I actually read the article. It made me wonder if patenting a piece of software as "a process, implemented on an x86 cpu" would be patentable, since it describes a particular piece of hardware. If so, it looks like rather than reducing the amount of frivolous patents, this merely opens the floodgates for a bunch of wannabes to attempt to patent "software x" on specific processors, while shafting the original idea guys because their patents are "too broad".
Also, what does "utilizing multiple computing devices" have to do with software? Can I just perform the same exact steps on a single cpu, perhaps taking twice as long, and claim that I'm not violating the patent just because it doesn't happen to utilize two separate devices?
This looks like a good way to start some sort of corporate war, but will end up being meaningless to the common man (until he hires on as a meat shield for the coming Microsoft/Yahoo/Sony conflict (Live, in HD where available!)).
Is it any wonder there are so many "pirates", when even the people who make the rules don't know how the rules work?
The "food is more expensive 'cos people are growing biofuel" actually *is* true. For one thing, biofuels are more expensive to produce than petroleum-based fuels. For another, the farmers are being told "grow corn, we need more ethanol", instead of "grow food, we like to not starve". And finally, here's a link that may give you some food for thought. The gist of it appears to be "biofuels are not sustainable, and require more than a third again as much energy to produce as an equivalent amount of gasoline".
The RepRap is a truly awesome piece of equipment. For those who are not able to expend the time or energy to check it out, I'll explain it here as briefly as I can. It's kinda like a 3D printer; It generates physical objects by extruding a polymer resin, based on a 3-dimensional model (think CAD/CAM). You can use it to make things, including making another one, and it's completely open source.
The free government project looks pretty neat, although I only gave it a quick once-over. I've bookmarked it for later perusal, when I have more time. Open-source governance is a great concept, I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of it.
The idea of mesh networking is still in its infancy, but is another wonderful concept. Basically, it takes the idea of the internet, and rips off all the ugly wiring. This gives us a reliable, global, mobile structure of communication anywhere, everywhere, whenever. Imagine every electrical device being a wireless access point. The basic framework for supporting mesh networking was added to the linux kernel in the latest release, so this may actually have enough steam to start getting underway.
The surveillance state is already the here and now. Releasing that information to the public at large is the only way to make certain it is not abused, and I like where you were headed with that.
If you want to hide behind your "jaded suburbanite" facade, feel free. "Chances are", you've never lost anything in a display of nature's wrath, and "chances are" that you're projecting your own sense of self-worth onto your perceptions of me.
Yes, I live in the US. I make a "decent" wage as a hardware/network tech for a small local software company. I am purchasing my own home (it's a trailer, think of that what you will) and purchasing my own car (a 2003 PT Cruiser that I'm still paying for, if you're interested. It also happens to be the closest thing to a "new" car I've ever owned, and the first one I've ever driven off of a lot) and can barely manage to make ends meet for me and my wife. I've been in the computer field for over two decades, so it's not a lack of experience or expertise, just a lack of money.
We don't throw outrageous parties. We don't own a television, and we wouldn't have time to watch one if we did. I only drive to work and back (7.6 miles, roughly, via the interstate) or to the grocery store (only 2 miles, but you can't carry a week's worth of food on a bicycle), and "eating out" for my family means we hit the dollar menu at McDonald's *maybe* once every two weeks (typically more like once every six), when my wife and I can afford to "splurge" and waste $3 on a meal that we didn't have to prepare ourselves. Two burgers, we split a fries, and drinks are at home in the fridge. I haven't set foot in the mall in 4 years. I haven't been to Walmart in 3 years. I haven't purchased new clothing in two years or more, unless you count socks, underwear, and T-shirts.
I'm in debt to the tune of a year's salary (before taxes), just because I have the audacity to want to own my own roof and my own transportation. It's another year's salary if I want to own the dirt my roof rests on, and I'm hoping to have that before I die. Don't shout "aha!" and point your finger at me about being in debt, dammit. I own one credit card, with a limit of $500.00, and it's for emergencies because I can't afford to open a savings account. My debt is solely my home and my (only) vehicle, not some credit-induced buying frenzy. We live hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck, and so does everyone I know.
I don't know if you live here in the US, but if you don't, you may have this misconception that the streets are paved with gold. Allow me to burst that bubble. The streets are barely paved at all down here in southwest Louisiana, where we still haven't recovered from the hurricane Katrina refugees, much less the damage from hurricane Rita. We still have "blue roofs" (tarps instead of shingles) all over the place, and entire towns are still disaster areas. Just last month, I drove through what used to be a neighborhood down in Cameron (about an hour south of my home), and there are maybe 5 intact structures in 2 square miles. Most places have just a few cinder blocks on a concrete pad, or a pile of rubble where someone's home used to be. It has been 3 years since the storm. Does this sound like rich people living it up?
I'm paying twice as much for gasoline as I was just two or three years ago, and it's become a serious dent in my budget. I'm paying more for my car (due to gas prices, insurance premiums, and maintenance) than I am paying for my home, my family's food, and our electricity usage combined. Admittedly, I buy in bulk when I can, but this is still absurd, when the perception of America is "A car in every garage". Hell, I don't even have a carport, or even a front porch; nevermind a garage. If I didn't need the hauling capacity, I'd cheerfully "downgrade" to a compact car - assuming I could find one for sale. Prices are skyrocketing on anything with even remotely decent gas mileage. Unfortunately, it's kinda hard to put a Dell server (still in the box) and a laser printer in an '81 Celica (my preferred method of transport, and I'm still kicking myself for selling it 5 years ago).
As for that dig against Americans, stop watching so much of our TV. None of us looks like that, n
The price of gasoline has doubled in 2 years. The price of food is going up, although I do have to admit it's not at the same rate. Why is food more expensive? They're putting it in the gas tank. Energy is becoming more expensive, and we just have to learn to live with it.
If our currency is not backed by oil, why are we fighting over it in some country on the other side of the globe?
If our currency is not backed by oil, why do we have an oil baron's son for president?
If our currency is inflation-proof, why is everything suddenly so expensive?
Here's a thought... why don't *we* convert to the Euro, too? Let someone else be the lead dog for a while, I'm tired of having my ankles bitten.
That trust you mention is bleeding away, and quickly. I'm sick of being on the low end of this 99/1 split (It is said that 99% of the world's wealth is owned by 1% of the population).
Oh, no! Please do continue the discussion. My mind is very rarely completely set on any given topic, and I welcome the opportunity to debate these points. Where did I say you were stupid and hypocritical?
I wasn't attempting to demonize anyone, merely pointing out my own personal experiences (which I then supported with (admittedly anecdotal) evidence. If you have your own anecdotes, feel free to share.
