If I cared as much as I probably should, you may have a point.
Well, hehe... fair enough.:) It's your money.;)
I seriously doubt that their lawyer browses slashdot,
Well I was thinking, even if he doesn't browse Slashdot normally, I would think he'd be reading this story. Slashdot has a lot of readers, and this was a relatively small story that suddenly got negative exposure on a fairly sizable site. In addition, if you're using the same email address for Slashdot and the besieged mailing list, it's very easy to just do a search on google for that address...
Yeah, he's got progressive scan, only gets anamorphic DVDs if he can help it. Of course he thinks it looks fine - maybe its just me:) It varies by DVD, but still its noticable
Could part of the problem be his DVD player? I've found the DVD player makes an even bigger difference in image quality than the TV does. I used to have an APEX piece of junk (God, the "hidden menu" feature of the 600A was so not worth the aggrevation of the bad picture and firmware bugs) and then switched to a higher-quality DVD player, and the difference was amazing.
Totally off-topic: anyone know if there are any firmware updates for the 600a to fix those annoying awful bugs in the unit? The occasional lockups, etc. I've heard they exist, but APEX's site doesn't have any for that model.
Talk to him and he cites case law, chapter and verse. "It's my hobby," he said.
It's kindof hard to interpret that as anything other than "case law is my hobby." None of the other statements necessarily refer to his hobby statement.
The plaintiff has the time and money, and the defendants don't, so they are forced to settle, even if their chances of winning in court are high. THIS kind of thing needs to be stopped.
I think the defendants could have a case against him (Note: IANAL). Isn't abusing the court system by filing baseless lawsuits wrongful prosecution? That is illegal in itself..
Some proposed recommendations involve all sorts of fines against the party that brought the case if it is determined to be frivolous (plus paying the defense legal fees), but the problem is that the defense still needs to money to get to that point.
Windows (the only legal OS in the USA cause Microsoft patented the DRMOS)
Why do people repeat this nonsense? Don't you realize how rediculous a statement that is? Even Bush's "kinder and gentler" Justice Department would be all over that for anti-trust reasons, among others.
So please: If some stupid law passes requiring DMR in the OS, Microsoft will lose any (possibly non-existant) patents concerning that.
IPX doesn't suck. That is foolish nonesense. It is very good at what it is designed for.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant that the IPX support in the Blizzard games is not so good. It assumes very low latency, which the UDP (through battle.net at least) doesn't have a problem with. It was fine for the local LANs it was originally made for, but it doesn't work well outside of that environment. That's why I don't get much lag when I play in a game on Battle.Net with a user with a modem. Sure, some actions are a little delayed, but that's not the type of lag I'm talking about. There is lag that you get in an IPX game that you do NOT get in a TCP/IP game. It's not because of bandwidth limitations, but due to the way Blizzard games (or Starcraft, at least) sync in IPX games.
Starcraft does have a TCP/IP (using UDP) version go grab the latest patch.
Remember, this option is only for local LANs. It's not like Diablo II where you can host a game and someone else specifies your IP address.
I'll lump tunneling UDP/IPX over pppd along in the "Kali" category, since they have the same effect of tunneling. So we essentially have two non-Battle.Net alternatives:
bnetd: Does not check for deleted/duplicate/valid CD keys, piracy is certainly possible. Has no Blizzard oversight. In itself does not allow for Warcraft 3 play.
kali: Does not check for deleted/duplicate/valid CD keys, piracy is certainly possible. Has no Blizzard oversight. In itself does not allow for Warcraft 3 play.
Seems to me that Blizzard has equal reason to be annoyed by tunneling solutions and bnetd (but of course, bnetd is more specific to Blizzard games).
Sure. But I don't see purely LAN games too often myself. Often it's "people on a LAN... and a guy halfway across the country." That was the nice thing about Kali -- even though people might be scattered, from the game's perspective they were all on the local LAN.
Some of Blizz's games are synchronous, like the starcraft you mentioned, so your friend with the modem is going to slow down everyone else, IPX vs. TCP/IP is irrelevant in this case.
Actually with Starcraft, that is not the case. When you connect with Battle.Net, a slow modem user does not slow down the other users like he would if he were using IPX. If the net-connection is completely unresponsive, then the game freezes for everyone until the lagger is dropped or unlags, but that is the extent to which a slow modem user (aren't they all?;) ) lags the game. The behavior is completely different for an IPX game.
