As a fellow RunRev user, you might want to look at the CloseField handler for each of those fields to trigger recalculation.
Additionally, the.app.sit version I downloaded had a "no"-symbol over the app icon, which indicates that the system thought it woudn't run at all on this architecture. That probably didn't help RunRev's case with the App Store approval at all, if not actively shooting it in the foot.
Microsoft's intention to "reboot" the MechWarrior franchise would be a good sign of future computer gaming to come, but there are two other issues: copyright and the intentions of the current owners.
The issue is that while the computer gaming rights were being traded around, the MechWarrior name itself was being traded around too. It is currently held by a company called WizKids which has granted full publication rights to Catalyst Game Labs, and is being rather proactive with it.
WizKids was nice enough with Catalyst and the printed game, but I have no idea how they negotiate the licensing of computer games, or how much creative control they're going to exercise over the finished product. Can anyone confirm if this is really a problem?
fuzzyfuzzyfungus: Did somebody just rediscover the fact that humans have been forming little social groups, sometimes partially or wholly kin-based, other times simply social, for most of their evolutionary history?
No, it's been observed that people have been gathering this way for a very long time. However, there's this field of study called "sociology" which aims to figure out what makes these groups come together or fight. And your comment got me wondering just how old the field of sociology really is.
I've only just started researching, but the earliest cite I've found so far is an examination of the pre-Civil-War south. This was about the 1850s, so sociology is a young science. And it's a slow-moving, vague science, combining the touchy-feely nature of biology, the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics, and the dismalness of economics. Why, it's just like a version of theology applied to the common man.
Because it is a science, there are occasionally breakthroughs or discoveries. And when they happen, they get announced. And when they're announced, people either perk up or yawn and brush them aside depending upon how profitable they sound.
Call it fluffheaded fantasizing on my part, but I could envision the much-maligned iPhone 1.1.1 update as being part of a wonderful Trojan Horse attack.
And no, I don't mean against the industry of hacked or modded iPhones, I mean against the industry practice of locking phones to specific carriers in the first place.
Yeah, it's goofy, I know, but think about it: for a very long time, the mobile networks have been calling the shots and tilting the playing field their way. Phones would be designed to meet those specs and little else. Consider that it took Apple's entry into the cell phone market in the first place to generate this sort of outrage. If it were a lesser device, interchangeable with all the other services out there, do you think enough people would have cared to raise this kind of stink?
If it turns out that Apple really did write phone-bricking code into patch 1.1.1, and they had to do this in order to meet a contractual obligation with AT&T, then I doubt that Apple would be in as much trouble as AT&T. Furthermore, perhaps the FCC, FTC, or some other relevant GOV TLA will give up relinquishing [sic] their duties long enough to investigate just how much the mobile carriers have been stifling their own progress and growth and that of the mobile device industry in the name of quick profits. At least, that's the dream. It's vague and it's fuzzy, but its realization would make me inordinately happy.
A company I worked for had similar similar browser-share for their major web applications, and it really had little to do with Opera and Safari being niche outcast browsers. It had a lot more to do with the site being so broken as to be unusable in Opera and Safari. People would go one or two pages in, realize there was a problem, and either switch to a different browser, or as the growing fear was, switch to a different company.
It stems from the complaint above that many large corporate IT departments don't want to switch from IE6. Well, guess what the in-house web developers code for first? IE6. Then they try to tweak the design to work passably in other browsers when they should be working the other way: create a standards-based layout, then tweak for the peccadillos of other browsers.
It can be said that Apples are among the smoothest running out of the box, but does that really mean there's no crap? This line of reasoning begs the definition of "crapware," and the #1 response would be "stuff you don't need on your computer." It doesn't have to slow it down, it doesn't have to have an enormous memory footprint when it's running or a huge disk footprint when it isn't, it just has to be stuff you don't need. And depending who you are, that can be quite a lot.
