Your words ring true, but the mistake everyone makes is thinking they know more than the enemy. I propose that MS WANTS people to pirate XP. XP is an OS. By definition the OS has to run on the computer. By practice, the software is sold as the largest money maker. The OS is the monopolous (sp?) razer, the productivity tools and games are the blades. If I recall,.NET apps dont even run on a computer.
At this point I should admit that my knowledge of XP and its.NET antipiracy systems is quite limited. Could anybody tell me if MS links XP activation to its products, so that they cant give away the razor?
When I was eight or ten, I took a weekend class at the local Community College called "LEGO LOGO." Thats right, we used Logo to move legos around. It was really interesting, but the programming was kind of weak. I can't remember off hand if we used loops or not, but it was more fun than just lego, since you built cars that moved and there were optical sensors etc.
On that other tidbit, I dont really think OOP was inspired by Lego so much as it was by natural progression. We had structs, and programs that worked with structs, so it was only a matter of time till we had structs that could work on themselves. OOP and the SmallTalk MVC architecture is really the result of people trying several BAD ways to implement things. Of course, I could be wrong.
Which is why I'd hate to work with you. While some of your initial points are accurate, others are not so accurate, but thats not the problem. Elitistism is bad because it generates conflict between members in the team. Since I kinda like to lead, I'd hate to have people like you in my team second guessing me and generally making the other people feel bad. While I am elite, I cannot and will not be elitist. People are who they are, not what they know. I can teach people, but I am not gifted enough to change them. I wish I could because you are in need of such a change. Your technical prowress will soon be limited by you inability to cooperate with your peers. I find that people with the initiative and capacity to learn useful, and those who can tolerate guiding others useful as well. There are much better reasons to hate people than because they do not know how to unroll a loop in asm, like refusing to learn how to when offererd.
Sorry if that read like a fortune cookie, or if it was too critical. But I've known too many people in my past that were elitist like you are now, and myself was included.
However, the idea that a CS grad could get away without knowing the architecture of a computer is quite concerning, and I soon suspect you'll find your degree worthless if indeed these grads are useless as Software Engineers. For you know, Software Engineering and Computer Science are quite differant. As you also know, one is business oriented around productivity and the other math oriented around things like computation time. So I could see if your degree granting instution preferred to think of CS as math oriented and shyed away from stacks and jnz's and other low level techniques (which may become obsolete if field programmable arrays ever materialize, replaced with new ones).
I attend Kansas State University, and while I feel generally ambivolent I really can't comment on the quality of the teaching going on compared to other schools. What I can do is tell you that my Major in Computer Science works like this:
First year we take two or three CS classes, Program Architecture, Data Structures and Logical Foundations of Programming. The first two are indeed taught in java, but the books we use are written in house by a guy who I have deemed the Bill Nye of Computer Science. As far as the programming goes, he despises the idea of learning to program in java the way in which you spoke of, plugging together components to make them work. The first class does however do this to some degree, mostly in the GUI sections. Its basically an intro to CS class that discusses your foundational concepts of if-thens, while loops, and functions/methods (what a god awful term, methods). The second class, which he teaches, has absouletly no dependance on Sun's Java APIs. It would make no sense to teach a class about HashTables by making them import java.util and creating an instance of HashTable. I agree that aint programming. In fact, Mr. Schmidt has made an effort to try and keep the ideology as language independant as he can, given that all our assignments are java based. The Logical Foundations class is a really interesting class with little work, but its important indeed.
The over all structure of our cirriculum is a 4 year program by evility. Every semseter we take at least one CS class. Each class is the prerequisite for the next, and they're only offered one semester a year for the most part. So I come in with 32 credit hours, enough to cut a year out of the way, but I have to stay for 4 because those 32 are only general education credits not CS. In a way I suppose its good, but in another, I wish I could compact it more.
