But only after signing a form stating that all damage they do will either come out of their paycheck on top of the time/work lost or be repaired by their hands when they're off the clock, again with a pay deduction based on the number of hours lost. I'm well aware that nightly/weekly backups would fix a lot of this (and should be implemented in any case), but a downed machine still means lost productivity, so it's nice to have a deterrent.
I can see a plethora of reasons not to open something, but ugly code isn't one of them. Ugly, embarrassing code is a reason to either do a major rewrite at the cost of paying employees more in the short term or to open it and get a free (albeit slow) rewrite at the cost of long-term profit because some people won't mind waving goodbye to (24-hour) support (from people who are actually paid to care). Another model that comes to mind is charging extra for the source and giving discounts for useful contributions. Then again, there's likely a few flaws in this since I just came up with it while writing this.
Nor does free speech mean--as you say--that others have to listen to you.
It would be nice, though; just imagine a world where everyone listened to and thought about what everyone else had to say before dismissing their ideas. Sadly, that's more of a human problem than a legal one.
They could raise the price to $200/year and it still wouldn't make a difference because of domain tasting. (Really, who actually gets buyer's remorse over a domain name?)
Then again, domains are a per year cost. They're the least expensive part of running a website. (They can even be skipped entirely in some cases, thanks to search engines. But let's think of the typosquatters for a moment...) Rather than causing squatters to simply close shop (Would you? It's almost sweatless revenue as it is.) because they're making less off of ads, I'd expect them to pay more attention to what domains are actually worth holding on to.
VNC over the Internet, through multiple regions? Wouldn't it be faster to just mail flash drives or build semaphore towers? (Hmm. I wonder if I can google by post?)
Note: I am not responsible if people choose to boycott your company instead.
You could always give them primarily to homeless people and mask it as an act of charity....Though then there's the problem of having everyone associate your product/service with homeless people.
It's a bit like all the ISPs crying foul over P2P users using "too much" data on their "unlimited" plans.
Really? Comcast and the like are all quite vague about their caps. This on the other hand...
Limitations on Your Use of the Service.
2. You agree that you will not (i) modify or cause to be modified any files that are a part of the Program or the Service; (ii) create or use cheats, bots, "mods", and/or hacks, or any other third-party software designed to modify the World of Warcraft experience; or (iii) use any third-party software that intercepts, "mines", or otherwise collects information from or through the Program or the Service. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you may update the Program with authorized patches and updates distributed by Blizzard, and Blizzard may, at its sole and absolute discretion, allow the use of certain third party user interfaces.
3. You may not disrupt or assist in the disruption of (i) any computer used to support the Service (each a "Server"); or (ii) any other player's Game experience. ANY ATTEMPT BY YOU TO DISRUPT THE SERVICE OR UNDERMINE THE LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF THE PROGRAM MAY BE A VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LAWS. You agree that you will not violate any applicable law or regulation in connection with your use of the Program or the Service.
...not so much. Considering I would see this flashed in my face during signup, during the first run of the client, and after every single patch when I played, I'd say they do a lot to point this out. I highlighted that bit in section 3 because these bots can run 24/7. That would quickly become a problem if they were only provisioned to handle people who slept every now and then, which is usually a reasonable assumption. Also, sleeping while a bot takes you to 70, then flooding the Auction house with shit really would disrupt the game experience of other players if a fair amount of others joined in.
Anyone here using those laser keyboards? Enjoy it? Thought not.
How about putting some work into making fancy new laptops as cheap as comparable desktop systems instead of adding gold, diamonds, baby skin and extra screens to them? Aside from the cost of that, it looks useless for actual work. Drop it? There goes the touch screen. Touch typing? Forget it!
This is no more the laptop of the future than LEGOs are the building material of the future.
The so-called "Irish Music" dispute concerns the portion of US copyright law that lets restaurants and shops play broadcast music without compensating the copyright holders. As previous coverage of this issue shows, Europe takes a fairly hard-line stance on these payments; a UK car repair chain was even targeted by collecting societies because its mechanics played their radios loud enough that customers could hear them.