Have you ever used iWeb? iDVD? Some would consider the whole iLife to be crapware because they plan to get higher-end, more professional applications through which to vent their creativity. And if they're thinking about office use, they're likely to go the route of Microsoft Office / OpenOffice, so bang goes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Do you ever plan to serve web pages up from your laptop? (Well, I do, but then again, look where I'm posting.) You probably don't need that install of Apache or PHP. Not planning on doing any software development? Yes, XCode is an optional install and not part of the standard kit, but you've still got perl, ruby, python, pico, vi, emacs, and more shells, libraries, and frameworks than you'll ever need nestled down in/usr/local. Have a digital music library already? Then you might also have a preferred player, and probably won't want iTunes to re-rip it into that silly AAC format. A lot of people despise Quicktime on general principle. And a lot of people still eschew Safari for Firefox despite its HTML5 support.
It all depends on your definition of "crapware." It's all assembled and designed by the mother company, so it's integrated so perfectly that you're never bothered by it if you never use it, but if you dig, you'll find something that'll fit the description.
MBGMorden: They speak of "compromising" these robots as if user programmable devices are inherently bad. I don't want to see devices locked down into black box "no touch" state because of some fear mongering.
I half agree with you; user-programmable devices are very useful, and easily tailored to efficiently perform specific tasks.
The crux of the argument, though, is "which user is giving the instructions?" Long ago on/. I made a comment differentiating security vs. transparency in government. This is much the same thing.
On the one hand, you (and a lot of people) want the device to be as programmable, flexible, and useful as possible. That means it must be able to do a lot of things. On the other hand, people might want to use such devices for nefarious, invasive purposes like spying, theft, vandalism, etc.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but remember:
You cannot have 100% security in anything, meaning someone might sooner or later break into your progbot and do horrible things, and
Until you have an establishment of security, any flexibility and programmability your progbot may have is a double-edged sword and may be used against you. Consequently...
The ultimate risk which a progbot poses to its owner is a factor of both its utility and the ease of intrusion. Given that security isn't guaranteed, utility has to be given some limits or other protections must be maintained (backups, lockdowns, etc.). Adjust your cost-benefit analyses accordingly.
If apple had have done the same thing it would be marketing genius..
No, if Apple had done this, it would still have sucked. It would take more than "genius" to make this pitch work, it would take "omnipotence." In fact, if the marketers at Apple really are geniuses, I would expect them never ever to try a campaign as hokey as this.
If anything, Apple sells only the style and solidity of the hardware and the utility of the software, and downplays the operating system because it exists only as a facilitator to the other things you want to do with the computer. It really is a case where you want to sell the sizzle instead of the steak, because the steak is boring.
However, in these modern times with object-oriented multithreaded programming, BASIC is kind of a throwback, don't you think? It may have been nice as the "gateway drug" of programming languages, but these days it's barely a first step.
I'm not necessarily trying to defend Apple here; their decision to decline any app with programmability is still a curious, regrettable, and philosophically indefensible one. (Do symbolic environments count, like you'd find on a programmable calculator? What if that environment allowed the display of English text? What if the environment had English equivalents for some symbols?) But it is possible for people to buck the trend.
Have you noticed how many employers don't simply want, but insist that new hires be good at multitasking? That the successful employee will be not only able to manage several projects at the same time, but will jump from one to another like a coked-up spider monkey on command?
Now, I admit fully to being resolutely anti-corporate, so it's only natural for me to look at this suspiciously. But I have to imagine that a whole lot of other people will see this as a disorder not just of the worker but of management, accepting sight unseen that multitasking, getting bits and pieces done on a whole lot of different projects in short order, is somehow more "efficient" (Hello? Changeover time?) than doing one thing to a good stopping point and then moving to another project when you're damn good and ready. It's especially a management problem if the management insists on mandating the changeovers, forcing employees to change gears without the clutch engaged.
I can easily believe this sort of affliction can be inflicted. So I say let's study the possibility that ADD can be a workplace injury, to be covered by health insurance, and see how long this trend lasts.
At the time, analysts pooh-poohed the idea of Apple's retail stores originally, too. The retail space was glutted with computers, Apple already had a relationship with CompUSA which was best described as "passive-aggressive," and Gateway's retail concept was defecating the bed. Opening a retail store was the silliest thing they could have done, except it worked for them. They weren't just marketing hardware and software, what they were doing was cashing in on the brand's exclusivity, by creating a boutique space where people could interact with the hardware and ask questions about it.