Nearly all of Blizz's games are peer-to-peer, again the starcraft you mention, so battle.net is not lagging your game.
You're right, but the part I was refering to was the initial game setup which occurs on Battle.Net -- gathering in a channel, hosting a game, letting people join... then finally when the game starts it's out of Battle.Net's hands. I've had nights where I gathered a small handful of friends, and we weren't even able to start a game together. When Battle.Net lags, it will often incorrectly claim a game doesn't exist (I think a lot of famous misleading error message like "game doesn't exist" and "character not found" are generic catchall error responses). When I tracerouted uswest.battle.net, the trace was perfectly clean... until the very last hop, where the times spiked by at least half a second. Packet loss was pretty high as well. Fortunately that's not the norm, but it's very annoying when it happens. That night of frustration when we couldn't start a Starcraft game (Kali wouldn't work since one of my friends was on a modem) was the night I decided to compile and setup the bnetd server. We haven't looked back since.
You are mistaken, Starcraft does have TCP/IP LAN play. It was added about the time the MacOS X version was released.
Starcraft, as of the current version, only has local TCP/IP capabilities. DiabloII has true TCP/IP over the Internet, but Starcraft's UDP support is still limited to the local lan. (though I've yet to try this with Kali -- might be interesting to see if it doesn't lag anymore)
No, LAN play is available through IPX on all their games. TCP LAN play was only added recently to help out MacOS X which does not have IPX support.
Sorry, but IPX REALLY sucks. Network performance is terrible if you're on a local LAN and want to connect to someone across the Internet (with Kali, let's say), especially if that person is on a slow modem. Under IPX, everyone's performance is synced to the person with the slowest network connection. Battle.Net is also pretty bad -- laggy as hell, unstable, and filled with people where the average maturity seems to be that of a 12-year old. Setting up a bnetd server on my box was the best way for myself and a small circle of friends to connect together, have our own ladder games, and play in our own private environment. It probably wouldn't have been necessary if Starcraft came with a TCP/IP option, but it doesn't. (for that matter, why doesn't the TCP/IP option in Diablo2 accept hostnames instead of IP addresses?)
I still think that the fastest way to begin switching the masses to Linux would be for the Game manufacurers to release games for Linux first.
I agree. A few points:
There was a time when almost every game was released for 5 or more platforms.. the PC/PCjr, AppleII, Commadore 64/128, Amiga, Atari, and so forth. I can still look at the game advertisements in some of my old "Family Computing" magazines and many of them had 6 screenshots -- one for each platform. These were games that were ported not just to different operating systems, but to different architectures. I'm not a game designer, so I don't know how much games these days are tied closely into Windows-specific calls, but it seems to me a lot of code could be shared since you're dealing with the same hardware. Are games just so much more advanced now that this isn't feasible, or is there just no demand? (Sadly, probably the latter)
I have both Windows and Linux machines, yet I buy all my games for Windows. (In fact, Turbotax and gaming are the only things that Windows machine has done for the last year) Sometimes I'll see a game released for Windows and Linux, but still I'll get the Windows version. Why?
Sometimes the main game will be released for Linux, but add-ons won't be. Heroes of Might and Magic III was released for Windows and Linux. But was the Armageddeon's Blade add-on available for Linux? Shadow of Death? Any of the milking-the-franchise spinoffs? If I want to play the game, I can buy it for Linux. If I want to play the entire game, I have to get the Windows version.
Contracting out to another company to make your Linux version of a game only works if the original version of the game is going to be the only version of the game (for example, Final Fantasy VII). By contracting out, often you'll miss the add-ons, but also the updates. Assume that the game is multiplayer and isn't terribly well-designed or tested (such as any of Blizzard's games). Say Diablo 2 is released with a Loki port. A trade hack bug strikes, a month later Blizzard comes out with a new patch -- do you think they'd have worked well with Loki to get the patch out for both platforms at the same time? I doubt it. So the Linux gamer misses out on bugfixes as well (though it wasn't till the last few years that serious bugfixes in PC games were even necessary *grumble*)
So because all the content was available for Windows, my Windows machine got the gaming hardware (the Linux one didn't even have a good 3D graphics card until very recently). Without the hardware and since full versions of titles were only ever released on Windows (with very very few exceptions), that's why I bought my games for Windows.
Someone just told me Ian McKellen is a homosexual. Is that true? I really hope it's just a misunderstanding because I really liked him as an actor before I learned that.
