Pfft. We've used strategy guides since the early eighties, when they were often included in computer magazines. Anybody remember Elite? The difference is that back then, games usually weren't long/complex enough to justify a full glossy book.
It's all about the money. If you write a successful game, you can also sell new "episodes", special editions, strategy games. It's the slightly more grown-up version of the Mario lunch boxes, watches, etc.
It's an interesting question. What it boils down to is the outcome if it came to legal proceedings.
If we're dealing with copyright infringement as a civil matter, then it comes down to the balance of probablilty. In a court, if there is a record of a house fire, you are probably ok to a collection of MP3s. If there's no record of a fire, and you can't produce a few hundred origial CDs, you're probably in trouble.
However, the industry seems to be treating piracy as a criminal matter, e.g. "piracy is a crime!". This allows stronger scare tactics. The flip side of that coin is that it has to be proven beyond all reasoable doubt that you did in fact illegaly obtain the music. So, if there's any chance at all, based upon the evidence, that you may have backed up your own music and then lost the originals, you have to be assumed innnocent.
But both have been used in the original Playstation. Can modern electronics really waste ten times more power than new electronics, doing the same thing?
A comparison between IE6, Firefox 1.5 and Opera 9 might be more fair, but look at the focus of the article (mostly features). People would just end up saying "Yes, Opera 9 can do X, but why does the article ignore the upcoming Firefox 2, and instead focus on old 1.5?".
> But if they're making lots of money, that kind of implies not as many people are copying it, at least to a certain degree.
You seem to be saying that for an artist, the volume of unauthorized copying is inversly propeortional to the volume of legal sales. That's plainly incorrect. ${boyband} sells heaps of CDs, and there are probably huge amounts of unauthorized copies of their CD floating around. On the other hand, the guy who sings in a bar in a small town will probably only sell a few CDs, and there will pobably only be a few unauthorized copies around.
...you'll only need one Blu-Ray disc, which by that time will be a hell of a lot cheaper then using 2 or more DVDs
Cheaper for who? Somehow I can't imagine any savings being passed on to the evil consumer. Anyway, on a game costing so much ($75?) I don't think it's the physical media keeping the price up.
To be fair, there really are no teams outside of the USA that would stand a chance of winning a game of baseball or American football.
Yes, quite. However, I bet there are no teams in the USA that would stand a chance of winning a game of Bowls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowls Take that, LB Ray Lewis;)
Re:These are the choices we make
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EFF has its place; but it's not a PAC. You need a Consumer's PAC, with at least $10M+/year of budget, to have a serious impact.
Well, $10M will pay a few lobbyists to take up your cause. But that's only the start of the process. Really, unless your cause makes lots of money for somebody, you can abandon the idea of raising enough money to use the democratic system. At least in the USA of today.
Re:in before the "just dont buy it" straw man..
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who do you boycott? all of them? well then be prepared to live in a cave, eat by candle light, and hunt for food again.
And there I was, thinking the release of "Caddyshack 3" wouldn't be of any importance to mankind.
A movie is typically packaged as an AVI or MPG within a collection of RAR files. There can be a small "runme.exe" or somehting similar packaged alongside the movie file in the RAR archive.
So no, there isn't a virus in the movie itself, but the runme.exe that comes with it can install lots of crap malware onto your machine.
I don't expect an employer to be like a parent. However, the grandparent post did have a point. I have found that nearly all of my previous employers have said that they care about their employees, and their employees' happiness. Some genuinely did, and some really didn't. Those that did care probably felt that employee happiness helped their cause. However, if an employer claims to care, then yes, I expect their actions to match their words.
The contract with your employer is just that, a contract. If that's the extent of your connection to your employer, and if you're happy, then fair enough. But I've found that I was happiest where I also had a good working relationship with my employer; management saw me as an asset, and did their best to accommodate me. I enjoyed the position, and went out of my way to do what I could for the company.
I don't trust your quoted source. The objectivity of your cited article can be seen in the following definition of openness:
"The Microsoft Office formats are open in the sense that every Microsoft Office competitor from StarOffice to OpenOffice.org to Word Perfect to ThinkFree Office has reverse engineered the Microsoft Office format and uses it freely yet they've never been sued by Microsoft for doing so."
The only case where a jitted language exceeds a natively compiled language is...
Actually, the post to which you replied never said the Java solution was faster than a C++ implementation. He said it was "superior". True, it is a vague term, but for his organization, superior may mean "easier to maintain", "smaller codebase", "easier to use on other hardware platforms", or any other number of possibilities.
I agree totally. Java is dead. We just have to get the message through to the huge numbers of organizations and developers who depend on the technology to get their jobs done. Oh, and then we have to come up with something better to replace it. Give me a little while...;)
Some places don't have cell phone coverage. It can be because you're is miles from a mast, or because the geography blocks the signal, or because buildings block the signal, or because something in your vicinity doesn't let a signal pass through it (accidentally or on purpose).
