Microsoft not wanting to support a competitor to its core product, particularly a competitor that is kicking their ass in the server market...how surprising.
The super bowl ads this year were horrible. I remember like 2 years ago the Super Bowl ads were these insane ads in which were hilarious and had great actors in them. This year they weren't much better than normal ads.
The Google ad however really stood out. Heck it even made me feel emotional.
His family should be honored that a company as big as google decided to make a reference to one of their father/grandfather's books in the name of their flagship product. I mean this is ridiculous that the copyright machine representing the family would be trying to do this.
So what, now every time someone makes references to a character in a novel they can be sued.
Thirty Seconds to Mars has a song called Stranger In a Strange Land and I haven't seen the Heinlein foundation get upset over them using a trademarked (its the book's actual title) phrase.
Cmon, what these Sci-Fi writers really wanted was to make a lasting impression on the world and the foundations representing their estates should be more interested in that rather than just trying to make money on every little reference made.
I'm all for security but now this all nonsensical. Instead of actually making actual changes they just impose extremely annoying rules that have no actual security improvement. What does it matter whether or not it is the last hour...can't the terrorist just set off a bomb...I dunno before the last hour. I don't understand what the actual point of this rule is.
So if I want to pee, read a book, put something away, or so much as even flinch I'm gonna be threatened with an arrest. Simply inconveniencing people isn't gonna make security any better...
As much as I absolutely love Stranger in a Strange land I think I would go on a murderous rampage if some hollywood director made a crappy movie about it.
cmon how could you think "but in future countries" sounds okay.
it should be "but in the future countries"
great info though. I mean its nice to see that the internet is starting to become more international, especially as the US cuts mandatory ties to ICANN.
I completely agree with this article. We have a local free newspaper here in South Florida called the New Times that is incredibly popular. It usually has local news about corruption and hotspots in South Florida. In addition it has an occasional national article (it just had an article talking about how the government is doing nothing to the big wigs involved with the banking collapse) and it has some interesting movie reviews. Overall it has actually become more popular in South Florida and has gained more prominence and readership. Pretty much every single business has a New Times drop box in their waiting room and the community college I go to probably has more than 10 drop boxes which are always empty about a day after the papers are dropped off.
I mean if local newspapers just focused on good exciting journalism they would get plenty of readers. I mean I read a ton of news on online and I haven't picked up a national newspaper in years, yet every monday I sit down and read the New Times while sipping on a cafe con leche and having some rice and beans at lunch at my favorite Latin restaurant.
I remember actually siting geocities pages as a source on my middle school papers. In heinsight that was probably a bad idea.
I remember using freewebs.com to make webpages when I was in middle school...or even worse the free webpage that earthlink gave us.
Wow I was so proud of my stupid earthlink webpage...with its site counter, guest book, and all that crazy stuff. I learned html from that kind of stuff and damn was I proud of my incredibly dumb web pages. I remember having midi auto playing music and a stupid cursor effect.
The nook does look pretty snazzy if you ask me. Amazon really needs to step up there game or the good ol' invisible hand will smack amazon in the face:P
Was amazon really too stupid to contact vodafone or orange and get a plan from them. I mean really why would they actually pay roaming charges with AT&T. Its not like they bought the kindles from AT&T and AT&T locked them:D
I mean this is the only reason I prefer playing PC FPSs. I love being able to go to the same server over and over again and knowing the regulars there. I am also part of a clan atm. There is something to said about dedicated servers and even though they cost a lot of money and activision running servers for us makes people have to spend more money but all in all the reason people are willing to fork over so much for a server is because it adds a new dimension of community.
It's hard to play matchmaking all day because there is no sense of community and its just one random game after another. There is nothing like going back to a dedicated server that you always go to and playing with a bunch of people you played before.
Eventually I ended up running a CS server off of the servers I used to sell shoutcast hosting (business got kinda slow meh) and damn was it fun. I had the zombie mod installed and I was running my own little clan.
How can activision stick such a massive middle finger to their customers. This is ridiculous.
Whats even more ridiculous is how the OP put up this slashdot post and even mentioned the petition without linking it.
In economics class they teach us stuff like opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the cost of an activity measured in the amount of money you could be making if you did something else.
So for example if you in college the cost of going to college isn't just the tuition its also the 40 or 50k that you could have been making had you not gone to college and worked, so even if you get a scholarship your still technically losing money (although, of course, you make it up in increased wages later on).
