"Neither have a substantial support from developers and publishers and the PDA functionality of the TapWave is not likely to bring in a lot of cross-market gaming-organizing consumers either."
Based on what evidence do you make this statement? You can make any statement you like, but back it up somehow.
You can buy the GBA and the IPod, but you can't ALSO buy a Palm for that much.
I have a GBA, a Palm, and no iPod right now. Maybe instead of blowing $300-$400 an iPod so that I can have all 3, maybe instead I'll ditch my GBA and Palm and get one of these.
The prior response to your post pretty much says it all. The bottom-rung Palms don't have a color display, and can't also double as an MP3 player. Once you include MP3 playback abilities, you realize that the price is about right -- and what's more, you only have to carry the one device with you on those long plane trips (provided the batteries last).
Another thing that I really like about the idea behind the Tapwave is this: Not only do they have some great games for it, but you also gain access to the vast library of excellent Palm games and ports. And unlike the $99 Palm, you're getting to play them on a NICE screen.
Throw in the Bluetooth multiplayer, and you've got something I want to buy. No really, I want one of these -- I can ditch my GBA and my Palm and gain an MP3 player. This thing would never leave my side.
I realize I sound like a market-droid by saying stuff like this, but they've integrated where they ought to have integrated here.
"Ahh, the correlation is that as file sharing goes up, cd sales go down."
Actually, as Napster usage went up, CD sales went up; shortly after Napster was shut down, CD sales plummeted. So the correlation is that file sharing improves CD sales. Anecdotal evidence: Every album I've purchased over the past two years was a direct result of having heard the songs on MP3 first -- either because a friend sent me a copy, or because I found the group on MP3.com.
"So unless you believe you have the right to trample over someone elses rights just because you don't agree with the way they run their business, you should rethink your opinion."
You know, up until recently it was against the law to have anal sex of any kind in Texas. Does that mean that everyone who did that should have been punished for it?
More to the point, is file-sharing theft? Since the evidence shows a strong correlation between file-sharing and CD sales, I would suggest that file-sharing is marketing, not theft.
And I'm not the only musician who thinks that way... See story from yesterday's Slashdot.
"So when do you draw the line? What if your company was making dangerous chemicals and not disposing of them properly? What if they were making chemical weapons? What if they were selling chemical weapons to terrorists?"
The point some of the above posters have made is that you can't draw the line, if people like chrisd will find you guilty by association. If more companies did what chrisd did, then SCO employees CAN'T jump ship, even if they want to.
Why help SCO? What you SHOULD be doing is giving SCO employees INCENTIVES to leave!!!!
"Now, if a person had a job to change to, then it'd be different. Blocking that door doesn't help the codemonky, it helps SCO."
ding ding ding -- we have a winner
By closing the door, you close off someone's escape route, so they're less able to stop supporting SCO.
Not that SCO would have any trouble finding a replacement in this market, but finding a replacement and training him/her takes money and time -- two things SCO does not have.
"To quit one's job over the SCO vs. Linux debate is intensly stupid and shows a real disconnect with reality... and to discriminate against those that don't is as stupid."
I think the real issue is that a wise man would realize that SCO's days are numbered, and be actively looking for work with that in mind. Morality's not the issue; even rats leave a sinking ship.
As a single guy, I can appreciate leaving a job for moral reasons; I've done it before. But if I'd had a family to feed at the time, the need to feed my family is the trump card. It is THE dominant philosophical issue.
My ears pricked up a lot sooner than that. My Kook Alarm goes off whenever I see or hear the word "Neoconservative."
The main reason this word tips me off is because you'll never hear a conservative call himself "neoconservative." The phrase is used by folks who do not merely disagree with conservatives and not only want them removed from office, but who have demonized the Right, and view them only as targets to be attacked -- for great justice!
Indeed, I clicked on the website's "About Us" button, and this phrase from it confirms that:
"The Primary Objective of Project Censored is... locating stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not, for one reason or another."
In other words, they do not exist to find instances of Censorship -- as the title of the site suggests. Rather, THEY EXIST SOLELY TO PROMOTE THEIR OWN POINT OF VIEW.