Sure he's gay. Hell, he was holding hands with a rather young man sitting next to him through much of the Oscars.;) He plays a gay man in Gods and Monsters, a film I heartily recommend.
After I learned Tom Cruise was gay AND a scientologist I never was able to watch Top Gun again!
Easy there, buddy! It's wise to post this anonymously since Cruise has been going wild slapping anyone who even hints that he might be gay with lawsuits. But being called a scientologist, that's a real insult (even though it's true).
They feed upon an artificial value created by the monopolies IP gives them.
The value of copies exist only because copyright holders can use their monopolies to create a lack of copies in the market.
What about the resources ($$$) that it takes to actually make movies/music/books/etc? Don't the creators deserve to reimbursed for their time and effort? Isn't it morally wrong to deny them their profit even from something they spent resources creating? IP doesn't magically grow on trees, it usually takes actual work and resources to create. When you buy a CD or movie, sure there's distribution cost (very low), but you're also paying the creation cost. That's why making a copy of something you didn't buy is stealing -- sure it's just a copy, but the use of that work creates the moral obligation to pay your share of the creation costs as well. So please don't try to play the "it's illegal, but not morally wrong" card; you don't have a leg to stand on.
Is it me or do even the impossibly crappy movies (even based on user opinion) seem to get glowing featured reviews? Does imdb simply have a policy of putting the highest-rated review on the front page? Maybe I should start writing bad reviews of crappy movies, and give them ratings of 10...
We have been told to outright lie to customers relating to a number of issues, including
* DSL network outages due to extremely poor design - we are not allowed to confirm these until "the word" comes through - even when half the country is without service.
Sounds like a good portion of the broadband providers here in the states. I got used to the nice uptime/downtime notices provided by my university. Then, I graduated... My DSL provider has a page customers can check for various downtimes (mail, network, etc), but most of the actual (not pre-planned) outages mysteriously never make it there.
Heroes are what really make Warcraft III more compelling that its predecessors (which is very high praise) These are like RPG characters.. they have experience, they level, they can collect magic items, they get really powerful magic spells. They ALSO increase the combat effectiveness of any group of creatures they lead into battle.
Sounds like an odd combination of Warcraft II and Heroes of Might and Magic III. The latter being one of the better turn-based fantasy strat games out there.:)
Overall concluding thoughts? I was dissapointed with Diablo II, I thought it was almost a (very large) expansion to Diablo I, with a stupid quasi-3D graphic gimmick.
Wow. Guess we disagree here. I really didn't like Diablo, but Diablo II is one of my all-time favorites. I'm hoping Warcraft III (and Diablo3) aren't as terribly buggy as Diablo II was.
some sort od scripting that allows me to assign priorities would be nice. Shooting at a building and somebody shows up to fix it? shoot that guy.
You can do that in Starcraft, btw.. Instead of moving your units to attack a building, have them move close to the building. They'll attack, but they'll break off and attack any units if they show up, since units have a higher priority. This works especially well with units that have ranged attacks, like guardians, battlecruisers, and carriers.
Slashdot has posted quite [slashdot.org] a [slashdot.org] few [slashdot.org] articles [slashdot.org] about the evils of the DMCA.
Don't you think it's possible that not all of the slashdot editors will agree on every single topic? One editor might post a story that another editor could completely disagree about. They're not all mindless automatons controlled by a hive-brain.
IF you want action, you protect with a few million people in front of washington, and threaten to riot, have it all get captured on national TV, raise money from such an event, you cant just tell them with words you dont like this bill, you have to show them with actions.
You're right, look at the incredible "success" of the anti-globalization people. Protests, even minor riots won't even change things when the other side has a huge amount of wealth and political power.
You dont understand the cause. Do you know what GNU and GPL is about? Open Source?
Well, I do, sure. I also believe they're principles that should be entered into by choice, not forced upon people.
Theres two groups in this country. The group which wants informations to be free, which is against patents, and intellectual property, then you have the group which wants information to be owned.
Both sides can make money, its proven, Redhat and AOL make as much money as Microsoft and Disney,
First of all, RedHat can barely break even. They aren't even close to being in the same league as Microsoft and Disney. And AOL isn't close to being against intellectual property either. A few open projects like Netscape and antagonism to Microsoft do not counteract the rest of the massive behemoth that is AOL-Time-Warner.