So lets say he could have gotten a 60k job being a journalist (I don't actually know how much they make) and he spend 6 months full time writing this book. Therefore he would have to sell 15,000 books just to break even.
And btw in most parts of the business world a 5% margin is atrocious, that is considered absolutely paper thin. About the only people that come anywhere near that margin is a bulk store like costco. My family owns a sports nutrition store and have lower prices than everyone around us but we have had to start cutting out and negotiating with distributors for any products that have lower than a 45% margin. The thing is we have so many fixed costs like marketing, rent, labor, franchise fees, etc that we need high margins.
its still legally piracy because he doesn't own the book. There is a reason he only gets $2 per $40 purchase, because he only has partial rights. Hes just basically telling people to pirate the book and he isn't going to sue you and he doubts that the publisher will sue someone against the authors wishes for PR reason. But he can't guarantee anything because he doesn't hold all of the rights.
What can you do? Publishers are a leech on the book and music industries. They are the ones who leech off of most of artists and authors money and its them, no piracy who cost authors and artists the most. But the system can't be changed, bookstores are still a big deal and authors can't get into a bookstore unless they have a big name publisher.
Programmers who work so much with computers still love hard copies of programming books. Honestly I don't think that will ever change at all. Even with all these fancy e-ink e-book readers programmers still love hard copies and they love their large books. Maybe its just precisely because they work so much with computers that there is something refreshing about reading from a hard copy.
And yes the OP is right, giving away digital copies is in no way going to diminish the physical book sales. Programmers love e-books for reference like when you have already read the book and need to quickly find one chapter but most programmers can't stand reading an entire programming book on a monitor.
The key reason he used for keeping windows around was productivity and IE....
I mean there are plenty of reasons for keeping windows around such as gaming, users are used to it, etc.
But productivity and IE? I really don't know anyone who has used other brothers and still says that IE is a better browser, its basically that people just don't know about other browsers. As for productivity that is so far gone I can barely even respond to that...one word. "Openoffice" schools and businesses have been using it for years.
Haven't people always tried to separate Business and Pleasure. People who do a job like to use their free time to escape that job. It doesn't mean they hate that job or that don't like doing it...its just that after doing a 40+ hour week most people want to sit back, enjoy a sports game, or go fishing or something.
it is one thing if your a programmer who is fresh out of college and you still want to learn some new languages and new skills but when your a 30+ year old programming veteran with a family the last thing you would want to do or should do is be sitting there working on some pet project instead of being with your friends and families enjoying the little things.
That is the problem with this country vs. Europe. We don't know to enjoy the little things anymore. I mean as a programmer who is cooped up in a chair and a cubicle/office the last thing you should be doing is spending more time behind a computer. Go outside, read a book, and relax.
In fact it wouldn't be much of a venture to say that people who leave work at work and not take it home are probably more productive and happy. Wouldn't you want an employee who puts all their effort in at work and relaxes at home so they don't get burnt out. I think that employers who only hire people who do pet projects are quite simply delusional. Who cares what people do at home, that not your time, unless of course you want to pay them extra for it (which no one will).
Wow so people feel bad for AT&T that people are paying for an incredibly expensive plan and that its slowing down the network because even though their revenues are so high they refuse in infrastructure.
I can put up with a little bit of ads. I have played racing games and it does ad to the experience. I know a while back I played the "real GTA3" mod and it ahd the actual name for the cars and they had ads and stuff.
But I do feel like after paying $60 for a video game I shouldn't have to subside it even more with ads.I mean unless they want to reduce the cost of a video game with ads to something like $45 or so dollars.
I could only put up with ads in video games in just a few genres and in very limited cases like an urban setting and such.
Get a Sager(or any other Clevo reseller), they are the most amazing developer laptops. They have an upgradable video card, can have a matte high resolution screen (so high that you have to change the DPI), and quad core and core i7 processors. And its all upgradable and relatively inexpensive.
They are just a no brainer for gaming and developing.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft not wanting to support a competitor to its core product, particularly a competitor that is kicking their ass in the server market...how surprising.
The super bowl ads this year were horrible. I remember like 2 years ago the Super Bowl ads were these insane ads in which were hilarious and had great actors in them. This year they weren't much better than normal ads.
The Google ad however really stood out. Heck it even made me feel emotional.
