I don't think the OP was referring to the retail release date, I think he meant the *rental* release date. Certainly, that's what happened to me a few days ago, with Blade Trinity (don't bother unless you're a fan of the series!) It wasn't supposed to have been release (in the UK) for another week or so, but there it was on the shelf in Blockbuster.
Not if they lose the case to have it struck down, *then* buy the company/patent. If I were feeling particularly Machiavellian, and had that sort of cash, I can see how I might bring the suit, lose on purpose, then buy the patent (or company). If the sums work out, it could be worthwhile.
I thought that in the US it was demonstrably possible to patent just about anything though? Just because you've managed to patent something doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to enforce the patent, either (at least in theory)
But no-one is being lured or tricked - the pag elinked to very clearly states what the software does:
"In exchange for having their Internet browsing and purchasing activity observed, members have access to free email virus scanning and other benefits."
(Sentence 6 of 7, all of which are in the same font and the same size)
If someone installs it without realising that it's going to collect marketing data, well, frankly I think they have bigger problems, like a serious need to improve their reading comprehension skills.
But that's true of *any* software, no matter what its intended purpose is. Hell, I know people who avoid using Firefox, because the update mechanism (used to) leaves multiple entries in the Add/Remove Programs control on Windows.
While I generally agree with you, I do have two comments.
Firstly, the editors didn't use the word "lure" at all, other than in so far as CowboyNeal chose to post this. All of the words in italics are those of prostoalex (unless he speaks up to claim that CowboyNeal changed them, of course).
Secondly, if I had mod points, you'd be going down for that opening sentence:-) (No danger of that though, I've not had mod points for years)
but a person has to admit that XP is, well, pretty big
Compared to what? Mandrake 10 Community Edition comes on 3 CDs. Sure, you get a ton of apps, but that's all part of the distro. Strip it down to just Linux, and KDE or Gnome, etc and I'm betting it'll weigh in at about the same size.
maybe the Windows kernel is pretty compact
ntoskknl.exe on my system is a touch over 2MB in size.
I will concede that Windows is a POS, but how does such a POS even boot?
That would seem to contradict your earlier statement that you're not "a flaming anti-MS person"...
Let me answer the question with a question of my own - what makes you say that XP is a POS? It boots, despite your incredulity. It works, for me at least, on a number of different machines. I do not personally know anyone who has had problems with it. Is the POS comment just fishing for karma, or do you have some genuine gripes? Size I understand is one, but disk space is ridiculously cheap these days (and besides, by way of comparison, UT2k4 requires around 6.5GB of disk space), so it seems to me to be a rather petty gripe. Anything else?
So, "it works for me therefore anyone else who says they have problems is a liar"? Tell me, are you a developer? If I had a pound for every time I've heard "but it works on my machine!" in response to a bug report I'd be rich.
[And yes, I *am* a developer]
Oh, and did you not see the bit where the OP talks about booting the system with the USB device attached? He didn't say anything about it not working after it's booted...
In other words, you got paid for your work. No, you didn't get any money, you got paid in experience, and the opportunity to produce something that you can show to other people.
I can definitely see that as a viable model for aspiring artists, but I'm not sure how many established artists you'll manage to attract. Of course there will always be some that will do it for fun; with luck, that'll be enough, because Fate knows there appear to be precious few willing to do it at the moment.
I don't think it's a problem of the licence or the artists, so much as the projects themselves being unable to attract the right people.
We don't go that far, but all interviews where I work are conducted by the interviewee's prospective peers. That is, designers are interviewed by designers, programmers by programmers, etc.
The only time HR gets involved is in signing off permission to hire, and sorting out the contract, etc. Once we have the permission, we handle *everything* ourselves (including filtering of CVs, etc). I (a senior programmer) have personally said "yes" or "no" regarding prospective hires. (Although we tend to interview in twos and threes, so it's not *just* my word)
If my company tried to move us all to running off a central server using dumb/thin terminals, I'd leave the same day. Then again, I do server-side Java development, and on my current project am starting to feel a bit squeezed for RAM at 1gig; there's no way I'd have that much available on a shared server, not with almost 30 of us in development alone. We'd really need one beefy server between two or three of us, in which case the savings are minimal.