They say they do this to explore the extent of censorship. Of course, the reason these stories are underreported couldn't POSSIBLY be because of (a) lack of evidence or (b) lack of understanding of the issues, now could it? Obviously, if these stories are being underreported, then the ONLY possible explanation must be that there's censorship going on! It's not that depleted Uranium isn't a radiation hazard, Transcendent.. it's that you JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND THE DANGER!!!!;););)
Let's talk about censorship HONESTLY. Let's talk about cases of people wanting to say something and being prevented from doing so, or persecuted for doing so. The ACLU does this when they defend pornographers, artists and Klansmen. The ACLU has an agenda as well (notice they leave the 2nd Amendment to the NRA), but they're doing a far better job than Sonoma State University's pathetic "Project Censored."
I never really understood the eBook business model, or how it was expected to work.
I have a good friend -- Rie Sheridan -- who has found some success as an independent author by selling short stories for a $1 a pop through Echelon Press. But an entire novel? Even with a Palm, I have trouble reading eBooks I've downloaded from Gutenberg.
I think that the way the internet will help change writing is the way that it has changed Comics. The successful webcomics provide regular content for free, and are basically funded through sales of related merchandise -- T-shirts and the like. I think writers will start writing stories as serials... distributing the content regularly for free, and making money off of merchandise.
I'm not just mouthing off, either. I'm going to do that. I'm working on converting my web site, Rimbosity (please be gentle, she's just a P-233 running Linux!), so that I'll be able to provide new music each month and a regular part of a serial each week. It should be up in about a month (conservative estimate; ought to be sooner).
The content will be free; the merchandise will be pay. Meanwhile, I have a day job.
This way, people can use AvantGo or Plucker to download the stories off of the web and keep up with them each week, or just check in once a week when they need a break from work. And I think it will work, for the same reasons it works for webcomics.
So I may be wrong, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is here, and we all will learn soon enough if I'm right!
Ehrm... that is... provided I still remember how to write...;)
"Dude, that's why I picked Go - because it's simple."
Go is one of the most computationally complex games in existence, dramatically more so than games like checkers and chess. You may say it is simple, but it's probably one of the worst, if not THE worst, scenarios for developing a good game AI. The main reason is the size of the board, but an important secondary reason is the very lack of rules you describe.
All those additional rules in "complex" games -- enemy strength, tech trees, resource numbers -- are quantifiable measures that simplify heuristic design because they are quantifiable. I know exactly how much more powerful my army will be if I go for one tech now rather than another. With "Go," there is no such obvious means to quantify possibilities (that is, to weight the edges of the search tree).
The question all game AIs must solve is: How do you -quantify- that one move is better than another? No matter how "fuzzy" or complex your method is, all computation comes down to quantification -- saying this move is "worth" more than that move, and then picking the one that is "worth" the most.
"Reaperbots are pretty simple creatures and can hardly even be said to have much of an AI. They don't really have to plan anything, just "shoot guys, and try to take cover when they shoot you." Their "AI" is simply a matter of distances, lines of sight, and other stuff that isn't too hard to code."
It's a challenging opponent that has varying levels of difficulty and doesn't cheat. As such, it is an OUTSTANDING video-game AI. What matters is the quality of the game, not whether the AI is "real" or not. Nobody playing the game gives a hoot if the AI is "real."
You almost seem to suggest that the ease of coding is a flaw -- but that's my whole point; good games are EASY to code, if you design for them from the start. "Real" AI is not the goal; a challenging game that plays fair is the goal.
"I disagree with you about there being too much of an overlap between physical enginnering and software engineering, but since it's completely a matter of opinion, there's no point really discussing it."
Of course there are facts we can use. It's a matter of looking at projects and how much time and money they cost to complete, and the consequences of having flaws. Since you can actually count the man-hours and dollars involved with the former, and you can count the lawsuit settlement dollars with the latter, you can measure quite well how similar software engineering is to other forms of engineering.
The main difference is that software engineering is much more immature than other forms of engineering, and as a result, lacks most of the tools that other engineering disciplines have. But we're improving quite rapidly. Compilers are all but taken for granted in their quality, gdb has made debuggers common, OO techniques seem to have taken firm root, and component-based design seems to be about to hit critical mass in a few years.
In short...
Game AI design gets simpler when things get quantifiable, or when restrictions are added. The goal of a good game AI is not for it to be "real" intelligence, but to be challenging, adjustable, and fair. And we can quantify exactly how much engineering practices benefit software (compared to other engineering disciplines) because all kinds of engineering development cost money and time.
"What is true in physical engineering is usually not true in software enginnering. Just because they're both called "engineering" does not mean that rules of thumb from one automatically apply to the other. It's dangerous to spread such guidelines between largely unrelated disciplines."
