William Gray thinks it's likely that he lost his funding because of it. Harrison Schmitt says that people have lost their funding because of it and it's causing people to stop being willing to oppose it.
If you're going to pay with a credit card at the pump there's no way to completely eliminate the problem. Paying inside should avoid this. If you're going to pay at the pump, using a debit card as a credit card (ie not putting in your pin) will give you greater protection since they won't be able to copy your card and use it at an ATM (the way these cards are being used so far).
Also, always always always check your account. There's always going to be a risk of fraud, whether it's from a waiter running your card multiple times, skimmers, or accidentally dropping it and having someone pick it up. Catching the fraud will generally do more good than vigilance.
That's an overly simplistic analysis of why someone might pirate a game. I have several reasons that I pirate games:
1. Extended demo - some games don't release a demo or they release a demo where it's impossible to tell if the game's worth buying or not. Rather than risk my money, I'll pirate it and buy it if it's worth playing. If it's not worth buying than I stop playing it. I have yet to play a pirated game all the way through without buying it first. I've bought A LOT of games because of this and this is the single biggest reason that I buy more games on the computer than the console.
2. I own the game, but I can't find the cd/dvd/whatever or it doesn't work for some reason. This tends to be only for older games.
3. LAN parties.
It's probably not strictly right to pirate the games for any reason, but I feel that those three reasons strike a balance between my need and the needs of the publishers. I'm not going to pay $100 to be able to LAN starcraft for a few hours and I believe it's unreasonable for the publisher to expect this of me.
For example - 3D terrain, the left click/right click interface, unit queuing, units guarding other units or structures, complex patrol paths and waypoints, polygonal units, etc etc etc etc..
That's just wrong. 3d terrain was in Starcraft to a limited extent, the left/right click interface was mostly just reversed from what starcraft and warcraft 2 did, and complex patrol paths and waypoints haven't been copied at all. I loved those games, but they haven't influenced the industry even a fraction of the amount that starcraft did.
I would guess the reason they didn't mention this was that the article is only for games released after 2000 and because it didn't really bring down a strong studio with a string of hits behind it.
Like many small businesses their essential failing was being under-capitalized, not necessarily a terrible product.
I disagree. They spent a metric fuck-ton of money on that one game. They were overly ambitious and didn't realize their own limits. Being under-capitalized is a legitimate problem, but they could have made several less ambitious games. As it was, they put all their eggs (of which they had many) in one overly-ambitious basket.
Burying the line costs a lot more initially and then takes a hell of a lot more effort to troubleshoot. It's all fine and dandy to try to get the lines buried until you have to foot the bill.
The result of this is that building a new transmission line in a new area is pretty much off limits unless it winds around to avoid existing structures by miles and miles
My dad was the engineer who planned the route for a new transmission line to a community which was growing very quickly. When the town locals heard about the route, they demanded that they bury the line (there was no alternate route) and they demanded the electric company pay the extra cost.
The company wasn't going to pay for burying the line, so it resulted in a game chicken. Turns out people stop pulling out these bullshit theories when they start suffering from blackouts.
Therefore, the Kindle is not the right choice of e-book reader for institutions such as colleges and universities to promote
Two points. First, and this has been mentioned elsewhere, Kindles don't hurt blind people, they help sighted people. Should the FDA hold back cystic fibrosis medications until an equal number of sickle cell anemia medications are ready to go to market?
Second, electronic books in general are better for visually impaired people overall. Instead of needing the publishers to spend extra money and resources converting their textbooks to braille formats, the students can buy a braille e-reader that will automatically convert the text to braille. When that happens then everyone wins.
1) completely bogus: OpenGL has an both a good documentation and extremely good literature
It's nice that you think so, but I've seen the documentation for both, and I much prefer the directx documentation. You are, in fact, helping to prove the GP's point: when Microsoft hears from a developer that their documentation sucks, they'll work on it and improve it. When open source people hear that something sucks, they insult the user and stick their heads back in their asses.
And how many genuinely foolproof and fail-safe machines do you use every day without noticing, because they work so well?
0. None. Zip. Zilch. There's no such thing as something that's genuinely foolproof and can't fail. Everyone knows this, so if they continue to say that there's no risk at all with this design, then the public's going to call bullshit on it. It'd be much better to say that it's more safe or less risky than other design types and avoid making everyone think of what the titanic would have been like in nuclear reactor form.
That's retarded. Germs devour and destroy each other as much or more than humans do. The difference is that germs are cheaper and faster to reproduce. Germs can go through several generations over the course of a week, so they're able to evolve much more quickly than larger animals and fill ecological niches more quickly and more efficiently. In addition, their population can explode over a very short time period. This means that when they find a resource they can exploit, they exploit it quickly and completely.