Of course, arguing about whether environmentalists and animal rights activists are hypocrites during a discussion of US solar plant applications might get us modded off-topic, but hey, this is Slashdot!
In 2000, when the Associated Press first noted PETA's Kervorkian-esque tendencies, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk complained that actually taking care of animals costs more than killing them. "We could become a no-kill shelter immediately," she admitted.
Please read the linked article before posting. It helps you not look like an idiot.
The problem being exposed is that the organization supposedly dedicated to protecting animals is really just a bunch of profiteering hatemongers. I think this supports the "environmentalists are a bunch of hypocrites" theories quite nicely.
I have yet to see an environmentalist or animal rights activist whose shoes were not made of processed animal and/or petroleum products. I have yet to see an environmentalist who walked everywhere they went because gasoline and combustion engines are bad for the environment. I have yet to see an outspoken environmentalist whose true goal was the preservation or continuance of life, rather than just having a soap-box to stand on.
If the traffic spends a lot of time just sitting around, then it's probably traffic that could easily be electric vehicles, which frankly are pretty readily available.
Really? Show me one.
Great, you've chosen a concept car due to be rolled out *maybe* in 2010. try again.
No, that one costs US$40,000.00 - that's nearly two years' salary (nevermind food, rent, insurance, etc) for anyone I know on a first-name basis. Sorry, but food comes first.
Nope, that one there isn't available in the US. Besides, it wouldn't be allowed on the interstate anyway, it only does 30mph.
Show me a fully-electric vehicle that I can purchase today, for less than US$25,000, that is legal to drive on the interstate (in other words, not restricted to roads with 35mph speed limits because it isn't allowed to go faster than 25mph due to government-imposed safety constraints).
Yeah, I thought not.
I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong. I currently drive a Chrysler PT Cruiser, because it is the closest I could find to what I'm looking for. No, it doesn't get great mileage, but it gets better mileage than any other light truck I could find, with the added benefit of a roof. (I also need the ability to carry a Dell server, in its box, as well as a Lexmark laser printer - also in its box.) My 45mph+ requirement is based on the idea that to go from my house to anywhere else, I have to travel on a 45mph road, or on the interstate. This is not legal in an NEV, as safety regulations prohibit them from travelling on roads with speed limits greater than 35mph. This is because they are limited (with a governor, not paperwork or physics) to 25mph in the US.
Show me an all-electric vehicle that conforms to the above requirements, and I'll cheerfully buy it. Matter of fact, show me an all-electric commuter vehicle (even just a one or two passenger, no cargo room model), that is allowed on a 45mph road, at a reasonable price (less than US$25,000) and I'll buy it on the spot (assuming there's no other hoop-jumping involved). I can afford to pay the note for two vehicles, if one of them doesn't use gas and the other is only used for out-of-town trips or cargo hauling. I'll even sweeten the deal. Show me that vehicle, and I'll buy it, then give you a modest finder's fee.
Unfortunately, I'm expecting you to do 5 minutes or so of googling, realise you're completely and utterly out of your depth (or out of touch with reality), then run off with your tail between your legs.
Please, prove me wrong. I can't afford to keep driving a vehicle that gets less than 30 miles to the gallon.
This is a huge problem with the legislative system, in my opinion. An individual bill should address a single issue, not be loaded up with dozens of items. I wouldn't make a firewall rule that allowed http access at the cost of opening up remote desktop access, why do we allow our legislators to perform the equivalent action?
This entire process is a farce, and is the main reason our country is in the state that it's in. Well, that and a complete lack of accountability for government and corporate entities.
I haven't been a fan of horror since Steven King stopped writing decent stuff (yeah, I know, pin that one down, right?), so Clive Barker never interested me. Having now read the wiki entry on Imajica, I may give that one a shot.
The concepts in the Wizardy series were excellent, as I had stated previously in this thread. Not the best grammar and spelling, but no one is perfect. It feels more important to me that the storyline come across as (suspension of dis-)believable, and that the characters have some depth.
The Lion of Farside had some neat concepts, but I will cheerfully admit that the execution was flawed. It felt as if it was written by a high-schooler, for high-schoolers.
Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series seems to be one of the "Epic Sagas" that I have grown to dislike. Nothing against him personally, but I don't think I would enjoy his work.
My bookshelf contains the entire Harry Potter series, so I would have difficulty spouting disdain for Rowling at this point.
It seems that we have very different tastes in novels, so let's just agree to disagree on that topic. I'm a "pulp" sci-fi guy, and you're into "hard" fantasy. So be it.
I would like to point out that the "bad writing" you describe seems to have less to do with well-structured plot lines, and more to do with poor editing, judging by the examples you have given. I see very few differences, other than typographical errors, between what you have described as "good", and what you have described as "bad".
Thanks again for continuing this completely off-topic discussion, and please accept my apology for lambasting you yesterday. It was extremely rude of me, and I am ashamed.
Whoa, there, cowboy. Before you go completely postal on me, I'd like to point out that I didn't call you "stupid or unintelligent". I did state my opinion that the behavior I was describing was, in my opinion, "foolish, unintelligent, or silly". Reading comprehension is evidently not in your repertoire today. Perhaps you should try looking up more than the word "asinine", this time through the text. Here is the wording you apparently objected to, with new emphasis added:
Oh, and one other thing; I hate to be picky, but it seems to me that it's a bit asinine to point out problems with someone else's writing unless your own is beyond reproach. Spelling/grammar errors happen. This is not meant to be an ad-hominem attack, merely a constructive criticism.
This is not, as you wrote, 'claimimg that something isn't "ad hominem" while in the same sentence calling them "stupid or unintelligent"'.
I've always felt that if someone is to be punished for something, they should have done the thing they were being punished for. I'm also very big on personal accountability. Since you're jumping down my throat over my having the nerve to state my own opinion, I'm going to assume I've been punished. In response, I shall now commence with actually commiting the offense I've been called to the carpet for. Let the (well and truly deserved, in my opinion) ad hominem attacks in this post begin with something you should have no difficulty understanding, and indeed have already (falsely) convicted me of previously stating: You are stupid, unintelligent, or at best uneducated. I had no idea that you fit the bill so well, when I used the word you evidently had to look up to determine the meaning of. Feel free to look up any of the big words I may use in the following diatribe.
Your first sentence contains three spelling errors. I will assume they are intentional, in a poorly-implemented attempt to be funny. Bravo. In order to be truly humorous, though, you should have intentionally misspelled nearly all the words in your post (or at least in the first paragraph), or stopped there.
