Generally there are two types of depression, although you rarely get one without aspects of the other. They also tend to feed off of each other.
The first is clinical depression, which means that chemicals are screwed up in your brain and you need medication. I was on so many different meds over the years until we finally found one that worked.
The second is situational depression, which basically means your life sucks. This can be manifested through physical or emotional abuse or so many other factors. Mine was more situational than chemical, but that's all relative. The chemical aspect alone would have been enough to take me out of life.
I refer to mine as "clinical depression" even though it was more situational just because that forces people to realize that there is a medical aspect to it.
My saying is that "medication gets you stable, counseling gets you fixed." If the meds that you are on aren't working and haven't been for several weeks, SWITCH. Effexor is what finally did it for me, but everyone is different.
Once you get some semblance of stability back, you have to get professional counseling. As my high school girlfriend's mother put it, "it took years for you to get that way, it's going to take years for you to get out." It's true, and you can't do it alone. Get help so you can talk through what has happened to you and get yourself sorted out.
Take care of yourself my friend.
- Neil Wehneman
which a great deal of mine was, and I simply refer to
I'm familiar with that list. I spent some time on alt.suicide.holiday (or ASH, as we call it). Unfortunately it doesn't include my favorite book on the topic, Dr. Geo Stone's Suicide and Attempted Suicide: Methods and Consequences.
So in response Mr. Anonymous Troll, I've been in the grip of despair and with the help of others (and I'm not ashamed to admit the Son of God Himself) I've beaten it.
Until you've got something constructive to say, get back under your rock.
Not that it's relevent to the question at hand, but I never could understand what would cause someone to take their own life.
Most of the replies have been anonymous trolls, so I'll give you an actual answer with a name behind it.
I went through four years of clinical depression with suicidal intent. Eventually, you get to the point when all you really remember is pain, and you believe that all you ever will feel is more pain. You have difficulty getting up and out of bed, and if you're not showing up and interacting with people, your previous relationships get shot to hell.
If there's going to be no end to the torment, why not leave it behind?
You can contact me through my site if you have additional questions for a depression survivor. I'll close this with a poem I wrote in the midst of my depression that I think explains things a little more as well.
- Neil Wehneman
**********
Depression Kills
Do not let yourself be lulled into thinking that depression is simply a fancy way of saying that someone is "sad." Mere sadness does not last for weeks or months or years.
Do not think that people with depression should just "snap out of it." Don't you think that if we could we would?
And do not think that depression is simply a disease of the mind. It literally destroys your immune system, depletes your energy, leaving only fatigue, and decimates your ties with friends and family.
Depression is not just an illness. Depression kills.
I googled to try to find the exact text of this, but was unsuccessful. Thankfully, the joke was funny enough that I remember it pretty well.
In Squaresoft's 1995 game The Secret of Evermore (which was produced entirely by Americans, coincidently), there was a section of the game that took place in a huge, open-air marketplace set in pseudo-Roman times.
Within this marketplace, there was a character tossing out the ambient "The End Is Near!" warnings and the like. Eventually, though, if you get into a conversation with him, the exchange goes something like this (emphasis mine at the end)....
The End Is Near Guy: The End Is Near! You: Uh huh. TEIN Guy: We have no control over our destiny! You: Whatever. TEIN Guy: In fact, we are being controlled by outside forces! You: Suuuure. TEIN Guy: It's true! We but answer to the directions of our huge, button-pushing overlords! You: Riiiiight. TEIN Guy: If I am lying, may the gods strike me down where I stand!
At this point, a dialog box pops up, with the options "Goat, Chicken, Basket" of which you get to select one.
After selecting, two lightning bolts flash down from the sky onto TEIN Guy, and whatever you selected is left standing in his place.
Unfortunately, I am not a lawyer, nor do I have the disposable income to pay for one.
However, this looks to me like a(nother) possible test case of the DMCA.