Forget the bullshit ideal that nature is loving and humans are brutal and warlike. Wherever there's a resource shortage there's fighting, whether it's humans or animals. The only difference is that humans can moderate it more effectively and then feel bad about it afterwards.
I personally go the other way. Sure, there's an Ext3 driver for windows, but from what I've seen it's not that good. On the other hand, I've used the NTFS driver on Linux quite a bit and it's worked pretty well. More importantly, I have confidence that the NTFS driver will continue to get better.
I absolutely think this was the right decision. Judges are in a special place where they need to avoid the appearance of bias at all costs. If friending someone on facebook gets a ruling overturned on appeal it's probably better than the friending not take place.
It looks like the statistics come from internet hits. If that's the case, then the numbers wouldn't be skewed by which operating system was bought on the computer, only which one's being used on it.
That's not so wrong. If you look at these numbers, you can see that Mac lost.15%, Windows stayed the same, and Linux gained.04%. So, about 25% of Mac's loss was Linux's gain. The rest seems to have been made up by mobile phones (but not the iphone, which also lost.01%).
The version trending shows that as many people who dumped XP or Vista picked up 7 and as many people as dumped OSX 10.5 picked up 10.6. So, the decline in Mac share comes from pre-10.5. There are a lot of possibilities that jump to mind, but the most interesting is that people are dumping their old Macs for Linux or Windows 7.
It requires a vulnerability in both the server and the client. The server's vulnerability is that it allows SWF's to be uploaded and it's hard to validate whether it's a SWF or something else (the article uses the example of a file that's both a SWF and a valid ZIP file).
The client side vulnerability is that it will execute any SWF as a flash object even if the extension or the headers are wrong. Once this is done, then the SWF object is running as if it's from the hacked website, which is basically an XSS attack on steroids.
Overall, it's a pretty interesting hack, but harder to pull off than your average XSS vulnerability. It requires problems in the server, browser and flash client.
It reminds me of one approach to avoid a terrorist attack when flying. Carry your own bomb onto the plane. After all, what are the chances that there would be two bombs on the plane?
That's why the TSA's so harmful. If you outlaw bombs on a plane, then only terrorists will have bombs.
Slashdot Mirror
William Gray thinks it's likely that he lost his funding because of it. Harrison Schmitt says that people have lost their funding because of it and it's causing people to stop being willing to oppose it.
How many botanists have been unable to get funding because they didn't support a controversial theory?
If you're going to pay with a credit card at the pump there's no way to completely eliminate the problem. Paying inside should avoid this. If you're going to pay at the pump, using a debit card as a credit card (ie not putting in your pin) will give you greater protection since they won't be able to copy your card and use it at an ATM (the way these cards are being used so far).
Also, always always always check your account. There's always going to be a risk of fraud, whether it's from a waiter running your card multiple times, skimmers, or accidentally dropping it and having someone pick it up. Catching the fraud will generally do more good than vigilance.
Small percentage of the population? I've never met someone who played Starcraft and didn't play it LAN.
Yeah, right. That's what they said about Watchmen!
That's an overly simplistic analysis of why someone might pirate a game. I have several reasons that I pirate games: 1. Extended demo - some games don't release a demo or they release a demo where it's impossible to tell if the game's worth buying or not. Rather than risk my money, I'll pirate it and buy it if it's worth playing. If it's not worth buying than I stop playing it. I have yet to play a pirated game all the way through without buying it first. I've bought A LOT of games because of this and this is the single biggest reason that I buy more games on the computer than the console.
2. I own the game, but I can't find the cd/dvd/whatever or it doesn't work for some reason. This tends to be only for older games.
3. LAN parties.
It's probably not strictly right to pirate the games for any reason, but I feel that those three reasons strike a balance between my need and the needs of the publishers. I'm not going to pay $100 to be able to LAN starcraft for a few hours and I believe it's unreasonable for the publisher to expect this of me.
Penalties that can actually be paid?
Umm, no? Not unless I can get a mortgage on that thing, and then we're looking at paying it off around 30 years from now.
For example - 3D terrain, the left click/right click interface, unit queuing, units guarding other units or structures, complex patrol paths and waypoints, polygonal units, etc etc etc etc..
That's just wrong. 3d terrain was in Starcraft to a limited extent, the left/right click interface was mostly just reversed from what starcraft and warcraft 2 did, and complex patrol paths and waypoints haven't been copied at all. I loved those games, but they haven't influenced the industry even a fraction of the amount that starcraft did.
no TA: Kingdoms and Cavedog
I would guess the reason they didn't mention this was that the article is only for games released after 2000 and because it didn't really bring down a strong studio with a string of hits behind it.
Like many small businesses their essential failing was being under-capitalized, not necessarily a terrible product.
I disagree. They spent a metric fuck-ton of money on that one game. They were overly ambitious and didn't realize their own limits. Being under-capitalized is a legitimate problem, but they could have made several less ambitious games. As it was, they put all their eggs (of which they had many) in one overly-ambitious basket.
