I agree. If you simply make a copy yourself because you refuse to buy it, you're not hurting the developer. But if you buy a forged copy from someone, you're encouraging them to profit at the expense of the developer.
The forger has incentive to cut into actual sales, which (IMHO) casual piracy does not.
People talk about how Q3 and Halflife Counterstrike both encouraged people to purchase the game because of the CD keys... Bull. Everyone I know who was serious about Quake 1 and Quake 2 had purchased a copy. Ditto with Q3. The ones who only played it casually at LANs didn't.
What most people do is try a new game at a LAN party or by downloading it, then buy it if they like it. That's why nobody I know bought Shogo, or Blood 2, or Heist. Even though all sounded interesting. But I know some who saw (and got to install and play) Deus Ex, Evil Islands, and recently AvP2 and went out and bought them, even though from what they'd seen in reviews they weren't planning on it.
You're right, it wasn't a troll. Perhaps it's inflamatory, but it's an honest opinion.
I wouldn't mind (much) a perfect copy protection that kept me from distributing copies of a game yet didn't get in the way. A smart-card you have to let the computer read when you install the game, or something similarly strong but unobtrusive. It'd be nice if it allowed backup copies to function properly as well.
What I mind is having to fish through my CDs every time I want to play a different game. I hate how Diablo 2's copy protection didn't work in my CD drive and Blizzard's response was that I should buy a new drive.
I hate how Q3's CD-Key authorization server went down for a while and instead of sticking a computer up that just authorized everything they didn't let anyone play. Instead of risking a few warez copies being able to play for a few hours, they said how terribly sorry they were, but they had no choice...
It's that kind of crap that makes me crack games when I buy them. I'm not going to let them dictate how I use my computer. Diablo 2 worked well when played off the HD (though it did take a big hunk of space.) My Q3A server (gone now) worked through the authorization problems by being cracked on ignoring the master servers anyways. It let everyone one, regardless.
Oh yeah, text hanging in your view. That makes it so much more lifelike!
The only reason that argument even begins to make sense when the Anime nuts use it is because they dub OVER the original voices with no-name voice actors. Here, the English was the original.
This is really a lot more realistic. BJ (the main character) can speak German, so this is what it would feel like to be him, hearing the guards talk and understanding them.
Yeah, I'm sure the game would sell well at the original price of $60 USD or more.
Come crying when piracy actually hurts sales. That means, when someone who would have purchased the game doesn't because of downloading it.
Sure, thousands will play the game for free, but what does it really hurt? They wouldn't have paid for it, so they get something for free and the developer doesn't lose anything. Everyone who bought the game still has it too, so they didn't lose.
Not compared to Team Arena. That was a cheap hack that they sold just to rake in a bit more. Wolf3d is the same engine and very little else. And it actually has a single-player element, one that doesn't involve out-railing bots. (God, their AI is crap.)
Q3:TA was a few new runes, some new models, and some new maps. Nothing amazing either. A day or so picking over planetquake for 3rd-party levels will get you the same quality. Ca-ching.
You think we should teach kids to use MS products? Heh. It'd do the average person about as much good if the course taught them to use McDonald's cash registers, for the jobs they'd be likely to get with those skills.
Instead, kids need to learn about computers in general, how to work-process in general, and so on. Then if they're bright enough to find a real job they'll have the basic skills they need to pick up the specific word processor their new company uses in a matter of hours, as opposed to being tied to a specific dead-end package.
Really, for all that 95% of people do, they could pick up any package in a few minutes. Most people never touch the advanced options. Not because they can't but because word processors are becoming page-layout programs and very few people have the need to do anything like that to write a memo.
Redhat *has* done that. They've donated a copy of Redhat to every person on the planet. Go and pick yours up.
You may claim that it has no cash value, but I claim it has as much or more than Microsoft's donation.
If you need an OS, Redhat's is a viable solution and can save you from having to buy 2k (or XP) Advanced Server, so it can be up to a $1500 value. More if you count the fact that it works, where most MS products barely do. (Setup a heavy-volume site on either OS, without purchasing any additional software...)
The other way to see this is that the cost of software is that of duplication. Redhat's potential donation is 1 to 4 CDs (if you want docs, source, extras, etc) times 6B people.
At that, Microsoft's donation is in the few-thousand dollar range. One CD per school. I can burn them at $.30 myself, I'd imagine they could have them pressed MUCH cheaper than that. In fact, the postage is likely to be the higher cost.
