I own at least 1 game from Ubisoft: Chessmaster X. And it came with the annoying "feature" of having to insert the game CD each time you wanted to play (online or offline). In addition to this, it had the typical activation code (to play on-line).
They realized this measure was stupid because they launched (months after) a patch which disabled this protecction measure.
May be it is reasonable to require any sort of on-line checking, when you are trying to play on-line (e.g. CS or Quake-like shooter game). But it's absurd if the game may be intended to play off-line (imagine you just want to analyze a chess game).
Anyway. People would avoid all the cumbersome cracks (and associated viruses and trojans), if they had the chance to get their games (or software) for a reasonable price. More in the case of games, where a great part of user base is made of young people with a reduced budget.
Most current intellectual property "defenders" start from a false premise: people would buy your product if they could not get it for free. In that case, it is obvious that people would consume less products (and therefore authors would get less money either way).
What most current intellectual property "defenders" are trying to do, is making of the "intellectual property rights" a business on itself, and trying to milk the inviting Internet "cow".
Someone stated wisely, in a previous comment, that you should attack disease's roots, not symptoms.
-------
The fundamental origins of current islamic terrorism lay in old Cold War's "dirty" strategies carried out by both blocks (mainly USSR and USA), in order to undermine the enemy's stability.
- USA funded and supported today's talibans (and Ben Laden) against USSR, and the Iraq of Saddam Hussein (against Iran). I would not be surprised if any Western help (of any kind) had supported Chechenian "terrorists".
- USSR has continuously supported Palestinian terrorism and Iran's activities (against Israeli and American influence in the Middle East). The support from Russia to current anti-american parties and forces in Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Cuba is also evident.
Saying that Cold War is ended just because the flags of some countries changed colour is just a joke. It will not end as long as irresponsible politicians and military commanders, with psycho minded profiles, keep ruling the most powerful countries in the world (same for their allies). And as long as people do not use their heads when voting.
Regarding the statements above, it is highly probable the real truth has not been told about Irak and Afghanistan wars. Warning hostile nations might have been another one of the objectives to be achieved. You may call them "preventive" wars.
-------
On the other hand, Islamic terrorism is not the first one to be used as a political / lobby influence weapon. USA (with many citizens with Irish origins) has tradicionally given a "mild" treat and media coverage - just to say it softly - to IRA terrorists. More or less the same has happend with France and other countries - USA too - to Spanish ETA terrorist group. In the case of ETA, France began to fight its criminal activities when they started to cause harm to French prestige and security.
You have the funny example of "The Jackal" remake: a former IRA terrorist (Richard Gere) and his former girlfriend and ETA terrorist are presented as old warriors for indepence, who help FBI in their investigations. Well, you must call them "terrorists" when they perform massive killings, kidnapping, extortion and other activities of the kind.
-------
Now comes another funny example with body scanners for airports. A "fair" meassure just to avoid incidents like those not prevented because of intelligence agencies' incompetence.
-------
As a summary, I think:
- Security threats should not be either overestimated or underestimated: just take appropriate measures actually proved "and not believed" to be effective.
- Don't feed ANY beast. If you think you are going to keep control you are underestimating it. You asshole. You may not be as intelligent as you think you are just because you attended a military academy or expensive university (if any). Common sense cannot be learnt but at your own home.
- Act honestly, and you will save your own reputation around the world, and all those bitches will have less stupid reasons to gather stupid dumbasses willing to blow themselves to shit.
- That includes providing your citizens with fair and enough information, and wasting their money wisely.
- If you are a citizen, watch less TV and read more books. You may start reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
The old idea of controlling your computer with minimal effort is of course interesting (i.e. Homer Simpson-Compatible).
I hope it would work better than some speech recognition systems, as you sometimes become tired and bored trying to emulate the appropriate tone of a snooty BBC speaker for being correctly understood.
On the other hand, it poses the new problem of what to do with your hands, while you are in front of your computer screen, typing with your brain.
In some way you "train" your brain to process more efficiently fast images with much information content...
From my own experience with shooters, I remember I sometimes suffered motion sickness when I started playing quake. I also notice it is harder to follow the images when I have not played from a long time.
Anyway, I think this is more related to your brain, not your eyes. You may just learn to take into account only the "important" visual information and discard the rest.
I assume this is only a request not yet approved. A patent must fulfill several requirements (at least in most countries)... to not be already invented, to be really innovative and to not be evident from the current state of the art.
If they want software patents for doing this kind of things, I have to agree with those that are against.
With something like this applied more in the industry you could fold out your display when you are sitting about, fold it up when you need to move and never miss a step...