What makes this case attractive is that, to my understanding, PlayFair works WITHIN the accepted norms of society for copyright law (if you don't have a key from iTunes showing you bought the song, it won't convert the audio).
It is a law that is OUTSIDE the accepted norms of society that is causing the problem here.
I googled EFF.org for "playfair" and didn't have any returns of relevance.
Is the EFF involved in this case, or are they even aware of it?
- Neil Wehneman
P.S. I've mentioned this in previousposts, but I'll mention it again here because it's relevant.
Dr. Larry Lessig, who argued "our side" in Eldred v. Ashcroft, has put up his new book Free Culture under a Creative Commons license. Noncommercial redistribution with attribution is freely allowed.
Download the PDF or buy it and support Creative Commons in the process.
Our intellectual property laws, when interpreted strictly, are a bit of a farce...[A]s a society, we have never ever, even for a day, played by the basic copyright rules "100%."
You've just summed up a major point that Lawrence Lessig makes in his new book, Free Culture.
For those who don't know, Dr. Lessig argued "our side" before the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft.
In his new book Dr. Lessig discusses that case, how every new content industry (radio, film, cable, etc..) has "pirated" an existing industry, how our government willingly allowed this to happen, and many other excellent points.
The entire book is available for FREE (as in speech) as a PDF here.
Those who want to buy a hard copy and have the referrer commission go to Creative Commons can do so here.
Don't you mean the bazaar approach in reference to Linux?
The cathedral approach (from ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar) is where a closed application is developed in seclusion from the rest of the world and we the unwashed masses are supposed to accept it as holy once we are graced with its presence.
Or did your professor's text mean something else when it said "cathedral"?
The article doesn't mention SaX, which I believe to be a fully separate program. For those who don't run SUSE, SaX handles video cards and monitors.
I ask because SaX saved me a few hours ago. I came home from school for a week, and left my 19" monitor at my apartment. I'm using a spare 17" monitor while at home. Unfortunately the refresh rate configured for the 19" monitor is incompatible with the lesser monitor.
I dreaded having to get a crash course in X configuration in order to manually change the refresh rate, but thankfully had SaX. I just restarted, chose "failsafe" from the GRUB options, hit SaX2 after logging in at the shell, and SaX automatically corrected the resolution and refresh rate to my new monitor.
I still haven't convinced my Windows 2000 box (damn you iTunes!) to adjust to the new monitor.
I'll poke with the Windows box some more in the morning, but I found it interesting that SaX fixed this problem quicker and with less fuss than Windows 2000.
I am a huge SUSE fan, in fact running 9.0 Professional as I type this.
Before, SUSE kept individuals from reselling their ISO's by leveraging YaST. Specifically, the YaST license states that you can freely make copies of ISO's containing it, and give them away. However, no money could change hands in the process.
Want to host SUSE ISO's containing YaST for all of your friends? The YaST license says 'go for it.' Want to charge them five dollars to download them (just to cover your hosting costs). The YaST license says you can't do that.
You could still extract OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and other GPL'd (or similar) software from the SUSE distro and distribute those as you wished, but it was YaST that you could only give away, never sell.
Novell appears to be opening YaST up to try to get the market and other parties to standardize on it. I applaud this, as I definitely consider YaST to be a best-of-breed application.
My question is, is there any other software within the SUSE distro that Novell could leverage to keep the SUSE ISO's from being sold?
I found out yesterday that my philosophy professor at Ohio State (Dr. Larry Sanger) actually created the Wikipedia. He referenced the page in a topic we were doing, and mentioned in passing that he had started the Wikipedia a few years back (although he is no longer involved with it, as of March 2002).
If anyone has any questions for him, I can personally pass them along to Dr. Sanger (assumign he has time to answer of course). He and I are on fairly good terms (I sit in the front and am the most active discussion participant in our class.)
It's possible to insert a CC work into something that's under full copyright, and that's something the GPL just can't do.