If this ever changes, I'm going to start hiding radios in public places to play until the batteries die or people steal them. If people have to pay a royalty just because other people hear something (something which is all over the place and quite easy to listen to, requiring only a $1 pocket radio), why do the broadcasters have to pay royalties? Actually, perhaps this could work, just give (Internet, terrestrial and satellite) radio stations a free ride, drop all blank media levies, and only charge those playing it for other people to listen. I'd quite enjoy the drop in people blasting their car stereos.
I suppose I'll just have to watch my surroundings while humming a tune.
"Police are stupid anyway. I can wave around whatever I want in my hand in whatever direction I want to." Perhaps a poor analogy, but god damnit, you're not just running it in your memory. You're also wasting CPU time, memory, and storage space on their machines for a character that you're not even playing with most of the time you're on. You're going against the rules of the game (the ToS), you're automating exactly what the game's centered around because you find it boring and, most importantly, you're just being an ass.
A first-come-first-serve approach would probably work pretty well; it's not like everyone and their grandmothers will be running to these labs to do research. Something like $500/month would be a nice barrier to entry, at least making the 'poorer university students' and 'nanotech hobbyists' think twice about whether their research is worth it.
What we consider a 'PC' will probably never be like that, since it doesn't need that kind of redundancy. At most, a home machine would need RAID 1 and a second box running rsync as a nightly cron job. (Perhaps redundant PSUs if you really, really hate having to hit the power button.)
For most number-crunching applications (like rendering or compiling things really, really fast), the most that's needed are redundant power supplies, checkpoints, and maybe RAID 1 and bright status LEDs on the nodes getting the results. In that kind of work, a toasted node only means some easily-replaced work will be lost and redone on another machine.
It's not the age of a company, it's the actions of a company. Also, I already dislike Apple because A) I consider the Mac to be too expensive for what it does, and B) I have a childish hatred for the 'i*' names. As for Google, I dislike their AdSense ToS, enjoy the search engine, and I am slightly miffed by their giant, ever-growing, half-of-the-Internet ad network they have.
Although, that still doesn't come close to Microsoft monopolizing the desktop for over a decade while also charging ridiculous prices for a disc, doing their best to lock people into their proprietary, ever-changing formats, forcing a horrible browser on the world to shape web 'standards' and kill off competition while not even paying attention to how secure said browser was, how stable the OS was, or how efficient the office suite was (...is). On top of that, there's also the current 'everyone on the planet is breaking our super-secret patents' thing.
If Apple/Google want to be hated like that, they have a lot of catching up to do.
Slashdot Mirror
But only after signing a form stating that all damage they do will either come out of their paycheck on top of the time/work lost or be repaired by their hands when they're off the clock, again with a pay deduction based on the number of hours lost. I'm well aware that nightly/weekly backups would fix a lot of this (and should be implemented in any case), but a downed machine still means lost productivity, so it's nice to have a deterrent.
I can see a plethora of reasons not to open something, but ugly code isn't one of them. Ugly, embarrassing code is a reason to either do a major rewrite at the cost of paying employees more in the short term or to open it and get a free (albeit slow) rewrite at the cost of long-term profit because some people won't mind waving goodbye to (24-hour) support (from people who are actually paid to care).
Another model that comes to mind is charging extra for the source and giving discounts for useful contributions. Then again, there's likely a few flaws in this since I just came up with it while writing this.
Young Earth jokes couldn't possibly be that old; Creationists have only been around for 20 years or so.
(Wet blankets on the other hand...)
Better weapons, apparently.
Unfortunately not. It was like this when I first saw it a few months ago. Also, this comment box is absolutely horrible. :(
Smallpox was a technological advance?
What's the preferences menu for again? It's escaping me at the moment.
They could raise the price to $200/year and it still wouldn't make a difference because of domain tasting. (Really, who actually gets buyer's remorse over a domain name?)
Those poor saps without AdBlock/NoScript, of course.