I welcome our new Google overlords!
His family should be honored that a company as big as google decided to make a reference to one of their father/grandfather's books in the name of their flagship product. I mean this is ridiculous that the copyright machine representing the family would be trying to do this.
So what, now every time someone makes references to a character in a novel they can be sued.
Thirty Seconds to Mars has a song called Stranger In a Strange Land and I haven't seen the Heinlein foundation get upset over them using a trademarked (its the book's actual title) phrase.
Cmon, what these Sci-Fi writers really wanted was to make a lasting impression on the world and the foundations representing their estates should be more interested in that rather than just trying to make money on every little reference made.
I'm all for security but now this all nonsensical. Instead of actually making actual changes they just impose extremely annoying rules that have no actual security improvement. What does it matter whether or not it is the last hour...can't the terrorist just set off a bomb...I dunno before the last hour. I don't understand what the actual point of this rule is.
So if I want to pee, read a book, put something away, or so much as even flinch I'm gonna be threatened with an arrest. Simply inconveniencing people isn't gonna make security any better...
Backup your laptop before traveling overseas...you never know if customs might shoot it.
Youtube is most certainly an ISP. An ISP is any company that hosts content without having any sort of publishing arm or creating content themselves.
As much as I absolutely love Stranger in a Strange land I think I would go on a murderous rampage if some hollywood director made a crappy movie about it.
cmon how could you think "but in future countries" sounds okay.
it should be "but in the future countries"
great info though. I mean its nice to see that the internet is starting to become more international, especially as the US cuts mandatory ties to ICANN.
I completely agree with this article. We have a local free newspaper here in South Florida called the New Times that is incredibly popular. It usually has local news about corruption and hotspots in South Florida. In addition it has an occasional national article (it just had an article talking about how the government is doing nothing to the big wigs involved with the banking collapse) and it has some interesting movie reviews. Overall it has actually become more popular in South Florida and has gained more prominence and readership. Pretty much every single business has a New Times drop box in their waiting room and the community college I go to probably has more than 10 drop boxes which are always empty about a day after the papers are dropped off.
I mean if local newspapers just focused on good exciting journalism they would get plenty of readers. I mean I read a ton of news on online and I haven't picked up a national newspaper in years, yet every monday I sit down and read the New Times while sipping on a cafe con leche and having some rice and beans at lunch at my favorite Latin restaurant.
I remember actually siting geocities pages as a source on my middle school papers. In heinsight that was probably a bad idea.
I remember using freewebs.com to make webpages when I was in middle school...or even worse the free webpage that earthlink gave us.
Wow I was so proud of my stupid earthlink webpage...with its site counter, guest book, and all that crazy stuff. I learned html from that kind of stuff and damn was I proud of my incredibly dumb web pages. I remember having midi auto playing music and a stupid cursor effect.
low UID master ...I come here to pay homage to you.
Its things like this that make me really wish the FCC would hurry up and ban permanent exclusivity deals.
But that would only happen in a world where congress can actually get anything done and stand up to businesses.
The nook does look pretty snazzy if you ask me. Amazon really needs to step up there game or the good ol' invisible hand will smack amazon in the face :P
Was amazon really too stupid to contact vodafone or orange and get a plan from them. I mean really why would they actually pay roaming charges with AT&T. Its not like they bought the kindles from AT&T and AT&T locked them :D
I mean this is the only reason I prefer playing PC FPSs. I love being able to go to the same server over and over again and knowing the regulars there. I am also part of a clan atm. There is something to said about dedicated servers and even though they cost a lot of money and activision running servers for us makes people have to spend more money but all in all the reason people are willing to fork over so much for a server is because it adds a new dimension of community.
It's hard to play matchmaking all day because there is no sense of community and its just one random game after another. There is nothing like going back to a dedicated server that you always go to and playing with a bunch of people you played before.
Eventually I ended up running a CS server off of the servers I used to sell shoutcast hosting (business got kinda slow meh) and damn was it fun. I had the zombie mod installed and I was running my own little clan.
How can activision stick such a massive middle finger to their customers. This is ridiculous.
Whats even more ridiculous is how the OP put up this slashdot post and even mentioned the petition without linking it.
http://www.petitiononline.com/dedis4mw/petition-sign.html
cmon guys sign that petition and vote with your wallets, if we allow them to do this then other games will see this as the go ahead to do the same.