To remain grammatically correct (or to properly convey a coherent thought), your third sentence (which is apparently the entirety of the second paragraph) should use a semicolon instead of the hyphen you chose, but we'll leave that as a "common usage" error. It would have been better advised to state "internal inconsistencies", instead of the sentence fragment "internally inconsistent" as an item in your list of examples of "bad writing". In addition, the word "and" should be removed and replaced by a comma, as I believe your outright abuse of the abbreviation for "et cetera" would count as the last item(s) in the list, which carries its own implied "and". Let's run with the idea that you were still failing to be funny, though, shall we?
As to your entitlement to having an opinion, yes. You most certainly can have an opinion on practically any subject you would like to. Your ability to express it, though, is severely limited by your lack of communication (in this instance, writing) skills. My opinion of your opinion of any author's work is that you do not know enough about the field to successfully defend any position you might think you have taken with regards to the effective communication of the subject matter.
As for the poorly conceived characters, poor plotlines, lack of subplots, poorly defined concepts, kludgy sentences, or internal inconsistencies that you seem so fond of pointing out in the titles I have listed, do please tell me what wonderful examples of fiction you believe to be exemplary of the opposite. What do you read, oh maestro of the written word? No, really, I want to know. Evidently, I am sorely lacking in some critical literature, and would like to understand your point of view on the subject. As a matter of fact, please don't bother to reply unless
"Freehold" is not a space opera at all, really. I had to stop and think to recall any bits where ships were even described, much less adventured in. The storyline is very much ground-based. It stops short of being an "epic saga", which is a good thing, in my book (pardon the pun). Most (if not all) of the books I have seen recently (in the past decade or so) that claimed to be an "EPIC SAGA!" were pure and unadulterated crap.
The concepts in "Wizardry Compiled" are awesome, and I think I dismissed any "bad writing" as simply a side effect of having been scanned into the system, rather than converted from some electronic form. Many of the books on the site seem to suffer from poor OCR, or perhaps that's Baen's new anti-plagiarism scheme. I've noticed several fiction authors/publishing houses are starting to throw in odd grammar or spelling errors (or maybe I'm just beginning to notice a phenomenon that has been occuring all along), and am assuming that they're just little red herrings, useful in a court case to prove some excerpt (or outright copy) is actually theirs. One of the (non-Baen) books I read recently even came out and said so in the foreword.
Oh, and one other thing; I hate to be picky, but it seems to me that it's a bit asinine to point out problems with someone else's writing unless your own is beyond reproach. Spelling/grammar errors happen. This is not meant to be an ad-hominem attack, merely a constructive criticism.
All I care about is the ability to remotely WIPE the machine. I dont care about recovery as Insurance gives me a new upgrade when it's stolen. I want to be able to trigger a switch that will wipe the thing hard and replace the windows boot with "STOLEN LAPTOP!" but will settle for simply wiping the drive silently.
The abovementioned cronjobs could be helpful with that.
I'm imagining a series of cronjobs, actually. One that grabs a specific file from a webserver, then another shortly after that executes the downloaded shell script. The script would do nothing at all, of course... until you replace it (on the webserver) with the one that wipes all your sensitive data, then sets another cronjob to scream for help at some inopportune moment.
Ways to scream for help: Faking a midnight DoS attack on fbi.gov sounds like a good way to get your laptop's thief caught. Of course, your laptop will probably be confiscated as evidence, and this might actually result in *you* going to jail, but whatever. Another downside would be the internet lagging like a beast as soon as it started, making the network traffic very obvious to the (illegal) user.
Wait for a phone line to be plugged into a modem, and dial 911 every 10 minutes with a voice message "I am a stolen [make/model] laptop computer with serial number xxxxxxxx, please trace this call and come bring me home. Thank you." Yes, I know, who uses phone lines these days? Perhaps VOIP would be a better option. Or maybe a cell phone in the casing? I've seen several articles on hiding a (caseless) cell phone in your vehicle, I don't think it would take too much ingenuity to do it to a laptop.
You can do quite a bit with a cron'd wget, followed by a cron'd shell script (pulled with the wget). If they turned your laptop on in the presence of WiFi, it could immediately alert you to its presence. Perhaps you could set the downloaded script to email you with location data every few minutes, or even hack a GPS unit into the laptop casing and USB it to the mainboard, so that you could email yourself actual coordinates. Plug those into google earth, and then call the cops and tell them "My laptop was stolen. Its GPS tracking software just told me that it's at [insert address here]. Please go pick it up, it's a [brand and model] with serial number [serial number]". Or go get it back yourself, if you are so inclined.
Have the embedded camera start taking snapshots (or even video). Have the microphone record the ambient noise (and any talking nearby). I'd worry less about accidentally capturing "sensitive data" than the thieves should about my laptop calling the cops on them when they turn it on.
"Hi, this is [name], my stolen laptop appears to be in use right now at the Starbucks on the corner of Third and Main. It'll be the one screaming its head off, probably being run away from by the guy that stole it. It's gonna start a 50-decibel siren and lock its inputs in about 15 minutes. I'll meet you there (I'm calling from my car, and I'm about 10 minutes away), so that I can shut it off for you (thus proving that it's mine). I'd appreciate it if I didn't have to make a citizen's arrest first, so please hurry."
Adeona sounds like a nice Q&E method of retreiving a stolen laptop, but I'd rather make it uncomfortable (or even dangerous!) for a thief to walk off with my notebook.
Hmm... maybe even just use the timed login feature to automatically log on to to the Desktop with an account named "Administrator" after a minute or two. Once it logs in, it checks for the presence of a network, and if it finds one, starts some of the nastiness described above while emailing you its IP.
Taken a step further, "dual-boot" the thing with a timed grub boot to a "clean" Windows XP install with no password, straight to the desktop... while running a bunch of "phone home" utilities in the background. How's that for a deadman switch? Yes, it would mean having to wait through the POST and pressing a key or two to kee
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
While the current copyright legislation may adhere to the letter of this statement, it does not adhere to the intent. So sorry, but "lifetime of the author + 70 years" is not a fair time limitation, especially not in today's society. I hate to shout something that some would find absurd, such as "3 years, with a one-time 3 year extension (or no extension at all)", but it's the only way to fight the people on the opposing (and equally absurd) side shouting "125+ years is not enough!"
In my opinion, the entire work should be made public domain (including source code, etc.) once it's abandonware. The original "creator" abandoned it, so give it to the public. A later product is a derivative work? So be it. At least you got a huge head start on your competition, in terms of "deriving" works. Compete with your own products? Why not? If you can't make the next version be better than the previous version, then you have serious problems, and they don't necessarily relate to your product line. Maybe you should keep supporting the old version, instead of letting it fall by the wayside. (Don't get me wrong, Windows 3.11 was great, but is no longer all that relevant to Joe User, or even Joe Corporate User.)