As for the upper level classes, we're expected to pick up the required language after sophmore year. Its a good way of weeding out the weaker students, but its also a good way of killing enrollment. Of about 300 new freshmen, 200 took the Intro CS Class (CIS 200) and changed to MIS in the College of Business. My girlfriend freaked and changed to Computer Engineering, but she's more of a hardware head than I am anyways. My roommate was well versed (too well versed, in my opinion) in VB, and he faired ok, though hes developed an exquisite disdain for working in VB anymore. I really hope that experiencing more powerful languages won't leave a sour taste in the mouth for other langauges, because LISP is quite daunting.
People won't pay for news on the net because of supply and demand. For every one news service that charges, theres five that are free. I'm making up the numbers, but its a conservative estimate. And lets face it, nobody's gonna pay out money to read IGN's crappy editorials. They're just not writers of that kind of cailber.
The issue of declining sales with increasing prices is a well known one, thats inherant to any business. The more expensive the less people choose it. I think the largest problem there is that most businesses have people who go through and figure out how to price things so that sales x price == max profit. I'm no genuis, but with.com stocks failures largely being pointed at no business plan, I'm fairly certiain there wasn't enough/any of those kind of employees in companies.
Finally is the issue of utility. I think Yamauchi put it best when he said "People do not need games to live. I think that few people in this industry understand this. We cannot sit down and do nothing. We have to strive daily to make our products appealing and captivating." Of course I am aware that the Net isn't console video games. But his words ring true. Too many people thought that being on the internet was all they needed in the "appealing and captivating" sector, so they hired the cheapest writers / artists / etc they could, or bought sites up that allready had a viewership and strip mined them. Problem with that is strip mining tends to rape the landscape, and nobody wants that. At least, not to pay for that.
And thats why pay sites don't do too well. Having said that, I think people's concepts of the willingness to pay for online content is grossly mis-interpreted. Maybe your viewership drops by a factor of a thousand when you change from free to ten cents a month. Maybe more. You look at that and say that its broke. What you're not seeing is that if you were charging 1 cent a day, youd probably see a drop of the same factor. There are definate barriers to entry that are unseen by just that kind of data.
If I were to do a pay site (that didnt have pr0n(which is obviously excluded in my rant)) I would focus on two things: quality of content and social status. Think of it like Tommy Hilfiger or Wall Street Journal. In either case, half the popularity is that they're so damn expensive. Its a status symbol to own these things, and sadly, the vast majority of American culture repects money above all else. So I charge 50 a month, with a lower rate for a trial period to build momentum, and maybe offer some hardcopy things like shirts or maybe even real hardcopy.
While nobody can prove what was in Greek Fire, I wouldn't be suprised to hear that it was indeed petrolium.
And it took 1500 years before people started actually using it for other purposes. I better start saving now if I want a nuclear powered motorcycle in 3502...
I'm afraid I must question the existance of the "large majority of people who would love to pay." Maybe there is some innate differance between the tip-jar like donation buttons and micropayments that cause this, but the vast majority of Penny Arcade viewers don't donate. They claim a halflife of a month on payments via donations.
My point here is that Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade loved Scott's idea, but after a few months in the trenches with depressing results, they were a bit sour on the idea, especially when the newest ICST basically said the same thing as the one before it.
Its a bit like reading an article about the radical possiblities of Internet Companies and dotcom's today.
I know he says this every time we turn around, but Yamauchi is planning on retiring (hopefully sooner than later). Even then, Yamauchi is not Nintendo in and of itself. There's a whole board of Directors which could override Yamauchi.
Having said that, I think there's a good deal of ill will festering between represenatives of both companies. Nintendo claims that Square is unneeded and talentless, basically. Square's claims are basically "we're trying to be reasonable here" and "Its Nintendo's fault." I suspect that the truth lies in the middle, as usual. I would wager that either Square wanted to make GBA games, and Nintendo wouldn't liscence them without a promise to develop for Gamecube, or that Square wanted to do some GBA-Gamecube interaction that would have beaten Nintendo to the punch.
Personally, I don't really care for Squaresoft anymore. They've become much more into FMV than gameplay, and Brownie Brown is stepping in to fill the void of SoM type games I enjoyed from Squaresoft. However, seeing FF on Gamecube would really turn things around for ps2 and Gamecube. Suddenly Nintendo isnt about kiddie games anymore, and FFX looks a whole lot better on Gamecube.
