Frankly, the more time they spend doing silly crap like this, the less time the spend screwing something important up. It's too bad it wastes tax dollars to do it, though...
Would you rather that they go after hookers on craigslist?
I believe that would qualify as "screwing something important up."
I haven't played Halo 3, but according to the Halo 3 Wikipedia article, Halo 3 supports multiplayer via split screen or LAN, just like Halo 1 and 2. Assuming this is true, and I see no reason to believe otherwise, it would be impossible for MS to monitor every single game.
And don't forget cybersex. That's online, entertaining and interactive (obligatory "what is sex? I am a Slashdot user blah blah blah"). Or hacking into remote computers for fun. Programming or blogging, when they are done for fun.
I suppose they could claim that any form of interactive entertainment is a game, which is true for some definitions of "game", but then their statement would just be redundant.
Except that it makes sense that McDonald's is able to count how many hamburgers they serve. They can check receipt records. But there is no way that Microsoft can monitor every single Halo 3 game.
the only bad thing about it is... Amazon has near-complete control over the pricing structure. (The pricing structure thing hurts authors, too.)
Doesn't this thing read pdfs and/or text files? If so, can't the authors sell their books from any website they want, for whatever price they want? Exactly how does Amazon exert control over the pricing structure?
Exactly how is this different from not having a EULA at all? The whole point of a EULA is an attempt to restrict what the user can do with their software. This is like saying that L.A. can solve it's murder problems by simply having murderers not murder people any more.
Yes you too can play a small fraction of available games.
You're referring to consoles right? Unless you buy all 3 popular consoles, you can only play about a third of the available console games. Whereas PCs can play about 1/2 of all console games, plus every PC game. Each console has maybe 1000 games for it, whereas I wouldn't be surprised if PCs have reached a million by now.
There's also the "constant hardware upgrade" metagame.
Not sure I would call it a game, or "constant", but yes PCs are upgradeable. Another plus. Whereas you have to buy a whole new console every 5 years to get the latest console games, you can upgrade your PC at your leisure. Best of all, you can upgrade one piece at a time. Whereas with consoles you have to upgrade the entire thing for about $300, you can get the same performance by upgrading your video card for about $100. Yes, $300 is for a brand new console and $100 is for a 2 year old video card, but they have the same performance.
It's hard to imagine why anyone would play console games. You lock yourself into a tiny world, with an underpowered, locked down and inflexible machine. You can only connect to one overpriced, over censored network to play your network games. And don't forget:
Are you kidding? I use Skype, but because it is the easiest to use and least buggy, not because of the price. In fact, Skype is almost of the most expensive VOIP service there is. Of the services I know of, it is only cheaper than Vonage. Gizmo (which you mentioned above) is cheaper. So is Wengo. I saw something on TV a couple of months ago called MagicJack. It's $20 / year (plus $20 for a required device), and it only runs on Windows and Mac.
That said, Skype is the cheapest for people who rarely use their phones. It is the only service that you can both pay by the minute, and that the minutes do not expire after a fixed amount of time after purchase.
As it is, the problem isn't a lack of qualified individuals, but rather a lack of jobs for them. On the face of it, this looks like a complete failure of an idea. But they have a secret. You see, they will teach people to use only Microsoft technologies, and if everything goes right, these people will be unemployable in an IT environment. When the number of qualified IT people is lowered to the number of jobs, success!
Am I the only one who likes the brown color scheme?
No. There are a few dozen of you people, including Mark Shuttleworth. It's got mostly brown, but some yellows and reds too, so I call it the "failing kidney" theme. One of the screenshots for a recent version I saw even had a skid mark in the bottom right corner.
It's funny you mention that. I have always been amazed at Google's capacity for error. In 4 lines of HTML, on the very simple page you mention, Google has managed to fit 65 errors and 8 warnings. Sibling poster has a link to the w3c validator.
They used to be kind of squirrely, and WiFi was just so much better. But with the explosion of interference, it might be time to look again.
According to the article, they are still much slower than Wi-Fi. But as a poster below pointed out, these people in the article didn't do an array of comprehensive tests, but rather only opted for a single throughput test.
Surely it must be possible to create a system that acts as a proxy for phonecalls?... Does this kinda thing exist already?