The idea here, from the very beginning of our country, was to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts", not "secure financial gain in perpetuity for the producers of new products".
Wow, I somehow totally missed that you were responding to the AC who was griping about digital books... I thought you were saying that Baen's free offerings were abandonware.
Sorry about that, but a good (off-topic) thread, anyways.
You accidentily inserted the word "quality" in there.
Nope, it was entirely intentional.
No doubt there are some gems, but I've yet to read/find them.
Keep looking, they're in there.
Of course, I grew up on pulp sci-fi, so my standards may be different from yours. There's definitely a lack of truly "hard" sci-fi, but there are many entertaining stories, and that's most of what I'm after, nowadays. There's no Asimov or Dickson in there, I'll admit. I like stories, not textbooks. If I wanted to actually learn about quantum physics, I'd go google up a textbook, or something.
To me, the Baen Free Library is mostly a repository of some fairly decent pop-sci-fi authors, that I can peruse at my leisure without having to track down that book from my stacks (I swear, they started out as shelves, but they keep gathering more books, and, well...). I like them because they don't require much thought to delve into, but often have good concepts.
"Freehold", for instance; A good read, with only a few obstacles to suspension of disbelief, describing a colony world based on anarchy, libertarianism and the free market, and the society's (obvious and obligatory) problems in its interactions with Earth because of its (lack of) societal structure. It has plenty of scenes where stuff blows up, and military drama abounds. It also makes some good points about our current society, and where it might be headed, as well as pointing out some of the good features of anarchy/libertarianism (it's not necessarily pandemonium, ya dig?). I've recommended it to several of my friends, and will continue to do so. Being able to recommend it by hitting someone with a link in an IM or forum post makes it that much easier.
Keep in mind that the Baen Free Library is more of a marketing push, so they're trying to appeal to the "lowest common denominator", rather than creating a free collective body-of-work like Project Gutenberg. On the other hand, Gutenberg doesn't make it easy to decide I like a series (or an author, or a single book), and drop a small chunk of change on a small stack of paperbacks.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Baen in any way other than being a fan of some of their authors.
My point was simply that the baen free library is still selling the works in question, and will cheerfully ship you a printed copy of any item in the "free" catalog, for a reasonable fee, upon request.
This, therefore, does not qualify as "abandonware" in any form.
Good example of some high-quality free stuff, though. I got turned onto the Baen Free Library a couple years ago, and have loved having a mobile source of free, quality science fiction. Anywhere I have 'net, I have Baen.
It's also incredibly easy to pick up a whole series after reading a couple online. Sometimes, there's just nothing like curling up on the couch with the dead-tree edition.
Yet somehow Baen Books does this with their free library.
Au contraire. They allow you to read some of the books for free, in the hopes that you will then purchase the entire series to read when you're not "plugged in". If you think otherwise, then you haven't read the essays you get at the root of the baen free library site.
Those books aren't out of print, they're simply being used as hooks. Same as letting a library loan out the books, except without the intermediary.
The only issue I have with this is that game companies go under, sometimes. Or are bought by other companies. Or stop supporting their product 10 or 15 years down the road. To be completely honest, it frightened me just the other day when I thought about my Steam games disappearing when Valve quits supporting them. I won't be giving Valve any more of my money, because of that. At least, not until some clever pirate shows me a way to install and play Halflife (1 or 2) without phoning home to a Steam server that may or may not be there in 10 years.
WoW is slightly different, although Blizzard's (and other game companies') tactics chap my hide for a different reason. I don't mind paying $15 a month to play online, with paid moderators whose job it is to make sure the game runs smoothly for all participants, and constant patching to keep the exploits to a minimum. Blizzard puts out a fine product, and I applaud that. The issue I have with it is... why do I have to pay $50 for a game, and *then* pay a subscription fee for the right to play it? Pick one, please. Either charge me for the privilege of playing, or charge me for a pretty box and shiny disk. Don't do both. Feels too much like paying for my cake and not getting to eat it anyway. And don't think I'm not a WoW addict... I've got a 70 undead 'lock, and I have mid-range toons on several servers. On two servers, I'm not allowed to make any more toons without deleting some. I managed to kick the habit after only 2 years of die-hard playing, and damned if they're not coming out with another expansion to make me crack out and buy the game *again* (the expansion pack, at least) later this year, so I can grind my way up to 80.
Of course, with the money flowing constantly just so I can jump on a WoW server every once in a while, Blizzard's not going anywhere, so I'm not worried about them... yet. Guild Wars, on the other hand, got out of hand long ago, and if anyone wants to purchase my Collector's Edition account (with the pre-order weapons and the special pets), just make a reasonable offer.
If I couldn't whip out my old copies of Master of Orion, Diablo, Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament, or Warcraft: Orcs and Humans every couple of years to relive my "glory days", I would be rather upset. Why, just a few months ago I beat MoO for the first time (with the Humans, anyway). What ever happened to single-player games with replay value?
The same goes for my old copies of Zelda and Zelda 2 (in the gold cartridges, mind you), Final Fantasy (the first one, not those anime-fests that people think are Final Fantasy nowadays), or Dragon Warrior (again, the very first one, not the mutations that occured later). Admittedly, No one is going to take away my rights to play those games on my 20-year old NES, but what happens when the hardware dies? That newfangled famicom duplex, or whatever it's called... yeah, sure, but why can't I plug my NES Advantage controllers into it? And don't get me started on the insanity of Nintendo throwing that group of counterfeiters in NEw Jersey into the slammer for causing them "millions of dollars in lost revenues"... they didn't even produce the original NES anymore, how were they losing money by these guys producing something they no longer sold?
I keep an old Pentium II machine around the house with Win95 installed on it (gods, no, it's not on the network) so that my wife can play Lemmings once in a blue moon... and just try and find a 5.25" floppy disk drive in today's market. Matter of fact, half the places I used to go for random "common" items don't even carry them anymore. Blank cassettes, blank VHS tapes, parallel cables, for crying out loud! How long before we can't buy blank CD/DVD media anymore?
But back to my point: you can't subscribe to a game company without the twinge of fear that someday, you won't be able to play their "activated online" game anymore.
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I always thought it stood for "full", as in "complete".
As in "read the full manual" or "read the full article".
If he wants to sue me for it, he knows where to find me.
I actually read the article. It made me wonder if patenting a piece of software as "a process, implemented on an x86 cpu" would be patentable, since it describes a particular piece of hardware. If so, it looks like rather than reducing the amount of frivolous patents, this merely opens the floodgates for a bunch of wannabes to attempt to patent "software x" on specific processors, while shafting the original idea guys because their patents are "too broad".