We dont need Microsoft and RIAA.
Sure "we" do, "we" being a society. The loss of either would create a vaccuum that would need to be filled. At the moment, Linux is not a substitute for Microsoft for the majority of computer users in the country. Apple might fill that void though. The RIAA, as much as we might abhor their tactics, are necessary for the music industry in its current form, mostly because without them, the only bands that could survive would be the ones that sell a lot (albums/tickets/merchandise). Maybe you don't know how much smaller (popularity) bands end up owing the RIAA -- they don't get money for fun, they need money making making music is not cheap. That's why the RIAA is more than just a powerful middleman.
Oil Companies use oil not because oil is the only form of energy or the best, its used because the Oil Industry, The Enrons, they have monopoly to maintain and while we can get free energy from stuff like Water, Air, Sunlight, which can power a car for 12 or more hours, (thats more than enough power to last for days) instead we are still paying a fortune for gas, cars are still using gas, the energy in our house while it could be self generated, people still are using oil,
Or, maybe the technology isn't as far along as you'd like to think. Why don't we have super solar/wind/air cars zipping up and down the road right now? Hint: it's not because of the powerful oil companies.
Napster and File Sharing benifits the masses, the majority of people in the world want it, what happened to democracy?
There was no true democracy, nor should have been. The United States (I'll assume that's what you refer to) was designed to protect the rights of a minority if the majority decided to just destroy those rights. That is, life, liberty, property, along with the various protections offered by the bill of the rights, and so forth. Now obviously, the US government has ignored this principle whenever it benefits law enforcement so much that the phrase is now practically meaningless, but the spirit still lives on.
The only people who are anti napster are CEOs, and elite musicians who have no talent like britney spears and others.
Good musicians have been against napster as well. When you want to remove one system, you must have something better to put in its place. The "hey, just share music for free, and let them recoup costs through concerts" arguement is sheer foolishness that marginalizes the rights of the artists and ignores economic reality.
For who, Microsoft? Maybe you could take your fingers out of the poison-dusted candy jar of IE-forced HTML extensions and back off on your 'Artistic vision' far enough to let all the OTHER browsers work with your site?
The original poster never mentioned IE-specific standards. The simple fact is Netscape doesn't even render regular standards properly.
Heheh, sounds like the old "Good Times" virus explanation. "Good Times" was a virus hoax that circulated around in the days before Outlook exploits, when the idea of getting a real virus from just looking at a piece of email was laughable. It claimed to do all sorts of things like reformat hard drives, so this "warning" about the Good Times virus came in the reponse.
The latest breaking news on the GOODTIMES virus.
It turns out that this so-called hoax virus is very
dangerous after all. Goodtimes will re-write your hard
drive. Not only that, it will scramble any disks that are
even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your
refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes
melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit
cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use
subspace field harmonics to scratch any CDs you try to
play.
It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It
will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all
your beer and leave dirty socks on the coffee table when
company comes over. It will put a dead kitten in the back
pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when
you are late for work.
Goodtimes will make you fall in love with a penguin. It
will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour
sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows
while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing
the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.
It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if
she is dead, such is the power of Goodtimes, it reaches out
beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you
can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave
libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice!
It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying
to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.
Goodtimes will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave
the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of Methamphetamine
in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove
while it goes out to chase gradeschoolers with your new
snowblower.
Whoa, am I reading this [neil.eton.ca] right? Most 1st world countries have a levy, and in the US the recording industry *can* legally charge a 3% levy BUT instead they think SSSCA with DRM CPUs, DRM chipsets and all of that is the best idea. WTF?
Why would that surprise you? SSSCA with DRM in hardware gives them much more control, and control is central to all of this.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, hehe... fair enough. :) It's your money. ;)
I seriously doubt that their lawyer browses slashdot,
Well I was thinking, even if he doesn't browse Slashdot normally, I would think he'd be reading this story. Slashdot has a lot of readers, and this was a relatively small story that suddenly got negative exposure on a fairly sizable site. In addition, if you're using the same email address for Slashdot and the besieged mailing list, it's very easy to just do a search on google for that address...
Could part of the problem be his DVD player? I've found the DVD player makes an even bigger difference in image quality than the TV does. I used to have an APEX piece of junk (God, the "hidden menu" feature of the 600A was so not worth the aggrevation of the bad picture and firmware bugs) and then switched to a higher-quality DVD player, and the difference was amazing.
