Did you expect them to just donate the relevant patents for the betterment of humanity? I mean, in the nation's current intellectual property regime? You've got to be kidding.
Personally I think they shouldn't even be allowed to patent such things. As the matter stands, the current, modern society can't stand without a proper fuel-source, our nations and basic functionality depends on it. If we do not find a proper alternative to crude oil before we run out of reserves our society will collapse. Thus it kind of is a real necessity for us to come up with a good, generally-acceptable alternative fuel-source that can fulfill all the different kinds of purposes for which we use crude oil-fuels. Thus being able to patent important research in the area only serves to hinder our progress and endanger our future, only because of temporary monetary benefit for limited parties.
Fight the disease, not the symptom.
Sometimes you cannot avoid fighting the symptoms first or else you'll run out of time.
Biofuel is nothing more than an absurdly inefficient kind of solar power.
You are pretty ignorant. The inefficiency is exactly why there is so much research in the area to try to make it less inefficient.
Besides, it actually is very common that new technologies are quite inefficient in the beginning and get better with time. A really good example and relevant in regards to the audience here would be logic gates in computers: at first they were these really huge vacuum tubes, wasting insane amounts of energy due to converting so much of it into heat and took lots of space. With time their size decreased and their efficiency went up due to not generating so much excess heat, and eventually they led to the invention of transistors.
Similarly, biobutanol might not be the best choice for biofuel, but research into it is still valuable. Perhaps with time we will get to the "vacuum tube stage" where it is good enough for general use and thus fulfills its purpose -- that is, to replace crude oil - based fuels -- and lead from there to even better alternatives.
I think he meant same quality. A 4GiB H.264 file with proper compression options is nigh indistinguishable from a BluRay. Audio is also usually offered in real AC3 streams with no difference in regards to the original source.
As any self-respecting geek should know the real question isn't whether or not to shoot it with a really big weapon; instead, the real question is whether to shoot at it with one, or use it as ammunition on one.
I challenge you to show me something GPL'd that is an original work, not a clear copy of someone elses previous work or idea.
That more or less applies to EVERYTHING imaginable: it simply is more or less impossible to find anything anymore that doesn't somehow copy from someone else's work or idea, even though you are trying to imply that BSD software somehow differs in this regard from others.
You must be awfully insecure to be offended by having seen a penis in a movie. Like... omg? It was not in any way or form the main point of the scene, nor did it play any part in the actual story, it was just a person being temporarily naked. It's pretty common in movies and I can bet you wouldn't have been offended had it been breasts or vagina, it's only because it happened to be the male body part.
As a side-note: in Finnish movies it's common to have scenes where the actors are naked in some situations, like for example if they happen to be in sauna or come out of one, and no one gets a fit about that. It simply is so normal and a part of many people's daily lives. And then again, nudity isn't depicted as an erotic situation or anything like that. It's sometimes funny how foreigners have so mixed reactions to such scenes: some react like OP for having seen a male penis, some are just excited about how casual Finns are about it, some get enormously embarrassed and try to look anywhere else but the screen..
Having RTFA , It appears that they mention specifically the GPL. It does not however mention other Open Sources licenses.
GPL is only given as an example, the actual clause would cover a lot more licenses. Not all of them though, from the wording of the clause it would seem that for example BSD license is not excluded as BSD license does not impose any extra regulations on a distributor.
If this is really true , then you can expect it to be quite some time before you find many software packages you would think might appear in a short time in the market place. Emulators for example - most of the ones we all use are covered by Open Source license - so dont expect ports of your favorite Open Source projects to appear on Windows Mobile 7. ScummVM , MAME... forget it...
It is true indeed. And you're only listing complete application suites whereas Microsoft's clause also prohibits applications from even using GPL-licensed libraries too. This has a huge impact on developers as there's plenty of popular high-quality GPL-licensed libraries in use and will mean that the developers will either have to rewrite the whole thing themselves or hire someone else to do it. This is a really bad move.
If Sony didn't ban cracked PS3's from PSN, and my gaming experience was affected by active exploits,
The problem is that cheating has never required a jailbroken system. It's possible even without jailbreaks and as such banning jailbroken systems accomplishes nothing in this regard.