The same principle applies in all cases - if being contactable is so important, keep an eye on the reception guage on your phone. If it indicates you've no reception, you're free to go elsewhere.
Whatever your situation now, you may have kids some day. And their well being and health shouldn't depend totally on your attitude towards investment and your career.
Should we also start paying for each others' car insurance, so that Citizen B isn't inconvenienced when he causes $20,000 in property damage when he tries to drive himself home after a night of drinking?
Well, that's the way insurance works. You pay $X per year, even though you have no accidents. All the $X add up to pay for Mr. Jones, who forgot to check in his mirror, and ended causing $100,000 of damage in a pile-up. The principle is that some day *you* may be that Mr. Jones. Same with having kids. Whatever your situation now, you may have kids some day. And their well being and health should depend *totally* on your attitude towards investment and your career.
Both the benefit and the responsibility of raising children are private, belonging only to those individuals who know and care for the children (parents, relatives, etc.).
When you retire, who will be paying for the upkeep of the infrastructure you'll be using? The roads, public services, emergency services? When you're drawing down your pension, whose contributions will be topping up the pension fund you've invested in? It'd be nice to think that your own contributions will be put aside by the fund managers until you retire. Unfortunately, that's not how it usually works. Your current contributions are probably paying for the pension incomes of current pensioners. And when you retire, it'll be the same for you. Of course, that's a general situation; you may be managing your own retirement funds, or planning on working until you drop. But society tends to form its rules around the average situation.
Commercial software is written to make money for shareholders. In order to earn this money, the development organization has two primary tasks;
1) to develop the best software possible, in order to attract new customers
2) to keep existing customers happy, in order to avoid losing existing customers, and having those lost customers scaring away potential customers.
On the other hand, free software is written for entirely different reasons. In my experience, the primary motivator is the developers' interest in the technology, possibly followed by an interest in being well-known for accomplishments. The important thing to note is that, unlike with commercial software, the satisfaction of the programmer is the main focus, rather than the satisfaction of shareholders, and thus customers.
There is nothing wrong with this, such programmer-motivated development can produce results that would be difficult to achieve in a commercial organization that is always being pressed for profit. But if you are choosing software to use, and want your needs to be important to the developer, you may be better served by choosing a developer whose livlihood depends on your satisfaction - a commercial software provider.
I was going to post the reply "I agree", as a document in MSWord 2003 format. However, the.doc file was 19.5KB, and I'm not sure the Slashdot filters would accept a hex dump of it...
Slashdot Mirror
Which government? Norway isn't (yet) subject to the U.S. government.
Pfft. We've used strategy guides since the early eighties, when they were often included in computer magazines. Anybody remember Elite? The difference is that back then, games usually weren't long/complex enough to justify a full glossy book.
It's all about the money. If you write a successful game, you can also sell new "episodes", special editions, strategy games. It's the slightly more grown-up version of the Mario lunch boxes, watches, etc.
It's an interesting question. What it boils down to is the outcome if it came to legal proceedings.
If we're dealing with copyright infringement as a civil matter, then it comes down to the balance of probablilty. In a court, if there is a record of a house fire, you are probably ok to a collection of MP3s. If there's no record of a fire, and you can't produce a few hundred origial CDs, you're probably in trouble.
However, the industry seems to be treating piracy as a criminal matter, e.g. "piracy is a crime!". This allows stronger scare tactics. The flip side of that coin is that it has to be proven beyond all reasoable doubt that you did in fact illegaly obtain the music. So, if there's any chance at all, based upon the evidence, that you may have backed up your own music and then lost the originals, you have to be assumed innnocent.
But both have been used in the original Playstation. Can modern electronics really waste ten times more power than new electronics, doing the same thing?
What, you mean Opera (52K) can't run on a Commodore64 after all?
A comparison between IE6, Firefox 1.5 and Opera 9 might be more fair, but look at the focus of the article (mostly features). People would just end up saying "Yes, Opera 9 can do X, but why does the article ignore the upcoming Firefox 2, and instead focus on old 1.5?".
> But if they're making lots of money, that kind of implies not as many people are copying it, at least to a certain degree.
You seem to be saying that for an artist, the volume of unauthorized copying is inversly propeortional to the volume of legal sales. That's plainly incorrect. ${boyband} sells heaps of CDs, and there are probably huge amounts of unauthorized copies of their CD floating around. On the other hand, the guy who sings in a bar in a small town will probably only sell a few CDs, and there will pobably only be a few unauthorized copies around.