Every bit of software engineering research I dug up in grad school and every year of experience I've had in the software industry has consistently demonstrated that software engineering is as much like other forms of engineering as they are like each other. Now maybe I went to the wrong software engineering conference and read the wrong research papers, and maybe I just worked for the wrong companies.
"Sit down and try to write an AI for the game of Go."
Do you always recommend to your junior staffers that they pick the most computationally complex example when learning a new topic? Or do you point them to "Hello World?"
Besides, we're not talking about fucking Go here. If I get into the games industry, approximately how many Go games do you think I'll be working on? How 'bout... none? We're not even talking about things on the level of chess here. We're talking about things like ReaperBot -- which was leaps and bounds ahead of the monster AI in Quake I, but hardly complex.
You clearly mistake me for one of the vast hordes of Slashdotters who have neither the education nor the experience to back up their juvenile rants. But my juvenile rants are quite well thought through, thank you very much!;)
You're right that building AI can be difficult. That's why there's really only a handful of chess programs out there -- GNUChess and ehrm... that non-free one.
But with chess, the AI has to be good, because the game is fair. There is no fog of war, no way for the computer to know what move you'll make next. And the rules of the game are known, so the computer can't cheat and get away with it.
You do know the engineering principle that the later you start development on an idea, the more it costs to implement? The general rule is that what costs $1 in the design phase costs $10 in the development phase, which costs $100 in the testing phase, which costs $1000 in the beta phase, and $10,000 in the release phase.
If you're arguing about budget constraints, then you've made the parent post's point for him: You have to design the AI from the beginning, not as an afterthought.
Remember, you are making a game. Part of what makes a game into a game is the challenge of playing it, of which AI development can be a big part. By waiting to develop AI until the last minute, it costs more to make the AI, and more importantly, you're putting the cart before the horse.
In summary...
Parent post: "Developers put the cart before the horse." Your post: "Well what do you expect us to do, put the horse back?"
My point: Putting the cart before the horse is not the only way to develop games; in fact, it is the wrong way. This is an engineering principle as old as time: If you design from the beginning with good AI in mind, expense is not the problem.
"you've heard of subsidies for farmers? welcome to the world of subsidies for failing corporations"
I agree with you in principle. They're similar in that the government is propping up a basically bad business model. Farming is a bad business model because you're selling a commodity product (which limits your margins), you're subject to the whims of nature every year (which can destroy your entire production line), and if you raise prices someone will undercut you and you won't sell anything.
If all of the major music labels fail, artists, promoters, etc. will find other jobs, or create new ways to get music into the masses' ears. If all of the farmers fail, everyone in the country starves to death. Food production is a bad business, but if we don't have a food production industry, we don't have food, y'know? That's a moderately significant distinction, there.
Given that difference, I feel the government is plenty justified in supporting farmers as much as possible. Farmers are the exception. Generally, subsidies are bad things, but everyone's gotta eat.
So how am I bypassing a technological measure controlling access to a work? The key issue here is that I'm not actually accessing the work. I'm trying my best NOT to access the work in question -- Windows and the other installed software. I don't WANT access to the work.
By the letter of the law, the original article -- the people who bypassed the startup script and launched Dell's preinstalled software -- have in fact violated this provision.
I never accessed the work, so I didn't circumvent the measure.
My company just bought a couple of Inspiron 5100s, and we were able to bypass the click-through entirely. I hit F2 and went into the BIOS and moved the CD-ROM above the HD in the "boot order" list. Then, I inserted a RedHat 9 bootable CDROM. Tah dah! Never ever agreed to their click-through license.
What's happening to the raw steak? Bacteria are eating it. They produce things, and cause a change. That's not death, that's life. If you don't eat it, the little microbes do. The cow is no more. It is no longer a cow; it is a steak. The cow is dead. The only existence of the cow is the cow-history.
Slashdot Mirror
Use keys to open doors...
And then that music.
I was thinking more of that backless dress she was wearing on Naboo. :P~~~~~~~~~~~
"Neither have a substantial support from developers and publishers and the PDA functionality of the TapWave is not likely to bring in a lot of cross-market gaming-organizing consumers either."
Based on what evidence do you make this statement? You can make any statement you like, but back it up somehow.
You can buy the GBA and the IPod, but you can't ALSO buy a Palm for that much.
I have a GBA, a Palm, and no iPod right now. Maybe instead of blowing $300-$400 an iPod so that I can have all 3, maybe instead I'll ditch my GBA and Palm and get one of these.
