Hmm, I have used DD-WRT for that many times, using Linksys WRT54GL routers. I have three of them at home... the main one has the Internet connection (cable) and does the DHCP assignments and NAT'ing etc. A cable runs upstairs to another one that acts as an ethernet switch and wireless access point. I have a third DD-WRT router running as a repeater bridge, to cover the rest of the house with WIFI. Nary a glitch... these routers have been running for years and literally go hundreds of days without a reboot (Well, the repeater bridge isn't on a UPS, so it gets hard booted when the power blinks out, or before we start the generator but that's not often)
I also do this for motels and lodges that are too cheap to buy proper equipment. WRT54GL routers, with DD-WRT. One of my favourite cases is a motel property that needed their network extended across the parking lot to their other building. It's a mickey mouse solution, but it works for them and only cost a few hundred dollars in parts and labour. A wireless repeater bridge across the parking lot (I upped the TX power a little on both routers) that has both ethernet switch ports (with another switch plugged into one of the ports that feeds the rooms) and wireless. The same SSID as the main network too and clients can roam. Nothing goes wrong with this setup unless someone messes with it. (Last time I was called there one of the routers had reverted back to defaults... someone used the reset button)
I'd investigate the laptop as the "hunk of junk". You could reboot the router to force a client to re-establish a wireless link, or deal with the client. It could also be a flaky router in the mix.
No, two wrongs do not make a right. However, it has been proven, with blackboards full of numbers with squiggly symbols and shit, that 2 wrongs squared, divided by the square root of 1 minus the universal gravitational constant, times the indefinite integral of fuck you, do.
Fuck that... I mow down civilians if they get in my way in any game. It's just a game and has nothing to do with real life behaviour. If I want to drive down the sidewalk and plow through people so be it. If a game wants me to mow down an airport full of people with a LMG, I will enjoy doing so.
Too bad I won't be buying Battlefield 3 to care about this one way or the other... I have never been overly pleased with any other games in that franchise.
I used to purchase games that had native Linux ports, even though they weren't open source/free. I am still able to play Unreal Tournament 2004 (64 bit even, by using the 64 bit binary provided by one of the patches, and compiling and dropping some libraries in its System directory). Doom 3 (and friends) and Quake 4 to this day still work out of the box for me (at whatever patch levels I'm at that added ALSA support etc. I mean)
So I'd say I've done pretty well with those game titles. It's a shame that things have changed for the worse, since then. I have long since resigned myself to keeping a Windows install just for games.
Moreover, I boycott all games from companies that do things like that. For example, I've got some nice games from Ubisoft (some of them among my favourites) but I stopped buying their games when they did that with Assassin's Creed 2. That's final... there's nothing Ubisoft can do to make me tolerate them again. (like Sony)
Steam, as a service, at least allows offline play, if your internet is down (provided you have already logged in online prior to that happening, and the games are "ready to play" which is usually the case in the event of occasional internet outage) but that Ubisoft model omits pieces of the game that have to be downloaded during play. (Yes, some titles are successfully cracked but it's a matter of principle for me)
Actually I am entitled to pass vehicles that are slowing me down and to do it safely and get back in my lane, I sometimes need to use my engine. Back in the day when cops weren't trained to be mindless, overbearing, money collecting tools of the state, they wouldn't have batted an eye for passing someone at 80 mph (the speed limits were higher too). In fact when stopped, you often just got a warning about excessive speed if you were passing. Police used to try to facilitate the flow of traffic.
Of course, you ignore the point. There are already laws on the books to deal with excessive speeding anyway. It's called "The Highway Traffic Act" here. The extrajudicial punishment is the problem, and the fact that a special provision, that was never intended to be used in this manner, is being abused. Just like the extrajudicial act of getting a registrar to shut down a site's domain will be.... as for the condescending physics lesson, you don't have to be a geek to have made it to grade 9. Or is that some sort of accomplishment in your circle? The mentality of "The law is the law" should merit a ribbon of some sort, so at least there's that.
Never mind changing motherboards... just try changing the mode of your SATA controller in bios settings (without doing registry changes before rebooting to change the bios setting). You'll be lucky if changing it BACK allows Windows to boot normally again without having broken itself. Windows Vista and Windows 7 are a regression in this respect, because they don't probe for storage controllers during boot anymore. (To shave a few precious seconds from the illusory fast startup times)
I shit you not... I had to redo a Vista installation because I changed to AHCI mode. Changing back to IDE mode (that the system was installed with) still resulted in endless blue screen reboots. I was livid. That kind of fragility is retarded.