Scott McCloud's full of ideas, but Tycho's arguments largely ran along the lines of "why the hell are you speaking for me?" Penny Arcade has been running on donations, but the largest barrier is one that Scott runs right around when he mentions Tycho's post. Tycho mentions that most of their viewership cannot perform credit transactions, which basically they don't have a credit card or don't trust the net with it. Scott paints the world black and white, where either the customers pay or steal, whilst directly ignoring the large majority of people who would love to pay but walk away when they find out they can only use credit cards.
I think the largest issue is that people want an automatic central system to handle micropayments, but nobody is going to build a central credit system out of the goodness of their hearts. Even if it was built, somebody would have to be there to work accounts recievable, since credit card only is a proven waste. There will always be a middle man in a central system.
I've seen that system in action. It might not be canada, but Kansas takes a close second. Anyways, whats in the article is radically differant than what you speak of. The police trainer type thing is based on film that basically has a random seed of events. The military version may have a few new items like a gun other than a revolver and maybe a "choice" situation, but what the article is talking about is an entirely computer generated system, from the graphics to the people, their reactions and motivates, to the story behind the game. It will also have voice recognition and synthesis, but I don't think they're very much finished with that part.
Basically, they're making the most immersive version of CounterStrike ever.
Actually its a reference to Penny Arcade. Haven't you noticed how bathrooms are really bright for some reason, but it doesnt take long to adjust your eyes in the bathroom?
The differance between tulips and gold is that gold is more often an intermediate good. While tulips can be sold as tulips, I'd think that they're also useful as an intermediate good in perfume or some other herbal product. However, gold is more useful than a tulip because you cannot grow more gold, and it does have an intrinsically value as a conductor, in addition to jewlery.
And for the record, I happened to take ECON 110. The numbering system is screwy, but I'd take a questionable course number over a questionable course.
I'm a student at Kansas State University, and our first two classes(CIS 200 and CIS 300) require Java. With my C++ background from HS, I was a little aggrevated that I'd have to learn Java syntax, but after going through a year of it, I'd definately recommend Java for first and second semester CS classes. Why?
Its a cleaner language than C/C++, missing the pointer and 'by reference' operators.
Its a good Object Oriented learning language, but only if you remember to actually teach OOP and not just "classes" and "inheritance." This means talking about program architecture and MVC. Some people claim that if Java were "truely OOP" it would support adding Integer Objects with a + or something. This is misleading. An OOL should avoid special cases like that, and a good Interger would have an add(Integer add) function.
Its cross platform compatible. Your students shouldn't need to worry about whether the code will compile on the grader's computer/OS. C++ that works on Mac may not like BeOS or *NIX.
What I'd really like to talk about though is what NOT to do with the language:
Group Projects: Don't go overboard with proving the usefulness of interfaces. A friend of mine at another school had to do a group project, and some idiot (another student or the TA, I can't remember) wrote out some horrible system using a hash table that wouldnt work given the concept of a hash table. The only thing that people will learn from that kind of thing is that the people around them are idiots. Save that one for Grad School.
Don't teach student about Linked Lists and Hash Tables by talking about the Sun package that implements that feature. Students are there to learn about data structures and algorithms, not Java Packages. If that means they're less likely to pass the Java Certification Level I, maybe Sun needs to rethink the Cert.
Don't go into great detail about hardware limitations and stuff like that. Its important to know, but Computer Science is mainly about mathematics, not Computer Engineering.
Don't test students over BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new StreamReader(System.in)); its not worth the trouble it causes, espcecially if the class is going to get into GUI related stuff. The static methods in JOptionPane will suffice, and they give you an oppertunity to discuss why static methods are useful.
Having said that, I am only a second year student with a junior status, I have yet to experience the entire ciriculum, and I do not know how educators feel about the rigor and content of their classes. All I know is that after CIS 200 about 2/3's to 3/4's of the people in the class changed majors. A lot went into MIS (poor, poor students). A couple found a new home in CE, of course they still need plenty more CS classes as well. And this was without discussing the headaches like passing by reference and passing by value that C++ would introduce.