The problem with Microsoft's concept is that they don't have the same culture to sell. Apple has a niche (albeit a very deep niche) market which supports the notion of exclusiveness (which anyone can conveniently buy into). Microsoft doesn't have that kind of exclusiveness (unless you're talking about excluding people who are using previous versions of their OS on older hardware). What Microsoft will instead find they're selling is ubiquity, and not even a nice sort of ubiquity either. It's more of a fetid, horrid inevitability, not so much like death as spending the holiday with in-laws.
Delusion_: freelegoporn.com is not cybersquatting. It's parody. The difference is crucial.
Just because a rights-holder says otherwise doesn't make it so.
Seconded. In fact, I remember another case where the court—wrongly—grabbed a domain name simply because of its resemblance to another site: etoy.com vs. etoys.com. etoy came first, but somehow eToys managed to suck up to a judge and lay claim to etoy.com, however temporarily. It may have had something to do with the fact that eToys thought it had a trademark for a vibrant, useful commerce site while that Johnny-come-earlier was pushing that wishy-washy pinko art.
This is the sort of thing the judiciary has to consider carefully when looking at a case where domain names rub a little too close together. And with the press continuing for domain names, the situation will only get worse.
jeffasselin: The google guys are intelligent and pay a lot of attentions to details
True enough, but it's also possible to pay too much attention to details. There's always the chance of a misstep somewhere, but I think Google's most at risk if they pay attention to the wrong detail, or waiting for a large volume of data to make "the perfect choice" where the best course of action would be simply to make a different choice.
That said, it is still kind of hard to accept Microsoft as a credible threat, except that this is version 2 of their search engine. They might have some details right this time.
Moraelin: Actually, I see another even bigger problem, at least for more traditional (WoW-type) MMOs. How big should your world be?
The question of how big an MMO should be is a simple matter of planning desired player density, introducing sufficient hooks to ensure interest, and mitigating player turnover by making the action easy enough for low-level characters to get into. All of this is part of the design of any MMO worth its salt.
However, remember that "should" is the most dangerous word in the English language. Forget "should." Screw "should"'s eye sockets until its ears cry.
How big will the game be? Because all that planning won't amount to anything if nobody shows up and the place feels like a well-lit and mip-mapped ghost town. Or if it takes off faster than expected and suddenly you're running the most popular lag machine in town.
It's been years since they were relevant, and they last updated in January 2008. However, they've been featured on Slashdot before and that January 2008 update his close to the mark on this one.
Clueless Mailers is the group that mapped the flow of spam, tracking email addresses as they were sold from one company to another to another until they mapped who fed what.
That "recent" article covers the current problem of (supposedly) reputable companies buying mailing lists from clueless clowns, and the troubles that ensued.
If it's a company you've heard before, and you can verify that the "opt out" will actually go to them, then opt out that way. If you don't see why you got on their list, tell them so, and they may twig onto the fact that their list wasn't all that hot.
If it's a company you've never heard of or there's something in it that smells hinky, just delete it, let it slide, and let them think that the message sailed off into the æther, never to be heard from again.
That third case? If it looks like a reputable company but the opt-out goes someplace apparently unrelated, do not simply opt out. Send a copy of the message to the people at the real company complaining of the deception. And that one's the one to hope for. Because if you can point out to the home office either (a) that someone is using their name poorly or (b) if they are authorized agents, they're getting bogus email addresses from somewhere, then they'll stop buying those discount lists of bulk email addresses and start doing their own damn work.
...and trust me, I don't normally use those two words that close together.
I second snowwrestler's comment. It was Seth Godin who pointed out that anyone seriously involved in marketing (as opposed to someone bulk-emailing thousands of people trying to sucker a precious two or three) would absolutely hate hate hate to alienate individuals by annoying them with unwanted messages. Even if they've never bought the product in question before, pissing them off with spam will only drive them away and generate poor word of mouth. Better to back off and preserve what chance you have rather than push harder and poison the well, to coin a mixed metaphor.
gizmoiscariot: Agreed. Not sure what all the hate for 4ed comes from. If you don't like it, don't play it. Its not like the previous edition's books exploded at a certain date and were not usable.