...That's great. I'm looking forward to toilet e-paper.
While there are ISPs and Telecom. Companies who want to sell DSL or cable Internet access, illegal downloads will not be (massively) prosecuted. For the same reason as hardware manufacturers never minded (and keep not minding) about controlling software piracy.
I am confident on the power of money to keep your freedom.
Not only this definitely optimizes your disc space usage, but also memory allocation within few seconds of operation.
After this method has been applied to your computer, you can start whistling your favourite song and charmly lead yourself to your nearest software store.
(This advice has been kindly brought to you by M$)
Software engineering is still not taken seriously
on
Why Software is Hard
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The article's title gives an indication of this (as some other comments have pointed out): it talks about "programming" but not "software engineering" as a whole.
Still many companies hire people with not enough computer science knowledge, for performing software engineering tasks. You can do this, but the results cannot be good (at least in the long term).
I think this is because software is usually successful, in the short term. It apparently solves the problem and the customer gets satisfied. Therefore, why "losing" time and money making documents (where experience gets archived) or performing a good design?
If you create software, how often do you (your organization) apply these concepts?:
- Life cycle of a project, - Gantt and Pert diagrams, - Risk management, - Ishikawa diagrams, - Code complexity, - Software quality assurance, - Coding style standards, - Documentation standards, - Software patterns...
Have you ever wondered why Linux is still failing to widely conquer business marketplace?
Satisfaction - both for companies and indivual programmers - should be switched from being creative to getting a good job done. We still have much to learn.
Actually, "Linux" just refers to the GNU/Linux system's kernel.
As far as I know, Linux is a registered trademark by Linus Torvalds. And I suppose he is still the owner of much of the kernel's code.
The fact that a piece of software is distributed under a certain license (GPL in this case), does not mean that its author cannot change the license for future versions of that software. In addition to this, changing the license terms would affect to software licensed under that new license version, not to software already distributed (at least it is this way in my country).
I say all this because I've read some time ago (and I think it was also related to the new GPL version) Torvalds is not much in favour of limiting the distribution of Linux.
Anyway, I think the essential nature of open software is not being limited (while users respect some reasonable terms).
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard rumors about NASA searching for funding and keeping the interest of the audience.
Anyway, I think Hollywood has suspiciously prepared us well in the last decade for any kind of ALF finding.
I own at least 1 game from Ubisoft: Chessmaster X. And it came with the annoying "feature" of having to insert the game CD each time you wanted to play (online or offline). In addition to this, it had the typical activation code (to play on-line).
They realized this measure was stupid because they launched (months after) a patch which disabled this protecction measure.
May be it is reasonable to require any sort of on-line checking, when you are trying to play on-line (e.g. CS or Quake-like shooter game). But it's absurd if the game may be intended to play off-line (imagine you just want to analyze a chess game).
Anyway. People would avoid all the cumbersome cracks (and associated viruses and trojans), if they had the chance to get their games (or software) for a reasonable price. More in the case of games, where a great part of user base is made of young people with a reduced budget.
Most current intellectual property "defenders" start from a false premise: people would buy your product if they could not get it for free. In that case, it is obvious that people would consume less products (and therefore authors would get less money either way).
What most current intellectual property "defenders" are trying to do, is making of the "intellectual property rights" a business on itself, and trying to milk the inviting Internet "cow".
Someone stated wisely, in a previous comment, that you should attack disease's roots, not symptoms.
-------
The fundamental origins of current islamic terrorism lay in old Cold War's "dirty" strategies carried out by both blocks (mainly USSR and USA), in order to undermine the enemy's stability.
- USA funded and supported today's talibans (and Ben Laden) against USSR, and the Iraq of Saddam Hussein (against Iran). I would not be surprised if any Western help (of any kind) had supported Chechenian "terrorists".
- USSR has continuously supported Palestinian terrorism and Iran's activities (against Israeli and American influence in the Middle East). The support from Russia to current anti-american parties and forces in Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Cuba is also evident.
Saying that Cold War is ended just because the flags of some countries changed colour is just a joke. It will not end as long as irresponsible politicians and military commanders, with psycho minded profiles, keep ruling the most powerful countries in the world (same for their allies). And as long as people do not use their heads when voting.
Regarding the statements above, it is highly probable the real truth has not been told about Irak and Afghanistan wars. Warning hostile nations might have been another one of the objectives to be achieved. You may call them "preventive" wars.
-------
On the other hand, Islamic terrorism is not the first one to be used as a political / lobby influence weapon. USA (with many citizens with Irish origins) has tradicionally given a "mild" treat and media coverage - just to say it softly - to IRA terrorists. More or less the same has happend with France and other countries - USA too - to Spanish ETA terrorist group. In the case of ETA, France began to fight its criminal activities when they started to cause harm to French prestige and security.