Except that Java dropped the VM scenario in favor of JIT compilation on most platforms. It converts the java byte code over to the native byte code rather than interpreting everything. Just make sure that your Java VoIP doesn't use Swing or AWT GUI junk, both really are memory intensive for some reason, even with JIT compiling.
At Kansas State we're fairly wired, with the residence hall Ethernet and the developing wireless deployment for laptops. I think the largest help in fighting virii is to get people to stop using Outlook, since most virii are.vbs. The best way to do that is not to outlaw outlook, but to provide a better solution than Outlook.
Considering that most school communications now rely on email and other electronic means, I think our department is doing an outstanding job. We have a help center too. A good friend of mine says the largest portion of issues they get is how to use MS productivity tools, although I'd bet they got quite a bit of calls when the IRC server (which USED to be connected to DALnet) got DDoS'd. If you really want to get people to fight virii, forcing them won't help. Just put out some Press Release type emails about how you want to help, and write up some guidelines, instructions on how to forward mail, etc. Rather than force people to use Norton and "sanctioned hardware" , maybe get a site liscence and encourage people to download it. If your server allows it, write a tutorial on how to filter email, especially things that have.vbs or.exe attachments. Instead of telling people what not to do, help them do things on their own.
You may have noticed that the article and its previous incarnation both used the concept of multiple sources, and it uses them for support rather than the majority of the content. Plus, both have focused largely on how things have happened historically, rather than the revisionist interpretation of today.
Its amazing, but one of those "gaming news" sites actually has some decent resources for those who want to know how to go about things. Gamasutra is also a good place to look, if you enjoy sifting through the massive amount of submissions they have in archives.
This is their main Developer page, while this is one of their better articles about the PC development industry. *Most* of what's written applies to consoles as well, but good luck making a console game and selling it without a publisher.
Their main argument appears to be trademarking of their culture. While I agree that England is rarely portrayed in a non comic manner, the point here is that nobody's tried to add the English culture to their large list of IP.
Ridiculous? You bet. But it's just one example of the kind of thing the Hague Convention could make possible.
The Maori are upset because their culture is being sold on the open seas, and soon to be even sold in their own country!
I can think of many people who would be pissed if all of a sudden Lego started making Jesus Legos and games, horribly botched the story, and then claimed their product was "made up in Denmark without reference to any particular culture."
These people are fighting the "monetizing" of their entire lifestyle. When people stand up to Microsoft, its heroicism (or insanity), but when somebody fights the gross overgeneralization of their religion, thats ludicrous.
On another note, the CNN story also features the classic "hole in the satellite picture:" the Maori believe that Lego is allready taking steps to trademark their own culture.
This story covers the other side pretty well, but its a shame that neither story was written by a good journalist, who would be objective enough to cover both side's concerns.
Dear Mr. Chiu:
I was reading your fascinating site, in particular, a page about how cells are created. You say that I can make my own cells by mixing in a bunch of organic materials into boiling water. While I don't have the rare Asian herbs necessary to perform this experiment myself, I was wondering if you had considered refuting Pascal's disproof of Spontaneous Generation, by replacing the meat with these special, potent, and indeed magical herbs. So have you considered performing the experiment in a professional manner and submitting it to formal review?
I'm no lawyer, but when I look at the legal code, and I see "the Federal Government cannot hold copyrights" I think that means no copyrights, and the way copyleft works is to establish copyright first, then copyleft it. Since the government cannot hold copyrights, that means it cannot copyleft anything either.
Slashdot Mirror
They run on a... oh, true. Poor phrasing. I meant they don't run locally. I suppose you could consider a server a computer....
At this point I should admit that my knowledge of XP and its .NET antipiracy systems is quite limited. Could anybody tell me if MS links XP activation to its products, so that they cant give away the razor?
