Seriously. If he just laid low for a while, people would start to forget about him. If he keeps spamming the courts whenever a new game comes out, he'll just dig himself deeper and deeper into the hole where his credibility used to be.
KEEP 'EM COMIN' JACK! WHAT? BEJEWELLED TEACHES KIDS TO BECOME JEWEL THIEVES? BRILLIANT! TAKE IT TO THE SUPREME COURT! GOOD LUCK TO YA!...fool. XD
Now if they did it the opposite way - making it easier when you're stressed, and harder when you're relaxed, it would actually make for a stess-busting fun game that's conducive to flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology).
As it is, it just lurks in wait to stress you out a bit, then spiral into unplayability - unless of course you don't care about the game whatsoever, in which case you shouldn't be playing.
First of all, I am not generalizing but it this post is rather one-sided so read critically and literally.
Of friends and family and IT, what I've heard sounds like women in the industry were more interested in making themselves look "good enough" even if it means backstabbing coworkers and playing political power games over doing their actual jobs. My father, a systems analyst, recently did a contract where a few female engineers basically played social-political office games to undermine the project leaders and circumvent them until they ultimately had a small circle of only women who would discriminate almost openly against male team members and rule autocratically from their tight social circle... then the project bombed because they'd alienated the only people with the needed experience and those who had been ignored simply left the sinking ship.
In my own limited experience, the women in my department are respectively: 1. Totally efficient and eager to work. Cheerful, model employee. 2. Constant complaints and loud emotional tantrums in an otherwise quiet shared office. Needs a ton of non-work comfort items that clutter an already nigh-unnavigable space. Has more "junk" than we have equipment in the department. 3. Unable to get anything right even if written out explicitly down to model and serial numbers. 4, 5. Totally normal great employees.
That said of professional ability, they're all great people personally, but my company just seems blessed that way....of course, every person is different and you can't judge an entire group - but I would be more interested to see what kind of experience the "geeks" involved had beforehand. It could just be that they had a few rare but bad experiences and generalized?
...and this is why MS didn't want to get into using GPL'ed code - apart from having to open their own up for scrutiny. They don't like to legally prostrate themselves, so they decided to stay the hell away. (Unless they've gone back to it now or something? They're also fickle, haha...)
Seriously, I wonder if he has massive ulcers and nervous conditions. Everything I've read by him has been about ominous, bleak, oppressive violations of people's rights. It's like Kafka writing for Wired magazine......which is not to say he isn't good at writing, just a little predictable. Ok, a lot predictable.
Long ago I found it was secure enough for me to use on my own main PC, provided I was the only user, and it was behind a router. I'd still call them the laughing stock of the security industry though, but with a little tweaking I could lock down anything I needed to.
Now... I'd say they aren't the worst, but I don't know who is... They're certainly moving up even if slowly, and I wouldn't call them a laughing stock anymore......but I would still take every precaution I did before, with the exception of a 24/7 software firewall, which I don't run simply because my router is doing such a good job of filtering, and the last virus/trojan I had was in the 1990s.
When I first shaved my head I could acutely feel temperature and airflow shifts in a room, but eventually I just got used to it. In the dark, I can crudely use accoustics to avoid bumping into things about the size of a basketball and up. Like others have posted, we have some of these abilities already. That said, if I could wear the headband without looking geeky, I'd go for it. Why not fill up a ball cap with sensory equipment instead of just trying to get the embriodery to stick out a half inch?
I live in Alberta and while I pay about $7/mo to use my Rogers phone, I can leave it turned on and wander all over the country and not be gouged for roaming fees by little roadside bandit carriers. I've heard this is a big problem particularly in southern states - drive a highway for a few hours, forget to shut off your cel, and get a $100 phone bill!
Only recently have things moved away from being a few-carrier monopoly - now there are a half dozen or so. Some things are pretty stupid, but overall I'm happy with Canadian cel provider practices. They should however include the access fee in the price of the plan as doing otherwise is bait & switch, possibly even false advertising. (What, am I going to sign up for the plan and NOT use their network? WTF?)
Keen thought. I was thinking it would be about time to order some stuff from the USA that I'd put off, but I'm going to have to keep an eye open for things like books that have two fixed prices - so long as it's not something like vehicles that gets taxed so hard in Canada to cancel out any saving.
I always get a chuckle out of video game magazines with demo discs - like I'm going to pay $15 for a monthly newsrag and some demos, haha...