Except that you're supposed to shake a Wiimote when using it. Every new game that came out would level cities around the globe.
Then again, domains are a per year cost. They're the least expensive part of running a website. (They can even be skipped entirely in some cases, thanks to search engines. But let's think of the typosquatters for a moment...)
Rather than causing squatters to simply close shop (Would you? It's almost sweatless revenue as it is.) because they're making less off of ads, I'd expect them to pay more attention to what domains are actually worth holding on to.
VNC over the Internet, through multiple regions? Wouldn't it be faster to just mail flash drives or build semaphore towers? (Hmm. I wonder if I can google by post?)
Wait. The US owns the cosmos? Shit. I guess Canada is my only option.
Considering I would see this flashed in my face during signup, during the first run of the client, and after every single patch when I played, I'd say they do a lot to point this out. I highlighted that bit in section 3 because these bots can run 24/7. That would quickly become a problem if they were only provisioned to handle people who slept every now and then, which is usually a reasonable assumption. Also, sleeping while a bot takes you to 70, then flooding the Auction house with shit really would disrupt the game experience of other players if a fair amount of others joined in.
Anyone here using those laser keyboards? Enjoy it? Thought not.
How about putting some work into making fancy new laptops as cheap as comparable desktop systems instead of adding gold, diamonds, baby skin and extra screens to them? Aside from the cost of that, it looks useless for actual work. Drop it? There goes the touch screen. Touch typing? Forget it!
This is no more the laptop of the future than LEGOs are the building material of the future.
If this ever changes, I'm going to start hiding radios in public places to play until the batteries die or people steal them. If people have to pay a royalty just because other people hear something (something which is all over the place and quite easy to listen to, requiring only a $1 pocket radio), why do the broadcasters have to pay royalties? Actually, perhaps this could work, just give (Internet, terrestrial and satellite) radio stations a free ride, drop all blank media levies, and only charge those playing it for other people to listen. I'd quite enjoy the drop in people blasting their car stereos.
I suppose I'll just have to watch my surroundings while humming a tune.
"Police are stupid anyway. I can wave around whatever I want in my hand in whatever direction I want to." Perhaps a poor analogy, but god damnit, you're not just running it in your memory. You're also wasting CPU time, memory, and storage space on their machines for a character that you're not even playing with most of the time you're on. You're going against the rules of the game (the ToS), you're automating exactly what the game's centered around because you find it boring and, most importantly, you're just being an ass.
A first-come-first-serve approach would probably work pretty well; it's not like everyone and their grandmothers will be running to these labs to do research. Something like $500/month would be a nice barrier to entry, at least making the 'poorer university students' and 'nanotech hobbyists' think twice about whether their research is worth it.
What we consider a 'PC' will probably never be like that, since it doesn't need that kind of redundancy. At most, a home machine would need RAID 1 and a second box running rsync as a nightly cron job. (Perhaps redundant PSUs if you really, really hate having to hit the power button.)
For most number-crunching applications (like rendering or compiling things really, really fast), the most that's needed are redundant power supplies, checkpoints, and maybe RAID 1 and bright status LEDs on the nodes getting the results. In that kind of work, a toasted node only means some easily-replaced work will be lost and redone on another machine.
It's not the age of a company, it's the actions of a company. Also, I already dislike Apple because A) I consider the Mac to be too expensive for what it does, and B) I have a childish hatred for the 'i*' names. As for Google, I dislike their AdSense ToS, enjoy the search engine, and I am slightly miffed by their giant, ever-growing, half-of-the-Internet ad network they have.
Although, that still doesn't come close to Microsoft monopolizing the desktop for over a decade while also charging ridiculous prices for a disc, doing their best to lock people into their proprietary, ever-changing formats, forcing a horrible browser on the world to shape web 'standards' and kill off competition while not even paying attention to how secure said browser was, how stable the OS was, or how efficient the office suite was (...is). On top of that, there's also the current 'everyone on the planet is breaking our super-secret patents' thing.
If Apple/Google want to be hated like that, they have a lot of catching up to do.