I'm not talking millions of dollars here, but the airline needs to get slapped in court to make them think twice next time a situation like this crops up.
Err... AirTran is a big company. Less than millions of dollars will not make them think twice. Hell, even if they had to pay millions, and put up with boycotts/people not flying, remember they are based out of the South. That whole "kick the scary minorities off the plane" may more than pay for itself in "AirTran is safe" thinking.
And if you think the level of competence at the RIAA is better than MediaSentry's, why don't you take a survey of the record company shareholders and ask them how competent the RIAA was in administering this campaign.
Why would I abrogate my opinion of their competence in favor of a large group? The shareholders have no unique access to information (as a group, no doubt some officers, etc. do). They have no unique education which makes them qualified to render judgement.
Only two things would differentate shareholders in RIAA member companies from Slashdot. The sample of humanity itself and the percentages drawn from people with various ethnic/religious/philisophical/educational backgrounds within the sample differ; as a reserve opining about competence as my unilateral perogative, this is meaningless. Second, would be that the shareholders, collectively, are in a position to enact change. While important, this seems irrelevent to accuracy of opinion.
I'm sorry to hop off on such a triviality, but I'm really in a "shareholders are messing up my day" place right now.
stamp it 'patent pending, TM 2008 [your name]. All rights reserved'
It may be more impressive if you copyright it as opposed to trademark it. In keeping with not garbaging up papers with not only worthless but inapplicable legalese, you don't want to claim a copyright on Math homework (not protected) or anything else based on formulas. And you don't want to claim to have filed a patent on "Hello World".
Yes. Neither Wii Fit nor MMOs are really AAA titles, so yes, both are exceptions; considering the point of the article was to encourage AAA titles to be on cross-platform. Casual games are often cross platform already. I agree that there is a point for such games, but those aren't the games the article targets.
Well, hardware can't be pirated. To the pirate, it might be as simple as a choice between a $500 video card or legitimately buying ten games.
I agree hardware cannot be pirated. But I disagree that expensive hardware makes one more likely to pirate games. Instead, it proves that gaming is worth at least $500 a year to you, so the additional cost of a game is likely to be acceptable.
The definition of "people who spend money on games" is changing. I'd much rather get 50% of a demographic of thousands than 100% of a demographic of hundreds.
Wow. Amazing. You would rather sell 500 * x units than 100 * x units (assuming it is an exact order of magnitude difference).
Of course, you left out that the revenue can easily be more than 5x higher per unit for those games; that the 100% goal is an easier business case; that much more competition there is in the 1000's market; and how much less money is spent by those 1000's.
Pop quiz, what are the minimum requirements for the most popular PC game ever?
What game are you talking about? WoW is probably the most popular game ever. But as I said before, MMOs and casual games are bad businesses. MMOs are bad to try to break into for precisely the same reason OSs are bad to try and break into. And Casual Games are drowning in a sea of crap.
Seriously, go join the Peace Corps and dig wells in Africa you self-indulgent f*cksticks.
And no, we won't read your blog to learn how you heroically overcome your run-in with dysentery.
My friend in the Peace Corps in Africa (although helping with medical care, not digging wells) has been able to post not-too-frequent, but not-uncommon updates.
Neither of which matters -- if your game only runs on the very latest, $500 worth of SLI goodness, with more RAM on the video card than a computer had two years ago, you're targeting a much smaller audience than Linux or OS X users.
Those are the people who spend money on games. If people are serious about gaming, they can at least dual boot into Windows, and have massive cards/RAM/etc. If people aren't serious about gaming, they are less likely to buy new games. Also, they're more likely to pirate games, because the other people have already proven themselves willing to dump quite a bit of cash to play.
MMOs cater to a market that is hardcore in a different way, so they are the exception.
I wonder how many of the clueless will complain to microsoft that the removal tool removed software THEY HAD PAID FOR
Well, it's malware, not scareware. That is, it only acts scary to get it downloaded/installed, not to get money. Otherwise, they would have tracked down the payments by now. And if they had paid for it, the customers probably used a credit card. So a large number of them could get it refunded because of the fraud involved.
It'll never happen, but I'd like to see one of those guys try to sue microsoft for violating their EULA -would microsoft try to claim that the EULA was invalid?....
Well, Microsoft would point out that the EULA is a contract* between the end-user and the other company, and Microsoft wasn't a signatory.