Also not coincidentally, these have been two nations I refuse to set foot in for even an hour for the last several years. Times change, and these are not the old friends we once knew. The people are fine, but their governments are dog mad and cannot be trusted to act ethically, or even not violate international law on a hunch. Not for me, thanks.
What is it with electric drag racers? They're all about convincing people that their machines are more powerful than the gas counterparts, but so often they ignore basic safety procedures. That is defnitely a drag bike - it looks longer than an extended Hayabusa or the MTT Y2K Superbike. Actually it has to be the longest racing-faired bike I've seen including dragsters. Too bad burnouts waste and suck - I'd be more impressed if he had a traction control system that delivered optimal power without spinning the wheel or lifting the front.
But anyway, I have a bike with 51hp... 51! That was hot in the 1980s, but modern bikes can do 120-200 stock. My bike has more than enough acceleration and speed to kill someone in seconds. What makes this guy think he can burnout a high power electric monster with absolutely no gear on? One slip and... well - that. Live and learn, I hope.
Easier than purchase? Forget buying shows online, grabbing a torrent is easier than watching the shows on TV! I have a digital satellite receiver (100% legit and paid for) and I rarely bother to watch TV on it - if I like a show, the networks will shift the time around without warning and I end up missing half of it, or I get a garbled episode when there's a really bad thunderstorm....so I grab a torrent of a season at a time, watch it whenever I want, wherever I want, on any device I want, and I have more than a few that play video on the go. On my TV (which is used as a PC monitor) the downloads often look sharper if more compression artifacts because my satellite box only has composite outputs. Most of them I don't pay for other than satellite bills. Some of them I do. I just watched 90% of the first season of Dexter after grabbing it to see what it's like - after work today I'll probably run out and buy the DVD set I saw in the store a couple weeks ago that made me think of it.
The TV networks, like record labels, just need to chill out a bit, keep an eye on their IPs but not enforce them with thuggish tactics. (heh... I got busted for downloading Battlestar Galactica once... a coworker was busted for KNIGHT RIDER! Gimme a break!)
The sad thing is that if they offered legal free torrents and included a sponsor pack or something that would give them money per view, I'd watch a few ads to show my support. However when I buy the DVD I'm sure it'll force me to sit through 5 minutes of crap every time I watch it, so I'll just circumvent it and say to hell with them... hahaha
Whatever you go for, say a serial number, make it absolutely integral to the function of the program - don't bolt it on at the end. That way if something circumvents it, it's still broken. Perhaps make some controls on the main window manifest through a mathematical equasion on the serial. After that I shouldn't have to say this, but - make absolutely certain it works reliably.
I hate programs that phone home, but if you just activate it online - no - if you just REPORT its activation online so you can keep tabs on it, I would not mind OS version, IP address, program version, and a timestamp. That way the program will not break if it cannot get a license from an online source, but if lots of people start using the same serial, you will know and can trace it back to the first user with some degree of success.
The modern move (Securom, Adobe, Windows) to requiring online registration to work, and in some cases using up a finite number of activations is totally wrong. Secure, yes. Good for the user? I think most of the time it just blows up for legitamite users. True pirates will find a way around it if they want it badly enough, and it's important of course not to catch the valid users in the crossfire in the war on piracy.
Then again, also consider what you're protecting and how much effort is required. I've seen programs with nice elaborate systems that are small $20 shareware apps that probably didn't warrant that kind of defense or rather the time and effort to implement it.
It's not even Skype's fault really... they support URLs. I guess some would say it's MS' fault because they allow malicious code to run. Personally I think trying to hold them accountable for that kind of thing just makes subsequent versions of Windows even more restricted and unusable without properly "breaking them in.":/
...and they can have my data cable when they pry it from my cold dead hands! pfft... paying to upload a 30 sec audio clip to my phone? Give me a break! I have a computer, I'll do it myself!
I have very very good luck with Windows - I grew up using MS-DOS and kind of kept up to date as things rolled out so I know enough ins and outs to keep it running well.
Generally my installations are conflict-free, fast, stable (OS crashing... doesn't happen. Period. The odd app dies time to time.) no viruses, no exploits, etc... I had a trojan about ten years ago but that was the last one.
Then again, I almost never install Windows before the first service pack. Win95 OSR1 was ok, OSR2 was so fast and stable for me. Win98 was a pig, then Win98 SE was a well-dressed pig (haha...) and by the end I didn't really want to get rid of it since I had it working... PRETTY well. NT, 2k... never used at home. WinXP/2003 have been amazing for me; I started at XP SP1, but 2003 was the original release. I never thought I'd see Windows run rock-solid for years, but here it is. I guess others aren't always so lucky but at work we have thousands of WinXP SP2 installations that work great.