The more I read about it, the more I like.
The prior response to your post pretty much says it all. The bottom-rung Palms don't have a color display, and can't also double as an MP3 player. Once you include MP3 playback abilities, you realize that the price is about right -- and what's more, you only have to carry the one device with you on those long plane trips (provided the batteries last).
Another thing that I really like about the idea behind the Tapwave is this: Not only do they have some great games for it, but you also gain access to the vast library of excellent Palm games and ports. And unlike the $99 Palm, you're getting to play them on a NICE screen.
Throw in the Bluetooth multiplayer, and you've got something I want to buy. No really, I want one of these -- I can ditch my GBA and my Palm and gain an MP3 player. This thing would never leave my side.
I realize I sound like a market-droid by saying stuff like this, but they've integrated where they ought to have integrated here.
"Ahh, the correlation is that as file sharing goes up, cd sales go down."
Actually, as Napster usage went up, CD sales went up; shortly after Napster was shut down, CD sales plummeted. So the correlation is that file sharing improves CD sales. Anecdotal evidence: Every album I've purchased over the past two years was a direct result of having heard the songs on MP3 first -- either because a friend sent me a copy, or because I found the group on MP3.com.
"So unless you believe you have the right to trample over someone elses rights just because you don't agree with the way they run their business, you should rethink your opinion."
Upon whose rights am I trampling?
You know, up until recently it was against the law to have anal sex of any kind in Texas. Does that mean that everyone who did that should have been punished for it?
More to the point, is file-sharing theft? Since the evidence shows a strong correlation between file-sharing and CD sales, I would suggest that file-sharing is marketing, not theft.
And I'm not the only musician who thinks that way... See story from yesterday's Slashdot.
I wonder if this is somehow connected to Bill Joy's recent departure from Sun...
Nah, probably just coincidence.
"So when do you draw the line? What if your company was making dangerous chemicals and not disposing of them properly? What if they were making chemical weapons? What if they were selling chemical weapons to terrorists?"
The point some of the above posters have made is that you can't draw the line, if people like chrisd will find you guilty by association. If more companies did what chrisd did, then SCO employees CAN'T jump ship, even if they want to.
Why help SCO? What you SHOULD be doing is giving SCO employees INCENTIVES to leave!!!!
"Now, if a person had a job to change to, then it'd be different. Blocking that door doesn't help the codemonky, it helps SCO."
ding ding ding -- we have a winner
By closing the door, you close off someone's escape route, so they're less able to stop supporting SCO.
Not that SCO would have any trouble finding a replacement in this market, but finding a replacement and training him/her takes money and time -- two things SCO does not have.
"To quit one's job over the SCO vs. Linux debate is intensly stupid and shows a real disconnect with reality... and to discriminate against those that don't is as stupid."
I think the real issue is that a wise man would realize that SCO's days are numbered, and be actively looking for work with that in mind. Morality's not the issue; even rats leave a sinking ship.
As a single guy, I can appreciate leaving a job for moral reasons; I've done it before. But if I'd had a family to feed at the time, the need to feed my family is the trump card. It is THE dominant philosophical issue.
My ears pricked up a lot sooner than that. My Kook Alarm goes off whenever I see or hear the word "Neoconservative."
... locating stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not, for one reason or another."
;) ;) ;)
The main reason this word tips me off is because you'll never hear a conservative call himself "neoconservative." The phrase is used by folks who do not merely disagree with conservatives and not only want them removed from office, but who have demonized the Right, and view them only as targets to be attacked -- for great justice!
Indeed, I clicked on the website's "About Us" button, and this phrase from it confirms that:
"The Primary Objective of Project Censored is
In other words, they do not exist to find instances of Censorship -- as the title of the site suggests. Rather, THEY EXIST SOLELY TO PROMOTE THEIR OWN POINT OF VIEW.
They say they do this to explore the extent of censorship. Of course, the reason these stories are underreported couldn't POSSIBLY be because of (a) lack of evidence or (b) lack of understanding of the issues, now could it? Obviously, if these stories are being underreported, then the ONLY possible explanation must be that there's censorship going on! It's not that depleted Uranium isn't a radiation hazard, Transcendent.. it's that you JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND THE DANGER!!!!