The problem is that depending how they get the books, they might not know how much they're going to hate it until they get the books, sit down with them, and find out just how limited this edition really is.
If you're lucky enough to live near a game store that has a back room or upstairs dedicated to playing games (a dying breed, those, but that's a rant for another time), then odds are good that either someone there plays 4th or the store itself runs demos. That's the best opportunity to play the game without needing the books yourself, because someone else likely already has them.
If you're just browsing in a bookstore, there's less opportunity to see the thing in action. You can read snippets and passages, but unless your bookstore is progressive and offers places where you can sit down and peruse what you want to buy, you're likely not going to capture the spirit of what makes a game good or bad.
As for why there's no love for 4th, I think it's limitation shock: 3.5 had become a hairy, unkempt, unruly man-child with many stress fractures where the added-on feats and features were causing bloat. The attempt to streamline it, give it a nice haircut, and maybe even get back to old-fashioned values (i.e. its wargaming roots) was overdone and overdone hard, to the point where I now refer to it as "the bastard child of role-playing and slot-car racing."
Counterpoint: At the risk of the "troll" moderation, those people who insist that roleplaying is impossible with 4th edition rules is doing it wrong. Roleplaying is a matter of characterization, independent of whatever structure of rules is at the table. It has more to do with imagination than the list of moves that your character can execute in combat, though they serve well as a reference for definition.
When I first saw this here, the first place I looked for additional information was the Internet Storm Center, where they eat this kind of stuff up. And sure enough, they even had a call from someone at Symantec saying that yes, this one is theirs.
Conspiracy theory or no (and it's looking more like no), there are two things that rescue this from dullsville:
In the comments on that SANS article, it's mentioned that yes, Symantec is deleting comments left and right, and meanwhile the talk is slowly wending its way onto the ZoneAlarm forums, which just goes to show that one man's misstep is another man's opportunity. And...
While the story behind the PIFTS file itself isn't terribly interesting, some unsavory rapscallion had noticed its popularity as a search term, and planted malware where people looking for information on it could stumble upon it. Fun stuff, eh? Look for malware information, and find it the hard way.
Google has already removed that link, but it might still be out there, just in case you use a different search engine. And there's no reason he/they won't try again on another site.
Slashdot Mirror
As a fellow RunRev user, you might want to look at the CloseField handler for each of those fields to trigger recalculation.
Additionally, the .app.sit version I downloaded had a "no"-symbol over the app icon, which indicates that the system thought it woudn't run at all on this architecture. That probably didn't help RunRev's case with the App Store approval at all, if not actively shooting it in the foot.
Wow, I have got to read /. at a lower karma level.
Microsoft's intention to "reboot" the MechWarrior franchise would be a good sign of future computer gaming to come, but there are two other issues: copyright and the intentions of the current owners.
The issue is that while the computer gaming rights were being traded around, the MechWarrior name itself was being traded around too. It is currently held by a company called WizKids which has granted full publication rights to Catalyst Game Labs, and is being rather proactive with it.
WizKids was nice enough with Catalyst and the printed game, but I have no idea how they negotiate the licensing of computer games, or how much creative control they're going to exercise over the finished product. Can anyone confirm if this is really a problem?
No, it's been observed that people have been gathering this way for a very long time. However, there's this field of study called "sociology" which aims to figure out what makes these groups come together or fight. And your comment got me wondering just how old the field of sociology really is.
I've only just started researching, but the earliest cite I've found so far is an examination of the pre-Civil-War south. This was about the 1850s, so sociology is a young science. And it's a slow-moving, vague science, combining the touchy-feely nature of biology, the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics, and the dismalness of economics. Why, it's just like a version of theology applied to the common man.
Because it is a science, there are occasionally breakthroughs or discoveries. And when they happen, they get announced. And when they're announced, people either perk up or yawn and brush them aside depending upon how profitable they sound.