Now, I realise that I am by no means a typical corporate user, and that for a lot of people that sort of a set up makes sense.
Just out of interest, what would you remove from the OS to strip out the "bloat"? I'll take visual themes and eye-candy as read (although personally, I *like* that sort of thing), so what else would you take out?
MS betas are free. The only difference (as far as I can tell) is that they're now saying that you can use them to produce live code and applications, if you want to.
I challenge you to find a single non-trivial piece of software that doesn't come with a licence that disclaims all liabilities; even the GPL contains clauses that do that.
a) an awful lot of home machines are either single user, or effectively single user (where everyone shares a single account)
b) all the system files are backed up on the nice, shiny install media
c) none of the user files are backed up
If you're not talking about a server or other shared/critical environment, then the only things of any real value on the machine are the user's own files. Root or not, they can toast them. Lindows, in case you hadn't noticed, is *not* aimed at servers...
There is almost no magic in Thief; the closest you get is the health potions, or the enemies that fire magic at you.
I think what defines "stealth game" is probably an entirely subjective thing; I've never played any of the Metal Gear games, so that won't define it for me. On the other hand, I know that a lot of the more dedicated Thief players consider it to be utterly against the spirit of the game to kill anyone. Google for walkthroughs, and you'll see ones that do their utmost to leave as little mark on each level as possible - no killing, no knocking people out, almost no extinguishing of torches.
So yes, you do get cool stuff to use in the Thief games, but a whole community of players has grown up around *not* using them if at all possible.
Because fourty people are sharing one and four people the other?
In my experience, people share a whole load of crap that shouldn't be on the network. Sometimes even very popular files are complete junk. (By which I mean misnamed, DRMed (and so useless) or even just plain corrupt).
Besides which, if you're serious about poisoning a p2p network, I don't see forty clients to be that much of a stretch. Hell, if you're really serious, you could put hundreds of them out on the network. It wouldn't take that many though - as soon as people start downloading form you and uploading to others, you're gaining even more poisoned clients.
Re:Don't underestimate a company as big as Dell
on
Dell Still Intel Only
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Most corporate customers don't mind the performance difference, since they will never get fired for buying Intel... on the contrary, in the corporate / server world, Intel has a great reputation.
I'd like to bet that a fair chunk of machines bought for corporate use are going to be used as desktops. For the vast majority of them, there *is* no noticeable performance difference; neither chip is going to get that report written any quicker than the other.
Sure, I do server-side web-app development, and I'll take all the power and RAM you can give me, but I realise that I'm by no means a typical corporate user.
So what happens to my document if I use Microsoft's fonts?
Read the licence. I haven't, but if it's anything like the licence for their other, similar products (eg the redistributals that come with VS) you have a licence to redistribute them as part of your app/document but acknowledge that ownership remains with MS, etc etc.
That is, you get to use them as you would expect to be able to use them, with no nasty surprises. You carry on with your anti-MS FUD though.
They were in compliance; someone else broke the license by distributing the software that was not supposed to be.
How so? The GPL does not allow you to place any further restrictions on recipients of the covered work - if a company GPLs something they cannot prevent it from being distributed.
That obviously means that if they sell it, or otherwise give it to a third party, that third party can give it to whoever they want. What I'm not clear about is internal distribution. Say one of my colleagues gives me something covered by the GPL. Can I then distribute it? Is this legally seen as a company giving the thing to itself, or an employee of the company giving it to another employee? If the latter, then I don't see how the company can prevent me from giving it to anyone I want. And what about when I leave? I don't see that the company can demand that I destroy any copies of the work, and I become a private citizen, entirely unconnected to the company, with a copy of a GPLed work in my possession...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the OP was referring to the retail release date, I think he meant the *rental* release date. Certainly, that's what happened to me a few days ago, with Blade Trinity (don't bother unless you're a fan of the series!) It wasn't supposed to have been release (in the UK) for another week or so, but there it was on the shelf in Blockbuster.
