HTML, XML, PNG, SVG, etc etc, are completely open. Pretty much all of these have OSS implementations (usually called "reference implementations", but they may also be unofficial OSS implementations because that's just what the OSS community will do whenever there's a standard to be implemented) - but these formats are NOT part of OSS to begin with. They are Open Standards.
Technically there should be no patents on these formats - in my opinion that is a prerequisite for an open standard. As far as I know all of the above formats are completely patent-free (which is why I didn't list the closest open video standard, XVID, since the wiki says it's potentially patent-encumbered).
No, that's not true at all. If MS wanted to use the reference implementations of technologies (where and only where these reference implementations were released under the GPL or a similar copyleft license), then they would open themselves up to having to GPL their wider codebase. I hate MS, but I think it's perfectly reasonable that they do not GPL their code.
However, it is still possible to implement Open Standards in proprietary software, and there is no license which can prevent it. You simply a) use the reference implementation, if it's not under a copyleft license (most reference implementations are released under the LGPL, which does not require you to GPL all of your code - but I doubt MS would be content using LGPL code either), or b) go back to the spec documents themselves (ie. the format itself, not the actual code), and write your own code to read the format spec.
Option b is hard and time-consuming, but really, proprietary companies cannot complain about being forced to implement an open standard without using the reference implementation, when when it goes the other way round, OpenXML for example, of course, has no reference implementation - just a confusing 6,000 page standard which OSS software has to write from scratch. In many other formats OSS has to reverse engineer it. So OSS gets the long end of the stick. There is no argument for proprietary developers that it is "hard" or "legally challenging" to implement Open Standards.
The GPL does not prevent non-GPL software from living on the same disc as it. It simply prevents the linking of GPL and non-GPL programs (either statically or dynamically) into an executable, or the incorporation of non-GPL code into the same program as GPL code. It says nothing about the same disc, web server, etc.
In fact, the GPL allows GPL programs to call (ie. execute in a different address space) a non-GPL program, and vice versa (which is why Linux is allowed to run non-GPL code, and proprietary IDEs can call GCC).
I don't know where device drivers fall into this (I would have thought they were dynamically linked into the Linux executable, but apparently not), but it is perfectly legal for nVidia drivers to be preinstalled in Linux distros. Ubuntu does it. You just hear debate about it all the time because it isn't "a true OSS operating system" in that case - which is why many "pure OS" distros such as Debian refuse to incorporate proprietary drivers.
Anyway the first thing you should never do in security is say "this is completely secure".
And how did the summary make the link from "completely private transmission of data" to DRM? It just highlights the fatal problem with DRM - even if we had quantum security, there'd be no way to make bits not copyable.
The only difference is that MP3 is the de facto standard, and WMA is not. So MS were just as bad, but non-standard (which is par for the course).And the reaction here is not so much "haha MS, you shouldn't have put MP3 in" as "haha MS, you got burned at your own game". If it happened to a company that didn't spread fear throughout the open source world that it's going to sue everyone for patent infringement, then we'd probably have more sympathy.So every time, instead of using standard (or de facto standard) technology, they go ahead and come up with their own proprietary, locked down, and often patent-encumbered technology.
They get bit for it because of their intentions. Whenever they release something like this, their intentions are pretty clearly bent on monopolising. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
With OpenXML they tried something new: They recognised that people don't like having their documents in proprietary patent-encumbered document formats. So they came up with a format which would seem to be open. What's the perfect name for it? "Open" - that implies openness, freedom, and portability, and "XML" - the buzzword of the decade, implying interoperability and ease-of-implementation.
Unfortunately, what you'll find if you read the 6000-page format specification of OpenXML* is that it is little more than a confusingly-twisted XMLization of the proprietary Office format - designed exclusively for the Office suite and virtually impossible for any other suite to support fully (in fact the spec explicitly recommends against non-Office suites implementing certain features). So OpenXML is just another example of MS playing by its own rules for its own purposes (not to avoid patent issues or anything like that). (Also OpenXML was not MS's attempt to create their own standard to avoid patents - the only reason for OpenXML is to compete with OpenDocument).
So don't make MS out to be the victim here - they just got burned in their own game. That's why everyone is laughing at them. If they really wanted to go against the de facto standards to avoid patents (and not go after a monopoly position), they could choose established open formats like Ogg Vorbis instead of coming up with their own and patenting them.Yes.
* which I haven't, but I've read summaries and excerpts from it.
(Still, I'd do it just for the freedom of having Ogg). (Vorbis).
The solution is obvious: move Mars closer to Earth. It doesn't matter how ridiculous an amount of effort it would take, or that it might seriously fuck up the cosmos: There's money to be made here!
Whoa...... mod this guy up... more! There's got to be a way to get to 6!
What are you talking about? You want those lawyers getting their cold dead hands on that planet!!!!!!?
Er, does this mean I have to login to www.slashdot.org.earth.sol? That could be slightly inconvenient for most (if not all) Internet users...
(Sorry... InterPlaNet users).
(Oh god, that is awful).
You know I think Microsoft should pay them in $20 bills. I mean..... we all know what 80 tonnes of coins would be like... just for once I want to see 80 tonnes of bills.... please?
(Plus, it'd be nice to see forklift operators making big money off these court disputes instead of lawyers all the time).
Wait wait, is this beer free as in beer? I think RMS goes for the other kind...
Wait, who are you replying to, me or Vicissidude? Because, your statement was an apt remark on the huge post above yours (which I agreed with). Vicissidude took your post and made a quite serious rant about America being a free market. And then I replied to him, finishing with a Matrix quote to show how geeky I am :P
So your comment seems more appropriate for Vicissidude's.
Oh man, I just spent an hour and a half going through the slashdot items and responding. Does anybody have a 12-step program for /.?
Probably because Vista has a bad balance of admin/user mode. I use Linux all the time. Here's what I need sudo for:
- Installing programs (including use of apt-get).
- Configuring my network
- Writing outside my home directory
- Mount external drives
That's about it. Everything I do as part of my normal workflow, I contain within my home directory (as you're supposed to do in a UNIX security environment). I don't need sudo to work on files, move things around, browse the web, run applications, etc.
Yet I'm secure because the guts of my system (which Linux, unlike Windows, isn't writing to all the time) is outside my home. It's simply a better security model.
Combine this with the fact that Vista's UAC is prompt prompt prompt. That gets annoying for the user, you request an action, you get a prompt, you have to press OK.
In Linux, everything I use sudo for is on the command line. I used to get annoyed by the "You need to be root to do that", but of course after awhile you learn when you need sudo and you just type those four letters "sudo". It's ridiculously easy, and it gives you full control, with less irritation. (Like the perfect shave).
Lmao... I thought you were replying to a slashdot post. Good article :)
How does me deleting or archiving emails change the amount of time I'll spend on them? I don't see that as part of "addiction", any more than having a step to quitting smoking being to clean up your cigaratte butts vs leave them in the ash tray.
:)) Everything else, I keep permanently.
I use gmail, and I delete emails that are crap, spam or useless. (Or slashdot replies
How's this for a new approach to email: Don't see it as a waste of time, but a powerful tool, a personal repository. My inbox is so comprehensive I can now search it for people's addresses, helpful advice, code snippets, etc. Deleting emails makes them a waste of time.