Call it fluffheaded fantasizing on my part, but I could envision the much-maligned iPhone 1.1.1 update as being part of a wonderful Trojan Horse attack.
And no, I don't mean against the industry of hacked or modded iPhones, I mean against the industry practice of locking phones to specific carriers in the first place.
Yeah, it's goofy, I know, but think about it: for a very long time, the mobile networks have been calling the shots and tilting the playing field their way. Phones would be designed to meet those specs and little else. Consider that it took Apple's entry into the cell phone market in the first place to generate this sort of outrage. If it were a lesser device, interchangeable with all the other services out there, do you think enough people would have cared to raise this kind of stink?
If it turns out that Apple really did write phone-bricking code into patch 1.1.1, and they had to do this in order to meet a contractual obligation with AT&T, then I doubt that Apple would be in as much trouble as AT&T. Furthermore, perhaps the FCC, FTC, or some other relevant GOV TLA will give up relinquishing [sic] their duties long enough to investigate just how much the mobile carriers have been stifling their own progress and growth and that of the mobile device industry in the name of quick profits. At least, that's the dream. It's vague and it's fuzzy, but its realization would make me inordinately happy.
A company I worked for had similar similar browser-share for their major web applications, and it really had little to do with Opera and Safari being niche outcast browsers. It had a lot more to do with the site being so broken as to be unusable in Opera and Safari. People would go one or two pages in, realize there was a problem, and either switch to a different browser, or as the growing fear was, switch to a different company.
It stems from the complaint above that many large corporate IT departments don't want to switch from IE6. Well, guess what the in-house web developers code for first? IE6. Then they try to tweak the design to work passably in other browsers when they should be working the other way: create a standards-based layout, then tweak for the peccadillos of other browsers.
It can be said that Apples are among the smoothest running out of the box, but does that really mean there's no crap? This line of reasoning begs the definition of "crapware," and the #1 response would be "stuff you don't need on your computer." It doesn't have to slow it down, it doesn't have to have an enormous memory footprint when it's running or a huge disk footprint when it isn't, it just has to be stuff you don't need. And depending who you are, that can be quite a lot.
Have you ever used iWeb? iDVD? Some would consider the whole iLife to be crapware because they plan to get higher-end, more professional applications through which to vent their creativity. And if they're thinking about office use, they're likely to go the route of Microsoft Office / OpenOffice, so bang goes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Do you ever plan to serve web pages up from your laptop? (Well, I do, but then again, look where I'm posting.) You probably don't need that install of Apache or PHP. Not planning on doing any software development? Yes, XCode is an optional install and not part of the standard kit, but you've still got perl, ruby, python, pico, vi, emacs, and more shells, libraries, and frameworks than you'll ever need nestled down in /usr/local. Have a digital music library already? Then you might also have a preferred player, and probably won't want iTunes to re-rip it into that silly AAC format. A lot of people despise Quicktime on general principle. And a lot of people still eschew Safari for Firefox despite its HTML5 support.
It all depends on your definition of "crapware." It's all assembled and designed by the mother company, so it's integrated so perfectly that you're never bothered by it if you never use it, but if you dig, you'll find something that'll fit the description.
The specifications for that cloud include a silver lining.
Don't be surprised if they keep saying it, too. Cognitive dissonance is so out of style these days.
I half agree with you; user-programmable devices are very useful, and easily tailored to efficiently perform specific tasks.
The crux of the argument, though, is "which user is giving the instructions?" Long ago on /. I made a comment differentiating security vs. transparency in government. This is much the same thing.
On the one hand, you (and a lot of people) want the device to be as programmable, flexible, and useful as possible. That means it must be able to do a lot of things. On the other hand, people might want to use such devices for nefarious, invasive purposes like spying, theft, vandalism, etc.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but remember:
No, if Apple had done this, it would still have sucked. It would take more than "genius" to make this pitch work, it would take "omnipotence." In fact, if the marketers at Apple really are geniuses, I would expect them never ever to try a campaign as hokey as this.
If anything, Apple sells only the style and solidity of the hardware and the utility of the software, and downplays the operating system because it exists only as a facilitator to the other things you want to do with the computer. It really is a case where you want to sell the sizzle instead of the steak, because the steak is boring.