*Regardless of whether you believe this to be true, I have no doubt that this is what they would claim.
If they have a "trust" issue with a convicted sex offender then, why the fuck do they release them?
Because people are put in jails for various lengths of time depending on their actions. They are released at specified dates, knowable beforehand. "Trust" is irrelevent because prison is designed to punish.
However one state tried doing something like this (involuntary commital). I don't remember how it played out, but it was on/. a while ago.
so running photoshop via wine is not good enough for you to do the same thing?
Congratulations, Linux is almost as good at running Photoshop as Windows (Photoshop bugs on top of WINE bugs/incomplete implementations! yay!). Read what I responded to, he said that Linux was better for everything than Mac OSX, except maybe they were equal with respect to graphic design. Mac OSX is just better for graphic design. It has Photoshop as a native app. Not only that, but the original app was always Mac based, so WINE runs an imperfect version of a port. Or you can run the original.
Besides that, most artists are happier on a Mac then Linux. It matters less what technically works than how productive it makes someone (which means if it does not work, it's still worthless.)
if you don't have to work to much on X task in a corporation then they're going to add something else for you to do, obviously.
You misunderstand my point. I'm not trying to say that I abdicate responsibility so I don't have to worry about it during my work week. I just want to avoid being in a position of being able to debug it, as that can mean all-nighters.
Also, I don't believe that your counterargument's premise is accurate, but since it wasn't central to the point it is irrelevent.
It runs Photoshop natively. Pretty important if the one thing you admit is that OSX is equal to Linux for graphic design work
From a development standpoint it's kinda hard to not want that instead of having to cry to a proprietary company to do what you want based off their own interests.
Actually, I kind of like abdicating some responsibility. That way, I have to work fewer nights.
That is indeed one of the stupidest features ever put in Windows, and there is no reliable way to disable it. I don't want autolaunch. I've never wanted it.
Run gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
System
Turn off Autoplay
Most Windows machines are poorly configured, but the options to tune its behavior usually exist.
Violent revolutions do not happen because a form of information got censored. Violent revolutions happen because a sufficiently large proportion of the populace cannot eat or because a sufficiently large proportion are being repressed (repression in this context means "taken away at night and never seen again", not "prevented from posting what they like in their blog").
A couple of counter-examples: The Glorious revolution; the American revolution; and the first Spanish Civil War.
After all, for decades we have been trained to click on the big flashy MS logo and expect something sensible happen. It's been that way in... In Windows... erh, no. In... fuck, in ANY program?
Since Windows 95 (Or was it 98?) There's been a big Microsoft logo in the bottom right that does pretty much everything basic. They called it the start menu, but after a decade+ of dumb jokes about "going to the start menu to shut down" they removed the label.
Getting rid of the File menu is as disturbing to me as putting the UI in Korean, in that I'm lost without it, but let's complain sensibly. Hyberbole undermines your point.
but ignorance of a notice all of sudden makes it the companies fault and not the stupid users?
Running Linux, which relies on RTFM and has a nerdy cache? Sure
Running OSX, which 'just works' and has a cool (non-nerdy) cache? Apple's fault. Their choice of market means that popping up a notice is not sufficent. The installer should check for a known error condition and abort or offer the option to install the firmware update first.
My argument: Here is the changelog. These are the real risks that are posed by continuing to use the old version. These are the benefits of upgrading.
And I'm sure the changelog for this version of OSX indicates that it plays poorly with Macs with old firmware?
New updates mean new bugs. For computers that are offline, I see no reason to update software with "just cause" updates. A number of programs degrade with updates and later major versions.
A few years is ridiculous, but I've seen too many problems because someone upgrades one program in a workflow chain, which has a bug, which brings down a system/office.
Sufficiently accurate for a religious text, but not at all appropriate for a technical description.
Replace "40%" with "half", "40 days" with "a month" and "40 NIS" with "the cost of a movie ticket (at least in the US)" and it reads just fine. And the numbers line up. They just have a different literal interpertation of a figurative speech.
If the prevelence of 40 as a figure is what turns you off, note that semetic languages commonly use the number 40 as a non-literal figure meaning "many" and somewhere around that order of magnitude. However, translations commonly take this literally. Hence, the prevelence of "40 days" for Noah's ark, "40 years" in the desert, etc.