Not if they lose the case to have it struck down, *then* buy the company/patent. If I were feeling particularly Machiavellian, and had that sort of cash, I can see how I might bring the suit, lose on purpose, then buy the patent (or company). If the sums work out, it could be worthwhile.
I thought that in the US it was demonstrably possible to patent just about anything though? Just because you've managed to patent something doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to enforce the patent, either (at least in theory)
But no-one is being lured or tricked - the pag elinked to very clearly states what the software does:
"In exchange for having their Internet browsing and purchasing activity observed, members have access to free email virus scanning and other benefits."
(Sentence 6 of 7, all of which are in the same font and the same size)
If someone installs it without realising that it's going to collect marketing data, well, frankly I think they have bigger problems, like a serious need to improve their reading comprehension skills.
But that's true of *any* software, no matter what its intended purpose is. Hell, I know people who avoid using Firefox, because the update mechanism (used to) leaves multiple entries in the Add/Remove Programs control on Windows.
While I generally agree with you, I do have two comments.
:-)
Firstly, the editors didn't use the word "lure" at all, other than in so far as CowboyNeal chose to post this. All of the words in italics are those of prostoalex (unless he speaks up to claim that CowboyNeal changed them, of course).
Secondly, if I had mod points, you'd be going down for that opening sentence
(No danger of that though, I've not had mod points for years)
but a person has to admit that XP is, well, pretty big
Compared to what? Mandrake 10 Community Edition comes on 3 CDs. Sure, you get a ton of apps, but that's all part of the distro. Strip it down to just Linux, and KDE or Gnome, etc and I'm betting it'll weigh in at about the same size.
maybe the Windows kernel is pretty compact
ntoskknl.exe on my system is a touch over 2MB in size.
I will concede that Windows is a POS, but how does such a POS even boot?
That would seem to contradict your earlier statement that you're not "a flaming anti-MS person"...
Let me answer the question with a question of my own - what makes you say that XP is a POS? It boots, despite your incredulity. It works, for me at least, on a number of different machines. I do not personally know anyone who has had problems with it. Is the POS comment just fishing for karma, or do you have some genuine gripes? Size I understand is one, but disk space is ridiculously cheap these days (and besides, by way of comparison, UT2k4 requires around 6.5GB of disk space), so it seems to me to be a rather petty gripe. Anything else?
What's more likely - that people blame Linux (which they know runs on real machines just fine), or the virtualization software?
I know that any time I had problems with running something under VMWare, I blamed VMWare, not the guest OS...
And mini tape recorders *aren't* widely available? C'mon, they're a fraction of the price and can be bought in most stationary/office supplies shop!
So, "it works for me therefore anyone else who says they have problems is a liar"? Tell me, are you a developer? If I had a pound for every time I've heard "but it works on my machine!" in response to a bug report I'd be rich.
[And yes, I *am* a developer]
Oh, and did you not see the bit where the OP talks about booting the system with the USB device attached? He didn't say anything about it not working after it's booted...
An inaccurate Register article? Say it ain't so!
In other words, you got paid for your work. No, you didn't get any money, you got paid in experience, and the opportunity to produce something that you can show to other people.
I can definitely see that as a viable model for aspiring artists, but I'm not sure how many established artists you'll manage to attract. Of course there will always be some that will do it for fun; with luck, that'll be enough, because Fate knows there appear to be precious few willing to do it at the moment.
I don't think it's a problem of the licence or the artists, so much as the projects themselves being unable to attract the right people.
We don't go that far, but all interviews where I work are conducted by the interviewee's prospective peers. That is, designers are interviewed by designers, programmers by programmers, etc.
The only time HR gets involved is in signing off permission to hire, and sorting out the contract, etc. Once we have the permission, we handle *everything* ourselves (including filtering of CVs, etc). I (a senior programmer) have personally said "yes" or "no" regarding prospective hires. (Although we tend to interview in twos and threes, so it's not *just* my word)
Even if it is 26cm high (and as others have pointed out that seems unlikely), I have a full tower case and plenty of space...