Yes. They are called, "long distance calling cards", and typically charge around 4 cents per minute. Test it first, because it is possible that the company would forward your Caller ID, but I have never seen that happen. You can use VOIP softphones without having the service attached to a dial-in phone number.
I think the primary concern people have is that Microsoft is encouraging OEMs to bundle their software in such a way as to force users who want to buy an XP PC from those OEMs to buy Microsoft software twice. Bundling is often something companies do to make a profit by screwing customers, and Microsoft has used bundling in the past to screw customers, and has been slapped for it.
That said, this seems to me like people whining, when they could more easily just shop around for an OEM that doesn't do what they dislike. OEMs are not like cable companies. There are 1000's of OEMs, and chances are slim that you won't find one you dislike with just a little searching.
Sourceforge TOS has had this same bullshit for years. They claim a full license to do whatever they want with whatever you upload, including sub-license. In fact, you can't even upload third party files, or derivative works such as GPL forks without violating the TOS. It is why I moved my FOSS project to CVSdude.
I find it much more likely that somebody misspelled the word, and then duplicated it several times, and then, only retroactively tried to claim, "I meant to do that!"
Mozilla created Firefox for Windows, and then they made a half-assed version for Linux. I'm not really surprised that the Windows version runs faster. Wine usually runs programs at about the same speed as the Windows version. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
I don't see how this "looks bleak for Linux." Damn trolls.
Ordinarily, I would agree. But I am sure he has had his name dragged through the mud. At this point, it is in his best interest to get as many articles and Slashdot summaries as possible to mention, "and subsequently found not guilty."
That map is pretty much useless. I looked at it, and there are tiny yellow spots in my state of Oregon, as well as every other state. Unfortunately, the cities are not marked, so I can't tell if those yellow spots cover my city or not. Fail.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, the more time they spend doing silly crap like this, the less time the spend screwing something important up. It's too bad it wastes tax dollars to do it, though...
Would you rather that they go after hookers on craigslist?
I believe that would qualify as "screwing something important up."
ScummVM has not written or delivered any "new adventure games". These are old games that ScummVM has recently added support for.
I haven't played Halo 3, but according to the Halo 3 Wikipedia article, Halo 3 supports multiplayer via split screen or LAN, just like Halo 1 and 2. Assuming this is true, and I see no reason to believe otherwise, it would be impossible for MS to monitor every single game.
And don't forget cybersex. That's online, entertaining and interactive (obligatory "what is sex? I am a Slashdot user blah blah blah"). Or hacking into remote computers for fun. Programming or blogging, when they are done for fun.
I suppose they could claim that any form of interactive entertainment is a game, which is true for some definitions of "game", but then their statement would just be redundant.
Except that it makes sense that McDonald's is able to count how many hamburgers they serve. They can check receipt records. But there is no way that Microsoft can monitor every single Halo 3 game.
What will they charge if I pee in my seat? Will they arrest me for theft of services if I don't have the money on me?
the only bad thing about it is ... Amazon has near-complete control over the pricing structure. (The pricing structure thing hurts authors, too.)
Doesn't this thing read pdfs and/or text files? If so, can't the authors sell their books from any website they want, for whatever price they want? Exactly how does Amazon exert control over the pricing structure?
Exactly how is this different from not having a EULA at all? The whole point of a EULA is an attempt to restrict what the user can do with their software. This is like saying that L.A. can solve it's murder problems by simply having murderers not murder people any more.
First Spore, then Wine 1.0, and now likely Darkfall? Next we'll have pigs flying, hell rising, and finally Duke Nuke'm Forever.
Yes you too can play a small fraction of available games.
You're referring to consoles right? Unless you buy all 3 popular consoles, you can only play about a third of the available console games. Whereas PCs can play about 1/2 of all console games, plus every PC game. Each console has maybe 1000 games for it, whereas I wouldn't be surprised if PCs have reached a million by now.
There's also the "constant hardware upgrade" metagame.
Not sure I would call it a game, or "constant", but yes PCs are upgradeable. Another plus. Whereas you have to buy a whole new console every 5 years to get the latest console games, you can upgrade your PC at your leisure. Best of all, you can upgrade one piece at a time. Whereas with consoles you have to upgrade the entire thing for about $300, you can get the same performance by upgrading your video card for about $100. Yes, $300 is for a brand new console and $100 is for a 2 year old video card, but they have the same performance.