The plugs would hold your personal data (and maybe your friends, encrypted, for stability, safety, etc.).
But as I said, there ain't much storage space on those. And stuff like personal data have the tendency of accumulating over time. Especially if you also plan to store your e-mails in there too.
With a few simple rules (if 10 of my friends trust someone 90%+, I trust him 80%+, and trust accumulating over time, whatever the details), we get a pretty global network of trust
That doesn't sound too smart. It's a well-known fact that people trust the wrong people and that someone you trust 100% can still suddenly reveal to be something completely different than what you thought. Ergo, your "web of trust" ain't any more trustworthy than anything in the internet as-it-is.
How would these wall plugs achieve freedom? I can understand if they only serve as a means of relaying data, but then they still rely on a bigger server to provide that data as they themselves do not have much storage and could in no way hold any meaningful databases. The problem is, if there is a bigger server they rely on to provide all that data then it's perfectly possible to render that server inaccessible and again the whole thing crumbles down.
And then everyone will get to watch their Internet bills double or triple as the ISP discovers that they're "running a server" in violation of the ISP's acceptable use policy and "helpfully" upgrades their service to business class.
I have no idea how popular such practices are somewhere else but atleast here in Finland you're perfectly safe and fine running your own servers. There's for example plenty of people running dedicated servers for their favorite games. Some ISPs filter certain incoming ports, like for example SSH, HTTP and HTTPS, but above a certain range they're all accessible. (Filtering SSH, HTTP and HTTPS isn't always fun, but I can certainly understand the idea behind that and thus I don't hold a grudge against those ISPs. Luckily my ISP doesn't do any filtering, though.)
Obviously, you are allowed to sign up for a business account if you wish, but really, running one or another type of a server at home is so popular that it'd just be a lot of extra work for ISPs to monitor for such and then try to get the customer to change their subscriptions.
I am curious though do they do that in some other parts of the world then?
But stop fucking using the term brick unless the device is incapable of powering on.
There are plenty of ways of bricking something and not being able to even power something on is only one of those. Like for example a gaming console: if you hit the power button and it goes on, but nothing else happens, then it clearly is bricked.
Basically bricked means the device no longer useable for the purposes it was actually originally made for and getting it to functional state requires tools not even a regular geek has at his or her disposal. It is not bricked if returning it to functional state is sufficiently doable, or if it doesn't do what you want it to do but still serves the purposes it was sold under.
Seriously, that's almost precisely why I've the same username all over place (amusingly, almost except/.) - so that people who know me on one might recognise me on another.
Indeed. If this is news then geesh, world's average IQ must have suddenly had a massive drop!
I was a tad intrigued about Galaxy Tab 10.1 at first, seeing how it sports Honeycomb and a 10.1" screen, but yeah, not having a USB port killed my interest quite fast.
When TV was new there was similar ruckus about how TV causes immoral and aggressive behaviour, even so much as to inciting people to murder eachother. The same thing happened with comics, too. Hell, looking back at history the same thing happened even with radio!
The truth is, there has not been a single study that did clearly prove that the invention of video games caused a rise in violence when taking population growth into account.
That's a great way to compromise your case and get sanctioned by a Judge. Anything that gets leaked from GeoHot's computers will effectively be blood on Sony's hands.
Of course they'll wait until the judge has ruled one way or another and the case is over. At that point the judge can't anymore change the outcome.
Since when the demandant can confiscate property of the person is accusing?
That's what struck me as seriously stupid and downright foul play, too. They shouldn't have any access to potential evidence, it should be inspected by a 3rd party who is in no conflict of interests, and that 3rd party should only give relevant data to Sony while leaving out all non-relevant. That's atleast how it'd be done here.
Knowing Sony they'll definitely try to plant something there AND will take backups of everything, absolutely everything, and then later on use the totally irrelevant pieces to try to deface Geohot. Hell, they'll just "leak" it to someone else who ain't working at Sony and who'll do the actual defacing all the while claiming their innocence.
Yes, if an NES game had a bug in it, you were busted, but overall games which couldn't be patched would be more thoroughly tested - too many game-killing bugs and sales would suffer, so there was incentive to get it right the first time.