Totally off-topic: anyone know if there are any firmware updates for the 600a to fix those annoying awful bugs in the unit? The occasional lockups, etc. I've heard they exist, but APEX's site doesn't have any for that model.
Not for long. PetWarehouse is now www.drfostersmith.com.
PetsWarehouse.com ATE MY BALLS!
You know... really stupid statements like this aren't really helpful to your case.
It's kindof hard to interpret that as anything other than "case law is my hobby." None of the other statements necessarily refer to his hobby statement.
I think the defendants could have a case against him (Note: IANAL). Isn't abusing the court system by filing baseless lawsuits wrongful prosecution? That is illegal in itself..
Some proposed recommendations involve all sorts of fines against the party that brought the case if it is determined to be frivolous (plus paying the defense legal fees), but the problem is that the defense still needs to money to get to that point.
Hrm.. isn't Nullsoft owned by Netscape, aka AOL/Time Warner now?
Why do people repeat this nonsense? Don't you realize how rediculous a statement that is? Even Bush's "kinder and gentler" Justice Department would be all over that for anti-trust reasons, among others.
So please: If some stupid law passes requiring DMR in the OS, Microsoft will lose any (possibly non-existant) patents concerning that.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant that the IPX support in the Blizzard games is not so good. It assumes very low latency, which the UDP (through battle.net at least) doesn't have a problem with. It was fine for the local LANs it was originally made for, but it doesn't work well outside of that environment. That's why I don't get much lag when I play in a game on Battle.Net with a user with a modem. Sure, some actions are a little delayed, but that's not the type of lag I'm talking about. There is lag that you get in an IPX game that you do NOT get in a TCP/IP game. It's not because of bandwidth limitations, but due to the way Blizzard games (or Starcraft, at least) sync in IPX games.
Starcraft does have a TCP/IP (using UDP) version go grab the latest patch.
Remember, this option is only for local LANs. It's not like Diablo II where you can host a game and someone else specifies your IP address.
I'll lump tunneling UDP/IPX over pppd along in the "Kali" category, since they have the same effect of tunneling. So we essentially have two non-Battle.Net alternatives:
- bnetd: Does not check for deleted/duplicate/valid CD keys, piracy is certainly possible. Has no Blizzard oversight. In itself does not allow for Warcraft 3 play.
- kali: Does not check for deleted/duplicate/valid CD keys, piracy is certainly possible. Has no Blizzard oversight. In itself does not allow for Warcraft 3 play.
Seems to me that Blizzard has equal reason to be annoyed by tunneling solutions and bnetd (but of course, bnetd is more specific to Blizzard games).Sure. But I don't see purely LAN games too often myself. Often it's "people on a LAN... and a guy halfway across the country." That was the nice thing about Kali -- even though people might be scattered, from the game's perspective they were all on the local LAN.
Some of Blizz's games are synchronous, like the starcraft you mentioned, so your friend with the modem is going to slow down everyone else, IPX vs. TCP/IP is irrelevant in this case.
Actually with Starcraft, that is not the case. When you connect with Battle.Net, a slow modem user does not slow down the other users like he would if he were using IPX. If the net-connection is completely unresponsive, then the game freezes for everyone until the lagger is dropped or unlags, but that is the extent to which a slow modem user (aren't they all? ;) ) lags the game. The behavior is completely different for an IPX game.
Nearly all of Blizz's games are peer-to-peer, again the starcraft you mention, so battle.net is not lagging your game.
You're right, but the part I was refering to was the initial game setup which occurs on Battle.Net -- gathering in a channel, hosting a game, letting people join... then finally when the game starts it's out of Battle.Net's hands. I've had nights where I gathered a small handful of friends, and we weren't even able to start a game together. When Battle.Net lags, it will often incorrectly claim a game doesn't exist (I think a lot of famous misleading error message like "game doesn't exist" and "character not found" are generic catchall error responses). When I tracerouted uswest.battle.net, the trace was perfectly clean... until the very last hop, where the times spiked by at least half a second. Packet loss was pretty high as well. Fortunately that's not the norm, but it's very annoying when it happens. That night of frustration when we couldn't start a Starcraft game (Kali wouldn't work since one of my friends was on a modem) was the night I decided to compile and setup the bnetd server. We haven't looked back since.
You are mistaken, Starcraft does have TCP/IP LAN play. It was added about the time the MacOS X version was released.