Will Windows Update lessen the need for major service packs? Did it in Win98? Did it in ME? Did it in XP? Not really... why should it be any different for Vista? I'll probably move to Vista eventually, but I don't think SP1 will even be enough - it sounds like there are a lot of dealbreakers in it and clearly I'm on the pro-Windows side of things. Also there isn't much incentive to move right now. The only thing I really want out of XP right now is better multiprocessor support. The security does suck, but I find running from behind a firewall/router with a bit of common sense in daily operation keeps it well safe enough.
Vista is a nice set of ideas, but I think they need to just bite the bullet and "BeOS it," drop backwards compatibility ONCE, and rewrite from scratch for modern systems. Do it like MacOS X and include an older legacy supporting version with it. It's not a smooth migration, but the disruption would be worth having everything done right - assuming they actually do it right. Multiprocessor support to at least 64 CPUs. Throw away everything to do with networking. Burn it. Do it from square one. They have the money. They have more than capable coders. They might even have business systems analysts who understand how to manage it (MIGHT!) Then choosing the best OS wouldn't be so much about the lesser of the evils. (Don't start about Linux... It's fine in the right cases, but I don't have any use or time for the dozen distros/versions I've run over the last 10 years. I'll keep checking in periodically but it's just not a practical solution for me or any company I've worked for.)
SecuROM is always updating and changing. Back in the days of UT I copied an original disc 1:1 SecuROM and all... Now that it wants to install services just to prevent me from running apps I always have on, they're going to have to strip that crap out before I'll buy a copy.
There are many games on that list people would complain about if the copy protection were THAT bad, but I think the majority are going to ignore it on Bioshock anyway...
Actually even in Japan, the employees spend a lot of time not working. It's only natural, and has been so long before internet connections on every desk.
If people worked constantly all day they would burn right out, or end up doing their jobs half-assed. I'm at work right now, and I take frequent breaks to surf the net, but then I get out there and get the job done with focus and effort. As long as I'm doing a good average or better amount of work, that's what my boss sees, and we're both happy.
What you said about no slacking on workshift, but no working on leisureshift is an important thing to keep in mind for people who do this though. If often skip my 2 15min coffee breaks, then work a regular shift because I spend about that long slacking or spacing out. I'm not going to just pretend I was working the whole time and skip out early. I think as long as people use good judgement and don't fall into the habit of wasting time they'll be alright for the most part.
I've never heard MS say that they hated open source. What they're afraid of is GPL since most of the ways they've looked at using it would require them to open the source to things that AREN'T open source that they have no intention of opening.
Much to the shock of readers here, there has been open source stuff on MS platforms even before Windows. Then again, it seems most readers won't be satisfied until everything MS makes is open source and free of charge. Good luck with that... Until then, they think it's MS vs open source - doesn't that make them sound eeeeevil?
Does this mean there will be an uber version of 2chan? (Pretty much synonymous with Internet in Japan...)
I predict it'll be like DoCoMo - ridiculously high speed and advanced, and pretty much only supported in Japan until eons later when it trickles out to the rest of us. Oh well, no RIAA, just lax Japanese censorship guidelines!
Yes - I wish it would fade into obscurity. I have to admit I keep a copy though, because without it, thousands (millions?) of websites basically just say "Sorry, you don't have Flash installed. Nothing here for you!"
He probably could have sold it for thousands of dollars. Maybe tens of thousands? After being modified it's probably worth a couple hundred if he can find a seller.
Sounds pretty dumb to me unless it means that much to him.
I use Opera so I can block content selectively. The typical IE + Flash user experience though is to load a site, then watch your CPU slam to a crawl as it tries to play 6 streaming video banner ads at once while some massive, page-blocking shape pops up with another instance of Flash.
Flash really sucks. It was bad a little while after its introduction, but has only become more of a pain unless you have a brand new PC and are viewing a site kind enough to only embed one instance of Shockwave / Flash. What it needs is an off switch since on a lot of movies you can't even right-click and unselect "play" anymore.
That is true. I was thinking more along the lines of a radio manufacturer blocking select public AM/FM stations. I don't really count cel phones, police scanners, etc as "radio stations."
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Seriously. If he just laid low for a while, people would start to forget about him. If he keeps spamming the courts whenever a new game comes out, he'll just dig himself deeper and deeper into the hole where his credibility used to be.