Minor quibble, but it's important enough to be stated. GPL'd works are under full copyright (to use your phrase). There are simply certain additional, relatively major rights that are granted if you accept certain additional, relatively minor responsibilities.
You are still welcome and encouraged to ignore the GPL and use the standard rights that are granted under copyright whenever you receive GPL'd software. You simply will not be able to use the additional rights (such as freer redistribution or modification) that the GPL grants by leveraging its own "full copyright."
As many here have said, it's possible that you're in the wrong degree program. At a four year university, if the degree says "Computer" or "Information Systems / Science" in it, you're going to have to do quite a bit of programming.
I'm currently an Information Systems major at Ohio State and feel it's a good fit for me. (The major was formerly called Management Information Systems). IS at OSU is about (outside the General Ed requirements) half business and half tech. The tech is about two thirds programming and one third systems analysis.
I don't enjoy coding, and I don't think I'm that great at it (relative to others who post here). However, I'm good enough and tenacious enough to pull off B's with some A's in the programming courses.
As for what I'll be doing full-time after school, I will be doing tech support and project management for Campus Crusade for Christ's largest state-side region. I think my degree will have prepared me for that because I will be able to speak the language of business / operations as well as the language of the "dedicated" programmers and engineers. My goal coming in to MIS was to be like PERL: jack of all trades, master of very few.
I started off as an engineering major (because of my standardized test scores), but the CAD classes kicked my ass hard enough that I decided not to pursue engineering. It sounds like perhaps you're having the same problem with coding as I did with CAD.
There is a reason some courses are called "weed-out classes."
I recommend you find a major that you enjoy AND are good at. It may or may not be tech-related. If you want some specific tech skills thrown in, consider hitting a community college or similar for certificates / experience in the areas of IT that interest you. A non-tech degree / skills with some tech certificates thrown in can actually be pretty attractive to a lot of employers.
I was offered and accepted a non-tech position with U.S. Bank in 2001 for that same reason.
One interesting thing that the article mentions that Napster is doing that Apple is yet to, is allow people to buy tracks "in bulk" for a small discount.
Members can now buy packs of 15, 25 or 50 tracks for US$13.95, $21.95 and $39.95, respectively.
I sincerely wish Apple would do something like this, espescially since I believe they would save a bit on credit-card processing fees (see one of my earlier posts).
They could even do this without cluttering up the iTMS interface by keeping the same "buy song" button. Just have any songs bought be charged against pre-purchased credit before it goes to your credit card on file.
Did anyone else who RTFA (don't worry, it's short) notice this gem at the end (emphasis mine)...
Commenting on Nokia's recent decision to lift its stake in Symbian, the leading smartphone operating system, to 63.3 per cent after moving to buy a 31.1 per cent stake from Psion, Mr Ollila stressed that Symbian would continue to be run as an independent company.
As in, yes we promise that we won't screw Symbian up as badly as we screwed up this whole N-Gage thing...
I used to work for U.S. Bank (in a non-technical capacity), and there is something called a "charge-back."
A charge-back is basically where the credit card company refunds a charge to a customer by withholding (current or future) funds from a merchant. Credit card companies hold a surprisingly large amount of power over merchants, even one such as MS.
The way a charge-back works is a customer tells the credit card issuer that they are disputing a charge, gives the reason for the dispute, and states that they have tried in good faith to resolve the dispute with the merchant but have been unsuccesful.
The credit card company will review your information, and more than likely, issue a credit to your next statement.
Look for a "Fraud / Lost or Stolen Card" number on the back of your card, and give them a call. If that call center doesn't handle those issues they can direct you quickly to who can.
When you talk to the right person, be rational, be reasonable, and don't ask for Gates' head on a stick sharpened on both ends. Simply ask them to charge the X-Box subscription back to MS because you were billed for a service you never received, and MS refuses to come to an amicable resolution.
It sounds like you have a pretty solid case. Good luck!
I'm sorry, but you have missed the point entirely.