Microsoft should be required to donate cash. The schools can then decide what computer-related needs they wish to fill and how to best go about that.
Anything else is as hollow a gesture as their donation of licenses to the Red Cross after the attacks.
Most of those products you mention don't lock the consumer into a specific brand.
Craftsman tools are standard sizes. They work interchangably with all other brands of tools.
Makita power tools use standard hex-bits and the one or two standards for drill bits (either round bits, or the newer hex ones).
Donations of these products increases name recognition, but doesn't force the students into future purchases.
Using Windows increases MS lock-in. Your apps run on an MS OS, your documents need an MS product to open, which again runs only on an MS OS. If you're not technically savy you can't get an MS OS pre-installed with any other OS.
The only other thing this nasty is when Coke or Pepsi makes a deal with the school and excludes all other brands of soft-drinks and the schools start expelling students who speak out against this or import the other beverages.
And here MS is with this tired game of "donating" a large ammount, retail value, of software. Then they usually make back more than their costs by claiming the full retail version as a charitable donation while paying pennies per disk to make it.
Sounds like they might benefit from the optimization of not putting newly freed blocks back into the main B+ trees until it's got some dead time...
If they build another B tree (only trivially balanced) as they delete files they could return control to the system quickly, and then they could pull the free blocks out of the temp tree and spend the time to properly balance the main trees as it builds them.
In the event that it needs those blocks *now* it could stop and take the time to merge them into the tree immediately.
The benefit is that it would only have bad performance on very full drives, where it is writing immediately following a delete, into the freed space. As opposed to how it sounds now where it has bad performance on all deletes.
Deletes are a common enough action that I think you'd want to optimize for them.
I think that kind of thing is covered under freedom of religion. If you have to mark yourself as a believer in an unpopular religion and might suffer violence as a result, you're not really free to practice your religion.
Much like passing a law saying that people saying unpopular things need to speak in some obscure language. Technically it'd still let them say what they want, but it would artificially reduce the potential audience much the same as if you forbid them to speak.
I think both would be found to violate the constitution.
(But I'm not from the US either, so I haven't studied constitutional law much.)
The tech slide was caused by people blowing millions of VC on Aeron chairs and hiring rock stars to play at huge parties instead of spending that money hiring people to develop a product.
And if you lost a bunch of money in MS stock during the crash... Good. Serves you right for trying to profit from their illegal actions. Stockholders need to face stiffer penalties for investing in companies they know are breaking the law.
To be safe from scummy lawyers, all you have to do is take reasonable precautions. Unless you are an expert this usually means consulting experts.
Hire a security company, follow their advice. If they don't recommend you stop allowing bags, you can essentially do so without worry. If it comes to a lawsuit, you point to the experts who gave you the advice and explain why you had reason to believe them to be experts.
Banning everying can probably cause more problems then carefully analyzing the situation and taking apropriate actions.
If there's a reason behing the ban then it should be stated, not the simple fact of the ban. If the ban is intended to stop someone from smuggling in a weapon then you instruct the security it stop anything that could be used for that purpose, not just "bags". (How about purses and fanny packs? Boxes of "papers"?)
Furthermore, no good can be served by preventing outside bags because a would-be-terrorist would simply leave, put a weapon in the bag, and come back.
You could prevent anyone from bringing in anything bag-like, but then again, you've got to know the real purpose or you get stuck on the issue of "is it a bag?"
It's not a problem with his English skills, it's a problem with his typing.
Even if it wasn't, not everyone speaks or writes English fluently. Even those who grew up with it. And you know, nobody really cares, other than you, and nobody (I mean that, not even your mother) cares what you think. If they did, you'd have better things to do than flame Linus over a typo.
I don't think Windows moves the swap file while defraging. At least, Win2k with the default defrag program (which sucks btw) doesn't.
As soon as I install 2k I move the swap to another drive, reboot, defrag, move the swap back, make it fixed size, and reboot.
You want the swap on the first drive, if possible, because that's the fastest part of the hard drive. There's often a noticable speed difference between the first and last quarter.
>They're making 5-10 times more than they would be making anywhere else,
Correct. People endure dangerous conditions and very long shifts because they can get a lot of money, compared to people without overseas jobs.
But look at what it does. The economy adjusts to having an overseas factory in town. People know the workers have money so they charge more for rent and food. This affects everyone, including those who don't make nice factory wages (of $.50 / hour, tops) and ends up lowering the standard of living in the area.