Comparing a modern game to a NES game is unfair; not only are AIs a lot more advanced now but also maps, characters, storyline (if applicable) are a whole lot more complex. Not to mention the graphics engine itself! A NES game could be only 64Kb in size, including graphics, whereas you can't find any modern engine that small, not to mention a whole game. It's almost impossible to get a modern triple-A size game "right", there always sneaks a few bugs or quirks there.
Though, I do agree with you partially: there are some certain companies who don't even try to do any QA, they just slap the game together and ignore any bugs.
Even so, that doesn't excuse the excessive DRM on Bioshock, Mass Effect, and other single player only games for which cheating has no effect on other players.
Again, partially agreed: excessive DRM is excessive. I personally find Steam DRM quite close to perfect: it works well, you rarely get issues, and Steam actually offers a lot of benefits instead of just trying to restrict you. Too many companies resort to DRM solutions that work poorly, are really annoying, and do not give any benefits whatsoever for those who use the non-hacked version.
DLC is a cool idea in theory, but there's an inherent incentive to release a half-baked game at full price, while DLC becomes more and more plentiful to the point where it's a substantial portion of the game itself.
Some companies release some great DLC packs for their games after a while, sometimes even so great that the whole game is worth playing from the beginning again. But some companies just use DLCs to squeeze players of their money, like for example some games already have the whole damn DLC included on the installation media but the company never mentions it and after a few month they pretend they're releasing a "new" DLC for the game..
I mostly feel DLCs are still a good idea. I just wish we could actually trust the game companies behind them. Not going to happen, though!
Traditional console RPGs look more like MMOs now, games require patching and even have DRM
That is simply a product of improvements in technology: before if there was a serious bug or flaw in a console game there simply was nothing you could do about it, you just had to live with it. Now you can actually do something about it, patch things up and so on, and sometimes even provide an extra feature or two. DRM is a by-product of consoles being network-connected nowadays: the companies try to keep people from cheating in online games, and I can verily understand that. If you've ever seen for examples someone shooting through several walls in CS or something you know what I'm talking about. Then there is DLCs: it's a popular way nowadays for companies to squeeze just a few more quids out of gamers, and there simply is no way to make DLCs work without being able to have both patching and DRM.
I'm mostly saying that having the ability to patch games, even when it might sometimes annoy a little, is a big benefit over having no such ability at all, and that certain kinds of DRM is quite understandable.
a few quirks introduced by lazy companies that do lazy ports don't make "consolitis".
A few quirks, you say? Lately all the games I've played have clearly been designed with a console in mind, some of them though make the transition to PC fairly well -- a good example is Batman: Arkham Asylum. An absolutely awesome game, noticeably created for consoles but works totally well on PC too -- and some make the transition fairly poorly: I just recently played through Mass Effect 1 and that one is surely an example of the poor transition. Menus worked so-and-so, sometimes you had to use mouse button to use a button, sometimes space bar, sometimes enter, some things didn't even work at all. And since I like to have my back and forward buttons mapped to left and right mouse buttons I ran into problems when trying to use my armored vehicle: it's hardwired to shoot with the right mouse button. There was plenty of other issues too, too many to list them all here.
Just to put it shortly: many games designed for consoles have plenty of actions/keys completely hardwired and then when the game gets ported to PC those hardwired things are completely forgotten. Then you run into all kinds of illogical input issues, navigating menus is often a whole puzzle of its own and so on. It's not really what I would call "quirks" since those things often hamper playability and enjoyment quite a lot.
How about the rest of the relevant statistics? Ie. how many of those actually went to court, and in how many of those did the judge actually rule in benefit of the porn company? Just saying that 100,000 people got sued doesn't really tell enough.
I'm not too good with spreadsheets and I can't see such information in the article itself.
and given that we find it convenient to refer to past events that happen close enough as "now", we should say that the event has just occurred, instead of pretending that saying it happened 64 million years ago changes anything for us.
The same logic applies in the reverse too: referring to it as happened 64 million years ago changes nothing for us so it's pointless to pretend it's happening now.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you expect them to just donate the relevant patents for the betterment of humanity? I mean, in the nation's current intellectual property regime? You've got to be kidding.