Ballmer and MS tried to equate GPL'd software (and similar) such as the Linux kernel, Apache, Mozilla, etc. with the term "non-commercial."
As you said, projects such as Desert Combat are non-commercial. I'm glad that the developers of it (who are obviously skilled) are finding some monetary gain out of this side project.
However, Linux / Apache / Mozilla, etc. are orders of magnitude more involved, valuable, and business worthy than projects such as this.
MS was trying to FUD them down to the same level. A non-Linux user who read this story who had only heard Ballmer's memos and PR would be more likely to equate Linux with Desert Combat.
Digital Illusions has signed Trauma Studios, creators of the non-commercial Desert Combat mod for BF1942
It is very sad how someone in a position of marketing power can poison how a word is used.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who was immediately reminded of these memos and press releases where MS tried to link GPL software with the misnomer of 'noncommerical.'
I actually got one of each, as I learned with the Cisco ATA 186 not to plug a 12v power brick into a 5v device [I grabbed the wrong brick on accident]. The smell of frying components in the Cisco ATA was...enlightening.
I shelled out $100 to get a Motorola vt1000 replacement, since this screwup was my own fault. I made arrangements to move back to Columbus to finish school (Go Bucks!) soon after, in mid-November.
I assumed that ATA was a standard industry abbreviation. Was I wrong in that respect, and / or is there a better term I should be using for such devices?
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed.
Generally there are two types of depression, although you rarely get one without aspects of the other. They also tend to feed off of each other.
The first is clinical depression, which means that chemicals are screwed up in your brain and you need medication. I was on so many different meds over the years until we finally found one that worked.
The second is situational depression, which basically means your life sucks. This can be manifested through physical or emotional abuse or so many other factors. Mine was more situational than chemical, but that's all relative. The chemical aspect alone would have been enough to take me out of life.
I refer to mine as "clinical depression" even though it was more situational just because that forces people to realize that there is a medical aspect to it.
My saying is that "medication gets you stable, counseling gets you fixed." If the meds that you are on aren't working and haven't been for several weeks, SWITCH. Effexor is what finally did it for me, but everyone is different.
Once you get some semblance of stability back, you have to get professional counseling. As my high school girlfriend's mother put it, "it took years for you to get that way, it's going to take years for you to get out." It's true, and you can't do it alone. Get help so you can talk through what has happened to you and get yourself sorted out.
Take care of yourself my friend.
- Neil Wehneman
which a great deal of mine was, and I simply refer to
OK, I know shouldn't do this, but what the hell.
I'm familiar with that list. I spent some time on alt.suicide.holiday (or ASH, as we call it). Unfortunately it doesn't include my favorite book on the topic, Dr. Geo Stone's Suicide and Attempted Suicide: Methods and Consequences.
Amazon.com link
So in response Mr. Anonymous Troll, I've been in the grip of despair and with the help of others (and I'm not ashamed to admit the Son of God Himself) I've beaten it.
Until you've got something constructive to say, get back under your rock.
- Neil Wehneman
Not that it's relevent to the question at hand, but I never could understand what would cause someone to take their own life.
Most of the replies have been anonymous trolls, so I'll give you an actual answer with a name behind it.
I went through four years of clinical depression with suicidal intent. Eventually, you get to the point when all you really remember is pain, and you believe that all you ever will feel is more pain. You have difficulty getting up and out of bed, and if you're not showing up and interacting with people, your previous relationships get shot to hell.
If there's going to be no end to the torment, why not leave it behind?
You can contact me through my site if you have additional questions for a depression survivor. I'll close this with a poem I wrote in the midst of my depression that I think explains things a little more as well.
- Neil Wehneman
**********
Depression Kills
Do not let yourself be lulled into thinking that depression is simply a fancy way of saying that someone is "sad."
Mere sadness does not last for weeks or months or years.
Do not think that people with depression should just "snap out of it."
