RIAA has been successful for one reason, they are doing volume over value yet again. Every time they can find someone downloading any music that looks like they own they go with plan 15B. Cease and desist, sue, profit.
It's worked so far so why are we surprised that they are continuing with it? Expect them to continue this way. The subject of the lawsuit is faceless and nameless to them. Doesn't matter if it's a grandma, a 8 year old, or a athlete, they all are guilty to the RIAA. You know those adds that show people saying "I got it" "I got it" and it's every race, religion, age, and sex. Well to the RIAA it's the same way except they are saying "I stole." Why have a different strategy for each person.
It's good to see people fighting against the tyrants pushing this down the courts throat but at the same time I have to realize that some of these people like did steal large quantities of music before it came to this step. Still that's no reason to act like this kid isn't in school. What's next? Demanding he goes to jail for 10 years?
well I am in the slashdot crowd, but then again I wrote this same thing when this question was asked about webmail.
I use thunderbird and webmail together, actually using gmail for it. I have 2 accounts, one is for business, one is places that will likely spam me (three in reality but one is not being used right now) and having to switch between the two is a pain and a half so instead of forwarding or doing hocus pocus to read both at the same time I use thunderbird to get both feeds at the same time.) I still believe a lot agree with this because they want to download their mail not leaving it on some hard drive somewhere (personally I don't delete from server which I'll get to in a minute).
But I use webmail for when I'm not at home, from anywhere in the world I can access all my email, and with gmail that means almost all my correspondences. Personally I use that a lot more as I use it to check from work (have an RSS feed for my primary on my home page too).
So essentially both of them are useful and most people probably realize this if they understand what pop3 is and their service offers it for free (kudos to gmail for doing that).
That being said the real question should be how many people aside from the slashdot crowd know what the fuck Thunderbird is? Most of them blindly use outlook but they will use something for pop3. And if their server uses IMAP even better.
I can't really see a reason against this except cost and regulation. Honestly I wouldn't care.
Really it's not for you (unless you want it) it's for the people who are morally opposed to certain things. You can do it for Kosher food, why not have it for cloned food (and possibly genetically enhanced food). The fact is there's going to be people against cloned food, and those people will choose not to buy cloned food, why not make it easier so they don't have to bitch. Let them go be elitists.
Personally I'm interested in a chicken that doesn't taste like chicken, hell find me a way to get lettuce that tastes like bacon and I'll start eating healthy. But that's a different story (as well as meat that automatically regenerates what ever portion I eat of it).
1. Ask enemy to stop, don't swear or use rude terms, for they may be an innocent person. 2. Point at the person with your hand to show who you are indicating, your gun should still be stowed. 3. Ask louder and this time gesture with both hands to show that you are indeed trying to help. 4. Shoot into the are with a flare gun to alert the combatant that you will use weapons if necessary.
All our rules have done is to make it near impossible for our boys over there to win anything, and easier for the opposition to the war to have a death toll. Of course at the same time there's no mention of non american's death because we only care about americans, the ones posting the death tolls don't care if we are winning or losing the war.
Personally I think the only people who have a say in the rules of combat are people who have or will be using the rules of combat in an arena of conflict. We saw it in Vietnam, we see it now, if the enemy is not playing by the rules then the rules have to change. Hell the only reason America had a shot during the revolutionary war is the British were held by rules of combat and their "nobility" and we won any way we could. American is forgetting this lesson as we're losing a war the same way we won our independence, oddly enough.
It wasn't just you, in the past many people have chimed in like this no matter the topic and I find it a bit odd because I'm not saying iTunes is any different (though I thought iTunes was cheaper for 30 minute shows).
I actually picked up the Guitar Hero packs (I thought it was worth the money). But for TV I actually got a DVR for the exact reason you mention, I want to have a copy of it on my drive if I want to rewatch it. I just find the prices for their tv selection and movie selection to be more expensive than they need to make it a viable alternative to DVDs or rental stores. Where as the iTunes music is a perfect alternative to CDs in that you buy what you want.
I love this thought process that because I'm not currently bitching about anyone else that it's only about Microsoft. I don't support Apple, Microsoft or anyone else who charges more than a fair amount for their wares.
I was simply pointing out that for the same price they are charging you can get something else easily worth more (aka a whole month of basic cable versus 20 shows that are available on basic cable). If Microsoft or Apple wants to find a business model for this situation then they have to change. 2 dollars is a lot for a 20 minute show, even more when that show isn't connected to anything. I understand having to buy a 2 dollar show of a drama like Lost, 24, or stargate where if something happens and you miss the episode you'll have trouble keeping up but just getting a quantity of goods at 2 dollars doesn't make sense.