Starcraft, as of the current version, only has local TCP/IP capabilities. DiabloII has true TCP/IP over the Internet, but Starcraft's UDP support is still limited to the local lan. (though I've yet to try this with Kali -- might be interesting to see if it doesn't lag anymore)
Sorry, but IPX REALLY sucks. Network performance is terrible if you're on a local LAN and want to connect to someone across the Internet (with Kali, let's say), especially if that person is on a slow modem. Under IPX, everyone's performance is synced to the person with the slowest network connection. Battle.Net is also pretty bad -- laggy as hell, unstable, and filled with people where the average maturity seems to be that of a 12-year old. Setting up a bnetd server on my box was the best way for myself and a small circle of friends to connect together, have our own ladder games, and play in our own private environment. It probably wouldn't have been necessary if Starcraft came with a TCP/IP option, but it doesn't. (for that matter, why doesn't the TCP/IP option in Diablo2 accept hostnames instead of IP addresses?)
I agree. A few points:
There was a time when almost every game was released for 5 or more platforms.. the PC/PCjr, AppleII, Commadore 64/128, Amiga, Atari, and so forth. I can still look at the game advertisements in some of my old "Family Computing" magazines and many of them had 6 screenshots -- one for each platform. These were games that were ported not just to different operating systems, but to different architectures. I'm not a game designer, so I don't know how much games these days are tied closely into Windows-specific calls, but it seems to me a lot of code could be shared since you're dealing with the same hardware. Are games just so much more advanced now that this isn't feasible, or is there just no demand? (Sadly, probably the latter)
I have both Windows and Linux machines, yet I buy all my games for Windows. (In fact, Turbotax and gaming are the only things that Windows machine has done for the last year) Sometimes I'll see a game released for Windows and Linux, but still I'll get the Windows version. Why?
- Sometimes the main game will be released for Linux, but add-ons won't be. Heroes of Might and Magic III was released for Windows and Linux. But was the Armageddeon's Blade add-on available for Linux? Shadow of Death? Any of the milking-the-franchise spinoffs? If I want to play the game, I can buy it for Linux. If I want to play the entire game, I have to get the Windows version.
- Contracting out to another company to make your Linux version of a game only works if the original version of the game is going to be the only version of the game (for example, Final Fantasy VII). By contracting out, often you'll miss the add-ons, but also the updates. Assume that the game is multiplayer and isn't terribly well-designed or tested (such as any of Blizzard's games). Say Diablo 2 is released with a Loki port. A trade hack bug strikes, a month later Blizzard comes out with a new patch -- do you think they'd have worked well with Loki to get the patch out for both platforms at the same time? I doubt it. So the Linux gamer misses out on bugfixes as well (though it wasn't till the last few years that serious bugfixes in PC games were even necessary *grumble*)
So because all the content was available for Windows, my Windows machine got the gaming hardware (the Linux one didn't even have a good 3D graphics card until very recently). Without the hardware and since full versions of titles were only ever released on Windows (with very very few exceptions), that's why I bought my games for Windows.Sure he's gay. Hell, he was holding hands with a rather young man sitting next to him through much of the Oscars. ;) He plays a gay man in Gods and Monsters, a film I heartily recommend.
After I learned Tom Cruise was gay AND a scientologist I never was able to watch Top Gun again!
Easy there, buddy! It's wise to post this anonymously since Cruise has been going wild slapping anyone who even hints that he might be gay with lawsuits. But being called a scientologist, that's a real insult (even though it's true).
What about the resources ($$$) that it takes to actually make movies/music/books/etc? Don't the creators deserve to reimbursed for their time and effort? Isn't it morally wrong to deny them their profit even from something they spent resources creating? IP doesn't magically grow on trees, it usually takes actual work and resources to create. When you buy a CD or movie, sure there's distribution cost (very low), but you're also paying the creation cost. That's why making a copy of something you didn't buy is stealing -- sure it's just a copy, but the use of that work creates the moral obligation to pay your share of the creation costs as well. So please don't try to play the "it's illegal, but not morally wrong" card; you don't have a leg to stand on.
* DSL network outages due to extremely poor design - we are not allowed to confirm these until "the word" comes through - even when half the country is without service.
Sounds like a good portion of the broadband providers here in the states. I got used to the nice uptime/downtime notices provided by my university. Then, I graduated... My DSL provider has a page customers can check for various downtimes (mail, network, etc), but most of the actual (not pre-planned) outages mysteriously never make it there.