That said, my own Linux kernel builds would not survive a hardware change at all because I disable everything I don't need. It would just fail to boot, or panic at worst and the remedy is simple though... boot with other media and jump start with the root= parameter and fix the kernel.
It's highly frowned upon by society, in western countries. The cops lobby for powers to be able to do it, and citizens frown when they are granted.
Examples: Where I live, they have this stupid "street racing" law that they have expanded to mean exceeding the speed limit by 50 km/h (regardless of circumstances), squealing tires, driving the wrong way to get out of traffic (e.g. motorcyclists getting charged for using part of a ramp or merging lane to sneak out of a traffic jam). The penalty is impounding the vehicle for one week, regardless of who owns it. (e.g. Dad, company vehicle, etc.) and criminal charges. These cases are mostly dismissed in court, yet the extrajudical punishment has already been administered. (Loss of possibly important vehicle for a week, and thousands of dollars in "fees" by the time you are done). Police were given "discretion", yet that translates into punish wherever possible.
So you get people being charged with this offense for ridiculous things like exceeding the speed limit by 50km/h in an 80 km/h zone (most of our highways have that ridiculous speed limit, even some divided spots) in order to safely pass a pack of idiots slowing down the whole highway. Putting this in perspective, that's only going 80 miles per hour (130 km/h). This is mostly how this law is applied. It's seldom used to catch "street racers" or "stunt drivers", it preys on ordinary people doing things that are not terribly unsafe, in the right circumstances. Judges lambaste the police for laying these charges, but they shamelessly proclaim that they are going to continue
Another example. Drinking and driving. The law here is 0.08 BAC, yet the police have been empowered to give road side suspensions and impound vehicles (You know it's just mean spirited when they do it regardless if there is someone else present to drive the vehicle or not) at 0.05. The law is 0.08, yet the police can punish you at 0.05 where it's not even an offense. The people who are "0.05 BAC" are not the problem, it's the drunks that need to be dealt with. Note: Any righteous twats who would admonish me for objecting to this, please fuck off in advance. I'm not advocating drunk driving, and it's not the point.
Arbitrarily shutting down sites to punish people is similar. It's going to be applied to punish people for copyright infringement while being sold for reasons of "thinking of the children" or "preventing terrorism" or "combating organized crime". It's also going to be used to silence people who interfere with agendas.
Police also do things to punish, like publicly announcing the names of "johns" (who haven't yet been or never will be convicted of anything) as well as accused pedophiles. (Innocent people have committed suicide because they couldn't live down the reputation after clearing their names)
Police can not be given broad powers of discretion, because they abuse them. They need to be kept on a very short, tight leash.
I wasn't going to pay any attention to that silliness, but I feel like saying that I use FTP all the time as well.
Not for server work (SSH protocols for that), but I use FTP between computers here. It's a fast and reliable way to transfer data. If it's a lot of small files I tar it up first though. (I would always want to archive that kind of stuff for any method of data transfer, though)
I still use FTP clients to download stuff where I can too. (e.g. kernel and other source tarballs, distro mirrors for ISOs etc.)
I don't want FTP to go away. However, I don't think that's got anything to do with the premise of the article... it's just used as an example of the "evolution" he's talking about. It's got nothing to do with the "middle protocols" in question, it's one of the application protocols and I doubt it's going anywhere. Reliable resuming of transfers (by inserting markers in the data stream) means less wasted bandwidth.
I'm not terribly familiar with calendar apps, but Evolution is probably the best known choice. (It tries to be like "Microsoft Outlook" and probably would fit in rather well for people used to MSOffice)
Yes, and you don't treat your employees like children. Just leave them alone and the good ones will get their work done. The ones that aren't productive, are the ones you need to deal with. Get rid of them if they don't respond to a friendly reminder. Never mind penalizing everyone with rules because a few can't handle responsibility. If people have to be repeatedly told that they are supposed to get work done on company time, what the fuck good are they?
Yes, Microsoft's stranglehold has a lot of momentum that's not easy to overcome. Also, in any organization there's always someone who fears change, and fights to keep the status quo. There are also people susceptible to the manipulations of consultants and solution providers. The well funded FUD campaigns from Microsoft, work on people too.
I'm sure anyone who's put Linux on people's computers has run into problems with some, as soon as they talk to their smarty pants daughter or someone who tell them they must have "Genuine Microsoft Windows" or some such shit. People can't get any help from their friends when they don't use Windows. It's like that with Apple computers around here too.