And believe me I've already taken my shots at Playstation (where to start) and Nintendo (the sega VC games are just sad when you can get them most of them for 20 bucks on a PS2 game). But this article is about microsoft. I don't have to constantly bitch about everyone because then it would be nonsensical. I'm discuss the matter at hand, or can't you figure that out?
I don't blame him for his opinions (ok I do, he's beyond stupid) but the crime I'm illustrating is a unlawful law that was over turned, as someone else mentioned he helped draft and file the motion for this law, he lobbied for it.
Should the elected officials have passed it? Depends, but if the law gets overturned because the words contained in it, it's the fault of the writers (of which Thompson was one). In that case that's who deserves to be punished, not the state. I can understand expecting the state to know if it's enforceable (and that's an acceptable reason to veto or cast a nay vote in most cases) but most lawmakers apparently don't care enough on that issue.
Thompson can spew shit all he wants over the airwaves and that's fine because there's little in way of "cost" except sanity, but he wrote the law that cost the state the money and I think he and his co-writers deserves the "credit" now.
Ignoring the fact that both shows have little to do with news and more to do with humor. The fact Microsoft is charging 2 dollars an episode for it is more than sad. There's people in other countries almost demanding Microsoft make it available for them, but look at the simple math.
2 dollars an episode for at least 20 episodes a month is 40 dollars. My cable bill is 40 dollars a month, I also get many more channels than comedy central and with an extra 5 bucks I get a DVR which means I can get all these shows already.
Personally the Video service Microsoft is offering needs to figure out a way to market the tv shows (unskipable advertisements at the beginning would be acceptable to me) because as it stands now it's less than a novelty, it's an insult.
Hell the Movies you only get for a couple days, the tv shows you are overcharged for. It's just not right.
Why not charge the 91K to the lawyers who lobbied for these laws? The Jack Thompsons of the world. If it wasn't for him decrying the state of games for years Louisiana wouldn't have tried to push the bill.
Make every mistake that Jack Thompson make not just hurt the state, but hurt him. He wants to bring frivolous law suits and decry every problem as video games fault people should turn around and demand the money from him.
At the very least let's hold him accountable for his rants, coming out with in hours of the Virgina Tech shooting and blaming video games is nothing short of morbid. It's 2000 equivalent of ambulance chasing and it needs to stop.
Parent is 100 percent right, however marketing and business tend to think in SKU terms for a variety of reasons.
Apparently like all other acronyms someone outside of the original world heard it and thought it was cool and made them sound like they were part of the industry and it propagates from there.
Personally SKU has a lot of useful connotations, the best I can think of is "Total versions of a product" which in most businesses is important, but like I said the parent is right, this is part of the over use of it by people trying to be "hip".
Let's be honest here, Sony's lost 1 engine, and in a tail spin, they're likely going to crater or step out of the industry, they have given us no reason to remain and arn't looking like it in the future, but Microsoft is the young up and comer who's going to follow's sony's example (last generation it was Sony who was pulling a Microsoft, mega sales, great games, nothing could go wrong.)
Nintendo has the key to avoiding another 1983 level crash. They sidestep all the problems and go in a new direction. A direction that lowers development cost (most development cost is to get better graphics or bigger games). Instead of a race to climb the next mountain they are going around the mountain.
Essentially the problem with this generation is everyone wants more content, more game, more graphics, and they want them all to look bigger and better. The problem is this costs money. GTA style games are big bucks now but they are even bigger budgets because you have to make a huge world.
I don't see a 1983 crash happening, however I do see Xbox struggling next generation, Sony being driven to a sink or swim level, but Nintendo's the fuzzy factor, if the industry starts working with the Wii, and developing lower budget but more innovative titles then you can see millions saved just from that move and the market is saved, otherwise you're going to see an epic level crash when we get to the question "what's next" after the 360? Better physics, better graphics? We're just killing ourself with every step we take on that path because the gameplay which has always mattered is ignored yet again.
Personally it's getting to that point. What's the difference between command and conquer 3, Company of heroes and Warcraft 3? Different motif, pretty much same game. What's the difference between Halo 2, Half-life 2, and Doom 3? Most JRPGS? Kotor 1 vs Kotor 2 vs fable vs the next western RPG. Most SRPGS based on disgaea typed engines (not even just nippon ichi titles)?