Sounds like an odd combination of Warcraft II and Heroes of Might and Magic III. The latter being one of the better turn-based fantasy strat games out there. :)
Overall concluding thoughts? I was dissapointed with Diablo II, I thought it was almost a (very large) expansion to Diablo I, with a stupid quasi-3D graphic gimmick.
Wow. Guess we disagree here. I really didn't like Diablo, but Diablo II is one of my all-time favorites. I'm hoping Warcraft III (and Diablo3) aren't as terribly buggy as Diablo II was.
You can do that in Starcraft, btw.. Instead of moving your units to attack a building, have them move close to the building. They'll attack, but they'll break off and attack any units if they show up, since units have a higher priority. This works especially well with units that have ranged attacks, like guardians, battlecruisers, and carriers.
Could it be because Vivendi/Universal has a long history of anti-consumer tactics?
Don't you think it's possible that not all of the slashdot editors will agree on every single topic? One editor might post a story that another editor could completely disagree about. They're not all mindless automatons controlled by a hive-brain.
You're right, look at the incredible "success" of the anti-globalization people. Protests, even minor riots won't even change things when the other side has a huge amount of wealth and political power.
Well, I do, sure. I also believe they're principles that should be entered into by choice, not forced upon people.
Theres two groups in this country. The group which wants informations to be free, which is against patents, and intellectual property, then you have the group which wants information to be owned.
Both sides can make money, its proven, Redhat and AOL make as much money as Microsoft and Disney,
First of all, RedHat can barely break even. They aren't even close to being in the same league as Microsoft and Disney. And AOL isn't close to being against intellectual property either. A few open projects like Netscape and antagonism to Microsoft do not counteract the rest of the massive behemoth that is AOL-Time-Warner.
We dont need Microsoft and RIAA.
Sure "we" do, "we" being a society. The loss of either would create a vaccuum that would need to be filled. At the moment, Linux is not a substitute for Microsoft for the majority of computer users in the country. Apple might fill that void though. The RIAA, as much as we might abhor their tactics, are necessary for the music industry in its current form, mostly because without them, the only bands that could survive would be the ones that sell a lot (albums/tickets/merchandise). Maybe you don't know how much smaller (popularity) bands end up owing the RIAA -- they don't get money for fun, they need money making making music is not cheap. That's why the RIAA is more than just a powerful middleman.
Oil Companies use oil not because oil is the only form of energy or the best, its used because the Oil Industry, The Enrons, they have monopoly to maintain and while we can get free energy from stuff like Water, Air, Sunlight, which can power a car for 12 or more hours, (thats more than enough power to last for days) instead we are still paying a fortune for gas, cars are still using gas, the energy in our house while it could be self generated, people still are using oil,
Or, maybe the technology isn't as far along as you'd like to think. Why don't we have super solar/wind/air cars zipping up and down the road right now? Hint: it's not because of the powerful oil companies.
Napster and File Sharing benifits the masses, the majority of people in the world want it, what happened to democracy?
There was no true democracy, nor should have been. The United States (I'll assume that's what you refer to) was designed to protect the rights of a minority if the majority decided to just destroy those rights. That is, life, liberty, property, along with the various protections offered by the bill of the rights, and so forth. Now obviously, the US government has ignored this principle whenever it benefits law enforcement so much that the phrase is now practically meaningless, but the spirit still lives on.
The only people who are anti napster are CEOs, and elite musicians who have no talent like britney spears and others.
Good musicians have been against napster as well. When you want to remove one system, you must have something better to put in its place. The "hey, just share music for free, and let them recoup costs through concerts" arguement is sheer foolishness that marginalizes the rights of the artists and ignores economic reality.
The original poster never mentioned IE-specific standards. The simple fact is Netscape doesn't even render regular standards properly.
The latest breaking news on the GOODTIMES virus.
It turns out that this so-called hoax virus is very dangerous after all. Goodtimes will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field harmonics to scratch any CDs you try to play.
It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave dirty socks on the coffee table when company comes over. It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.
Goodtimes will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.
It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of Goodtimes, it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice! It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.
Goodtimes will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of Methamphetamine in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase gradeschoolers with your new snowblower.
Why would that surprise you? SSSCA with DRM in hardware gives them much more control, and control is central to all of this.