There's a whole world out there, away from Microsoft. It's true that if people get used to a lot of the same apps on Windows that we use, it will be easy to transition them to a better environment. (Firefox, Open or LibreOffice, Gimp, Mplayer front ends that blow that stupid Windows Media Player back to the sulphurous, farting pit it came from etc.)
I have often told clients replacing their computers, only to find a trial of a horrid new version of MS Office, that "You'll find OpenOffice to be more like Microsoft Office than Microsoft Office is these days" (I use LibreOffice in place of it now, but the same thing can be said)
These aren't people locked into features of Microsoft Office, they are just ordinary people with ordinary documents and spreadsheets who like ordinary menus that give them access to ordinary application features at the top of their program. For people who send.doc and.xls to other people, I set the program to save in MSOffice 97/2000/XP format by default. (That's not exactly doing the world any favours, but I do want their files to be correctly readable by everyone, including the many users of older MSOffice versions. I know lots of people still using Office 2000.)
That's how I play Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, I keep coming back to them. I'll go on a kick for a month or so, then leave it alone for a while. Lots of "chores" to do in those games and I could do without some of that, but those games are good dollar value.
I play single player games, and seldom the multiplayer component (not at all these days) so when I buy a title for $50 to $60 and it's got a short campaign, I'm pissed. For example Medal of Honour had a beautiful campaign, great mountain scenery set in Afghanistan and the shooting was good. I was enjoying it... and I was looking forward to getting back to it on the second night. Little did I know, I was on the last legs of the campaign, and the game was over 20 minutes later. That was a rip off. I've gone back and replayed a few scenes, but I'm pretty much done with it.
You guys are probably right and I'm full of shit, but people can be pretty dense. For example, I personally know someone who mistook Fallout New Vegas for a new Rainbow 6 Vegas game. He's not very ambulatory and he got his housemate, who only plays a few games like golf and GTAIV, pick it up for him at EB games when he heard about it. It got all the way in the Xbox before they realized it "WTF???" lol. OK, that's quite silly and I laughed and chided them for it, but when they took it back to EB games for trade in, the employee said they weren't the only ones who made that mistake. (In a town of about 20,000. I can only shake my head.)
When I think of Bethesda, I think of Fallout as those are the only games I've had from that company, but I've heard people speak of "Elder Scrolls" (Oblivion at the time). To me those two words go together and I would not be confused by Scrolls. Elder is the more significant word in that title. I've not played the game but knowing nothing about it, it gave me a vision of some white haired, bearded old man poring over ancient text whenever I heard it. I haven't tried it because it's not really my kind of game.
(I have since looked into those games and I realize it's not about scrolls, whereas Scrolls actually is, for actuating spells)
(I didn't realize it would be in Sweden... it could be quite different. All bets are off)
But I was more thinking of:
6) Judge sternly rules to stop using the name Scrolls, and (not necessarily because) he doesn't like the court's time being wasted with frivolity. If he's willing to give up the name over the outcome of a video game, just give it up. I highly doubt the judge would identify with the chivalry and nobody is going to take that challenge seriously. It would be legally foolish for anyone on the complaining side to take it. Company executives would not allow that.
As for the actual name, I don't think it's too much of a stretch in the USA at least, for it to be associated with Zenimax/Bethesda's product. Disagree? I guess then, Windows is also too short to trademark since it has the same number of letters, and is also a common item. Try making even an unrelated software product named that. There's a reason they call it the X Window System, and not "X Windows" like we used to say back in the 90's. Or, let's see Pella make a slide show of their inventory and call it "The Windows Screensaver".
I was thinking of making a new game, it's a chess game. I think I'll call it Unbelievable Tournament. Surely, the word tournament should be safe? (Activision would of course crawl right up my ass and use my balls for a punching bag)
I'll bet that if I made an arena type shooter just named "Tournament" that they would do the same thing and they've got lots of money to use, to demonstrate how wrong I am. This is how these kinds of assholes think, and it's pretty sick.
Database software, and a web browser. Both were named Firebird, which is quite a common name for everything from mythological beasts, to cars. They don't have anything to do with each other except that they are both software. Someone had to change the name of their web browser so it didn't confuse those poor database users. (No, it didn't go to court either but the lawyers probably advised to change the name because of what would happen)
But really, I think Confusador (comment #37125280 above) is probably right, as are others saying similar things. He already knows he's going to give up the name and is having a bit of fun and publicity. (Good for him. Lots of respect for that, being a good sport about it)
I don't think this is squatting in any way, I just used that as an example. The point is, he's just demonstrated that he's willing to change it over something arbitrary. (like payment of money in my examples, or in this case a blog post requesting a video game duel)
It's not "This is my brand and I'm going to defend it from Bethesda" anymore. Now it's, "I'd be willing to change it in exchange for..." I think the challenge was a dumb thing to do, for that reason.