We are getting the same game over and over with slight changes and slight modifications and people are starting to realize that not every game is a completely unique and new experience, and from the sound of it we are getting pissed.
Besides shopping online is a male's wet dream. You haggle for prices on ebay and sites, you look at what you want, and can instantly find it with out having to search through 100 items you don't want and you can get it delivered to your house with out having to spend more than 10 minutes actually shopping. If it wasn't for the distrustful sellers online it would be perfect.
Did you even read the summary or were you just going for the first post?
This data isn't hacked, it's being misused, they are completely different situations. This database is giving access to the wrong people who will likely use the data for data mining finiacial information. These people are given complete access like a normal university.
The real problem though is that it sounds like anyone who logs onto this system has 100 percent access to every entry even without any proof of a business relationship with the person. It's hard to even consider this hacking or cracking as it's just a wide open database.
This is my problem with schools, instead of teaching children they feel it's their responsibility to police children. What's next? If a child gets home and goes on wikipedia the parents should be considered harmful for showing them that site.
It's very simple, Wikipedia is a fast reference, but in no way shape or form is it a sitable reference. Want to know the 1999 New York Knicks line up? Wiki probably has it. Want to know why Camels are able to go a long time without water, wiki probably knows that too.
However Wikipedia is the beginning of any journey. You need to check their citations, do a little work on your own and figure it out.
This is the same as schools not realizing that maybe they should teach people how to effectively use search engines, or effectively use computers in general, to research and find hard data. At my office Wikipedia is considered "fact" but at the same time everyone knows the fallacies of it, and everyone also has common sense. No one jumps out a window to fly because they read it in wikipedia, we mostly use it for fast reference. Jack says there's 1 person in the house of representatives that is from DC, Jill says Do they even get to vote. Wikipedia answers both questions, no one disagreed with it, no one cared after we found out. Move on to next agenda item (actually happened). But again we were all using common sense and aren't using it for anything more than random information we'll forget tomorrow. Again something schools could teach but decide not to.
But then again schools have changed, any idiot can pass a grade, you can't even hold kids back because it's perceived that it's their right to graduate, and if you act out you have a problem, it couldn't be that you're an adolescent? Our teachers are glorified babysitters, is it any wonder that we're going to complain about the schools in congress?
The real kicker is I went to a rich rural city's schools, I can only imagine what hell the inner city schools are like.
When I say create safe versions. I'm talking about figuring out something simple like writing a wrapper around snprint where no matter what the last character becomes '/0'. If this causes issues for your code then it causes issues with your code. It might truncate your last character from something. If that's the case increase the n in snprintf and increase the size of your array. However this version changes the snprintf from the "hopefully we don't enter n as buffer size" to "Well Hopefully all the data gets there". Aka it works it just doesn't work well.
Next step is to look at the return value and continue from there. I'm not saying to duplicate functions but if a function has an unsafe feature that you can figure out (I'm sure Microsoft found all these unsafe functions just hasn't had time to fix the code they are called in. At least that's what they say every time they reference the millions of lines of code they have) then you can quickly switch every call from snprintf to snprintf_safe where now at least it won't buffer overflow.
These safe functions should do all the error checking you need in it. Hell there's about a million otherways to solve these problems but the fact is someone has to do it and Microsoft needs to learn that they should take time to do it. It's a reason I don't use Microsoft products because they have these buffer overflow problems that should be easier to fix then "we can't" implies.
I love morrowind, but I'm with you on Oblivion it was ok when I started with it I had at least 20-30 hours in it then I realized that everyone leveled up with me and it lost the appeal it had. Now with OOO I'm going to try it again.
But you understand my point. Bethsda might not be perfect but imagine fallout 3 with oblivion's engine to the point where someone can do a Total Conversion of the level and create a second or third story? That's an amazing idea to have and it's already been proven possible by morrowind. That's great to me considering what Brotherhood of Steel was for the PS2.
Seriously, the recovery system they are mentioning is good.... FOR TESTING! Real software shouldn't crash, if it does crash it better be because of hardware failure because software shouldn't do so much that crashing is an option. That's theory of course but it's a possible and working theory in most cases.
Buffer overflows? Create and use a SAFE version of functions... Like.. I don't know? Try snprintf with only the output buffer's size?