Also, what does "utilizing multiple computing devices" have to do with software? Can I just perform the same exact steps on a single cpu, perhaps taking twice as long, and claim that I'm not violating the patent just because it doesn't happen to utilize two separate devices?
This looks like a good way to start some sort of corporate war, but will end up being meaningless to the common man (until he hires on as a meat shield for the coming Microsoft/Yahoo/Sony conflict (Live, in HD where available!)).
Is it any wonder there are so many "pirates", when even the people who make the rules don't know how the rules work?
The "food is more expensive 'cos people are growing biofuel" actually *is* true. For one thing, biofuels are more expensive to produce than petroleum-based fuels. For another, the farmers are being told "grow corn, we need more ethanol", instead of "grow food, we like to not starve". And finally, here's a link that may give you some food for thought. The gist of it appears to be "biofuels are not sustainable, and require more than a third again as much energy to produce as an equivalent amount of gasoline".
The RepRap is a truly awesome piece of equipment. For those who are not able to expend the time or energy to check it out, I'll explain it here as briefly as I can. It's kinda like a 3D printer; It generates physical objects by extruding a polymer resin, based on a 3-dimensional model (think CAD/CAM). You can use it to make things, including making another one, and it's completely open source.
The free government project looks pretty neat, although I only gave it a quick once-over. I've bookmarked it for later perusal, when I have more time. Open-source governance is a great concept, I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of it.
The idea of mesh networking is still in its infancy, but is another wonderful concept. Basically, it takes the idea of the internet, and rips off all the ugly wiring. This gives us a reliable, global, mobile structure of communication anywhere, everywhere, whenever. Imagine every electrical device being a wireless access point. The basic framework for supporting mesh networking was added to the linux kernel in the latest release, so this may actually have enough steam to start getting underway.
The surveillance state is already the here and now. Releasing that information to the public at large is the only way to make certain it is not abused, and I like where you were headed with that.
In short, sign me up.
If you want to hide behind your "jaded suburbanite" facade, feel free. "Chances are", you've never lost anything in a display of nature's wrath, and "chances are" that you're projecting your own sense of self-worth onto your perceptions of me.
Yes, I live in the US. I make a "decent" wage as a hardware/network tech for a small local software company. I am purchasing my own home (it's a trailer, think of that what you will) and purchasing my own car (a 2003 PT Cruiser that I'm still paying for, if you're interested. It also happens to be the closest thing to a "new" car I've ever owned, and the first one I've ever driven off of a lot) and can barely manage to make ends meet for me and my wife. I've been in the computer field for over two decades, so it's not a lack of experience or expertise, just a lack of money.
We don't throw outrageous parties. We don't own a television, and we wouldn't have time to watch one if we did. I only drive to work and back (7.6 miles, roughly, via the interstate) or to the grocery store (only 2 miles, but you can't carry a week's worth of food on a bicycle), and "eating out" for my family means we hit the dollar menu at McDonald's *maybe* once every two weeks (typically more like once every six), when my wife and I can afford to "splurge" and waste $3 on a meal that we didn't have to prepare ourselves. Two burgers, we split a fries, and drinks are at home in the fridge. I haven't set foot in the mall in 4 years. I haven't been to Walmart in 3 years. I haven't purchased new clothing in two years or more, unless you count socks, underwear, and T-shirts.
I'm in debt to the tune of a year's salary (before taxes), just because I have the audacity to want to own my own roof and my own transportation. It's another year's salary if I want to own the dirt my roof rests on, and I'm hoping to have that before I die. Don't shout "aha!" and point your finger at me about being in debt, dammit. I own one credit card, with a limit of $500.00, and it's for emergencies because I can't afford to open a savings account. My debt is solely my home and my (only) vehicle, not some credit-induced buying frenzy. We live hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck, and so does everyone I know.
I don't know if you live here in the US, but if you don't, you may have this misconception that the streets are paved with gold. Allow me to burst that bubble. The streets are barely paved at all down here in southwest Louisiana, where we still haven't recovered from the hurricane Katrina refugees, much less the damage from hurricane Rita. We still have "blue roofs" (tarps instead of shingles) all over the place, and entire towns are still disaster areas. Just last month, I drove through what used to be a neighborhood down in Cameron (about an hour south of my home), and there are maybe 5 intact structures in 2 square miles. Most places have just a few cinder blocks on a concrete pad, or a pile of rubble where someone's home used to be. It has been 3 years since the storm. Does this sound like rich people living it up?
I'm paying twice as much for gasoline as I was just two or three years ago, and it's become a serious dent in my budget. I'm paying more for my car (due to gas prices, insurance premiums, and maintenance) than I am paying for my home, my family's food, and our electricity usage combined. Admittedly, I buy in bulk when I can, but this is still absurd, when the perception of America is "A car in every garage". Hell, I don't even have a carport, or even a front porch; nevermind a garage. If I didn't need the hauling capacity, I'd cheerfully "downgrade" to a compact car - assuming I could find one for sale. Prices are skyrocketing on anything with even remotely decent gas mileage. Unfortunately, it's kinda hard to put a Dell server (still in the box) and a laser printer in an '81 Celica (my preferred method of transport, and I'm still kicking myself for selling it 5 years ago).
As for that dig against Americans, stop watching so much of our TV. None of us looks like that, n
The price of gasoline has doubled in 2 years. The price of food is going up, although I do have to admit it's not at the same rate. Why is food more expensive? They're putting it in the gas tank. Energy is becoming more expensive, and we just have to learn to live with it.
If our currency is not backed by oil, why are we fighting over it in some country on the other side of the globe?
If our currency is not backed by oil, why do we have an oil baron's son for president?
If our currency is inflation-proof, why is everything suddenly so expensive?
Here's a thought... why don't *we* convert to the Euro, too? Let someone else be the lead dog for a while, I'm tired of having my ankles bitten.
That trust you mention is bleeding away, and quickly. I'm sick of being on the low end of this 99/1 split (It is said that 99% of the world's wealth is owned by 1% of the population).
Ok, yeah, kudzu. Annoying stuff, ain't it?
But... Did it stop the erosion?
Oh, no! Please do continue the discussion. My mind is very rarely completely set on any given topic, and I welcome the opportunity to debate these points. Where did I say you were stupid and hypocritical?
I wasn't attempting to demonize anyone, merely pointing out my own personal experiences (which I then supported with (admittedly anecdotal) evidence. If you have your own anecdotes, feel free to share.