Let's talk about censorship HONESTLY. Let's talk about cases of people wanting to say something and being prevented from doing so, or persecuted for doing so. The ACLU does this when they defend pornographers, artists and Klansmen. The ACLU has an agenda as well (notice they leave the 2nd Amendment to the NRA), but they're doing a far better job than Sonoma State University's pathetic "Project Censored."
I never really understood the eBook business model, or how it was expected to work.
;)
I have a good friend -- Rie Sheridan -- who has found some success as an independent author by selling short stories for a $1 a pop through Echelon Press. But an entire novel? Even with a Palm, I have trouble reading eBooks I've downloaded from Gutenberg.
I think that the way the internet will help change writing is the way that it has changed Comics. The successful webcomics provide regular content for free, and are basically funded through sales of related merchandise -- T-shirts and the like. I think writers will start writing stories as serials... distributing the content regularly for free, and making money off of merchandise.
I'm not just mouthing off, either. I'm going to do that. I'm working on converting my web site, Rimbosity (please be gentle, she's just a P-233 running Linux!), so that I'll be able to provide new music each month and a regular part of a serial each week. It should be up in about a month (conservative estimate; ought to be sooner).
The content will be free; the merchandise will be pay. Meanwhile, I have a day job.
This way, people can use AvantGo or Plucker to download the stories off of the web and keep up with them each week, or just check in once a week when they need a break from work. And I think it will work, for the same reasons it works for webcomics.
So I may be wrong, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is here, and we all will learn soon enough if I'm right!
Ehrm... that is... provided I still remember how to write...
"Dude, that's why I picked Go - because it's simple."
Go is one of the most computationally complex games in existence, dramatically more so than games like checkers and chess. You may say it is simple, but it's probably one of the worst, if not THE worst, scenarios for developing a good game AI. The main reason is the size of the board, but an important secondary reason is the very lack of rules you describe.
All those additional rules in "complex" games -- enemy strength, tech trees, resource numbers -- are quantifiable measures that simplify heuristic design because they are quantifiable. I know exactly how much more powerful my army will be if I go for one tech now rather than another. With "Go," there is no such obvious means to quantify possibilities (that is, to weight the edges of the search tree).
The question all game AIs must solve is: How do you -quantify- that one move is better than another? No matter how "fuzzy" or complex your method is, all computation comes down to quantification -- saying this move is "worth" more than that move, and then picking the one that is "worth" the most.
"Reaperbots are pretty simple creatures and can hardly even be said to have much of an AI. They don't really have to plan anything, just "shoot guys, and try to take cover when they shoot you." Their "AI" is simply a matter of distances, lines of sight, and other stuff that isn't too hard to code."
It's a challenging opponent that has varying levels of difficulty and doesn't cheat. As such, it is an OUTSTANDING video-game AI. What matters is the quality of the game, not whether the AI is "real" or not. Nobody playing the game gives a hoot if the AI is "real."
You almost seem to suggest that the ease of coding is a flaw -- but that's my whole point; good games are EASY to code, if you design for them from the start. "Real" AI is not the goal; a challenging game that plays fair is the goal.
"I disagree with you about there being too much of an overlap between physical enginnering and software engineering, but since it's completely a matter of opinion, there's no point really discussing it."
Of course there are facts we can use. It's a matter of looking at projects and how much time and money they cost to complete, and the consequences of having flaws. Since you can actually count the man-hours and dollars involved with the former, and you can count the lawsuit settlement dollars with the latter, you can measure quite well how similar software engineering is to other forms of engineering.
The main difference is that software engineering is much more immature than other forms of engineering, and as a result, lacks most of the tools that other engineering disciplines have. But we're improving quite rapidly. Compilers are all but taken for granted in their quality, gdb has made debuggers common, OO techniques seem to have taken firm root, and component-based design seems to be about to hit critical mass in a few years.
In short...
Game AI design gets simpler when things get quantifiable, or when restrictions are added. The goal of a good game AI is not for it to be "real" intelligence, but to be challenging, adjustable, and fair. And we can quantify exactly how much engineering practices benefit software (compared to other engineering disciplines) because all kinds of engineering development cost money and time.
"What is true in physical engineering is usually not true in software enginnering. Just because they're both called "engineering" does not mean that rules of thumb from one automatically apply to the other. It's dangerous to spread such guidelines between largely unrelated disciplines."
;)
Every bit of software engineering research I dug up in grad school and every year of experience I've had in the software industry has consistently demonstrated that software engineering is as much like other forms of engineering as they are like each other. Now maybe I went to the wrong software engineering conference and read the wrong research papers, and maybe I just worked for the wrong companies.