Buffer overflows are the fault of the programmer and there should be no excuse. Telling the system to crash instead of overflowing is a fix, but it's neither a good fix or a feature. It's a BUG that has been paved over by paper. Until you come back with concrete it's not really fixed.
Let's switch it around. If my game company submits a game to the Microsoft certification process which crashes, and we gave this excuse we'd be rejected in 2 seconds. Why is in-house Microsoft products gets a pass on this matter?
Well good for him, but considering still one of the best selling games on the 360, and has probably the most mods of any game I can't seem to see the point?
Seriously Oblivion is one of the best games in this generation, just because it runs like crap on your computer doesn't mean it is because of optimizations, they wanted to give a great experience to the end user. They did that. The amount of work that goes into one Elder Scroll game makes me believe that Fallout 3 has the potential for being the best of the series.
Or we could give it back to interplay and let them make another brotherhood of steel. Maybe the parent would prefer that?
But on the other hand I know people were willing to pay 2 dollars per song but now they are acting like this is too much? Go figure. Personally if I want the music it's a fair price, if I don't want the music it's not.
This is the typical response that I expected to see, granted it took almost a day to appear.
Where does it say we impeach the president for mistakes or subversion by his employees. Impeachment is for "High crimes and misdemenors" or treason or bribery. It then gives the congress power to decide what that means. Yeah it's vague.
This is President Bush's administration, this isn't President Bush himself. Yes because of mistakes two acts are violated. Then there should be suitable punishments for that however until someone proves that President Bush was somehow actively involved in this there's little if any grounds for impeachment.
But yeah let's bring up how the Attorney general is biased right? Because a little late dirt slinging is ok, ignoring the fact that all US Attorney generals are appointed by the president.
No what I call harass is demands that we have independent councils for every little thing that might be a problem or an inconvenience to Bush. Any time Bush recommended any course of action, you'd have one group who would investigate it, not based on "was it good for the country" but "what dirt can we use to shame Bush".
We had a republican congress for years and I still heard random complaints from congressmen (and congresswomen if you want me to be PC) about this and that. Stuff that wouldn't matter 30 years ago but now seem of vital importance because Bush might have been caught in a lie.
Both sides of the Aisle seem to forget that American government is supposed to work for the good of the people, not for their petty little pride, interest groups, public glory, or what ever else their brains tell them to act for. That's something both sides have to get over. The second thing to realize is if you don't like Bush fine, but if you're comparing him to anyone not named Kerry or Gore then the comparison doesn't matter. Bush ran for presidency in 2000, and 2004. The democrats had a choice, the republicans had a choice, the third parties had their choices. Love it or hate it, Bush won over the other choices, complaining about how X would be better is a joke because unless he ran in that election you're boned. Want him out of the office? You got 20 monthes, You've lived 7 years with him, I think we can all wait that much longer.
Perhaps it's the class of people that worked on Maniac Mansion, or perhaps it was a different enough group than monkey's island. Hell it could just be the freedom they had to work on it.
Personally I'd like to think the later because there's just so many ways to "win" the game with so many different groups that I have to imagine it was hard but fun to develop and design, which produced a better relationship that the developers had with the product. But it could be any number of reasons.
Seriously people come on. We have no knowledge what the fuck went on, attacking Bush over this when he's barely mentioned (except as the leader) is a little premature. He's not omnipotent, hell according to most people who are rallying against him he can't tie his shoes so talks of conspiracy should be laughable?
Now we are taking Washington Post (who's doesn't surprise me that they'd bring up Watergate) and NPR (who's bias is rarely in question unless it's ignored) and hearing them bring up the 18 minutes. Not surprising in the least.
Personally I'll wait until after this is all over, the last 6 years have been the Democrats trying to get a pound of flesh after the Republicans shamed Clinton so I think we'll be hearing about this for the next 2 years, but personally I'm waiting until we get some ACTUAL evidence of who did what when before I place blame. But if you're ok with this then realize you better be ok if Hillary or Obama gets in and the Republicans continually harass him, and then better be ok when the next president gets harassed by the opposite side again and again. Personally I was sick of it when people couldn't figure out what the Clinton impeachment was about (hint: it had nothing to do with the sex, it had to do with an actual crime).
The only question I have is it any wonder why people are so disillusioned by our government where our president and congress both can barely break 40 percent approval?
Slashdot Mirror
RIAA has been successful for one reason, they are doing volume over value yet again. Every time they can find someone downloading any music that looks like they own they go with plan 15B. Cease and desist, sue, profit.