Of course, arguing about whether environmentalists and animal rights activists are hypocrites during a discussion of US solar plant applications might get us modded off-topic, but hey, this is Slashdot!
In 2000, when the Associated Press first noted PETA's Kervorkian-esque tendencies, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk complained that actually taking care of animals costs more than killing them. "We could become a no-kill shelter immediately," she admitted.
Please read the linked article before posting. It helps you not look like an idiot.
The problem being exposed is that the organization supposedly dedicated to protecting animals is really just a bunch of profiteering hatemongers. I think this supports the "environmentalists are a bunch of hypocrites" theories quite nicely.
I have yet to see an environmentalist or animal rights activist whose shoes were not made of processed animal and/or petroleum products. I have yet to see an environmentalist who walked everywhere they went because gasoline and combustion engines are bad for the environment. I have yet to see an outspoken environmentalist whose true goal was the preservation or continuance of life, rather than just having a soap-box to stand on.
Class dismissed.
for successfully implementing a Tool reference in a Slashdot post.
Those poor carrots.
If the traffic spends a lot of time just sitting around, then it's probably traffic that could easily be electric vehicles, which frankly are pretty readily available.
Really? Show me one.
Great, you've chosen a concept car due to be rolled out *maybe* in 2010. try again.
No, that one costs US$40,000.00 - that's nearly two years' salary (nevermind food, rent, insurance, etc) for anyone I know on a first-name basis. Sorry, but food comes first.
Nope, that one there isn't available in the US. Besides, it wouldn't be allowed on the interstate anyway, it only does 30mph.
Show me a fully-electric vehicle that I can purchase today, for less than US$25,000, that is legal to drive on the interstate (in other words, not restricted to roads with 35mph speed limits because it isn't allowed to go faster than 25mph due to government-imposed safety constraints).
Yeah, I thought not.
I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong. I currently drive a Chrysler PT Cruiser, because it is the closest I could find to what I'm looking for. No, it doesn't get great mileage, but it gets better mileage than any other light truck I could find, with the added benefit of a roof. (I also need the ability to carry a Dell server, in its box, as well as a Lexmark laser printer - also in its box.) My 45mph+ requirement is based on the idea that to go from my house to anywhere else, I have to travel on a 45mph road, or on the interstate. This is not legal in an NEV, as safety regulations prohibit them from travelling on roads with speed limits greater than 35mph. This is because they are limited (with a governor, not paperwork or physics) to 25mph in the US.
Show me an all-electric vehicle that conforms to the above requirements, and I'll cheerfully buy it. Matter of fact, show me an all-electric commuter vehicle (even just a one or two passenger, no cargo room model), that is allowed on a 45mph road, at a reasonable price (less than US$25,000) and I'll buy it on the spot (assuming there's no other hoop-jumping involved). I can afford to pay the note for two vehicles, if one of them doesn't use gas and the other is only used for out-of-town trips or cargo hauling. I'll even sweeten the deal. Show me that vehicle, and I'll buy it, then give you a modest finder's fee.
Unfortunately, I'm expecting you to do 5 minutes or so of googling, realise you're completely and utterly out of your depth (or out of touch with reality), then run off with your tail between your legs.
Please, prove me wrong. I can't afford to keep driving a vehicle that gets less than 30 miles to the gallon.
This is a huge problem with the legislative system, in my opinion. An individual bill should address a single issue, not be loaded up with dozens of items. I wouldn't make a firewall rule that allowed http access at the cost of opening up remote desktop access, why do we allow our legislators to perform the equivalent action?
This entire process is a farce, and is the main reason our country is in the state that it's in.
Well, that and a complete lack of accountability for government and corporate entities.
Thank you for responding.
I haven't been a fan of horror since Steven King stopped writing decent stuff (yeah, I know, pin that one down, right?), so Clive Barker never interested me. Having now read the wiki entry on Imajica, I may give that one a shot.
The concepts in the Wizardy series were excellent, as I had stated previously in this thread. Not the best grammar and spelling, but no one is perfect. It feels more important to me that the storyline come across as (suspension of dis-)believable, and that the characters have some depth.
The Lion of Farside had some neat concepts, but I will cheerfully admit that the execution was flawed. It felt as if it was written by a high-schooler, for high-schoolers.
Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series seems to be one of the "Epic Sagas" that I have grown to dislike. Nothing against him personally, but I don't think I would enjoy his work.
My bookshelf contains the entire Harry Potter series, so I would have difficulty spouting disdain for Rowling at this point.
It seems that we have very different tastes in novels, so let's just agree to disagree on that topic. I'm a "pulp" sci-fi guy, and you're into "hard" fantasy. So be it.
I would like to point out that the "bad writing" you describe seems to have less to do with well-structured plot lines, and more to do with poor editing, judging by the examples you have given. I see very few differences, other than typographical errors, between what you have described as "good", and what you have described as "bad".
Thanks again for continuing this completely off-topic discussion, and please accept my apology for lambasting you yesterday. It was extremely rude of me, and I am ashamed.
What do you read, that Baen's fiction seems to fall so short of your standards?
Whoa, there, cowboy. Before you go completely postal on me, I'd like to point out that I didn't call you "stupid or unintelligent". I did state my opinion that the behavior I was describing was, in my opinion, "foolish, unintelligent, or silly". Reading comprehension is evidently not in your repertoire today. Perhaps you should try looking up more than the word "asinine", this time through the text. Here is the wording you apparently objected to, with new emphasis added:
Oh, and one other thing; I hate to be picky, but it seems to me that it's a bit asinine to point out problems with someone else's writing unless your own is beyond reproach. Spelling/grammar errors happen. This is not meant to be an ad-hominem attack, merely a constructive criticism.
This is not, as you wrote, 'claimimg that something isn't "ad hominem" while in the same sentence calling them "stupid or unintelligent"'.
I've always felt that if someone is to be punished for something, they should have done the thing they were being punished for. I'm also very big on personal accountability. Since you're jumping down my throat over my having the nerve to state my own opinion, I'm going to assume I've been punished. In response, I shall now commence with actually commiting the offense I've been called to the carpet for. Let the (well and truly deserved, in my opinion) ad hominem attacks in this post begin with something you should have no difficulty understanding, and indeed have already (falsely) convicted me of previously stating: You are stupid, unintelligent, or at best uneducated. I had no idea that you fit the bill so well, when I used the word you evidently had to look up to determine the meaning of. Feel free to look up any of the big words I may use in the following diatribe.
Your first sentence contains three spelling errors. I will assume they are intentional, in a poorly-implemented attempt to be funny. Bravo. In order to be truly humorous, though, you should have intentionally misspelled nearly all the words in your post (or at least in the first paragraph), or stopped there.