In economics class they teach us stuff like opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the cost of an activity measured in the amount of money you could be making if you did something else.
So for example if you in college the cost of going to college isn't just the tuition its also the 40 or 50k that you could have been making had you not gone to college and worked, so even if you get a scholarship your still technically losing money (although, of course, you make it up in increased wages later on).
So lets say he could have gotten a 60k job being a journalist (I don't actually know how much they make) and he spend 6 months full time writing this book. Therefore he would have to sell 15,000 books just to break even.
And btw in most parts of the business world a 5% margin is atrocious, that is considered absolutely paper thin. About the only people that come anywhere near that margin is a bulk store like costco. My family owns a sports nutrition store and have lower prices than everyone around us but we have had to start cutting out and negotiating with distributors for any products that have lower than a 45% margin. The thing is we have so many fixed costs like marketing, rent, labor, franchise fees, etc that we need high margins.
They edited and promoted his work therefore they also own some of the rights, so nope even his own work isn't completely his anymore.
its still legally piracy because he doesn't own the book. There is a reason he only gets $2 per $40 purchase, because he only has partial rights. Hes just basically telling people to pirate the book and he isn't going to sue you and he doubts that the publisher will sue someone against the authors wishes for PR reason. But he can't guarantee anything because he doesn't hold all of the rights.
What can you do? Publishers are a leech on the book and music industries. They are the ones who leech off of most of artists and authors money and its them, no piracy who cost authors and artists the most. But the system can't be changed, bookstores are still a big deal and authors can't get into a bookstore unless they have a big name publisher.
Programmers who work so much with computers still love hard copies of programming books. Honestly I don't think that will ever change at all. Even with all these fancy e-ink e-book readers programmers still love hard copies and they love their large books. Maybe its just precisely because they work so much with computers that there is something refreshing about reading from a hard copy.
And yes the OP is right, giving away digital copies is in no way going to diminish the physical book sales. Programmers love e-books for reference like when you have already read the book and need to quickly find one chapter but most programmers can't stand reading an entire programming book on a monitor.
The key reason he used for keeping windows around was productivity and IE....
I mean there are plenty of reasons for keeping windows around such as gaming, users are used to it, etc.
But productivity and IE? I really don't know anyone who has used other brothers and still says that IE is a better browser, its basically that people just don't know about other browsers. As for productivity that is so far gone I can barely even respond to that...one word. "Openoffice" schools and businesses have been using it for years.
Haven't people always tried to separate Business and Pleasure. People who do a job like to use their free time to escape that job. It doesn't mean they hate that job or that don't like doing it...its just that after doing a 40+ hour week most people want to sit back, enjoy a sports game, or go fishing or something.
it is one thing if your a programmer who is fresh out of college and you still want to learn some new languages and new skills but when your a 30+ year old programming veteran with a family the last thing you would want to do or should do is be sitting there working on some pet project instead of being with your friends and families enjoying the little things.
That is the problem with this country vs. Europe. We don't know to enjoy the little things anymore. I mean as a programmer who is cooped up in a chair and a cubicle/office the last thing you should be doing is spending more time behind a computer. Go outside, read a book, and relax.
In fact it wouldn't be much of a venture to say that people who leave work at work and not take it home are probably more productive and happy. Wouldn't you want an employee who puts all their effort in at work and relaxes at home so they don't get burnt out. I think that employers who only hire people who do pet projects are quite simply delusional. Who cares what people do at home, that not your time, unless of course you want to pay them extra for it (which no one will).
Wow so people feel bad for AT&T that people are paying for an incredibly expensive plan and that its slowing down the network because even though their revenues are so high they refuse in infrastructure.
I can put up with a little bit of ads. I have played racing games and it does ad to the experience. I know a while back I played the "real GTA3" mod and it ahd the actual name for the cars and they had ads and stuff.
But I do feel like after paying $60 for a video game I shouldn't have to subside it even more with ads.I mean unless they want to reduce the cost of a video game with ads to something like $45 or so dollars.
I could only put up with ads in video games in just a few genres and in very limited cases like an urban setting and such.
Get a Sager(or any other Clevo reseller), they are the most amazing developer laptops. They have an upgradable video card, can have a matte high resolution screen (so high that you have to change the DPI), and quad core and core i7 processors. And its all upgradable and relatively inexpensive.
They are just a no brainer for gaming and developing.
Streisand Effect