It's worked so far so why are we surprised that they are continuing with it? Expect them to continue this way. The subject of the lawsuit is faceless and nameless to them. Doesn't matter if it's a grandma, a 8 year old, or a athlete, they all are guilty to the RIAA. You know those adds that show people saying "I got it" "I got it" and it's every race, religion, age, and sex. Well to the RIAA it's the same way except they are saying "I stole." Why have a different strategy for each person.
It's good to see people fighting against the tyrants pushing this down the courts throat but at the same time I have to realize that some of these people like did steal large quantities of music before it came to this step. Still that's no reason to act like this kid isn't in school. What's next? Demanding he goes to jail for 10 years?
well I am in the slashdot crowd, but then again I wrote this same thing when this question was asked about webmail.
I use thunderbird and webmail together, actually using gmail for it. I have 2 accounts, one is for business, one is places that will likely spam me (three in reality but one is not being used right now) and having to switch between the two is a pain and a half so instead of forwarding or doing hocus pocus to read both at the same time I use thunderbird to get both feeds at the same time.) I still believe a lot agree with this because they want to download their mail not leaving it on some hard drive somewhere (personally I don't delete from server which I'll get to in a minute).
But I use webmail for when I'm not at home, from anywhere in the world I can access all my email, and with gmail that means almost all my correspondences. Personally I use that a lot more as I use it to check from work (have an RSS feed for my primary on my home page too).
So essentially both of them are useful and most people probably realize this if they understand what pop3 is and their service offers it for free (kudos to gmail for doing that).
That being said the real question should be how many people aside from the slashdot crowd know what the fuck Thunderbird is? Most of them blindly use outlook but they will use something for pop3. And if their server uses IMAP even better.
I can't really see a reason against this except cost and regulation. Honestly I wouldn't care.
Really it's not for you (unless you want it) it's for the people who are morally opposed to certain things. You can do it for Kosher food, why not have it for cloned food (and possibly genetically enhanced food). The fact is there's going to be people against cloned food, and those people will choose not to buy cloned food, why not make it easier so they don't have to bitch. Let them go be elitists.
Personally I'm interested in a chicken that doesn't taste like chicken, hell find me a way to get lettuce that tastes like bacon and I'll start eating healthy. But that's a different story (as well as meat that automatically regenerates what ever portion I eat of it).
Having a little experience with this question the answer that always seems to come up is between "no boobs and fake boobs, I'll choose fake boobs."
Oddly enough that's true in the porn industry as well.
1. Ask enemy to stop, don't swear or use rude terms, for they may be an innocent person.
2. Point at the person with your hand to show who you are indicating, your gun should still be stowed.
3. Ask louder and this time gesture with both hands to show that you are indeed trying to help.
4. Shoot into the are with a flare gun to alert the combatant that you will use weapons if necessary.
All our rules have done is to make it near impossible for our boys over there to win anything, and easier for the opposition to the war to have a death toll. Of course at the same time there's no mention of non american's death because we only care about americans, the ones posting the death tolls don't care if we are winning or losing the war.
Personally I think the only people who have a say in the rules of combat are people who have or will be using the rules of combat in an arena of conflict. We saw it in Vietnam, we see it now, if the enemy is not playing by the rules then the rules have to change. Hell the only reason America had a shot during the revolutionary war is the British were held by rules of combat and their "nobility" and we won any way we could. American is forgetting this lesson as we're losing a war the same way we won our independence, oddly enough.
It wasn't just you, in the past many people have chimed in like this no matter the topic and I find it a bit odd because I'm not saying iTunes is any different (though I thought iTunes was cheaper for 30 minute shows).
I actually picked up the Guitar Hero packs (I thought it was worth the money). But for TV I actually got a DVR for the exact reason you mention, I want to have a copy of it on my drive if I want to rewatch it. I just find the prices for their tv selection and movie selection to be more expensive than they need to make it a viable alternative to DVDs or rental stores. Where as the iTunes music is a perfect alternative to CDs in that you buy what you want.
I love this thought process that because I'm not currently bitching about anyone else that it's only about Microsoft. I don't support Apple, Microsoft or anyone else who charges more than a fair amount for their wares.
I was simply pointing out that for the same price they are charging you can get something else easily worth more (aka a whole month of basic cable versus 20 shows that are available on basic cable). If Microsoft or Apple wants to find a business model for this situation then they have to change. 2 dollars is a lot for a 20 minute show, even more when that show isn't connected to anything. I understand having to buy a 2 dollar show of a drama like Lost, 24, or stargate where if something happens and you miss the episode you'll have trouble keeping up but just getting a quantity of goods at 2 dollars doesn't make sense.