To remain grammatically correct (or to properly convey a coherent thought), your third sentence (which is apparently the entirety of the second paragraph) should use a semicolon instead of the hyphen you chose, but we'll leave that as a "common usage" error. It would have been better advised to state "internal inconsistencies", instead of the sentence fragment "internally inconsistent" as an item in your list of examples of "bad writing". In addition, the word "and" should be removed and replaced by a comma, as I believe your outright abuse of the abbreviation for "et cetera" would count as the last item(s) in the list, which carries its own implied "and". Let's run with the idea that you were still failing to be funny, though, shall we?
As to your entitlement to having an opinion, yes. You most certainly can have an opinion on practically any subject you would like to. Your ability to express it, though, is severely limited by your lack of communication (in this instance, writing) skills. My opinion of your opinion of any author's work is that you do not know enough about the field to successfully defend any position you might think you have taken with regards to the effective communication of the subject matter.
As for the poorly conceived characters, poor plotlines, lack of subplots, poorly defined concepts, kludgy sentences, or internal inconsistencies that you seem so fond of pointing out in the titles I have listed, do please tell me what wonderful examples of fiction you believe to be exemplary of the opposite. What do you read, oh maestro of the written word? No, really, I want to know. Evidently, I am sorely lacking in some critical literature, and would like to understand your point of view on the subject. As a matter of fact, please don't bother to reply unless
"Freehold" is not a space opera at all, really. I had to stop and think to recall any bits where ships were even described, much less adventured in. The storyline is very much ground-based. It stops short of being an "epic saga", which is a good thing, in my book (pardon the pun). Most (if not all) of the books I have seen recently (in the past decade or so) that claimed to be an "EPIC SAGA!" were pure and unadulterated crap.
The concepts in "Wizardry Compiled" are awesome, and I think I dismissed any "bad writing" as simply a side effect of having been scanned into the system, rather than converted from some electronic form. Many of the books on the site seem to suffer from poor OCR, or perhaps that's Baen's new anti-plagiarism scheme. I've noticed several fiction authors/publishing houses are starting to throw in odd grammar or spelling errors (or maybe I'm just beginning to notice a phenomenon that has been occuring all along), and am assuming that they're just little red herrings, useful in a court case to prove some excerpt (or outright copy) is actually theirs. One of the (non-Baen) books I read recently even came out and said so in the foreword.
Oh, and one other thing; I hate to be picky, but it seems to me that it's a bit asinine to point out problems with someone else's writing unless your own is beyond reproach. Spelling/grammar errors happen. This is not meant to be an ad-hominem attack, merely a constructive criticism.
Wow, cool. Too bad I'm discussing in this thread, because I would mod that informative. Thanks!
All I care about is the ability to remotely WIPE the machine. I dont care about recovery as Insurance gives me a new upgrade when it's stolen. I want to be able to trigger a switch that will wipe the thing hard and replace the windows boot with "STOLEN LAPTOP!" but will settle for simply wiping the drive silently.
The abovementioned cronjobs could be helpful with that.
I'm imagining a series of cronjobs, actually.
One that grabs a specific file from a webserver, then another shortly after that executes the downloaded shell script. The script would do nothing at all, of course... until you replace it (on the webserver) with the one that wipes all your sensitive data, then sets another cronjob to scream for help at some inopportune moment.
Ways to scream for help:
Faking a midnight DoS attack on fbi.gov sounds like a good way to get your laptop's thief caught. Of course, your laptop will probably be confiscated as evidence, and this might actually result in *you* going to jail, but whatever. Another downside would be the internet lagging like a beast as soon as it started, making the network traffic very obvious to the (illegal) user.
Wait for a phone line to be plugged into a modem, and dial 911 every 10 minutes with a voice message "I am a stolen [make/model] laptop computer with serial number xxxxxxxx, please trace this call and come bring me home. Thank you." Yes, I know, who uses phone lines these days? Perhaps VOIP would be a better option. Or maybe a cell phone in the casing? I've seen several articles on hiding a (caseless) cell phone in your vehicle, I don't think it would take too much ingenuity to do it to a laptop.
You can do quite a bit with a cron'd wget, followed by a cron'd shell script (pulled with the wget). If they turned your laptop on in the presence of WiFi, it could immediately alert you to its presence. Perhaps you could set the downloaded script to email you with location data every few minutes, or even hack a GPS unit into the laptop casing and USB it to the mainboard, so that you could email yourself actual coordinates. Plug those into google earth, and then call the cops and tell them "My laptop was stolen. Its GPS tracking software just told me that it's at [insert address here]. Please go pick it up, it's a [brand and model] with serial number [serial number]". Or go get it back yourself, if you are so inclined.
Have the embedded camera start taking snapshots (or even video). Have the microphone record the ambient noise (and any talking nearby). I'd worry less about accidentally capturing "sensitive data" than the thieves should about my laptop calling the cops on them when they turn it on.
"Hi, this is [name], my stolen laptop appears to be in use right now at the Starbucks on the corner of Third and Main. It'll be the one screaming its head off, probably being run away from by the guy that stole it. It's gonna start a 50-decibel siren and lock its inputs in about 15 minutes. I'll meet you there (I'm calling from my car, and I'm about 10 minutes away), so that I can shut it off for you (thus proving that it's mine). I'd appreciate it if I didn't have to make a citizen's arrest first, so please hurry."
Adeona sounds like a nice Q&E method of retreiving a stolen laptop, but I'd rather make it uncomfortable (or even dangerous!) for a thief to walk off with my notebook.
Hmm... maybe even just use the timed login feature to automatically log on to to the Desktop with an account named "Administrator" after a minute or two. Once it logs in, it checks for the presence of a network, and if it finds one, starts some of the nastiness described above while emailing you its IP.
Taken a step further, "dual-boot" the thing with a timed grub boot to a "clean" Windows XP install with no password, straight to the desktop... while running a bunch of "phone home" utilities in the background. How's that for a deadman switch? Yes, it would mean having to wait through the POST and pressing a key or two to kee
From Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
While the current copyright legislation may adhere to the letter of this statement, it does not adhere to the intent. So sorry, but "lifetime of the author + 70 years" is not a fair time limitation, especially not in today's society. I hate to shout something that some would find absurd, such as "3 years, with a one-time 3 year extension (or no extension at all)", but it's the only way to fight the people on the opposing (and equally absurd) side shouting "125+ years is not enough!"