It's hard to imagine why anyone would play console games. You lock yourself into a tiny world, with an underpowered, locked down and inflexible machine. You can only connect to one overpriced, over censored network to play your network games. And don't forget:
Loading...
That guy was 52 when he made that page. In Internet years, he is about 1000 by now, and has probably expired.
Are you kidding? I use Skype, but because it is the easiest to use and least buggy, not because of the price. In fact, Skype is almost of the most expensive VOIP service there is. Of the services I know of, it is only cheaper than Vonage. Gizmo (which you mentioned above) is cheaper. So is Wengo. I saw something on TV a couple of months ago called MagicJack. It's $20 / year (plus $20 for a required device), and it only runs on Windows and Mac.
That said, Skype is the cheapest for people who rarely use their phones. It is the only service that you can both pay by the minute, and that the minutes do not expire after a fixed amount of time after purchase.
The new major release fixes several remaining bugs in the 3.x releases
That's great, but they forgot to mention how many new bugs were introduced.
It's a .0 release. They don't know how many new bugs were introduced yet.
As it is, the problem isn't a lack of qualified individuals, but rather a lack of jobs for them. On the face of it, this looks like a complete failure of an idea. But they have a secret. You see, they will teach people to use only Microsoft technologies, and if everything goes right, these people will be unemployable in an IT environment. When the number of qualified IT people is lowered to the number of jobs, success!
Am I the only one who likes the brown color scheme?
No. There are a few dozen of you people, including Mark Shuttleworth. It's got mostly brown, but some yellows and reds too, so I call it the "failing kidney" theme. One of the screenshots for a recent version I saw even had a skid mark in the bottom right corner.
It's funny you mention that. I have always been amazed at Google's capacity for error. In 4 lines of HTML, on the very simple page you mention, Google has managed to fit 65 errors and 8 warnings. Sibling poster has a link to the w3c validator.
They used to be kind of squirrely, and WiFi was just so much better. But with the explosion of interference, it might be time to look again.
According to the article, they are still much slower than Wi-Fi. But as a poster below pointed out, these people in the article didn't do an array of comprehensive tests, but rather only opted for a single throughput test.
Surely it must be possible to create a system that acts as a proxy for phonecalls? ... Does this kinda thing exist already?
Yes. They are called, "long distance calling cards", and typically charge around 4 cents per minute. Test it first, because it is possible that the company would forward your Caller ID, but I have never seen that happen. You can use VOIP softphones without having the service attached to a dial-in phone number.
I think the primary concern people have is that Microsoft is encouraging OEMs to bundle their software in such a way as to force users who want to buy an XP PC from those OEMs to buy Microsoft software twice. Bundling is often something companies do to make a profit by screwing customers, and Microsoft has used bundling in the past to screw customers, and has been slapped for it.
That said, this seems to me like people whining, when they could more easily just shop around for an OEM that doesn't do what they dislike. OEMs are not like cable companies. There are 1000's of OEMs, and chances are slim that you won't find one you dislike with just a little searching.
They are called, "old people", and yes, there are a lot of them in L.A.
Sourceforge TOS has had this same bullshit for years. They claim a full license to do whatever they want with whatever you upload, including sub-license. In fact, you can't even upload third party files, or derivative works such as GPL forks without violating the TOS. It is why I moved my FOSS project to CVSdude.
I find it much more likely that somebody misspelled the word, and then duplicated it several times, and then, only retroactively tried to claim, "I meant to do that!"
Mozilla created Firefox for Windows, and then they made a half-assed version for Linux. I'm not really surprised that the Windows version runs faster. Wine usually runs programs at about the same speed as the Windows version. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
I don't see how this "looks bleak for Linux." Damn trolls.
Ordinarily, I would agree. But I am sure he has had his name dragged through the mud. At this point, it is in his best interest to get as many articles and Slashdot summaries as possible to mention, "and subsequently found not guilty."
That map is pretty much useless. I looked at it, and there are tiny yellow spots in my state of Oregon, as well as every other state. Unfortunately, the cities are not marked, so I can't tell if those yellow spots cover my city or not. Fail.