If my company tried to move us all to running off a central server using dumb/thin terminals, I'd leave the same day. Then again, I do server-side Java development, and on my current project am starting to feel a bit squeezed for RAM at 1gig; there's no way I'd have that much available on a shared server, not with almost 30 of us in development alone. We'd really need one beefy server between two or three of us, in which case the savings are minimal.
Now, I realise that I am by no means a typical corporate user, and that for a lot of people that sort of a set up makes sense.
Just out of interest, what would you remove from the OS to strip out the "bloat"? I'll take visual themes and eye-candy as read (although personally, I *like* that sort of thing), so what else would you take out?
MS betas are free. The only difference (as far as I can tell) is that they're now saying that you can use them to produce live code and applications, if you want to.
I challenge you to find a single non-trivial piece of software that doesn't come with a licence that disclaims all liabilities; even the GPL contains clauses that do that.
Consider this:
a) an awful lot of home machines are either single user, or effectively single user (where everyone shares a single account)
b) all the system files are backed up on the nice, shiny install media
c) none of the user files are backed up
If you're not talking about a server or other shared/critical environment, then the only things of any real value on the machine are the user's own files. Root or not, they can toast them. Lindows, in case you hadn't noticed, is *not* aimed at servers...
For what it's worth (ie nothing) I tend to agree with you. FUD is the new troll - a term to be thrown at anyone you disagree with.
No-one seems to stop to think that perhaps the person they're responding to could just be wrong.
There is almost no magic in Thief; the closest you get is the health potions, or the enemies that fire magic at you.
I think what defines "stealth game" is probably an entirely subjective thing; I've never played any of the Metal Gear games, so that won't define it for me. On the other hand, I know that a lot of the more dedicated Thief players consider it to be utterly against the spirit of the game to kill anyone. Google for walkthroughs, and you'll see ones that do their utmost to leave as little mark on each level as possible - no killing, no knocking people out, almost no extinguishing of torches.
So yes, you do get cool stuff to use in the Thief games, but a whole community of players has grown up around *not* using them if at all possible.
Because fourty people are sharing one and four people the other?
In my experience, people share a whole load of crap that shouldn't be on the network. Sometimes even very popular files are complete junk. (By which I mean misnamed, DRMed (and so useless) or even just plain corrupt).
Besides which, if you're serious about poisoning a p2p network, I don't see forty clients to be that much of a stretch. Hell, if you're really serious, you could put hundreds of them out on the network. It wouldn't take that many though - as soon as people start downloading form you and uploading to others, you're gaining even more poisoned clients.
Most corporate customers don't mind the performance difference, since they will never get fired for buying Intel... on the contrary, in the corporate / server world, Intel has a great reputation.
I'd like to bet that a fair chunk of machines bought for corporate use are going to be used as desktops. For the vast majority of them, there *is* no noticeable performance difference; neither chip is going to get that report written any quicker than the other.
Sure, I do server-side web-app development, and I'll take all the power and RAM you can give me, but I realise that I'm by no means a typical corporate user.
So what happens to my document if I use Microsoft's fonts?
Read the licence. I haven't, but if it's anything like the licence for their other, similar products (eg the redistributals that come with VS) you have a licence to redistribute them as part of your app/document but acknowledge that ownership remains with MS, etc etc.
That is, you get to use them as you would expect to be able to use them, with no nasty surprises. You carry on with your anti-MS FUD though.
They were in compliance; someone else broke the license by distributing the software that was not supposed to be.
How so? The GPL does not allow you to place any further restrictions on recipients of the covered work - if a company GPLs something they cannot prevent it from being distributed.
That obviously means that if they sell it, or otherwise give it to a third party, that third party can give it to whoever they want. What I'm not clear about is internal distribution. Say one of my colleagues gives me something covered by the GPL. Can I then distribute it? Is this legally seen as a company giving the thing to itself, or an employee of the company giving it to another employee? If the latter, then I don't see how the company can prevent me from giving it to anyone I want. And what about when I leave? I don't see that the company can demand that I destroy any copies of the work, and I become a private citizen, entirely unconnected to the company, with a copy of a GPLed work in my possession...