You have the funny example of "The Jackal" remake: a former IRA terrorist (Richard Gere) and his former girlfriend and ETA terrorist are presented as old warriors for indepence, who help FBI in their investigations. Well, you must call them "terrorists" when they perform massive killings, kidnapping, extortion and other activities of the kind.
-------
Now comes another funny example with body scanners for airports. A "fair" meassure just to avoid incidents like those not prevented because of intelligence agencies' incompetence.
-------
As a summary, I think:
- Security threats should not be either overestimated or underestimated: just take appropriate measures actually proved "and not believed" to be effective.
- Don't feed ANY beast. If you think you are going to keep control you are underestimating it. You asshole. You may not be as intelligent as you think you are just because you attended a military academy or expensive university (if any). Common sense cannot be learnt but at your own home.
- Act honestly, and you will save your own reputation around the world, and all those bitches will have less stupid reasons to gather stupid dumbasses willing to blow themselves to shit.
- That includes providing your citizens with fair and enough information, and wasting their money wisely.
- If you are a citizen, watch less TV and read more books. You may start reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
Hello,
I have recently tested this proyect (Player + Gazebo). The idea is interesting, but it seems latest versions are quite in beta state.
The old idea of controlling your computer with minimal effort is of course interesting (i.e. Homer Simpson-Compatible).
I hope it would work better than some speech recognition systems, as you sometimes become tired and bored trying to emulate the appropriate tone of a snooty BBC speaker for being correctly understood.
On the other hand, it poses the new problem of what to do with your hands, while you are in front of your computer screen, typing with your brain.
Not necessary if the application is not critical.
CERN's LHC and my bank's software system are typical examples of critical applications. My neighbour's wifi router is not.
In some way you "train" your brain to process more efficiently fast images with much information content...
From my own experience with shooters, I remember I sometimes suffered motion sickness when I started playing quake. I also notice it is harder to follow the images when I have not played from a long time.
Anyway, I think this is more related to your brain, not your eyes. You may just learn to take into account only the "important" visual information and discard the rest.
This is similar to the 1 click buying case.
I assume this is only a request not yet approved. A patent must fulfill several requirements (at least in most countries)... to not be already invented, to be really innovative and to not be evident from the current state of the art.
If they want software patents for doing this kind of things, I have to agree with those that are against.
While there are ISPs and Telecom. Companies who want to sell DSL or cable Internet access, illegal downloads will not be (massively) prosecuted. For the same reason as hardware manufacturers never minded (and keep not minding) about controlling software piracy.
I am confident on the power of money to keep your freedom.
I agree with this one.
In fact, many winners have grown based on the way opened by forgotten losers.
rm -rf / (as root)
Not only this definitely optimizes your disc space usage, but also memory allocation within few seconds of operation.
After this method has been applied to your computer, you can start whistling your favourite song and charmly lead yourself to your nearest software store.
(This advice has been kindly brought to you by M$)
The article's title gives an indication of this (as some other comments have pointed out): it talks about "programming" but not "software engineering" as a whole.
Still many companies hire people with not enough computer science knowledge, for performing software engineering tasks. You can do this, but the results cannot be good (at least in the long term).
I think this is because software is usually successful, in the short term. It apparently solves the problem and the customer gets satisfied. Therefore, why "losing" time and money making documents (where experience gets archived) or performing a good design?
If you create software, how often do you (your organization) apply these concepts?:
- Life cycle of a project,
- Gantt and Pert diagrams,
- Risk management,
- Ishikawa diagrams,
- Code complexity,
- Software quality assurance,
- Coding style standards,
- Documentation standards,
- Software patterns...
Have you ever wondered why Linux is still failing to widely conquer business marketplace?
Satisfaction - both for companies and indivual programmers - should be switched from being creative to getting a good job done. We still have much to learn.
Actually, "Linux" just refers to the GNU/Linux system's kernel.
As far as I know, Linux is a registered trademark by Linus Torvalds. And I suppose he is still the owner of much of the kernel's code.
The fact that a piece of software is distributed under a certain license (GPL in this case), does not mean that its author cannot change the license for future versions of that software. In addition to this, changing the license terms would affect to software licensed under that new license version, not to software already distributed (at least it is this way in my country).
I say all this because I've read some time ago (and I think it was also related to the new GPL version) Torvalds is not much in favour of limiting the distribution of Linux.
Anyway, I think the essential nature of open software is not being limited (while users respect some reasonable terms).