And believe me I've already taken my shots at Playstation (where to start) and Nintendo (the sega VC games are just sad when you can get them most of them for 20 bucks on a PS2 game). But this article is about microsoft. I don't have to constantly bitch about everyone because then it would be nonsensical. I'm discuss the matter at hand, or can't you figure that out?
I don't blame him for his opinions (ok I do, he's beyond stupid) but the crime I'm illustrating is a unlawful law that was over turned, as someone else mentioned he helped draft and file the motion for this law, he lobbied for it.
Should the elected officials have passed it? Depends, but if the law gets overturned because the words contained in it, it's the fault of the writers (of which Thompson was one). In that case that's who deserves to be punished, not the state. I can understand expecting the state to know if it's enforceable (and that's an acceptable reason to veto or cast a nay vote in most cases) but most lawmakers apparently don't care enough on that issue.
Thompson can spew shit all he wants over the airwaves and that's fine because there's little in way of "cost" except sanity, but he wrote the law that cost the state the money and I think he and his co-writers deserves the "credit" now.
Ignoring the fact that both shows have little to do with news and more to do with humor. The fact Microsoft is charging 2 dollars an episode for it is more than sad. There's people in other countries almost demanding Microsoft make it available for them, but look at the simple math.
2 dollars an episode for at least 20 episodes a month is 40 dollars. My cable bill is 40 dollars a month, I also get many more channels than comedy central and with an extra 5 bucks I get a DVR which means I can get all these shows already.
Personally the Video service Microsoft is offering needs to figure out a way to market the tv shows (unskipable advertisements at the beginning would be acceptable to me) because as it stands now it's less than a novelty, it's an insult.
Hell the Movies you only get for a couple days, the tv shows you are overcharged for. It's just not right.
Why not charge the 91K to the lawyers who lobbied for these laws? The Jack Thompsons of the world. If it wasn't for him decrying the state of games for years Louisiana wouldn't have tried to push the bill.
Make every mistake that Jack Thompson make not just hurt the state, but hurt him. He wants to bring frivolous law suits and decry every problem as video games fault people should turn around and demand the money from him.
At the very least let's hold him accountable for his rants, coming out with in hours of the Virgina Tech shooting and blaming video games is nothing short of morbid. It's 2000 equivalent of ambulance chasing and it needs to stop.
Parent is 100 percent right, however marketing and business tend to think in SKU terms for a variety of reasons.
Apparently like all other acronyms someone outside of the original world heard it and thought it was cool and made them sound like they were part of the industry and it propagates from there.
Personally SKU has a lot of useful connotations, the best I can think of is "Total versions of a product" which in most businesses is important, but like I said the parent is right, this is part of the over use of it by people trying to be "hip".
Let's be honest here, Sony's lost 1 engine, and in a tail spin, they're likely going to crater or step out of the industry, they have given us no reason to remain and arn't looking like it in the future, but Microsoft is the young up and comer who's going to follow's sony's example (last generation it was Sony who was pulling a Microsoft, mega sales, great games, nothing could go wrong.)
Nintendo has the key to avoiding another 1983 level crash. They sidestep all the problems and go in a new direction. A direction that lowers development cost (most development cost is to get better graphics or bigger games). Instead of a race to climb the next mountain they are going around the mountain.
Essentially the problem with this generation is everyone wants more content, more game, more graphics, and they want them all to look bigger and better. The problem is this costs money. GTA style games are big bucks now but they are even bigger budgets because you have to make a huge world.
I don't see a 1983 crash happening, however I do see Xbox struggling next generation, Sony being driven to a sink or swim level, but Nintendo's the fuzzy factor, if the industry starts working with the Wii, and developing lower budget but more innovative titles then you can see millions saved just from that move and the market is saved, otherwise you're going to see an epic level crash when we get to the question "what's next" after the 360? Better physics, better graphics? We're just killing ourself with every step we take on that path because the gameplay which has always mattered is ignored yet again.
Personally it's getting to that point. What's the difference between command and conquer 3, Company of heroes and Warcraft 3? Different motif, pretty much same game. What's the difference between Halo 2, Half-life 2, and Doom 3? Most JRPGS? Kotor 1 vs Kotor 2 vs fable vs the next western RPG. Most SRPGS based on disgaea typed engines (not even just nippon ichi titles)?