Also note that doesn't mean I personally agree with that stance, it's just how I think the courts are going to react. I'd rather be wrong and see the bullies lose.
If serious, he just screwed himself out of using the contested name. He just expressed his willingness to change it. So now, a judge knows that it's not crucial to the project to keep the name, if he would frivolously agree to changing it over the outcome of a video game match.
It's like this. Big bad greedy company wants your name, or your domain, or wants you to stop using it because it infringes on their trademark, or "dilutes their brand" or whatever buzzwords they use. You say you will change it if they pay you a million dollars. You probably just screwed yourself in court if they refuse, because it makes you look like a squatter.
Remember MikeRoweSoft.com? He might have had a leg to stand on because it was his name, and he was a software developer, but as soon as he attempted to extort money from Microsoft, his prospects of winning were shot. (If I recall correctly, he settled for some free gifts from MS)
I haven't bought one article of porn since about 1993. No magazines, (news stand or sex shop style) no movies or movie rentals. I wouldn't pay for porn on the Internet either. There's always more than enough smut to look at.
Those assfucks at Comcrap and Time Waster are just starting to whine about this phenomenon now?
Well, since when does Microsoft follow Microsoft's guidelines? Windows Live Mail did prompt to save the message, for about half a second before Windows rebooted.
I just did read what you said, and I would say those are pretty onerous recommendations (automatically saving and restoring state data) just to accommodate a flawed update system.. Unlikely to be followed and certainly not by Microsoft. For the Firefox example, a browser can save your tabs and stuff but let's see it save the contents of whatever form you were composing. (text fields, radio boxes etc.)
Whoops... good thing I pasted my text first, because I would have lost this post. I had to come back here and click reply, anew. The empty form wasn't even here.
I was giving a lesson (something I don't like doing but there's a genuine need for it around here) to a geezer on composing emails and Windows Update shut us down in the middle of it. I was concentrating on what he was doing and somehow missed the warning (it certainly wasn't in focus), and all we saw was a prompt to save the message being composed, and it went away too quickly and the PC rebooted. ("ding") The old boy was a real laborious typer too and he lost his message.
It's not the application that is defective, but Microsoft's procedures and policies.
This isn't Unix, and processes don't inherently save their data when they suddenly get a polite signal to terminate. (high level applications generally don't save user documents on termination without prompting anyway)
Not to mention, with the way they criminalize people in America, a significant portion of the population there is ineligible to vote. The conditions vary by state, as do procedures for reinstatement (some make it difficult due to ambiguity), but they generally don't allow people with criminal records to vote. In some states, it doesn't even have to be a felony conviction.
It's deliberate "disenfranchisement" and it's a nice way of fixing things so that people who run afoul of the current system never get to vote for change.
Even games with token multiplayer like Dead Space 2 have that code on it nowadays.
How many bites of the cherry do they want? One game goes through enough hands, it would have earnt more from multiplayer tokens then the original first hand cost of the game. Where is the outcry?
Coincidently, I just got bitten by that with DeadSpace 2 a few weeks ago and it affects the single player game too.
I love those DeadSpace games on my PC, so I bought a used copy of DeadSpace 2 for XBox 360 to bring over to my friend's place. It was $32 or some such, not even close to free. (so there's no "whatdyer expect for $10" factor)
We don't give a rat's ass about multiplayer for that game (I can imagine it would be rather pointless), but this unlock code also affected what items were available in the game (at the Store). I didn't realize that I had all that stuff available on my PC (game bought through Steam), because it was unlocked. So because we didn't have this code (tied to the original purchaser's xbox account, so it couldn't have been given by the seller) we spent a good portion of the game having to scrounge for weapons and ammo until schematics were collected to make them available.
They changed the single player game, because we bought it used. Yes, it does change the game when you don't have stuff. It only succeeded in pissing me off, it didn't get them any money. We just played through the first round like that, to unlock "newgame +" to start off with items available.
I'd like to say I'll never buy another game from those creeps, but EA has their hands in so many pies that it would be difficult to avoid them.