Interesting choice of words there... considering that "resources" which could help them win would include two shells full of birdshot...
Really now, it's not like the iPhone is a closed black-box environment, for which no outsider can create software.
However, in these modern times with object-oriented multithreaded programming, BASIC is kind of a throwback, don't you think? It may have been nice as the "gateway drug" of programming languages, but these days it's barely a first step.
I'm not necessarily trying to defend Apple here; their decision to decline any app with programmability is still a curious, regrettable, and philosophically indefensible one. (Do symbolic environments count, like you'd find on a programmable calculator? What if that environment allowed the display of English text? What if the environment had English equivalents for some symbols?) But it is possible for people to buck the trend.
Or something I like saying: "I divide my moods up into 'myself' and 'everyone else' days, as in 'If I had a gun, who would I should first?'"
"The little critters of nature... they don't know they're ugly!"
Have you noticed how many employers don't simply want, but insist that new hires be good at multitasking? That the successful employee will be not only able to manage several projects at the same time, but will jump from one to another like a coked-up spider monkey on command?
Now, I admit fully to being resolutely anti-corporate, so it's only natural for me to look at this suspiciously. But I have to imagine that a whole lot of other people will see this as a disorder not just of the worker but of management, accepting sight unseen that multitasking, getting bits and pieces done on a whole lot of different projects in short order, is somehow more "efficient" (Hello? Changeover time?) than doing one thing to a good stopping point and then moving to another project when you're damn good and ready. It's especially a management problem if the management insists on mandating the changeovers, forcing employees to change gears without the clutch engaged.
I can easily believe this sort of affliction can be inflicted. So I say let's study the possibility that ADD can be a workplace injury, to be covered by health insurance, and see how long this trend lasts.
At the time, analysts pooh-poohed the idea of Apple's retail stores originally, too. The retail space was glutted with computers, Apple already had a relationship with CompUSA which was best described as "passive-aggressive," and Gateway's retail concept was defecating the bed. Opening a retail store was the silliest thing they could have done, except it worked for them. They weren't just marketing hardware and software, what they were doing was cashing in on the brand's exclusivity, by creating a boutique space where people could interact with the hardware and ask questions about it.
The problem with Microsoft's concept is that they don't have the same culture to sell. Apple has a niche (albeit a very deep niche) market which supports the notion of exclusiveness (which anyone can conveniently buy into). Microsoft doesn't have that kind of exclusiveness (unless you're talking about excluding people who are using previous versions of their OS on older hardware). What Microsoft will instead find they're selling is ubiquity, and not even a nice sort of ubiquity either. It's more of a fetid, horrid inevitability, not so much like death as spending the holiday with in-laws.
Seconded. In fact, I remember another case where the court—wrongly—grabbed a domain name simply because of its resemblance to another site: etoy.com vs. etoys.com. etoy came first, but somehow eToys managed to suck up to a judge and lay claim to etoy.com, however temporarily. It may have had something to do with the fact that eToys thought it had a trademark for a vibrant, useful commerce site while that Johnny-come-earlier was pushing that wishy-washy pinko art.
This is the sort of thing the judiciary has to consider carefully when looking at a case where domain names rub a little too close together. And with the press continuing for domain names, the situation will only get worse.
True enough, but it's also possible to pay too much attention to details. There's always the chance of a misstep somewhere, but I think Google's most at risk if they pay attention to the wrong detail, or waiting for a large volume of data to make "the perfect choice" where the best course of action would be simply to make a different choice.
That said, it is still kind of hard to accept Microsoft as a credible threat, except that this is version 2 of their search engine. They might have some details right this time.
Is this an appropriately dramatic moment for a WHOOOOSH!! ?
The question of how big an MMO should be is a simple matter of planning desired player density, introducing sufficient hooks to ensure interest, and mitigating player turnover by making the action easy enough for low-level characters to get into. All of this is part of the design of any MMO worth its salt.
However, remember that "should" is the most dangerous word in the English language. Forget "should." Screw "should"'s eye sockets until its ears cry.