Personally I think they shouldn't even be allowed to patent such things. As the matter stands, the current, modern society can't stand without a proper fuel-source, our nations and basic functionality depends on it. If we do not find a proper alternative to crude oil before we run out of reserves our society will collapse. Thus it kind of is a real necessity for us to come up with a good, generally-acceptable alternative fuel-source that can fulfill all the different kinds of purposes for which we use crude oil-fuels. Thus being able to patent important research in the area only serves to hinder our progress and endanger our future, only because of temporary monetary benefit for limited parties.
Fight the disease, not the symptom.
Sometimes you cannot avoid fighting the symptoms first or else you'll run out of time.
Biofuel is nothing more than an absurdly inefficient kind of solar power.
You are pretty ignorant. The inefficiency is exactly why there is so much research in the area to try to make it less inefficient.
Besides, it actually is very common that new technologies are quite inefficient in the beginning and get better with time. A really good example and relevant in regards to the audience here would be logic gates in computers: at first they were these really huge vacuum tubes, wasting insane amounts of energy due to converting so much of it into heat and took lots of space. With time their size decreased and their efficiency went up due to not generating so much excess heat, and eventually they led to the invention of transistors.
Similarly, biobutanol might not be the best choice for biofuel, but research into it is still valuable. Perhaps with time we will get to the "vacuum tube stage" where it is good enough for general use and thus fulfills its purpose -- that is, to replace crude oil - based fuels -- and lead from there to even better alternatives.
Higher quality picture?
I think he meant same quality. A 4GiB H.264 file with proper compression options is nigh indistinguishable from a BluRay. Audio is also usually offered in real AC3 streams with no difference in regards to the original source.
As any self-respecting geek should know the real question isn't whether or not to shoot it with a really big weapon; instead, the real question is whether to shoot at it with one, or use it as ammunition on one.
I challenge you to show me something GPL'd that is an original work, not a clear copy of someone elses previous work or idea.
That more or less applies to EVERYTHING imaginable: it simply is more or less impossible to find anything anymore that doesn't somehow copy from someone else's work or idea, even though you are trying to imply that BSD software somehow differs in this regard from others.
*ahem*... imagine the uproar had the film depicted a female penis. Usually you can only rent those...
Hah :D Sounds like you have some experience in that field, though ;)
Also, no one gives a shit about Finnish movies or the amount of nudity in them.
The imperfection is all yours.
You must be awfully insecure to be offended by having seen a penis in a movie. Like... omg? It was not in any way or form the main point of the scene, nor did it play any part in the actual story, it was just a person being temporarily naked. It's pretty common in movies and I can bet you wouldn't have been offended had it been breasts or vagina, it's only because it happened to be the male body part.
As a side-note: in Finnish movies it's common to have scenes where the actors are naked in some situations, like for example if they happen to be in sauna or come out of one, and no one gets a fit about that. It simply is so normal and a part of many people's daily lives. And then again, nudity isn't depicted as an erotic situation or anything like that. It's sometimes funny how foreigners have so mixed reactions to such scenes: some react like OP for having seen a male penis, some are just excited about how casual Finns are about it, some get enormously embarrassed and try to look anywhere else but the screen..
I personally really enjoyed it, atleast it wasn't your bog-standard action movie which only attracts people because of large explosions.
Having RTFA , It appears that they mention specifically the GPL. It does not however mention other Open Sources licenses.
GPL is only given as an example, the actual clause would cover a lot more licenses. Not all of them though, from the wording of the clause it would seem that for example BSD license is not excluded as BSD license does not impose any extra regulations on a distributor.
If this is really true , then you can expect it to be quite some time before you find many software packages you would think ... forget it ...
might appear in a short time in the market place. Emulators for example - most of the ones we all use are covered by Open Source
license - so dont expect ports of your favorite Open Source projects to appear on Windows Mobile 7. ScummVM , MAME
It is true indeed. And you're only listing complete application suites whereas Microsoft's clause also prohibits applications from even using GPL-licensed libraries too. This has a huge impact on developers as there's plenty of popular high-quality GPL-licensed libraries in use and will mean that the developers will either have to rewrite the whole thing themselves or hire someone else to do it. This is a really bad move.
If Sony didn't ban cracked PS3's from PSN, and my gaming experience was affected by active exploits,
The problem is that cheating has never required a jailbroken system. It's possible even without jailbreaks and as such banning jailbroken systems accomplishes nothing in this regard.