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Hmm, I have used DD-WRT for that many times, using Linksys WRT54GL routers. I have three of them at home... the main one has the Internet connection (cable) and does the DHCP assignments and NAT'ing etc. A cable runs upstairs to another one that acts as an ethernet switch and wireless access point. I have a third DD-WRT router running as a repeater bridge, to cover the rest of the house with WIFI. Nary a glitch... these routers have been running for years and literally go hundreds of days without a reboot (Well, the repeater bridge isn't on a UPS, so it gets hard booted when the power blinks out, or before we start the generator but that's not often)
I also do this for motels and lodges that are too cheap to buy proper equipment. WRT54GL routers, with DD-WRT. One of my favourite cases is a motel property that needed their network extended across the parking lot to their other building. It's a mickey mouse solution, but it works for them and only cost a few hundred dollars in parts and labour. A wireless repeater bridge across the parking lot (I upped the TX power a little on both routers) that has both ethernet switch ports (with another switch plugged into one of the ports that feeds the rooms) and wireless. The same SSID as the main network too and clients can roam. Nothing goes wrong with this setup unless someone messes with it. (Last time I was called there one of the routers had reverted back to defaults... someone used the reset button)
I'd investigate the laptop as the "hunk of junk". You could reboot the router to force a client to re-establish a wireless link, or deal with the client. It could also be a flaky router in the mix.
No, two wrongs do not make a right. However, it has been proven, with blackboards full of numbers with squiggly symbols and shit, that 2 wrongs squared, divided by the square root of 1 minus the universal gravitational constant, times the indefinite integral of fuck you, do.
Fuck that... I mow down civilians if they get in my way in any game. It's just a game and has nothing to do with real life behaviour. If I want to drive down the sidewalk and plow through people so be it. If a game wants me to mow down an airport full of people with a LMG, I will enjoy doing so.
Too bad I won't be buying Battlefield 3 to care about this one way or the other... I have never been overly pleased with any other games in that franchise.
I still have all the tapes I recorded from when TNG was on TV in the 80's. (I'm sure they are horribly degraded, but I still have them in a box lol)
That means I can format shift to .avi or .mkv :-)
I used to purchase games that had native Linux ports, even though they weren't open source/free. I am still able to play Unreal Tournament 2004 (64 bit even, by using the 64 bit binary provided by one of the patches, and compiling and dropping some libraries in its System directory). Doom 3 (and friends) and Quake 4 to this day still work out of the box for me (at whatever patch levels I'm at that added ALSA support etc. I mean)
So I'd say I've done pretty well with those game titles. It's a shame that things have changed for the worse, since then. I have long since resigned myself to keeping a Windows install just for games.
Moreover, I boycott all games from companies that do things like that. For example, I've got some nice games from Ubisoft (some of them among my favourites) but I stopped buying their games when they did that with Assassin's Creed 2. That's final... there's nothing Ubisoft can do to make me tolerate them again. (like Sony)
Steam, as a service, at least allows offline play, if your internet is down (provided you have already logged in online prior to that happening, and the games are "ready to play" which is usually the case in the event of occasional internet outage) but that Ubisoft model omits pieces of the game that have to be downloaded during play. (Yes, some titles are successfully cracked but it's a matter of principle for me)
Actually I am entitled to pass vehicles that are slowing me down and to do it safely and get back in my lane, I sometimes need to use my engine. Back in the day when cops weren't trained to be mindless, overbearing, money collecting tools of the state, they wouldn't have batted an eye for passing someone at 80 mph (the speed limits were higher too). In fact when stopped, you often just got a warning about excessive speed if you were passing. Police used to try to facilitate the flow of traffic.
Of course, you ignore the point. There are already laws on the books to deal with excessive speeding anyway. It's called "The Highway Traffic Act" here. The extrajudicial punishment is the problem, and the fact that a special provision, that was never intended to be used in this manner, is being abused. Just like the extrajudicial act of getting a registrar to shut down a site's domain will be. ... as for the condescending physics lesson, you don't have to be a geek to have made it to grade 9. Or is that some sort of accomplishment in your circle? The mentality of "The law is the law" should merit a ribbon of some sort, so at least there's that.
Never mind changing motherboards... just try changing the mode of your SATA controller in bios settings (without doing registry changes before rebooting to change the bios setting). You'll be lucky if changing it BACK allows Windows to boot normally again without having broken itself. Windows Vista and Windows 7 are a regression in this respect, because they don't probe for storage controllers during boot anymore. (To shave a few precious seconds from the illusory fast startup times)
I shit you not... I had to redo a Vista installation because I changed to AHCI mode. Changing back to IDE mode (that the system was installed with) still resulted in endless blue screen reboots. I was livid. That kind of fragility is retarded.