At least, this was the explaination I was given for why 40 appears everywhere in the Bible. Given that the person who told me reads it in the original, I tend to trust him when it comes to linguistic nuances.
What came first, the occupation or the resistance?
Interesting phrasing, because it seeks to exploit commmon knowledge that the occupations come first, prima facia. However, that question is leading.
The true question is did attacks upon Israel from the West Bank and Gaza precede or follow Israeli control? And the unequivocal answer is the attacks preceded Israeli control.
A better system would have the end-user pay someone they trust to identify the site; they are directly paying for the identification service and can take their business elsewhere if they get crap service.
Exactly. That's why everyone uses Linux. And why no one has to worry about net neutrality. And why Ma Bell never was an issue. And why the credit rating bureaus never let their customers down; after all three of them compete!
As it is, I don't think anyone would be liable (except yourself) to pick up the cost of shenanigans
It depends on the country. Two friends of mine were mugged, and their wallets stolen. The one with a US credit card made a call, got the charges reversed, and a new card in the mail. No pain. My other friend from South America was on the hook for the thousands of USD that the crooks rang up, and couldn't even cancel it until the next morning.
Slashdot Mirror
Err... AirTran is a big company. Less than millions of dollars will not make them think twice. Hell, even if they had to pay millions, and put up with boycotts/people not flying, remember they are based out of the South. That whole "kick the scary minorities off the plane" may more than pay for itself in "AirTran is safe" thinking.
Indeed I am. Mostly because of your earlier statement:
Why would I abrogate my opinion of their competence in favor of a large group? The shareholders have no unique access to information (as a group, no doubt some officers, etc. do). They have no unique education which makes them qualified to render judgement.
Only two things would differentate shareholders in RIAA member companies from Slashdot. The sample of humanity itself and the percentages drawn from people with various ethnic/religious/philisophical/educational backgrounds within the sample differ; as a reserve opining about competence as my unilateral perogative, this is meaningless. Second, would be that the shareholders, collectively, are in a position to enact change. While important, this seems irrelevent to accuracy of opinion.
I'm sorry to hop off on such a triviality, but I'm really in a "shareholders are messing up my day" place right now.
It may be more impressive if you copyright it as opposed to trademark it. In keeping with not garbaging up papers with not only worthless but inapplicable legalese, you don't want to claim a copyright on Math homework (not protected) or anything else based on formulas. And you don't want to claim to have filed a patent on "Hello World".
IANAL
Yes. Neither Wii Fit nor MMOs are really AAA titles, so yes, both are exceptions; considering the point of the article was to encourage AAA titles to be on cross-platform. Casual games are often cross platform already. I agree that there is a point for such games, but those aren't the games the article targets.
I agree hardware cannot be pirated. But I disagree that expensive hardware makes one more likely to pirate games. Instead, it proves that gaming is worth at least $500 a year to you, so the additional cost of a game is likely to be acceptable.
Wow. Amazing. You would rather sell 500 * x units than 100 * x units (assuming it is an exact order of magnitude difference).
Of course, you left out that the revenue can easily be more than 5x higher per unit for those games; that the 100% goal is an easier business case; that much more competition there is in the 1000's market; and how much less money is spent by those 1000's.
What game are you talking about? WoW is probably the most popular game ever. But as I said before, MMOs and casual games are bad businesses. MMOs are bad to try to break into for precisely the same reason OSs are bad to try and break into. And Casual Games are drowning in a sea of crap.
My friend in the Peace Corps in Africa (although helping with medical care, not digging wells) has been able to post not-too-frequent, but not-uncommon updates.
Those are the people who spend money on games. If people are serious about gaming, they can at least dual boot into Windows, and have massive cards/RAM/etc. If people aren't serious about gaming, they are less likely to buy new games. Also, they're more likely to pirate games, because the other people have already proven themselves willing to dump quite a bit of cash to play.
MMOs cater to a market that is hardcore in a different way, so they are the exception.
Well, it's malware, not scareware. That is, it only acts scary to get it downloaded/installed, not to get money. Otherwise, they would have tracked down the payments by now. And if they had paid for it, the customers probably used a credit card. So a large number of them could get it refunded because of the fraud involved.
Well, Microsoft would point out that the EULA is a contract* between the end-user and the other company, and Microsoft wasn't a signatory.