...fool. XD
KEEP 'EM COMIN' JACK! WHAT? BEJEWELLED TEACHES KIDS TO BECOME JEWEL THIEVES? BRILLIANT! TAKE IT TO THE SUPREME COURT! GOOD LUCK TO YA!
Now if they did it the opposite way - making it easier when you're stressed, and harder when you're relaxed, it would actually make for a stess-busting fun game that's conducive to flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology).
As it is, it just lurks in wait to stress you out a bit, then spiral into unplayability - unless of course you don't care about the game whatsoever, in which case you shouldn't be playing.
First of all, I am not generalizing but it this post is rather one-sided so read critically and literally.
...of course, every person is different and you can't judge an entire group - but I would be more interested to see what kind of experience the "geeks" involved had beforehand. It could just be that they had a few rare but bad experiences and generalized?
Of friends and family and IT, what I've heard sounds like women in the industry were more interested in making themselves look "good enough" even if it means backstabbing coworkers and playing political power games over doing their actual jobs. My father, a systems analyst, recently did a contract where a few female engineers basically played social-political office games to undermine the project leaders and circumvent them until they ultimately had a small circle of only women who would discriminate almost openly against male team members and rule autocratically from their tight social circle... then the project bombed because they'd alienated the only people with the needed experience and those who had been ignored simply left the sinking ship.
In my own limited experience, the women in my department are respectively:
1. Totally efficient and eager to work. Cheerful, model employee.
2. Constant complaints and loud emotional tantrums in an otherwise quiet shared office. Needs a ton of non-work comfort items that clutter an already nigh-unnavigable space. Has more "junk" than we have equipment in the department.
3. Unable to get anything right even if written out explicitly down to model and serial numbers.
4, 5. Totally normal great employees.
That said of professional ability, they're all great people personally, but my company just seems blessed that way.
...and this is why MS didn't want to get into using GPL'ed code - apart from having to open their own up for scrutiny.
They don't like to legally prostrate themselves, so they decided to stay the hell away. (Unless they've gone back to it now or something? They're also fickle, haha...)
Seriously, I wonder if he has massive ulcers and nervous conditions. Everything I've read by him has been about ominous, bleak, oppressive violations of people's rights. It's like Kafka writing for Wired magazine... ...which is not to say he isn't good at writing, just a little predictable. Ok, a lot predictable.
Long ago I found it was secure enough for me to use on my own main PC, provided I was the only user, and it was behind a router. I'd still call them the laughing stock of the security industry though, but with a little tweaking I could lock down anything I needed to.
...but I would still take every precaution I did before, with the exception of a 24/7 software firewall, which I don't run simply because my router is doing such a good job of filtering, and the last virus/trojan I had was in the 1990s.
Now... I'd say they aren't the worst, but I don't know who is... They're certainly moving up even if slowly, and I wouldn't call them a laughing stock anymore...
When I first shaved my head I could acutely feel temperature and airflow shifts in a room, but eventually I just got used to it.
In the dark, I can crudely use accoustics to avoid bumping into things about the size of a basketball and up.
Like others have posted, we have some of these abilities already. That said, if I could wear the headband without looking geeky, I'd go for it. Why not fill up a ball cap with sensory equipment instead of just trying to get the embriodery to stick out a half inch?
I live in Alberta and while I pay about $7/mo to use my Rogers phone, I can leave it turned on and wander all over the country and not be gouged for roaming fees by little roadside bandit carriers. I've heard this is a big problem particularly in southern states - drive a highway for a few hours, forget to shut off your cel, and get a $100 phone bill!
Only recently have things moved away from being a few-carrier monopoly - now there are a half dozen or so. Some things are pretty stupid, but overall I'm happy with Canadian cel provider practices. They should however include the access fee in the price of the plan as doing otherwise is bait & switch, possibly even false advertising. (What, am I going to sign up for the plan and NOT use their network? WTF?)
Keen thought.
I was thinking it would be about time to order some stuff from the USA that I'd put off, but I'm going to have to keep an eye open for things like books that have two fixed prices - so long as it's not something like vehicles that gets taxed so hard in Canada to cancel out any saving.
I always get a chuckle out of video game magazines with demo discs - like I'm going to pay $15 for a monthly newsrag and some demos, haha...
Also not coincidentally, these have been two nations I refuse to set foot in for even an hour for the last several years.
Times change, and these are not the old friends we once knew. The people are fine, but their governments are dog mad and cannot be trusted to act ethically, or even not violate international law on a hunch. Not for me, thanks.