Reasonable people do not speak in such absolutes.
If only there was an "Insightfully Funny" mod, you, sir, would get it.
Burying the line costs a lot more initially and then takes a hell of a lot more effort to troubleshoot. It's all fine and dandy to try to get the lines buried until you have to foot the bill.
The result of this is that building a new transmission line in a new area is pretty much off limits unless it winds around to avoid existing structures by miles and miles
My dad was the engineer who planned the route for a new transmission line to a community which was growing very quickly. When the town locals heard about the route, they demanded that they bury the line (there was no alternate route) and they demanded the electric company pay the extra cost.
The company wasn't going to pay for burying the line, so it resulted in a game chicken. Turns out people stop pulling out these bullshit theories when they start suffering from blackouts.
Therefore, the Kindle is not the right choice of e-book reader for institutions such as colleges and universities to promote
Two points. First, and this has been mentioned elsewhere, Kindles don't hurt blind people, they help sighted people. Should the FDA hold back cystic fibrosis medications until an equal number of sickle cell anemia medications are ready to go to market?
Second, electronic books in general are better for visually impaired people overall. Instead of needing the publishers to spend extra money and resources converting their textbooks to braille formats, the students can buy a braille e-reader that will automatically convert the text to braille. When that happens then everyone wins.
1) completely bogus: OpenGL has an both a good documentation and extremely good literature
It's nice that you think so, but I've seen the documentation for both, and I much prefer the directx documentation. You are, in fact, helping to prove the GP's point: when Microsoft hears from a developer that their documentation sucks, they'll work on it and improve it. When open source people hear that something sucks, they insult the user and stick their heads back in their asses.
And how many genuinely foolproof and fail-safe machines do you use every day without noticing, because they work so well?
0. None. Zip. Zilch. There's no such thing as something that's genuinely foolproof and can't fail. Everyone knows this, so if they continue to say that there's no risk at all with this design, then the public's going to call bullshit on it. It'd be much better to say that it's more safe or less risky than other design types and avoid making everyone think of what the titanic would have been like in nuclear reactor form.
That's retarded. Germs devour and destroy each other as much or more than humans do. The difference is that germs are cheaper and faster to reproduce. Germs can go through several generations over the course of a week, so they're able to evolve much more quickly than larger animals and fill ecological niches more quickly and more efficiently. In addition, their population can explode over a very short time period. This means that when they find a resource they can exploit, they exploit it quickly and completely.
Forget the bullshit ideal that nature is loving and humans are brutal and warlike. Wherever there's a resource shortage there's fighting, whether it's humans or animals. The only difference is that humans can moderate it more effectively and then feel bad about it afterwards.
I personally go the other way. Sure, there's an Ext3 driver for windows, but from what I've seen it's not that good. On the other hand, I've used the NTFS driver on Linux quite a bit and it's worked pretty well. More importantly, I have confidence that the NTFS driver will continue to get better.
I absolutely think this was the right decision. Judges are in a special place where they need to avoid the appearance of bias at all costs. If friending someone on facebook gets a ruling overturned on appeal it's probably better than the friending not take place.
Is your county's public records office a den of Satan, as well?
Yes, but not for that reason.
It looks like the statistics come from internet hits. If that's the case, then the numbers wouldn't be skewed by which operating system was bought on the computer, only which one's being used on it.
That's not so wrong. If you look at these numbers, you can see that Mac lost .15%, Windows stayed the same, and Linux gained .04%. So, about 25% of Mac's loss was Linux's gain. The rest seems to have been made up by mobile phones (but not the iphone, which also lost .01%).
The version trending shows that as many people who dumped XP or Vista picked up 7 and as many people as dumped OSX 10.5 picked up 10.6. So, the decline in Mac share comes from pre-10.5. There are a lot of possibilities that jump to mind, but the most interesting is that people are dumping their old Macs for Linux or Windows 7.
shady viagra sales...go right ahead, Mark! We're behind you all the way!
It's a trap!
It requires a vulnerability in both the server and the client. The server's vulnerability is that it allows SWF's to be uploaded and it's hard to validate whether it's a SWF or something else (the article uses the example of a file that's both a SWF and a valid ZIP file).
The client side vulnerability is that it will execute any SWF as a flash object even if the extension or the headers are wrong. Once this is done, then the SWF object is running as if it's from the hacked website, which is basically an XSS attack on steroids.
Overall, it's a pretty interesting hack, but harder to pull off than your average XSS vulnerability. It requires problems in the server, browser and flash client.
It reminds me of one approach to avoid a terrorist attack when flying. Carry your own bomb onto the plane. After all, what are the chances that there would be two bombs on the plane?
That's why the TSA's so harmful. If you outlaw bombs on a plane, then only terrorists will have bombs.