Don't you think that if we could we would?
And do not think that depression is simply a disease of the mind.
It literally destroys your immune system, depletes your energy, leaving only fatigue, and decimates your ties with friends and family.
Depression is not just an illness.
Depression kills.
Well, you know what they say about lawyers...
It's only 99% of them that give the 1% a bad name.
- Neil Wehneman
We need a (+1, Bitch-Slap) modifier.
Your point by point refutation was well done, well done indeed.
*applauds*
- Neil Wehneman
I googled to try to find the exact text of this, but was unsuccessful. Thankfully, the joke was funny enough that I remember it pretty well.
In Squaresoft's 1995 game The Secret of Evermore (which was produced entirely by Americans, coincidently), there was a section of the game that took place in a huge, open-air marketplace set in pseudo-Roman times.
Within this marketplace, there was a character tossing out the ambient "The End Is Near!" warnings and the like. Eventually, though, if you get into a conversation with him, the exchange goes something like this (emphasis mine at the end)....
The End Is Near Guy: The End Is Near!
You: Uh huh.
TEIN Guy: We have no control over our destiny!
You: Whatever.
TEIN Guy: In fact, we are being controlled by outside forces!
You: Suuuure.
TEIN Guy: It's true! We but answer to the directions of our huge, button-pushing overlords!
You: Riiiiight.
TEIN Guy: If I am lying, may the gods strike me down where I stand!
At this point, a dialog box pops up, with the options "Goat, Chicken, Basket" of which you get to select one.
After selecting, two lightning bolts flash down from the sky onto TEIN Guy, and whatever you selected is left standing in his place.
- Neil
Unfortunately, I am not a lawyer, nor do I have the disposable income to pay for one.
However, this looks to me like a(nother) possible test case of the DMCA.
What makes this case attractive is that, to my understanding, PlayFair works WITHIN the accepted norms of society for copyright law (if you don't have a key from iTunes showing you bought the song, it won't convert the audio).
It is a law that is OUTSIDE the accepted norms of society that is causing the problem here.
I googled EFF.org for "playfair" and didn't have any returns of relevance.
Is the EFF involved in this case, or are they even aware of it?
- Neil Wehneman
P.S. I've mentioned this in previous posts, but I'll mention it again here because it's relevant.
Dr. Larry Lessig, who argued "our side" in Eldred v. Ashcroft, has put up his new book Free Culture under a Creative Commons license. Noncommercial redistribution with attribution is freely allowed.
Download the PDF or buy it and support Creative Commons in the process.
You've just summed up a major point that Lawrence Lessig makes in his new book, Free Culture.
For those who don't know, Dr. Lessig argued "our side" before the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft.
In his new book Dr. Lessig discusses that case, how every new content industry (radio, film, cable, etc..) has "pirated" an existing industry, how our government willingly allowed this to happen, and many other excellent points.
The entire book is available for FREE (as in speech) as a PDF here.
Those who want to buy a hard copy and have the referrer commission go to Creative Commons can do so here.
- Neil Wehneman
Dr. Lessig has put his new book Free Culture under a noncommercially freely redistributable Creative Commons License.
It's a great book, very insightful and interesting. I read it in two days.
Read it in PDF format here, or buy it (with referrer commission going to Creative Commons) here.
- Neil Wehneman
Slightly related to this idea of taking original content (say Penny Arcade) and remixing it (new dialogue), is the web-comic 8-Bit Theater.
The premise is a sorta-retelling of the original Final Fantasy's story using the sprites from that game.
Disclaimer: I am not affliated with 8-Bit Theater beyond being a loyal reader who has been entertained for over 400 strips.
- Neil Wehneman
Don't you mean the bazaar approach in reference to Linux?
The cathedral approach (from ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar ) is where a closed application is developed in seclusion from the rest of the world and we the unwashed masses are supposed to accept it as holy once we are graced with its presence.
Or did your professor's text mean something else when it said "cathedral"?