On that other tidbit, I dont really think OOP was inspired by Lego so much as it was by natural progression. We had structs, and programs that worked with structs, so it was only a matter of time till we had structs that could work on themselves. OOP and the SmallTalk MVC architecture is really the result of people trying several BAD ways to implement things. Of course, I could be wrong.
Sorry if that read like a fortune cookie, or if it was too critical. But I've known too many people in my past that were elitist like you are now, and myself was included.
However, the idea that a CS grad could get away without knowing the architecture of a computer is quite concerning, and I soon suspect you'll find your degree worthless if indeed these grads are useless as Software Engineers. For you know, Software Engineering and Computer Science are quite differant. As you also know, one is business oriented around productivity and the other math oriented around things like computation time. So I could see if your degree granting instution preferred to think of CS as math oriented and shyed away from stacks and jnz's and other low level techniques (which may become obsolete if field programmable arrays ever materialize, replaced with new ones).
First year we take two or three CS classes, Program Architecture, Data Structures and Logical Foundations of Programming. The first two are indeed taught in java, but the books we use are written in house by a guy who I have deemed the Bill Nye of Computer Science. As far as the programming goes, he despises the idea of learning to program in java the way in which you spoke of, plugging together components to make them work. The first class does however do this to some degree, mostly in the GUI sections. Its basically an intro to CS class that discusses your foundational concepts of if-thens, while loops, and functions/methods (what a god awful term, methods). The second class, which he teaches, has absouletly no dependance on Sun's Java APIs. It would make no sense to teach a class about HashTables by making them import java.util and creating an instance of HashTable. I agree that aint programming. In fact, Mr. Schmidt has made an effort to try and keep the ideology as language independant as he can, given that all our assignments are java based. The Logical Foundations class is a really interesting class with little work, but its important indeed.
The over all structure of our cirriculum is a 4 year program by evility. Every semseter we take at least one CS class. Each class is the prerequisite for the next, and they're only offered one semester a year for the most part. So I come in with 32 credit hours, enough to cut a year out of the way, but I have to stay for 4 because those 32 are only general education credits not CS. In a way I suppose its good, but in another, I wish I could compact it more.
As for the upper level classes, we're expected to pick up the required language after sophmore year. Its a good way of weeding out the weaker students, but its also a good way of killing enrollment. Of about 300 new freshmen, 200 took the Intro CS Class (CIS 200) and changed to MIS in the College of Business. My girlfriend freaked and changed to Computer Engineering, but she's more of a hardware head than I am anyways. My roommate was well versed (too well versed, in my opinion) in VB, and he faired ok, though hes developed an exquisite disdain for working in VB anymore. I really hope that experiencing more powerful languages won't leave a sour taste in the mouth for other langauges, because LISP is quite daunting.
So what University or Institute are you in?
is a janitor. Nobody uses engineer in the States unless they want to sound important or they work in a trainyard. Scientist is the new profession...
The issue of declining sales with increasing prices is a well known one, thats inherant to any business. The more expensive the less people choose it. I think the largest problem there is that most businesses have people who go through and figure out how to price things so that sales x price == max profit. I'm no genuis, but with .com stocks failures largely being pointed at no business plan, I'm fairly certiain there wasn't enough/any of those kind of employees in companies.
Finally is the issue of utility. I think Yamauchi put it best when he said "People do not need games to live. I think that few people in this industry understand this. We cannot sit down and do nothing. We have to strive daily to make our products appealing and captivating." Of course I am aware that the Net isn't console video games. But his words ring true. Too many people thought that being on the internet was all they needed in the "appealing and captivating" sector, so they hired the cheapest writers / artists / etc they could, or bought sites up that allready had a viewership and strip mined them. Problem with that is strip mining tends to rape the landscape, and nobody wants that. At least, not to pay for that.
And thats why pay sites don't do too well. Having said that, I think people's concepts of the willingness to pay for online content is grossly mis-interpreted. Maybe your viewership drops by a factor of a thousand when you change from free to ten cents a month. Maybe more. You look at that and say that its broke. What you're not seeing is that if you were charging 1 cent a day, youd probably see a drop of the same factor. There are definate barriers to entry that are unseen by just that kind of data.