Cheaper for who? Somehow I can't imagine any savings being passed on to the evil consumer. Anyway, on a game costing so much ($75?) I don't think it's the physical media keeping the price up.
Yes, quite. However, I bet there are no teams in the USA that would stand a chance of winning a game of Bowls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowls
Take that, LB Ray Lewis
Well, $10M will pay a few lobbyists to take up your cause. But that's only the start of the process. Really, unless your cause makes lots of money for somebody, you can abandon the idea of raising enough money to use the democratic system. At least in the USA of today.
And there I was, thinking the release of "Caddyshack 3" wouldn't be of any importance to mankind.
A movie is typically packaged as an AVI or MPG within a collection of RAR files. There can be a small "runme.exe" or somehting similar packaged alongside the movie file in the RAR archive.
So no, there isn't a virus in the movie itself, but the runme.exe that comes with it can install lots of crap malware onto your machine.
I don't expect an employer to be like a parent. However, the grandparent post did have a point. I have found that nearly all of my previous employers have said that they care about their employees, and their employees' happiness. Some genuinely did, and some really didn't. Those that did care probably felt that employee happiness helped their cause. However, if an employer claims to care, then yes, I expect their actions to match their words.
The contract with your employer is just that, a contract. If that's the extent of your connection to your employer, and if you're happy, then fair enough. But I've found that I was happiest where I also had a good working relationship with my employer; management saw me as an asset, and did their best to accommodate me. I enjoyed the position, and went out of my way to do what I could for the company.
Do you know for sure that she got laid? She might only have told you she did out of spite
But how else can you achieve successification? And the synergies, For god sake think of the poor synergies!
Actually, the post to which you replied never said the Java solution was faster than a C++ implementation. He said it was "superior". True, it is a vague term, but for his organization, superior may mean "easier to maintain", "smaller codebase", "easier to use on other hardware platforms", or any other number of possibilities.
I agree totally. Java is dead. We just have to get the message through to the huge numbers of organizations and developers who depend on the technology to get their jobs done. Oh, and then we have to come up with something better to replace it. Give me a little while... ;)
I'm not aware of any laws requiring buildings to be built in a way that facilitates signals to pass through them.
Some places don't have cell phone coverage. It can be because you're is miles from a mast, or because the geography blocks the signal, or because buildings block the signal, or because something in your vicinity doesn't let a signal pass through it (accidentally or on purpose).
The same principle applies in all cases - if being contactable is so important, keep an eye on the reception guage on your phone. If it indicates you've no reception, you're free to go elsewhere.
Oops, typo.
Whatever your situation now, you may have kids some day. And their well being and health shouldn't depend totally on your attitude towards investment and your career.
Well, that's the way insurance works. You pay $X per year, even though you have no accidents. All the $X add up to pay for Mr. Jones, who forgot to check in his mirror, and ended causing $100,000 of damage in a pile-up. The principle is that some day *you* may be that Mr. Jones. Same with having kids. Whatever your situation now, you may have kids some day. And their well being and health should depend *totally* on your attitude towards investment and your career.
When you retire, who will be paying for the upkeep of the infrastructure you'll be using? The roads, public services, emergency services? When you're drawing down your pension, whose contributions will be topping up the pension fund you've invested in? It'd be nice to think that your own contributions will be put aside by the fund managers until you retire. Unfortunately, that's not how it usually works. Your current contributions are probably paying for the pension incomes of current pensioners. And when you retire, it'll be the same for you. Of course, that's a general situation; you may be managing your own retirement funds, or planning on working until you drop. But society tends to form its rules around the average situation.
Commercial software is written to make money for shareholders. In order to earn this money, the development organization has two primary tasks;
1) to develop the best software possible, in order to attract new customers
2) to keep existing customers happy, in order to avoid losing existing customers, and having those lost customers scaring away potential customers.
On the other hand, free software is written for entirely different reasons. In my experience, the primary motivator is the developers' interest in the technology, possibly followed by an interest in being well-known for accomplishments. The important thing to note is that, unlike with commercial software, the satisfaction of the programmer is the main focus, rather than the satisfaction of shareholders, and thus customers.
There is nothing wrong with this, such programmer-motivated development can produce results that would be difficult to achieve in a commercial organization that is always being pressed for profit. But if you are choosing software to use, and want your needs to be important to the developer, you may be better served by choosing a developer whose livlihood depends on your satisfaction - a commercial software provider.
I was going to post the reply "I agree", as a document in MSWord 2003 format. However, the .doc file was 19.5KB, and I'm not sure the Slashdot filters would accept a hex dump of it...
Most modern PAL TVs have the option to use 100Hz when displaying the picture. All this does is reduce flicker, but it's good at that.
Out of interest, do modern NTSC TVs have the option to double-up to 120Hz? I've often wondered...