- Neil Wehneman
[W]hat I get from other people is that game testers... are almost disposable
Hate to be the one to break this to you, but the general business concensus in almost any industry is that just about anyone is disposable.
Not that I agree with this, but that is the reality, esp. when an economy is not doing overly well.
- Neil Wehneman
The article doesn't mention SaX, which I believe to be a fully separate program. For those who don't run SUSE, SaX handles video cards and monitors.
I ask because SaX saved me a few hours ago. I came home from school for a week, and left my 19" monitor at my apartment. I'm using a spare 17" monitor while at home. Unfortunately the refresh rate configured for the 19" monitor is incompatible with the lesser monitor.
I dreaded having to get a crash course in X configuration in order to manually change the refresh rate, but thankfully had SaX. I just restarted, chose "failsafe" from the GRUB options, hit SaX2 after logging in at the shell, and SaX automatically corrected the resolution and refresh rate to my new monitor.
I still haven't convinced my Windows 2000 box (damn you iTunes!) to adjust to the new monitor.
I'll poke with the Windows box some more in the morning, but I found it interesting that SaX fixed this problem quicker and with less fuss than Windows 2000.
- Neil Wehneman
I am a huge SUSE fan, in fact running 9.0 Professional as I type this.
Before, SUSE kept individuals from reselling their ISO's by leveraging YaST. Specifically, the YaST license states that you can freely make copies of ISO's containing it, and give them away. However, no money could change hands in the process.
Want to host SUSE ISO's containing YaST for all of your friends? The YaST license says 'go for it.' Want to charge them five dollars to download them (just to cover your hosting costs). The YaST license says you can't do that.
You could still extract OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and other GPL'd (or similar) software from the SUSE distro and distribute those as you wished, but it was YaST that you could only give away, never sell.
Novell appears to be opening YaST up to try to get the market and other parties to standardize on it. I applaud this, as I definitely consider YaST to be a best-of-breed application.
My question is, is there any other software within the SUSE distro that Novell could leverage to keep the SUSE ISO's from being sold?
- Neil Wehneman
Speaking of the Wikipedia...
I found out yesterday that my philosophy professor at Ohio State (Dr. Larry Sanger) actually created the Wikipedia. He referenced the page in a topic we were doing, and mentioned in passing that he had started the Wikipedia a few years back (although he is no longer involved with it, as of March 2002).
If anyone has any questions for him, I can personally pass them along to Dr. Sanger (assumign he has time to answer of course). He and I are on fairly good terms (I sit in the front and am the most active discussion participant in our class.)
His information is here.
My email is...neil at wehneman.com
- Neil Wehneman
Minor quibble, but it's important enough to be stated. GPL'd works are under full copyright (to use your phrase). There are simply certain additional, relatively major rights that are granted if you accept certain additional, relatively minor responsibilities.
You are still welcome and encouraged to ignore the GPL and use the standard rights that are granted under copyright whenever you receive GPL'd software. You simply will not be able to use the additional rights (such as freer redistribution or modification) that the GPL grants by leveraging its own "full copyright."
- Neil Wehneman
As many here have said, it's possible that you're in the wrong degree program. At a four year university, if the degree says "Computer" or "Information Systems / Science" in it, you're going to have to do quite a bit of programming.
I'm currently an Information Systems major at Ohio State and feel it's a good fit for me. (The major was formerly called Management Information Systems). IS at OSU is about (outside the General Ed requirements) half business and half tech. The tech is about two thirds programming and one third systems analysis.
I don't enjoy coding, and I don't think I'm that great at it (relative to others who post here). However, I'm good enough and tenacious enough to pull off B's with some A's in the programming courses.
As for what I'll be doing full-time after school, I will be doing tech support and project management for Campus Crusade for Christ's largest state-side region. I think my degree will have prepared me for that because I will be able to speak the language of business / operations as well as the language of the "dedicated" programmers and engineers. My goal coming in to MIS was to be like PERL: jack of all trades, master of very few.