That said, my own Linux kernel builds would not survive a hardware change at all because I disable everything I don't need. It would just fail to boot, or panic at worst and the remedy is simple though... boot with other media and jump start with the root= parameter and fix the kernel.
It's highly frowned upon by society, in western countries. The cops lobby for powers to be able to do it, and citizens frown when they are granted.
Examples: Where I live, they have this stupid "street racing" law that they have expanded to mean exceeding the speed limit by 50 km/h (regardless of circumstances), squealing tires, driving the wrong way to get out of traffic (e.g. motorcyclists getting charged for using part of a ramp or merging lane to sneak out of a traffic jam). The penalty is impounding the vehicle for one week, regardless of who owns it. (e.g. Dad, company vehicle, etc.) and criminal charges. These cases are mostly dismissed in court, yet the extrajudical punishment has already been administered. (Loss of possibly important vehicle for a week, and thousands of dollars in "fees" by the time you are done). Police were given "discretion", yet that translates into punish wherever possible.
So you get people being charged with this offense for ridiculous things like exceeding the speed limit by 50km/h in an 80 km/h zone (most of our highways have that ridiculous speed limit, even some divided spots) in order to safely pass a pack of idiots slowing down the whole highway. Putting this in perspective, that's only going 80 miles per hour (130 km/h). This is mostly how this law is applied. It's seldom used to catch "street racers" or "stunt drivers", it preys on ordinary people doing things that are not terribly unsafe, in the right circumstances. Judges lambaste the police for laying these charges, but they shamelessly proclaim that they are going to continue
Another example. Drinking and driving. The law here is 0.08 BAC, yet the police have been empowered to give road side suspensions and impound vehicles (You know it's just mean spirited when they do it regardless if there is someone else present to drive the vehicle or not) at 0.05. The law is 0.08, yet the police can punish you at 0.05 where it's not even an offense. The people who are "0.05 BAC" are not the problem, it's the drunks that need to be dealt with. Note: Any righteous twats who would admonish me for objecting to this, please fuck off in advance. I'm not advocating drunk driving, and it's not the point.
Arbitrarily shutting down sites to punish people is similar. It's going to be applied to punish people for copyright infringement while being sold for reasons of "thinking of the children" or "preventing terrorism" or "combating organized crime". It's also going to be used to silence people who interfere with agendas.
Police also do things to punish, like publicly announcing the names of "johns" (who haven't yet been or never will be convicted of anything) as well as accused pedophiles. (Innocent people have committed suicide because they couldn't live down the reputation after clearing their names)
Police can not be given broad powers of discretion, because they abuse them. They need to be kept on a very short, tight leash.
I wasn't going to pay any attention to that silliness, but I feel like saying that I use FTP all the time as well.
Not for server work (SSH protocols for that), but I use FTP between computers here. It's a fast and reliable way to transfer data. If it's a lot of small files I tar it up first though. (I would always want to archive that kind of stuff for any method of data transfer, though)
I still use FTP clients to download stuff where I can too. (e.g. kernel and other source tarballs, distro mirrors for ISOs etc.)
I don't want FTP to go away. However, I don't think that's got anything to do with the premise of the article... it's just used as an example of the "evolution" he's talking about. It's got nothing to do with the "middle protocols" in question, it's one of the application protocols and I doubt it's going anywhere. Reliable resuming of transfers (by inserting markers in the data stream) means less wasted bandwidth.
I'm not terribly familiar with calendar apps, but Evolution is probably the best known choice. (It tries to be like "Microsoft Outlook" and probably would fit in rather well for people used to MSOffice)
http://library.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/usage-calendar.html.en
There's also Mozilla calendar apps to look at. (e.g. Mozilla Sunbird, or the new calendar app that comes with Thunderbird)
I'm sorry I can't give you any specific advice.
Yes, and you don't treat your employees like children. Just leave them alone and the good ones will get their work done. The ones that aren't productive, are the ones you need to deal with. Get rid of them if they don't respond to a friendly reminder. Never mind penalizing everyone with rules because a few can't handle responsibility. If people have to be repeatedly told that they are supposed to get work done on company time, what the fuck good are they?
Yes, Microsoft's stranglehold has a lot of momentum that's not easy to overcome. Also, in any organization there's always someone who fears change, and fights to keep the status quo. There are also people susceptible to the manipulations of consultants and solution providers. The well funded FUD campaigns from Microsoft, work on people too.
I'm sure anyone who's put Linux on people's computers has run into problems with some, as soon as they talk to their smarty pants daughter or someone who tell them they must have "Genuine Microsoft Windows" or some such shit. People can't get any help from their friends when they don't use Windows. It's like that with Apple computers around here too.