The plugs would hold your personal data (and maybe your friends, encrypted, for stability, safety, etc.).
But as I said, there ain't much storage space on those. And stuff like personal data have the tendency of accumulating over time. Especially if you also plan to store your e-mails in there too.
With a few simple rules (if 10 of my friends trust someone 90%+, I trust him 80%+, and trust accumulating over time, whatever the details), we get a pretty global network of trust
That doesn't sound too smart. It's a well-known fact that people trust the wrong people and that someone you trust 100% can still suddenly reveal to be something completely different than what you thought. Ergo, your "web of trust" ain't any more trustworthy than anything in the internet as-it-is.
How would these wall plugs achieve freedom? I can understand if they only serve as a means of relaying data, but then they still rely on a bigger server to provide that data as they themselves do not have much storage and could in no way hold any meaningful databases. The problem is, if there is a bigger server they rely on to provide all that data then it's perfectly possible to render that server inaccessible and again the whole thing crumbles down.
And then everyone will get to watch their Internet bills double or triple as the ISP discovers that they're "running a server" in violation of the ISP's acceptable use policy and "helpfully" upgrades their service to business class.
I have no idea how popular such practices are somewhere else but atleast here in Finland you're perfectly safe and fine running your own servers. There's for example plenty of people running dedicated servers for their favorite games. Some ISPs filter certain incoming ports, like for example SSH, HTTP and HTTPS, but above a certain range they're all accessible. (Filtering SSH, HTTP and HTTPS isn't always fun, but I can certainly understand the idea behind that and thus I don't hold a grudge against those ISPs. Luckily my ISP doesn't do any filtering, though.)
Obviously, you are allowed to sign up for a business account if you wish, but really, running one or another type of a server at home is so popular that it'd just be a lot of extra work for ISPs to monitor for such and then try to get the customer to change their subscriptions.
I am curious though do they do that in some other parts of the world then?
But stop fucking using the term brick unless the device is incapable of powering on.
There are plenty of ways of bricking something and not being able to even power something on is only one of those. Like for example a gaming console: if you hit the power button and it goes on, but nothing else happens, then it clearly is bricked.
Basically bricked means the device no longer useable for the purposes it was actually originally made for and getting it to functional state requires tools not even a regular geek has at his or her disposal. It is not bricked if returning it to functional state is sufficiently doable, or if it doesn't do what you want it to do but still serves the purposes it was sold under.
Seriously, that's almost precisely why I've the same username all over place (amusingly, almost except /.) - so that people who know me on one might recognise me on another.
Indeed. If this is news then geesh, world's average IQ must have suddenly had a massive drop!
That broke it for me ...
I was a tad intrigued about Galaxy Tab 10.1 at first, seeing how it sports Honeycomb and a 10.1" screen, but yeah, not having a USB port killed my interest quite fast.
Indeed.
When TV was new there was similar ruckus about how TV causes immoral and aggressive behaviour, even so much as to inciting people to murder eachother. The same thing happened with comics, too. Hell, looking back at history the same thing happened even with radio!
The truth is, there has not been a single study that did clearly prove that the invention of video games caused a rise in violence when taking population growth into account.
That's a great way to compromise your case and get sanctioned by a Judge.
Anything that gets leaked from GeoHot's computers will effectively be blood on Sony's hands.
Of course they'll wait until the judge has ruled one way or another and the case is over. At that point the judge can't anymore change the outcome.
Since when the demandant can confiscate property of the person is accusing?
That's what struck me as seriously stupid and downright foul play, too. They shouldn't have any access to potential evidence, it should be inspected by a 3rd party who is in no conflict of interests, and that 3rd party should only give relevant data to Sony while leaving out all non-relevant. That's atleast how it'd be done here.
Knowing Sony they'll definitely try to plant something there AND will take backups of everything, absolutely everything, and then later on use the totally irrelevant pieces to try to deface Geohot. Hell, they'll just "leak" it to someone else who ain't working at Sony and who'll do the actual defacing all the while claiming their innocence.
Big corp. executive not happy with decline of prices, blames competitors.