"Sit down and try to write an AI for the game of Go."
Do you always recommend to your junior staffers that they pick the most computationally complex example when learning a new topic? Or do you point them to "Hello World?"
Besides, we're not talking about fucking Go here. If I get into the games industry, approximately how many Go games do you think I'll be working on? How 'bout... none? We're not even talking about things on the level of chess here. We're talking about things like ReaperBot -- which was leaps and bounds ahead of the monster AI in Quake I, but hardly complex.
You clearly mistake me for one of the vast hordes of Slashdotters who have neither the education nor the experience to back up their juvenile rants. But my juvenile rants are quite well thought through, thank you very much!
You're right that building AI can be difficult. That's why there's really only a handful of chess programs out there -- GNUChess and ehrm... that non-free one.
But with chess, the AI has to be good, because the game is fair. There is no fog of war, no way for the computer to know what move you'll make next. And the rules of the game are known, so the computer can't cheat and get away with it.
You do know the engineering principle that the later you start development on an idea, the more it costs to implement? The general rule is that what costs $1 in the design phase costs $10 in the development phase, which costs $100 in the testing phase, which costs $1000 in the beta phase, and $10,000 in the release phase.
If you're arguing about budget constraints, then you've made the parent post's point for him: You have to design the AI from the beginning, not as an afterthought.
Remember, you are making a game. Part of what makes a game into a game is the challenge of playing it, of which AI development can be a big part. By waiting to develop AI until the last minute, it costs more to make the AI, and more importantly, you're putting the cart before the horse.
In summary...
Parent post: "Developers put the cart before the horse."
Your post: "Well what do you expect us to do, put the horse back?"
My point: Putting the cart before the horse is not the only way to develop games; in fact, it is the wrong way. This is an engineering principle as old as time: If you design from the beginning with good AI in mind, expense is not the problem.
"You don't own a radio?"
There aren't any stations here in San Diego that play Trance, House, Prog-Metal, or Industrial.
OK, 94.9 sometimes does.
"Ever hear of a library?"
Used to listen to new music at the library all the time. Now that I have a day job and a lot of responsibilities, I can't go to the library every day.
"Got any friends?"
I don't like the music they like so much. Some of it, yeah. But they don't listen to the things I listen to.
How about those of us who haven't bought new CD's because we haven't been able to use file-sharing to go find new music that we like?
"you've heard of subsidies for farmers? welcome to the world of subsidies for failing corporations"
I agree with you in principle. They're similar in that the government is propping up a basically bad business model. Farming is a bad business model because you're selling a commodity product (which limits your margins), you're subject to the whims of nature every year (which can destroy your entire production line), and if you raise prices someone will undercut you and you won't sell anything.
If all of the major music labels fail, artists, promoters, etc. will find other jobs, or create new ways to get music into the masses' ears. If all of the farmers fail, everyone in the country starves to death. Food production is a bad business, but if we don't have a food production industry, we don't have food, y'know? That's a moderately significant distinction, there.
Given that difference, I feel the government is plenty justified in supporting farmers as much as possible. Farmers are the exception. Generally, subsidies are bad things, but everyone's gotta eat.
So how am I bypassing a technological measure controlling access to a work? The key issue here is that I'm not actually accessing the work. I'm trying my best NOT to access the work in question -- Windows and the other installed software. I don't WANT access to the work.
By the letter of the law, the original article -- the people who bypassed the startup script and launched Dell's preinstalled software -- have in fact violated this provision.
I never accessed the work, so I didn't circumvent the measure.
Interesting idea. How do ya figure?
My company just bought a couple of Inspiron 5100s, and we were able to bypass the click-through entirely. I hit F2 and went into the BIOS and moved the CD-ROM above the HD in the "boot order" list. Then, I inserted a RedHat 9 bootable CDROM. Tah dah! Never ever agreed to their click-through license.
What's happening to the raw steak? Bacteria are eating it. They produce things, and cause a change. That's not death, that's life. If you don't eat it, the little microbes do. The cow is no more. It is no longer a cow; it is a steak. The cow is dead. The only existence of the cow is the cow-history.
"Geesh, get over it pal, nothing is static."
Death is static. The changes in the Internet are signs that it is still alive.
"When I read the title, I imagined a hoard of old geezers, using walkers, coming at me with sticks..."
Of course. Old Age and Treachery ALWAYS overcome Youth and Skill.