There's a whole world out there, away from Microsoft. It's true that if people get used to a lot of the same apps on Windows that we use, it will be easy to transition them to a better environment. (Firefox, Open or LibreOffice, Gimp, Mplayer front ends that blow that stupid Windows Media Player back to the sulphurous, farting pit it came from etc.)
Good luck with your plan :-)
I have often told clients replacing their computers, only to find a trial of a horrid new version of MS Office, that "You'll find OpenOffice to be more like Microsoft Office than Microsoft Office is these days" (I use LibreOffice in place of it now, but the same thing can be said)
These aren't people locked into features of Microsoft Office, they are just ordinary people with ordinary documents and spreadsheets who like ordinary menus that give them access to ordinary application features at the top of their program. For people who send .doc and .xls to other people, I set the program to save in MSOffice 97/2000/XP format by default. (That's not exactly doing the world any favours, but I do want their files to be correctly readable by everyone, including the many users of older MSOffice versions. I know lots of people still using Office 2000.)
That's how I play Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, I keep coming back to them. I'll go on a kick for a month or so, then leave it alone for a while. Lots of "chores" to do in those games and I could do without some of that, but those games are good dollar value.
I play single player games, and seldom the multiplayer component (not at all these days) so when I buy a title for $50 to $60 and it's got a short campaign, I'm pissed. For example Medal of Honour had a beautiful campaign, great mountain scenery set in Afghanistan and the shooting was good. I was enjoying it... and I was looking forward to getting back to it on the second night. Little did I know, I was on the last legs of the campaign, and the game was over 20 minutes later. That was a rip off. I've gone back and replayed a few scenes, but I'm pretty much done with it.
You guys are probably right and I'm full of shit, but people can be pretty dense. For example, I personally know someone who mistook Fallout New Vegas for a new Rainbow 6 Vegas game. He's not very ambulatory and he got his housemate, who only plays a few games like golf and GTAIV, pick it up for him at EB games when he heard about it. It got all the way in the Xbox before they realized it "WTF???" lol. OK, that's quite silly and I laughed and chided them for it, but when they took it back to EB games for trade in, the employee said they weren't the only ones who made that mistake. (In a town of about 20,000. I can only shake my head.)
When I think of Bethesda, I think of Fallout as those are the only games I've had from that company, but I've heard people speak of "Elder Scrolls" (Oblivion at the time). To me those two words go together and I would not be confused by Scrolls. Elder is the more significant word in that title. I've not played the game but knowing nothing about it, it gave me a vision of some white haired, bearded old man poring over ancient text whenever I heard it. I haven't tried it because it's not really my kind of game.
(I have since looked into those games and I realize it's not about scrolls, whereas Scrolls actually is, for actuating spells)
(I didn't realize it would be in Sweden... it could be quite different. All bets are off)
But I was more thinking of:
6) Judge sternly rules to stop using the name Scrolls, and (not necessarily because) he doesn't like the court's time being wasted with frivolity. If he's willing to give up the name over the outcome of a video game, just give it up. I highly doubt the judge would identify with the chivalry and nobody is going to take that challenge seriously. It would be legally foolish for anyone on the complaining side to take it. Company executives would not allow that.
As for the actual name, I don't think it's too much of a stretch in the USA at least, for it to be associated with Zenimax/Bethesda's product. Disagree? I guess then, Windows is also too short to trademark since it has the same number of letters, and is also a common item. Try making even an unrelated software product named that. There's a reason they call it the X Window System, and not "X Windows" like we used to say back in the 90's. Or, let's see Pella make a slide show of their inventory and call it "The Windows Screensaver".
I was thinking of making a new game, it's a chess game. I think I'll call it Unbelievable Tournament. Surely, the word tournament should be safe? (Activision would of course crawl right up my ass and use my balls for a punching bag)
I'll bet that if I made an arena type shooter just named "Tournament" that they would do the same thing and they've got lots of money to use, to demonstrate how wrong I am. This is how these kinds of assholes think, and it's pretty sick.
Database software, and a web browser. Both were named Firebird, which is quite a common name for everything from mythological beasts, to cars. They don't have anything to do with each other except that they are both software. Someone had to change the name of their web browser so it didn't confuse those poor database users. (No, it didn't go to court either but the lawyers probably advised to change the name because of what would happen)
But really, I think Confusador (comment #37125280 above) is probably right, as are others saying similar things. He already knows he's going to give up the name and is having a bit of fun and publicity. (Good for him. Lots of respect for that, being a good sport about it)
We'll probably never know.