*Regardless of whether you believe this to be true, I have no doubt that this is what they would claim.
Because people are put in jails for various lengths of time depending on their actions. They are released at specified dates, knowable beforehand. "Trust" is irrelevent because prison is designed to punish.
However one state tried doing something like this (involuntary commital). I don't remember how it played out, but it was on /. a while ago.
Wowza, that makes no sense. x 3 implies x 4 If you really wanted to make a more powerful statement about your love, you should use 2 instead.
Congratulations, Linux is almost as good at running Photoshop as Windows (Photoshop bugs on top of WINE bugs/incomplete implementations! yay!). Read what I responded to, he said that Linux was better for everything than Mac OSX, except maybe they were equal with respect to graphic design. Mac OSX is just better for graphic design. It has Photoshop as a native app. Not only that, but the original app was always Mac based, so WINE runs an imperfect version of a port. Or you can run the original.
Besides that, most artists are happier on a Mac then Linux. It matters less what technically works than how productive it makes someone (which means if it does not work, it's still worthless.)
You misunderstand my point. I'm not trying to say that I abdicate responsibility so I don't have to worry about it during my work week. I just want to avoid being in a position of being able to debug it, as that can mean all-nighters.
Also, I don't believe that your counterargument's premise is accurate, but since it wasn't central to the point it is irrelevent.
It runs Photoshop natively. Pretty important if the one thing you admit is that OSX is equal to Linux for graphic design work
Actually, I kind of like abdicating some responsibility. That way, I have to work fewer nights.
Most Windows machines are poorly configured, but the options to tune its behavior usually exist.
A couple of counter-examples: The Glorious revolution; the American revolution; and the first Spanish Civil War.
Since Windows 95 (Or was it 98?) There's been a big Microsoft logo in the bottom right that does pretty much everything basic. They called it the start menu, but after a decade+ of dumb jokes about "going to the start menu to shut down" they removed the label.
Getting rid of the File menu is as disturbing to me as putting the UI in Korean, in that I'm lost without it, but let's complain sensibly. Hyberbole undermines your point.
Running Linux, which relies on RTFM and has a nerdy cache? Sure
Running OSX, which 'just works' and has a cool (non-nerdy) cache? Apple's fault. Their choice of market means that popping up a notice is not sufficent. The installer should check for a known error condition and abort or offer the option to install the firmware update first.
And I'm sure the changelog for this version of OSX indicates that it plays poorly with Macs with old firmware?
New updates mean new bugs. For computers that are offline, I see no reason to update software with "just cause" updates. A number of programs degrade with updates and later major versions.
A few years is ridiculous, but I've seen too many problems because someone upgrades one program in a workflow chain, which has a bug, which brings down a system/office.
Attacks upon Jewish landowners preceeded the creation of Israel.
Replace "40%" with "half", "40 days" with "a month" and "40 NIS" with "the cost of a movie ticket (at least in the US)" and it reads just fine. And the numbers line up. They just have a different literal interpertation of a figurative speech.
Irony points, considering it was Palestian leaders who were indicted for war crimes alongside the Nazis they supported.
If the prevelence of 40 as a figure is what turns you off, note that semetic languages commonly use the number 40 as a non-literal figure meaning "many" and somewhere around that order of magnitude. However, translations commonly take this literally. Hence, the prevelence of "40 days" for Noah's ark, "40 years" in the desert, etc.
At least, this was the explaination I was given for why 40 appears everywhere in the Bible. Given that the person who told me reads it in the original, I tend to trust him when it comes to linguistic nuances.
In what way are they not acknowledging it?
Interesting phrasing, because it seeks to exploit commmon knowledge that the occupations come first, prima facia. However, that question is leading.
The true question is did attacks upon Israel from the West Bank and Gaza precede or follow Israeli control? And the unequivocal answer is the attacks preceded Israeli control.
Exactly. That's why everyone uses Linux. And why no one has to worry about net neutrality. And why Ma Bell never was an issue. And why the credit rating bureaus never let their customers down; after all three of them compete!
It depends on the country. Two friends of mine were mugged, and their wallets stolen. The one with a US credit card made a call, got the charges reversed, and a new card in the mail. No pain. My other friend from South America was on the hook for the thousands of USD that the crooks rang up, and couldn't even cancel it until the next morning.