How big will the game be? Because all that planning won't amount to anything if nobody shows up and the place feels like a well-lit and mip-mapped ghost town. Or if it takes off faster than expected and suddenly you're running the most popular lag machine in town.
It's been years since they were relevant, and they last updated in January 2008. However, they've been featured on Slashdot before and that January 2008 update his close to the mark on this one.
Clueless Mailers is the group that mapped the flow of spam, tracking email addresses as they were sold from one company to another to another until they mapped who fed what.
That "recent" article covers the current problem of (supposedly) reputable companies buying mailing lists from clueless clowns, and the troubles that ensued.
If it's a company you've heard before, and you can verify that the "opt out" will actually go to them, then opt out that way. If you don't see why you got on their list, tell them so, and they may twig onto the fact that their list wasn't all that hot.
If it's a company you've never heard of or there's something in it that smells hinky, just delete it, let it slide, and let them think that the message sailed off into the æther, never to be heard from again.
That third case? If it looks like a reputable company but the opt-out goes someplace apparently unrelated, do not simply opt out. Send a copy of the message to the people at the real company complaining of the deception. And that one's the one to hope for. Because if you can point out to the home office either (a) that someone is using their name poorly or (b) if they are authorized agents, they're getting bogus email addresses from somewhere, then they'll stop buying those discount lists of bulk email addresses and start doing their own damn work.
...and trust me, I don't normally use those two words that close together.
I second snowwrestler's comment. It was Seth Godin who pointed out that anyone seriously involved in marketing (as opposed to someone bulk-emailing thousands of people trying to sucker a precious two or three) would absolutely hate hate hate to alienate individuals by annoying them with unwanted messages. Even if they've never bought the product in question before, pissing them off with spam will only drive them away and generate poor word of mouth. Better to back off and preserve what chance you have rather than push harder and poison the well, to coin a mixed metaphor.
The problem is that depending how they get the books, they might not know how much they're going to hate it until they get the books, sit down with them, and find out just how limited this edition really is.
If you're lucky enough to live near a game store that has a back room or upstairs dedicated to playing games (a dying breed, those, but that's a rant for another time), then odds are good that either someone there plays 4th or the store itself runs demos. That's the best opportunity to play the game without needing the books yourself, because someone else likely already has them.
If you're just browsing in a bookstore, there's less opportunity to see the thing in action. You can read snippets and passages, but unless your bookstore is progressive and offers places where you can sit down and peruse what you want to buy, you're likely not going to capture the spirit of what makes a game good or bad.
As for why there's no love for 4th, I think it's limitation shock: 3.5 had become a hairy, unkempt, unruly man-child with many stress fractures where the added-on feats and features were causing bloat. The attempt to streamline it, give it a nice haircut, and maybe even get back to old-fashioned values (i.e. its wargaming roots) was overdone and overdone hard, to the point where I now refer to it as "the bastard child of role-playing and slot-car racing."
Counterpoint: At the risk of the "troll" moderation, those people who insist that roleplaying is impossible with 4th edition rules is doing it wrong. Roleplaying is a matter of characterization, independent of whatever structure of rules is at the table. It has more to do with imagination than the list of moves that your character can execute in combat, though they serve well as a reference for definition.
When I first saw this here, the first place I looked for additional information was the Internet Storm Center, where they eat this kind of stuff up. And sure enough, they even had a call from someone at Symantec saying that yes, this one is theirs.
Conspiracy theory or no (and it's looking more like no), there are two things that rescue this from dullsville:
In the comments on that SANS article, it's mentioned that yes, Symantec is deleting comments left and right, and meanwhile the talk is slowly wending its way onto the ZoneAlarm forums, which just goes to show that one man's misstep is another man's opportunity. And...
While the story behind the PIFTS file itself isn't terribly interesting, some unsavory rapscallion had noticed its popularity as a search term, and planted malware where people looking for information on it could stumble upon it. Fun stuff, eh? Look for malware information, and find it the hard way.
Google has already removed that link, but it might still be out there, just in case you use a different search engine. And there's no reason he/they won't try again on another site.