Yes, if an NES game had a bug in it, you were busted, but overall games which couldn't be patched would be more thoroughly tested - too many game-killing bugs and sales would suffer, so there was incentive to get it right the first time.
Comparing a modern game to a NES game is unfair; not only are AIs a lot more advanced now but also maps, characters, storyline (if applicable) are a whole lot more complex. Not to mention the graphics engine itself! A NES game could be only 64Kb in size, including graphics, whereas you can't find any modern engine that small, not to mention a whole game. It's almost impossible to get a modern triple-A size game "right", there always sneaks a few bugs or quirks there.
Though, I do agree with you partially: there are some certain companies who don't even try to do any QA, they just slap the game together and ignore any bugs.
Even so, that doesn't excuse the excessive DRM on Bioshock, Mass Effect, and other single player only games for which cheating has no effect on other players.
Again, partially agreed: excessive DRM is excessive. I personally find Steam DRM quite close to perfect: it works well, you rarely get issues, and Steam actually offers a lot of benefits instead of just trying to restrict you. Too many companies resort to DRM solutions that work poorly, are really annoying, and do not give any benefits whatsoever for those who use the non-hacked version.
DLC is a cool idea in theory, but there's an inherent incentive to release a half-baked game at full price, while DLC becomes more and more plentiful to the point where it's a substantial portion of the game itself.
Some companies release some great DLC packs for their games after a while, sometimes even so great that the whole game is worth playing from the beginning again. But some companies just use DLCs to squeeze players of their money, like for example some games already have the whole damn DLC included on the installation media but the company never mentions it and after a few month they pretend they're releasing a "new" DLC for the game..
I mostly feel DLCs are still a good idea. I just wish we could actually trust the game companies behind them. Not going to happen, though!
Traditional console RPGs look more like MMOs now, games require patching and even have DRM
That is simply a product of improvements in technology: before if there was a serious bug or flaw in a console game there simply was nothing you could do about it, you just had to live with it. Now you can actually do something about it, patch things up and so on, and sometimes even provide an extra feature or two. DRM is a by-product of consoles being network-connected nowadays: the companies try to keep people from cheating in online games, and I can verily understand that. If you've ever seen for examples someone shooting through several walls in CS or something you know what I'm talking about. Then there is DLCs: it's a popular way nowadays for companies to squeeze just a few more quids out of gamers, and there simply is no way to make DLCs work without being able to have both patching and DRM.
I'm mostly saying that having the ability to patch games, even when it might sometimes annoy a little, is a big benefit over having no such ability at all, and that certain kinds of DRM is quite understandable.
a few quirks introduced by lazy companies that do lazy ports don't make "consolitis".
A few quirks, you say? Lately all the games I've played have clearly been designed with a console in mind, some of them though make the transition to PC fairly well -- a good example is Batman: Arkham Asylum. An absolutely awesome game, noticeably created for consoles but works totally well on PC too -- and some make the transition fairly poorly: I just recently played through Mass Effect 1 and that one is surely an example of the poor transition. Menus worked so-and-so, sometimes you had to use mouse button to use a button, sometimes space bar, sometimes enter, some things didn't even work at all. And since I like to have my back and forward buttons mapped to left and right mouse buttons I ran into problems when trying to use my armored vehicle: it's hardwired to shoot with the right mouse button. There was plenty of other issues too, too many to list them all here.
Just to put it shortly: many games designed for consoles have plenty of actions/keys completely hardwired and then when the game gets ported to PC those hardwired things are completely forgotten. Then you run into all kinds of illogical input issues, navigating menus is often a whole puzzle of its own and so on. It's not really what I would call "quirks" since those things often hamper playability and enjoyment quite a lot.
How about the rest of the relevant statistics? Ie. how many of those actually went to court, and in how many of those did the judge actually rule in benefit of the porn company? Just saying that 100,000 people got sued doesn't really tell enough.
I'm not too good with spreadsheets and I can't see such information in the article itself.
and given that we find it convenient to refer to past events that happen close enough as "now", we should say that the event has just occurred, instead of pretending that saying it happened 64 million years ago changes anything for us.
The same logic applies in the reverse too: referring to it as happened 64 million years ago changes nothing for us so it's pointless to pretend it's happening now.