I started off as an engineering major (because of my standardized test scores), but the CAD classes kicked my ass hard enough that I decided not to pursue engineering. It sounds like perhaps you're having the same problem with coding as I did with CAD.
There is a reason some courses are called "weed-out classes."
I recommend you find a major that you enjoy AND are good at. It may or may not be tech-related. If you want some specific tech skills thrown in, consider hitting a community college or similar for certificates / experience in the areas of IT that interest you. A non-tech degree / skills with some tech certificates thrown in can actually be pretty attractive to a lot of employers.
I was offered and accepted a non-tech position with U.S. Bank in 2001 for that same reason.
Good luck!
- Neil Wehneman
I sincerely wish Apple would do something like this, espescially since I believe they would save a bit on credit-card processing fees (see one of my earlier posts).
They could even do this without cluttering up the iTMS interface by keeping the same "buy song" button. Just have any songs bought be charged against pre-purchased credit before it goes to your credit card on file.
- Neil Wehneman
As in, yes we promise that we won't screw Symbian up as badly as we screwed up this whole N-Gage thing...
- Neil Wehneman
You mispelled 'B1GG3R P3NI5 N0W!!!1111'
- Neil Wehneman
The stick. It's a reference to Golding's The Lord of the Flies (not to be confused with LotR).
- Neil Wehneman
I used to work for U.S. Bank (in a non-technical capacity), and there is something called a "charge-back."
A charge-back is basically where the credit card company refunds a charge to a customer by withholding (current or future) funds from a merchant. Credit card companies hold a surprisingly large amount of power over merchants, even one such as MS.
The way a charge-back works is a customer tells the credit card issuer that they are disputing a charge, gives the reason for the dispute, and states that they have tried in good faith to resolve the dispute with the merchant but have been unsuccesful.
The credit card company will review your information, and more than likely, issue a credit to your next statement.
Look for a "Fraud / Lost or Stolen Card" number on the back of your card, and give them a call. If that call center doesn't handle those issues they can direct you quickly to who can.
When you talk to the right person, be rational, be reasonable, and don't ask for Gates' head on a stick sharpened on both ends. Simply ask them to charge the X-Box subscription back to MS because you were billed for a service you never received, and MS refuses to come to an amicable resolution.
It sounds like you have a pretty solid case. Good luck!
- Neil Wehneman
I'm sorry, but you have missed the point entirely.
Ballmer and MS tried to equate GPL'd software (and similar) such as the Linux kernel, Apache, Mozilla, etc. with the term "non-commercial."
As you said, projects such as Desert Combat are non-commercial. I'm glad that the developers of it (who are obviously skilled) are finding some monetary gain out of this side project.
However, Linux / Apache / Mozilla, etc. are orders of magnitude more involved, valuable, and business worthy than projects such as this.
MS was trying to FUD them down to the same level. A non-Linux user who read this story who had only heard Ballmer's memos and PR would be more likely to equate Linux with Desert Combat.
It is that FUD that I am rallying against.
- Neil Wehneman
Digital Illusions has signed Trauma Studios, creators of the non-commercial Desert Combat mod for BF1942
It is very sad how someone in a position of marketing power can poison how a word is used.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who was immediately reminded of these memos and press releases where MS tried to link GPL software with the misnomer of 'noncommerical.'
- Neil Wehneman
I actually got one of each, as I learned with the Cisco ATA 186 not to plug a 12v power brick into a 5v device [I grabbed the wrong brick on accident]. The smell of frying components in the Cisco ATA was...enlightening.
I shelled out $100 to get a Motorola vt1000 replacement, since this screwup was my own fault. I made arrangements to move back to Columbus to finish school (Go Bucks!) soon after, in mid-November.
I assumed that ATA was a standard industry abbreviation. Was I wrong in that respect, and / or is there a better term I should be using for such devices?