What is it with electric drag racers? They're all about convincing people that their machines are more powerful than the gas counterparts, but so often they ignore basic safety procedures. That is defnitely a drag bike - it looks longer than an extended Hayabusa or the MTT Y2K Superbike. Actually it has to be the longest racing-faired bike I've seen including dragsters. Too bad burnouts waste and suck - I'd be more impressed if he had a traction control system that delivered optimal power without spinning the wheel or lifting the front.
But anyway, I have a bike with 51hp... 51! That was hot in the 1980s, but modern bikes can do 120-200 stock. My bike has more than enough acceleration and speed to kill someone in seconds. What makes this guy think he can burnout a high power electric monster with absolutely no gear on? One slip and... well - that. Live and learn, I hope.
Easier than purchase? Forget buying shows online, grabbing a torrent is easier than watching the shows on TV! I have a digital satellite receiver (100% legit and paid for) and I rarely bother to watch TV on it - if I like a show, the networks will shift the time around without warning and I end up missing half of it, or I get a garbled episode when there's a really bad thunderstorm. ...so I grab a torrent of a season at a time, watch it whenever I want, wherever I want, on any device I want, and I have more than a few that play video on the go. On my TV (which is used as a PC monitor) the downloads often look sharper if more compression artifacts because my satellite box only has composite outputs. Most of them I don't pay for other than satellite bills. Some of them I do. I just watched 90% of the first season of Dexter after grabbing it to see what it's like - after work today I'll probably run out and buy the DVD set I saw in the store a couple weeks ago that made me think of it.
The TV networks, like record labels, just need to chill out a bit, keep an eye on their IPs but not enforce them with thuggish tactics. (heh... I got busted for downloading Battlestar Galactica once... a coworker was busted for KNIGHT RIDER! Gimme a break!)
The sad thing is that if they offered legal free torrents and included a sponsor pack or something that would give them money per view, I'd watch a few ads to show my support. However when I buy the DVD I'm sure it'll force me to sit through 5 minutes of crap every time I watch it, so I'll just circumvent it and say to hell with them... hahaha
Whatever you go for, say a serial number, make it absolutely integral to the function of the program - don't bolt it on at the end. That way if something circumvents it, it's still broken. Perhaps make some controls on the main window manifest through a mathematical equasion on the serial. After that I shouldn't have to say this, but - make absolutely certain it works reliably.
I hate programs that phone home, but if you just activate it online - no - if you just REPORT its activation online so you can keep tabs on it, I would not mind OS version, IP address, program version, and a timestamp. That way the program will not break if it cannot get a license from an online source, but if lots of people start using the same serial, you will know and can trace it back to the first user with some degree of success.
The modern move (Securom, Adobe, Windows) to requiring online registration to work, and in some cases using up a finite number of activations is totally wrong. Secure, yes. Good for the user? I think most of the time it just blows up for legitamite users. True pirates will find a way around it if they want it badly enough, and it's important of course not to catch the valid users in the crossfire in the war on piracy.
Then again, also consider what you're protecting and how much effort is required. I've seen programs with nice elaborate systems that are small $20 shareware apps that probably didn't warrant that kind of defense or rather the time and effort to implement it.
Just some opinion and food for thought for you...
It's not even Skype's fault really... they support URLs. :/
I guess some would say it's MS' fault because they allow malicious code to run. Personally I think trying to hold them accountable for that kind of thing just makes subsequent versions of Windows even more restricted and unusable without properly "breaking them in."
...and they can have my data cable when they pry it from my cold dead hands!
pfft... paying to upload a 30 sec audio clip to my phone? Give me a break! I have a computer, I'll do it myself!
I have very very good luck with Windows - I grew up using MS-DOS and kind of kept up to date as things rolled out so I know enough ins and outs to keep it running well.
Generally my installations are conflict-free, fast, stable (OS crashing... doesn't happen. Period. The odd app dies time to time.) no viruses, no exploits, etc... I had a trojan about ten years ago but that was the last one.
Then again, I almost never install Windows before the first service pack. Win95 OSR1 was ok, OSR2 was so fast and stable for me. Win98 was a pig, then Win98 SE was a well-dressed pig (haha...) and by the end I didn't really want to get rid of it since I had it working... PRETTY well. NT, 2k... never used at home. WinXP/2003 have been amazing for me; I started at XP SP1, but 2003 was the original release. I never thought I'd see Windows run rock-solid for years, but here it is. I guess others aren't always so lucky but at work we have thousands of WinXP SP2 installations that work great.