If I were to do a pay site (that didnt have pr0n(which is obviously excluded in my rant)) I would focus on two things: quality of content and social status. Think of it like Tommy Hilfiger or Wall Street Journal. In either case, half the popularity is that they're so damn expensive. Its a status symbol to own these things, and sadly, the vast majority of American culture repects money above all else. So I charge 50 a month, with a lower rate for a trial period to build momentum, and maybe offer some hardcopy things like shirts or maybe even real hardcopy.
Enough evil capitalist for now. >:)
And it took 1500 years before people started actually using it for other purposes. I better start saving now if I want a nuclear powered motorcycle in 3502...
My point here is that Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade loved Scott's idea, but after a few months in the trenches with depressing results, they were a bit sour on the idea, especially when the newest ICST basically said the same thing as the one before it.
Its a bit like reading an article about the radical possiblities of Internet Companies and dotcom's today.
Indeed I do. To my understanding, a lot of the artists who worked on SoM are now at BB.
Having said that, I think there's a good deal of ill will festering between represenatives of both companies. Nintendo claims that Square is unneeded and talentless, basically. Square's claims are basically "we're trying to be reasonable here" and "Its Nintendo's fault." I suspect that the truth lies in the middle, as usual. I would wager that either Square wanted to make GBA games, and Nintendo wouldn't liscence them without a promise to develop for Gamecube, or that Square wanted to do some GBA-Gamecube interaction that would have beaten Nintendo to the punch.
Personally, I don't really care for Squaresoft anymore. They've become much more into FMV than gameplay, and Brownie Brown is stepping in to fill the void of SoM type games I enjoyed from Squaresoft. However, seeing FF on Gamecube would really turn things around for ps2 and Gamecube. Suddenly Nintendo isnt about kiddie games anymore, and FFX looks a whole lot better on Gamecube.
Scott McCloud's full of ideas, but Tycho's arguments largely ran along the lines of "why the hell are you speaking for me?" Penny Arcade has been running on donations, but the largest barrier is one that Scott runs right around when he mentions Tycho's post. Tycho mentions that most of their viewership cannot perform credit transactions, which basically they don't have a credit card or don't trust the net with it. Scott paints the world black and white, where either the customers pay or steal, whilst directly ignoring the large majority of people who would love to pay but walk away when they find out they can only use credit cards. I think the largest issue is that people want an automatic central system to handle micropayments, but nobody is going to build a central credit system out of the goodness of their hearts. Even if it was built, somebody would have to be there to work accounts recievable, since credit card only is a proven waste. There will always be a middle man in a central system.
Basically, they're making the most immersive version of CounterStrike ever.
Actually its a reference to Penny Arcade. Haven't you noticed how bathrooms are really bright for some reason, but it doesnt take long to adjust your eyes in the bathroom?
And for the record, I happened to take ECON 110. The numbering system is screwy, but I'd take a questionable course number over a questionable course.
And submit your resume to someone who wants to give you good pay (60k+) a year and get drownded out by all the applicants.
Its a cleaner language than C/C++, missing the pointer and 'by reference' operators.
Its a good Object Oriented learning language, but only if you remember to actually teach OOP and not just "classes" and "inheritance." This means talking about program architecture and MVC. Some people claim that if Java were "truely OOP" it would support adding Integer Objects with a + or something. This is misleading. An OOL should avoid special cases like that, and a good Interger would have an add(Integer add) function.
Its cross platform compatible. Your students shouldn't need to worry about whether the code will compile on the grader's computer/OS. C++ that works on Mac may not like BeOS or *NIX.
What I'd really like to talk about though is what NOT to do with the language:
Group Projects: Don't go overboard with proving the usefulness of interfaces. A friend of mine at another school had to do a group project, and some idiot (another student or the TA, I can't remember) wrote out some horrible system using a hash table that wouldnt work given the concept of a hash table. The only thing that people will learn from that kind of thing is that the people around them are idiots. Save that one for Grad School.