I don't think this is squatting in any way, I just used that as an example. The point is, he's just demonstrated that he's willing to change it over something arbitrary. (like payment of money in my examples, or in this case a blog post requesting a video game duel)
It's not "This is my brand and I'm going to defend it from Bethesda" anymore. Now it's, "I'd be willing to change it in exchange for..." I think the challenge was a dumb thing to do, for that reason.
Also note that doesn't mean I personally agree with that stance, it's just how I think the courts are going to react. I'd rather be wrong and see the bullies lose.
If serious, he just screwed himself out of using the contested name. He just expressed his willingness to change it. So now, a judge knows that it's not crucial to the project to keep the name, if he would frivolously agree to changing it over the outcome of a video game match.
It's like this. Big bad greedy company wants your name, or your domain, or wants you to stop using it because it infringes on their trademark, or "dilutes their brand" or whatever buzzwords they use. You say you will change it if they pay you a million dollars. You probably just screwed yourself in court if they refuse, because it makes you look like a squatter.
Remember MikeRoweSoft.com? He might have had a leg to stand on because it was his name, and he was a software developer, but as soon as he attempted to extort money from Microsoft, his prospects of winning were shot. (If I recall correctly, he settled for some free gifts from MS)
But yeah, free publicity, anyway.
Sponsored by those bastards making big money from the petroleum industry, even.
I haven't bought one article of porn since about 1993. No magazines, (news stand or sex shop style) no movies or movie rentals. I wouldn't pay for porn on the Internet either. There's always more than enough smut to look at.
Those assfucks at Comcrap and Time Waster are just starting to whine about this phenomenon now?
Well, since when does Microsoft follow Microsoft's guidelines? Windows Live Mail did prompt to save the message, for about half a second before Windows rebooted.
I just did read what you said, and I would say those are pretty onerous recommendations (automatically saving and restoring state data) just to accommodate a flawed update system.. Unlikely to be followed and certainly not by Microsoft. For the Firefox example, a browser can save your tabs and stuff but let's see it save the contents of whatever form you were composing. (text fields, radio boxes etc.)
Whoops... good thing I pasted my text first, because I would have lost this post. I had to come back here and click reply, anew. The empty form wasn't even here.
I was giving a lesson (something I don't like doing but there's a genuine need for it around here) to a geezer on composing emails and Windows Update shut us down in the middle of it. I was concentrating on what he was doing and somehow missed the warning (it certainly wasn't in focus), and all we saw was a prompt to save the message being composed, and it went away too quickly and the PC rebooted. ("ding") The old boy was a real laborious typer too and he lost his message.
It's not the application that is defective, but Microsoft's procedures and policies.
This isn't Unix, and processes don't inherently save their data when they suddenly get a polite signal to terminate. (high level applications generally don't save user documents on termination without prompting anyway)
Automatic updates get turned off.
Not to mention, with the way they criminalize people in America, a significant portion of the population there is ineligible to vote. The conditions vary by state, as do procedures for reinstatement (some make it difficult due to ambiguity), but they generally don't allow people with criminal records to vote. In some states, it doesn't even have to be a felony conviction.
It's deliberate "disenfranchisement" and it's a nice way of fixing things so that people who run afoul of the current system never get to vote for change.
Even games with token multiplayer like Dead Space 2 have that code on it nowadays.
How many bites of the cherry do they want? One game goes through enough hands, it would have earnt more from multiplayer tokens then the original first hand cost of the game. Where is the outcry?
Coincidently, I just got bitten by that with DeadSpace 2 a few weeks ago and it affects the single player game too.
I love those DeadSpace games on my PC, so I bought a used copy of DeadSpace 2 for XBox 360 to bring over to my friend's place. It was $32 or some such, not even close to free. (so there's no "whatdyer expect for $10" factor)
We don't give a rat's ass about multiplayer for that game (I can imagine it would be rather pointless), but this unlock code also affected what items were available in the game (at the Store). I didn't realize that I had all that stuff available on my PC (game bought through Steam), because it was unlocked. So because we didn't have this code (tied to the original purchaser's xbox account, so it couldn't have been given by the seller) we spent a good portion of the game having to scrounge for weapons and ammo until schematics were collected to make them available.
They changed the single player game, because we bought it used. Yes, it does change the game when you don't have stuff. It only succeeded in pissing me off, it didn't get them any money. We just played through the first round like that, to unlock "newgame +" to start off with items available.
I'd like to say I'll never buy another game from those creeps, but EA has their hands in so many pies that it would be difficult to avoid them.