Will Windows Update lessen the need for major service packs? Did it in Win98? Did it in ME? Did it in XP? Not really... why should it be any different for Vista? I'll probably move to Vista eventually, but I don't think SP1 will even be enough - it sounds like there are a lot of dealbreakers in it and clearly I'm on the pro-Windows side of things. Also there isn't much incentive to move right now. The only thing I really want out of XP right now is better multiprocessor support. The security does suck, but I find running from behind a firewall/router with a bit of common sense in daily operation keeps it well safe enough.
Vista is a nice set of ideas, but I think they need to just bite the bullet and "BeOS it," drop backwards compatibility ONCE, and rewrite from scratch for modern systems. Do it like MacOS X and include an older legacy supporting version with it. It's not a smooth migration, but the disruption would be worth having everything done right - assuming they actually do it right. Multiprocessor support to at least 64 CPUs. Throw away everything to do with networking. Burn it. Do it from square one. They have the money. They have more than capable coders. They might even have business systems analysts who understand how to manage it (MIGHT!) Then choosing the best OS wouldn't be so much about the lesser of the evils. (Don't start about Linux... It's fine in the right cases, but I don't have any use or time for the dozen distros/versions I've run over the last 10 years. I'll keep checking in periodically but it's just not a practical solution for me or any company I've worked for.)
SecuROM is always updating and changing. Back in the days of UT I copied an original disc 1:1 SecuROM and all...
Now that it wants to install services just to prevent me from running apps I always have on, they're going to have to strip that crap out before I'll buy a copy.
There are many games on that list people would complain about if the copy protection were THAT bad, but I think the majority are going to ignore it on Bioshock anyway...
Actually even in Japan, the employees spend a lot of time not working. It's only natural, and has been so long before internet connections on every desk.
If people worked constantly all day they would burn right out, or end up doing their jobs half-assed. I'm at work right now, and I take frequent breaks to surf the net, but then I get out there and get the job done with focus and effort. As long as I'm doing a good average or better amount of work, that's what my boss sees, and we're both happy.
What you said about no slacking on workshift, but no working on leisureshift is an important thing to keep in mind for people who do this though. If often skip my 2 15min coffee breaks, then work a regular shift because I spend about that long slacking or spacing out. I'm not going to just pretend I was working the whole time and skip out early. I think as long as people use good judgement and don't fall into the habit of wasting time they'll be alright for the most part.
I've never heard MS say that they hated open source. What they're afraid of is GPL since most of the ways they've looked at using it would require them to open the source to things that AREN'T open source that they have no intention of opening.
Much to the shock of readers here, there has been open source stuff on MS platforms even before Windows. Then again, it seems most readers won't be satisfied until everything MS makes is open source and free of charge. Good luck with that... Until then, they think it's MS vs open source - doesn't that make them sound eeeeevil?
Does this mean there will be an uber version of 2chan? (Pretty much synonymous with Internet in Japan...)
I predict it'll be like DoCoMo - ridiculously high speed and advanced, and pretty much only supported in Japan until eons later when it trickles out to the rest of us. Oh well, no RIAA, just lax Japanese censorship guidelines!
"I for one welcome our futuristic overlords."
Yes - I wish it would fade into obscurity. I have to admit I keep a copy though, because without it, thousands (millions?) of websites basically just say "Sorry, you don't have Flash installed. Nothing here for you!"
Of course there are millions of those around...
He probably could have sold it for thousands of dollars. Maybe tens of thousands? After being modified it's probably worth a couple hundred if he can find a seller.
Sounds pretty dumb to me unless it means that much to him.
I use Opera so I can block content selectively. The typical IE + Flash user experience though is to load a site, then watch your CPU slam to a crawl as it tries to play 6 streaming video banner ads at once while some massive, page-blocking shape pops up with another instance of Flash.
Flash really sucks. It was bad a little while after its introduction, but has only become more of a pain unless you have a brand new PC and are viewing a site kind enough to only embed one instance of Shockwave / Flash. What it needs is an off switch since on a lot of movies you can't even right-click and unselect "play" anymore.
That is true. I was thinking more along the lines of a radio manufacturer blocking select public AM/FM stations. I don't really count cel phones, police scanners, etc as "radio stations."
I think you nailed it.
Sure, it's a risky activity - for STDs, pregnancy, relationships, etc - but as if the smarter teens aren't trying to get some too.
Any difference gets you singled out as a teenager. Good call.