Don't teach student about Linked Lists and Hash Tables by talking about the Sun package that implements that feature. Students are there to learn about data structures and algorithms, not Java Packages. If that means they're less likely to pass the Java Certification Level I, maybe Sun needs to rethink the Cert.
Don't go into great detail about hardware limitations and stuff like that. Its important to know, but Computer Science is mainly about mathematics, not Computer Engineering.
Don't test students over BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader(new StreamReader(System.in)); its not worth the trouble it causes, espcecially if the class is going to get into GUI related stuff. The static methods in JOptionPane will suffice, and they give you an oppertunity to discuss why static methods are useful.
Having said that, I am only a second year student with a junior status, I have yet to experience the entire ciriculum, and I do not know how educators feel about the rigor and content of their classes. All I know is that after CIS 200 about 2/3's to 3/4's of the people in the class changed majors. A lot went into MIS (poor, poor students). A couple found a new home in CE, of course they still need plenty more CS classes as well. And this was without discussing the headaches like passing by reference and passing by value that C++ would introduce.
Except that Java dropped the VM scenario in favor of JIT compilation on most platforms. It converts the java byte code over to the native byte code rather than interpreting everything. Just make sure that your Java VoIP doesn't use Swing or AWT GUI junk, both really are memory intensive for some reason, even with JIT compiling.
Considering that most school communications now rely on email and other electronic means, I think our department is doing an outstanding job. We have a help center too. A good friend of mine says the largest portion of issues they get is how to use MS productivity tools, although I'd bet they got quite a bit of calls when the IRC server (which USED to be connected to DALnet) got DDoS'd. If you really want to get people to fight virii, forcing them won't help. Just put out some Press Release type emails about how you want to help, and write up some guidelines, instructions on how to forward mail, etc. Rather than force people to use Norton and "sanctioned hardware" , maybe get a site liscence and encourage people to download it. If your server allows it, write a tutorial on how to filter email, especially things that have .vbs or .exe attachments. Instead of telling people what not to do, help them do things on their own.
You may have noticed that the article and its previous incarnation both used the concept of multiple sources, and it uses them for support rather than the majority of the content. Plus, both have focused largely on how things have happened historically, rather than the revisionist interpretation of today.
Its amazing, but one of those "gaming news" sites actually has some decent resources for those who want to know how to go about things. Gamasutra is also a good place to look, if you enjoy sifting through the massive amount of submissions they have in archives. This is their main Developer page, while this is one of their better articles about the PC development industry. *Most* of what's written applies to consoles as well, but good luck making a console game and selling it without a publisher.
Their main argument appears to be trademarking of their culture. While I agree that England is rarely portrayed in a non comic manner, the point here is that nobody's tried to add the English culture to their large list of IP.
I can think of many people who would be pissed if all of a sudden Lego started making Jesus Legos and games, horribly botched the story, and then claimed their product was "made up in Denmark without reference to any particular culture."
These people are fighting the "monetizing" of their entire lifestyle. When people stand up to Microsoft, its heroicism (or insanity), but when somebody fights the gross overgeneralization of their religion, thats ludicrous.
On another note, the CNN story also features the classic "hole in the satellite picture:" the Maori believe that Lego is allready taking steps to trademark their own culture. This story covers the other side pretty well, but its a shame that neither story was written by a good journalist, who would be objective enough to cover both side's concerns.
Dear Mr. Chiu: I was reading your fascinating site, in particular, a page about how cells are created. You say that I can make my own cells by mixing in a bunch of organic materials into boiling water. While I don't have the rare Asian herbs necessary to perform this experiment myself, I was wondering if you had considered refuting Pascal's disproof of Spontaneous Generation, by replacing the meat with these special, potent, and indeed magical herbs. So have you considered performing the experiment in a professional manner and submitting it to formal review?
I'm no lawyer, but when I look at the legal code, and I see "the Federal Government cannot hold copyrights" I think that means no copyrights, and the way copyleft works is to establish copyright first, then copyleft it. Since the government cannot hold copyrights, that means it cannot copyleft anything either.