We are getting the same game over and over with slight changes and slight modifications and people are starting to realize that not every game is a completely unique and new experience, and from the sound of it we are getting pissed.
The 1950s called, they want their sexism back.
Besides shopping online is a male's wet dream. You haggle for prices on ebay and sites, you look at what you want, and can instantly find it with out having to search through 100 items you don't want and you can get it delivered to your house with out having to spend more than 10 minutes actually shopping. If it wasn't for the distrustful sellers online it would be perfect.
Did you even read the summary or were you just going for the first post?
This data isn't hacked, it's being misused, they are completely different situations. This database is giving access to the wrong people who will likely use the data for data mining finiacial information. These people are given complete access like a normal university.
The real problem though is that it sounds like anyone who logs onto this system has 100 percent access to every entry even without any proof of a business relationship with the person. It's hard to even consider this hacking or cracking as it's just a wide open database.
OOH look I just got an email to enlarge my junk!
This is my problem with schools, instead of teaching children they feel it's their responsibility to police children. What's next? If a child gets home and goes on wikipedia the parents should be considered harmful for showing them that site.
It's very simple, Wikipedia is a fast reference, but in no way shape or form is it a sitable reference. Want to know the 1999 New York Knicks line up? Wiki probably has it. Want to know why Camels are able to go a long time without water, wiki probably knows that too.
However Wikipedia is the beginning of any journey. You need to check their citations, do a little work on your own and figure it out.
This is the same as schools not realizing that maybe they should teach people how to effectively use search engines, or effectively use computers in general, to research and find hard data. At my office Wikipedia is considered "fact" but at the same time everyone knows the fallacies of it, and everyone also has common sense. No one jumps out a window to fly because they read it in wikipedia, we mostly use it for fast reference. Jack says there's 1 person in the house of representatives that is from DC, Jill says Do they even get to vote. Wikipedia answers both questions, no one disagreed with it, no one cared after we found out. Move on to next agenda item (actually happened). But again we were all using common sense and aren't using it for anything more than random information we'll forget tomorrow. Again something schools could teach but decide not to.
But then again schools have changed, any idiot can pass a grade, you can't even hold kids back because it's perceived that it's their right to graduate, and if you act out you have a problem, it couldn't be that you're an adolescent? Our teachers are glorified babysitters, is it any wonder that we're going to complain about the schools in congress?
The real kicker is I went to a rich rural city's schools, I can only imagine what hell the inner city schools are like.
When I say create safe versions. I'm talking about figuring out something simple like writing a wrapper around snprint where no matter what the last character becomes '/0'. If this causes issues for your code then it causes issues with your code. It might truncate your last character from something. If that's the case increase the n in snprintf and increase the size of your array. However this version changes the snprintf from the "hopefully we don't enter n as buffer size" to "Well Hopefully all the data gets there". Aka it works it just doesn't work well.
Next step is to look at the return value and continue from there. I'm not saying to duplicate functions but if a function has an unsafe feature that you can figure out (I'm sure Microsoft found all these unsafe functions just hasn't had time to fix the code they are called in. At least that's what they say every time they reference the millions of lines of code they have) then you can quickly switch every call from snprintf to snprintf_safe where now at least it won't buffer overflow.
These safe functions should do all the error checking you need in it. Hell there's about a million otherways to solve these problems but the fact is someone has to do it and Microsoft needs to learn that they should take time to do it. It's a reason I don't use Microsoft products because they have these buffer overflow problems that should be easier to fix then "we can't" implies.
I love morrowind, but I'm with you on Oblivion it was ok when I started with it I had at least 20-30 hours in it then I realized that everyone leveled up with me and it lost the appeal it had. Now with OOO I'm going to try it again.
But you understand my point. Bethsda might not be perfect but imagine fallout 3 with oblivion's engine to the point where someone can do a Total Conversion of the level and create a second or third story? That's an amazing idea to have and it's already been proven possible by morrowind. That's great to me considering what Brotherhood of Steel was for the PS2.
Seriously, the recovery system they are mentioning is good.... FOR TESTING! Real software shouldn't crash, if it does crash it better be because of hardware failure because software shouldn't do so much that crashing is an option. That's theory of course but it's a possible and working theory in most cases.
Buffer overflows? Create and use a SAFE version of functions... Like.. I don't know? Try snprintf with only the output buffer's size?
