This is just a typical response of a company which has the lion's share of the market. Instead of being sensible and looking for ways to make new markets and expand in varying ways within their own, they look to entrench their position in their own market and wring more money out of their customers.
It has always been the case that once a company reaches ~80% market share, they transition from bringing more value to their customers then trying to get more value out of their customers. Microsoft just happens to be exceptionally blatant about it.
I've been waiting for this day for the entire time the injunction has been in place. So I'm using it today, exploring through the Web of mathematical topics, and suddenly the Web site stops responding. "Hmm, I say, bet it got slashdotted."
The recent appearance of this story in the popular media is a pretty good testament to the abject crappiness of science-related news coverage. The low-density asteroid airburst explanation of the Tunguska event has been established as the dominant theory for the explosion since the mid-late eighties. This is not new.
Sloppy programming is sloppy programming, open source or not. Most programmers are sloppy and don't do error handling carefully. I'm sure the (rather high) percentage of open source programmers that do a lousy job with error handling is comparable with the percentage of non-open source programmers that do the same. Most things suck in all walks of life.
I think it's highly amusing that they didn't bother securing permission from the copyright owner before starting their project.
I never finished Ultima I. I got to the endgame with Mondain and kept "killing" him, he kept turning into a pile of dust, and then into a bat, and then back into human form, over and over again.
Yes, this game was called Crobots. You can still find copies of it around with some well-placed Web searches.
There's also a more recent type of this simulation called RealTimeBattle which uses a simple text-based protocol so that you can write a bot in literally any language.
Right. We also need scientists who cling on to their pet theories for dear life after they have long since been disproven. Hoyle's support of the steady state model in his later years was near-comical: it involved patches upon patches to make the thing even come close to matching observation. Occam's razor would have made short work of it.
Let's not forget that these results are highly disputed among physicists. Just because someone reports they're seeing something doesn't mean that is, what in fact, they are seeing.
Many spammers already put unique identifiers (sometimes wholly different gobs of text) in their spams so that they aren't easily spamcaught. Many also personalize their email so that it includes the (at least according to their records) name of the addressee.
In short, there are many types of spam that this mechanism will fail to catch today, much less if such a system becomes widespread. It's too late for such a half-hearted measure.
A bit much. A red giant is just the final stage of a normal main sequence star like the Sun. They burn brightly while they fuse helium, then when they use up their fuel they shed their outer envelope and puff away to a white dwarf, nice and quiet like.
We all do understand that the functionality of the robot has nothing to do with the fact that it's running on a Pentium, right? It's about software, not hardware.
Well, what do you expect? The name does violate their trademark. If you want to make clones of popular programs, you'd damn well name them something different.
Furthermore, trademark holders are obligated to protect their trademarks; if they do not pursue trademark violation issues they know about, then future infringers can use that as a valid defense.
What's most infuriating about all this aptly-put "post-Columbine hysteria" is that school shootings are nothing new, even in the United States. People get killed by violence in schools all the time, and have been for decades. The difference now is that it's in white, middle-class schools that the shootings are happening.
No one took notice when it was happening in schools in the ghettos of this country. And you still get these (white) liberals insisting that this country is not racist. It's the most sinister form of racism -- blissful ignorance.
Rumor mongering at its worst. If they don't like something, they must have already violated it. Real nice. Froth-mouthed, knee-jerk advocacy doesn't win any points on either side.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just a typical response of a company which has the lion's share of the market. Instead of being sensible and looking for ways to make new markets and expand in varying ways within their own, they look to entrench their position in their own market and wring more money out of their customers.
It has always been the case that once a company reaches ~80% market share, they transition from bringing more value to their customers then trying to get more value out of their customers. Microsoft just happens to be exceptionally blatant about it.
I've been waiting for this day for the entire time the injunction has been in place. So I'm using it today, exploring through the Web of mathematical topics, and suddenly the Web site stops responding. "Hmm, I say, bet it got slashdotted."
Switch majors. If you don't like doing it, don't do it.
The trailer was uninspired, pretentious, and boring. Given how pathetic Episode I was, I'm sure that's a sign of what we have in store for Episode II.
At least they're using CG for Yoda now. He looked downright laughable.
The recent appearance of this story in the popular media is a pretty good testament to the abject crappiness of science-related news coverage. The low-density asteroid airburst explanation of the Tunguska event has been established as the dominant theory for the explosion since the mid-late eighties. This is not new.
Sloppy programming is sloppy programming, open source or not. Most programmers are sloppy and don't do error handling carefully. I'm sure the (rather high) percentage of open source programmers that do a lousy job with error handling is comparable with the percentage of non-open source programmers that do the same. Most things suck in all walks of life.
I think it's highly amusing that they didn't bother securing permission from the copyright owner before starting their project.
I never finished Ultima I. I got to the endgame with Mondain and kept "killing" him, he kept turning into a pile of dust, and then into a bat, and then back into human form, over and over again.
This is puzzling. What is Loki thinking? Postal is a very old game, but more importantly, it wasn't very good and it wasn't very successful either.
What exactly did you expect to happen? Fry's bought Egghead's assets.
Just because someone started working on something intending to be a joke doesn't mean it's not a joke and that anything will come of it.
Yes, this game was called Crobots. You can still find copies of it around with some well-placed Web searches.
There's also a more recent type of this simulation called RealTimeBattle which uses a simple text-based protocol so that you can write a bot in literally any language.
Right. We also need scientists who cling on to their pet theories for dear life after they have long since been disproven. Hoyle's support of the steady state model in his later years was near-comical: it involved patches upon patches to make the thing even come close to matching observation. Occam's razor would have made short work of it.
No kidding. Talk about egg on their faces. It's been known for months, there's no excuse for the damage being this bad.
Let's not forget that these results are highly disputed among physicists. Just because someone reports they're seeing something doesn't mean that is, what in fact, they are seeing.
It's Slashdot. What did you expect? Seriously.
This is pretty hilarious, considering how far more gruesome the price performance curves were just a few years ago.
Many spammers already put unique identifiers (sometimes wholly different gobs of text) in their spams so that they aren't easily spamcaught. Many also personalize their email so that it includes the (at least according to their records) name of the addressee.
In short, there are many types of spam that this mechanism will fail to catch today, much less if such a system becomes widespread. It's too late for such a half-hearted measure.
A bit much. A red giant is just the final stage of a normal main sequence star like the Sun. They burn brightly while they fuse helium, then when they use up their fuel they shed their outer envelope and puff away to a white dwarf, nice and quiet like.
We all do understand that the functionality of the robot has nothing to do with the fact that it's running on a Pentium, right? It's about software, not hardware.
Perhaps Hollywood could concentrate on one or two original movies this decade?
Well, what do you expect? The name does violate their trademark. If you want to make clones of popular programs, you'd damn well name them something different.
Furthermore, trademark holders are obligated to protect their trademarks; if they do not pursue trademark violation issues they know about, then future infringers can use that as a valid defense.
What, you mean another C-like scripting language? Aren't there enough of these already?
Surely of all the cranks in the world, you could have picked a more interesting one.
What's most infuriating about all this aptly-put "post-Columbine hysteria" is that school shootings are nothing new, even in the United States. People get killed by violence in schools all the time, and have been for decades. The difference now is that it's in white, middle-class schools that the shootings are happening.
No one took notice when it was happening in schools in the ghettos of this country. And you still get these (white) liberals insisting that this country is not racist. It's the most sinister form of racism -- blissful ignorance.
Rumor mongering at its worst. If they don't like something, they must have already violated it. Real nice. Froth-mouthed, knee-jerk advocacy doesn't win any points on either side.