In my opinion, the entire work should be made public domain (including source code, etc.) once it's abandonware. The original "creator" abandoned it, so give it to the public. A later product is a derivative work? So be it. At least you got a huge head start on your competition, in terms of "deriving" works. Compete with your own products? Why not? If you can't make the next version be better than the previous version, then you have serious problems, and they don't necessarily relate to your product line. Maybe you should keep supporting the old version, instead of letting it fall by the wayside. (Don't get me wrong, Windows 3.11 was great, but is no longer all that relevant to Joe User, or even Joe Corporate User.)
The idea here, from the very beginning of our country, was to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts", not "secure financial gain in perpetuity for the producers of new products".
Wow, I somehow totally missed that you were responding to the AC who was griping about digital books... I thought you were saying that Baen's free offerings were abandonware.
Sorry about that, but a good (off-topic) thread, anyways.
You accidentily inserted the word "quality" in there.
Nope, it was entirely intentional.
No doubt there are some gems, but I've yet to read/find them.
Keep looking, they're in there.
Of course, I grew up on pulp sci-fi, so my standards may be different from yours. There's definitely a lack of truly "hard" sci-fi, but there are many entertaining stories, and that's most of what I'm after, nowadays. There's no Asimov or Dickson in there, I'll admit. I like stories, not textbooks. If I wanted to actually learn about quantum physics, I'd go google up a textbook, or something.
To me, the Baen Free Library is mostly a repository of some fairly decent pop-sci-fi authors, that I can peruse at my leisure without having to track down that book from my stacks (I swear, they started out as shelves, but they keep gathering more books, and, well...). I like them because they don't require much thought to delve into, but often have good concepts.
"Freehold", for instance; A good read, with only a few obstacles to suspension of disbelief, describing a colony world based on anarchy, libertarianism and the free market, and the society's (obvious and obligatory) problems in its interactions with Earth because of its (lack of) societal structure. It has plenty of scenes where stuff blows up, and military drama abounds. It also makes some good points about our current society, and where it might be headed, as well as pointing out some of the good features of anarchy/libertarianism (it's not necessarily pandemonium, ya dig?). I've recommended it to several of my friends, and will continue to do so. Being able to recommend it by hitting someone with a link in an IM or forum post makes it that much easier.
Keep in mind that the Baen Free Library is more of a marketing push, so they're trying to appeal to the "lowest common denominator", rather than creating a free collective body-of-work like Project Gutenberg. On the other hand, Gutenberg doesn't make it easy to decide I like a series (or an author, or a single book), and drop a small chunk of change on a small stack of paperbacks.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Baen in any way other than being a fan of some of their authors.
My point was simply that the baen free library is still selling the works in question, and will cheerfully ship you a printed copy of any item in the "free" catalog, for a reasonable fee, upon request.
This, therefore, does not qualify as "abandonware" in any form.
Good example of some high-quality free stuff, though. I got turned onto the Baen Free Library a couple years ago, and have loved having a mobile source of free, quality science fiction. Anywhere I have 'net, I have Baen.
It's also incredibly easy to pick up a whole series after reading a couple online. Sometimes, there's just nothing like curling up on the couch with the dead-tree edition.
Yet somehow Baen Books does this with their free library.
Au contraire. They allow you to read some of the books for free, in the hopes that you will then purchase the entire series to read when you're not "plugged in". If you think otherwise, then you haven't read the essays you get at the root of the baen free library site.
Those books aren't out of print, they're simply being used as hooks. Same as letting a library loan out the books, except without the intermediary.
Don't get confused about the issues at hand.
Valve has a nice vision:
Gotta love Valve. And Blizzard.
The only issue I have with this is that game companies go under, sometimes. Or are bought by other companies. Or stop supporting their product 10 or 15 years down the road. To be completely honest, it frightened me just the other day when I thought about my Steam games disappearing when Valve quits supporting them. I won't be giving Valve any more of my money, because of that. At least, not until some clever pirate shows me a way to install and play Halflife (1 or 2) without phoning home to a Steam server that may or may not be there in 10 years.
WoW is slightly different, although Blizzard's (and other game companies') tactics chap my hide for a different reason. I don't mind paying $15 a month to play online, with paid moderators whose job it is to make sure the game runs smoothly for all participants, and constant patching to keep the exploits to a minimum. Blizzard puts out a fine product, and I applaud that. The issue I have with it is... why do I have to pay $50 for a game, and *then* pay a subscription fee for the right to play it? Pick one, please. Either charge me for the privilege of playing, or charge me for a pretty box and shiny disk. Don't do both. Feels too much like paying for my cake and not getting to eat it anyway. And don't think I'm not a WoW addict... I've got a 70 undead 'lock, and I have mid-range toons on several servers. On two servers, I'm not allowed to make any more toons without deleting some. I managed to kick the habit after only 2 years of die-hard playing, and damned if they're not coming out with another expansion to make me crack out and buy the game *again* (the expansion pack, at least) later this year, so I can grind my way up to 80.
Of course, with the money flowing constantly just so I can jump on a WoW server every once in a while, Blizzard's not going anywhere, so I'm not worried about them... yet. Guild Wars, on the other hand, got out of hand long ago, and if anyone wants to purchase my Collector's Edition account (with the pre-order weapons and the special pets), just make a reasonable offer.
If I couldn't whip out my old copies of Master of Orion, Diablo, Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament, or Warcraft: Orcs and Humans every couple of years to relive my "glory days", I would be rather upset. Why, just a few months ago I beat MoO for the first time (with the Humans, anyway). What ever happened to single-player games with replay value?
The same goes for my old copies of Zelda and Zelda 2 (in the gold cartridges, mind you), Final Fantasy (the first one, not those anime-fests that people think are Final Fantasy nowadays), or Dragon Warrior (again, the very first one, not the mutations that occured later). Admittedly, No one is going to take away my rights to play those games on my 20-year old NES, but what happens when the hardware dies? That newfangled famicom duplex, or whatever it's called... yeah, sure, but why can't I plug my NES Advantage controllers into it? And don't get me started on the insanity of Nintendo throwing that group of counterfeiters in NEw Jersey into the slammer for causing them "millions of dollars in lost revenues"... they didn't even produce the original NES anymore, how were they losing money by these guys producing something they no longer sold?
I keep an old Pentium II machine around the house with Win95 installed on it (gods, no, it's not on the network) so that my wife can play Lemmings once in a blue moon... and just try and find a 5.25" floppy disk drive in today's market. Matter of fact, half the places I used to go for random "common" items don't even carry them anymore. Blank cassettes, blank VHS tapes, parallel cables, for crying out loud! How long before we can't buy blank CD/DVD media anymore?
But back to my point: you can't subscribe to a game company without the twinge of fear that someday, you won't be able to play their "activated online" game anymore.
This is also a str