Buffer overflows are the fault of the programmer and there should be no excuse. Telling the system to crash instead of overflowing is a fix, but it's neither a good fix or a feature. It's a BUG that has been paved over by paper. Until you come back with concrete it's not really fixed.
Let's switch it around. If my game company submits a game to the Microsoft certification process which crashes, and we gave this excuse we'd be rejected in 2 seconds. Why is in-house Microsoft products gets a pass on this matter?
So AC hates the Elder scrolls game.
Well good for him, but considering still one of the best selling games on the 360, and has probably the most mods of any game I can't seem to see the point?
Seriously Oblivion is one of the best games in this generation, just because it runs like crap on your computer doesn't mean it is because of optimizations, they wanted to give a great experience to the end user. They did that. The amount of work that goes into one Elder Scroll game makes me believe that Fallout 3 has the potential for being the best of the series.
Or we could give it back to interplay and let them make another brotherhood of steel. Maybe the parent would prefer that?
Just a heads up it's more like 3 to $6.25
But on the other hand I know people were willing to pay 2 dollars per song but now they are acting like this is too much? Go figure. Personally if I want the music it's a fair price, if I don't want the music it's not.
This is the typical response that I expected to see, granted it took almost a day to appear.
Where does it say we impeach the president for mistakes or subversion by his employees. Impeachment is for "High crimes and misdemenors" or treason or bribery. It then gives the congress power to decide what that means. Yeah it's vague.
This is President Bush's administration, this isn't President Bush himself. Yes because of mistakes two acts are violated. Then there should be suitable punishments for that however until someone proves that President Bush was somehow actively involved in this there's little if any grounds for impeachment.
But yeah let's bring up how the Attorney general is biased right? Because a little late dirt slinging is ok, ignoring the fact that all US Attorney generals are appointed by the president.
No what I call harass is demands that we have independent councils for every little thing that might be a problem or an inconvenience to Bush. Any time Bush recommended any course of action, you'd have one group who would investigate it, not based on "was it good for the country" but "what dirt can we use to shame Bush".
We had a republican congress for years and I still heard random complaints from congressmen (and congresswomen if you want me to be PC) about this and that. Stuff that wouldn't matter 30 years ago but now seem of vital importance because Bush might have been caught in a lie.
Both sides of the Aisle seem to forget that American government is supposed to work for the good of the people, not for their petty little pride, interest groups, public glory, or what ever else their brains tell them to act for. That's something both sides have to get over. The second thing to realize is if you don't like Bush fine, but if you're comparing him to anyone not named Kerry or Gore then the comparison doesn't matter. Bush ran for presidency in 2000, and 2004. The democrats had a choice, the republicans had a choice, the third parties had their choices. Love it or hate it, Bush won over the other choices, complaining about how X would be better is a joke because unless he ran in that election you're boned. Want him out of the office? You got 20 monthes, You've lived 7 years with him, I think we can all wait that much longer.
Perhaps it's the class of people that worked on Maniac Mansion, or perhaps it was a different enough group than monkey's island. Hell it could just be the freedom they had to work on it.
Personally I'd like to think the later because there's just so many ways to "win" the game with so many different groups that I have to imagine it was hard but fun to develop and design, which produced a better relationship that the developers had with the product. But it could be any number of reasons.
Seriously people come on. We have no knowledge what the fuck went on, attacking Bush over this when he's barely mentioned (except as the leader) is a little premature. He's not omnipotent, hell according to most people who are rallying against him he can't tie his shoes so talks of conspiracy should be laughable?
Now we are taking Washington Post (who's doesn't surprise me that they'd bring up Watergate) and NPR (who's bias is rarely in question unless it's ignored) and hearing them bring up the 18 minutes. Not surprising in the least.
Personally I'll wait until after this is all over, the last 6 years have been the Democrats trying to get a pound of flesh after the Republicans shamed Clinton so I think we'll be hearing about this for the next 2 years, but personally I'm waiting until we get some ACTUAL evidence of who did what when before I place blame. But if you're ok with this then realize you better be ok if Hillary or Obama gets in and the Republicans continually harass him, and then better be ok when the next president gets harassed by the opposite side again and again. Personally I was sick of it when people couldn't figure out what the Clinton impeachment was about (hint: it had nothing to do with the sex, it had to do with an actual crime).
The only question I have is it any wonder why people are so disillusioned by our government where our president and congress both can barely break 40 percent approval?