> NOT buy their products. End it the capitalist
> consumer way, don't get government involved.
So the government should provide the protection of law to the companies. Making sure that the people don't just take these valuable western machines and sell them, but the government shouldn't provide the protection of law to the people, making sure they're paid a living wage for a safe and fair job?
That's a bit of a double standard.
For people to lobby against Nike is for them to use the same "force" against Nike that Nike uses against the people it employs. The force of law. If you want it to work for you, you have to accept it when it works against you.
It's a good idea. Tournament games need to be like this, making sure than random events don't influence the outcome more than skill. In fairly random games you need to make sure that they influence everyone equally.
The problem with displaying the seed beforehand is that it'd be possible to predict what you'd get if you polymorphed a specific pile of stuff, and not do it unless you'd get something good out of it, etc.
Of course, you could do the same thing anyways, but if you weren't running the server it'd be harder. (There are still ways though to figure out what seed was used.)
As to the bones and save files... They could be exported into a text file, something platform independant. In fact, some XML-ish format would probably be the best. That way other games could implement import and export features for Nethack characters, keeping as much as they can and translating items into close equivalents.
There's no real issue of cheating because
1) You can already cheat, you just need to edit a binary file.
2) You can sign the text file, and put the user into 'no score' mode if the signature doesn't match. (Cheatable though, see #1)
3) Wizard mode is available, so it's not like anyone is trying to stop newbies from exploring.
I personally think it's a great idea. In fact, I'll make a note about looking at the source and seeing if it's within my skill.
Re:Very nice...
on
Netscape 6.2
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Yep. A free, ad-free, open-source, embeddable version of Opera.
With Opera you can get it free, or ad-free, not both.
You also can't get the source, extend the functionality (Spellchecker.xpi) or embed the rendering engine into a project of yours (Galleon, K-Meleon, or anything else).
Opera is great, but there are many things for which it's not the best.
For something like this a 15-minute class on the basic and then an hour or so on "power-user" tips.
The whole idea is to provide a few needed applications and nothing else. People don't need to learn about the control panel because they'll never install any hardware or software.
I've seen Linux setup as a limited terminal and it's as easy or easier than Windows. It boots up, shows just a taskbar with icons and application tabs. Alt-Tab switches apps, everything else works like you'd expect. There was no "start" menu because there were only six (or so) apps that the computer had installed. The users literally could not screw it up, but if they did you'd just open a console (with a hidden program, and a password) and untar the client setup, restart X and it's back to normal.
Most of the time when a user needs Windows (in this kind of setup) it's because they have a job they've only ever done in Windows. If you figure out what it is you can probably find another app to do it. If it does require Windows you can either give them another PC (if it's their main task) or let them run it under VMWare. The ease of use outweighs purchasing a "useless" license for Windows.
Most users I know don't know MS Word for instance, they know how to type, do basic layout, and print a document using MS Word. They'd be just as happy in anythin else. All you need to do is get a decent trainer to use both and teach a short transition class in the difference between the two.
I agree, even though I tend to post with the bonus myself. I figure I might as well use it, but yeah, if all you need to do to get it is karma whore for a while it lowers the respectibility of it.
What I suggested at one point was that ACs who were modded up to 1 would sort above logged-in users, and anyone modded up to 2 would sort above 'bonus using' users.
I mean, it seems fair. My posts may be above average (hence worthy of a global +1) but an AC who got modded up to 2 probably has something more important to say than my post at default score.
It's pretty acurate to call them crooks. They knew what their forced upgrade would do, they designed in the lack of functionality. They (through their online mouthpiece) then called anyone who wanted their product to function as it did at purchase, a "Freeloader".
When presented with ways to make this up to the users, such as providing free service until the patch was made, they blatantly refused.
Many of the people who bought Tivo were in countries where the service wasn't available (no locla listings) so buying the service would have simply been a way to get around the nag screens.
I don't care at all if they lost money on each unit. I simply care about the product description on the back of the earlier units that described their functionality (without service) and how the company later decided that they wouldn't honor it.
Why is it companies can decide not to honor contracts and people support them? Would you support someone on here who said they decided not to continue their car payments, but kept the car anyways? You probably own stock like most of the people on the Tivo forum. The ones who were calling the owners of unsubscribes units thieves and cheats, and demanding that they pay for the monthly service, regardless of the product (at time of purchase) saying it wasn't necessary.
I understand that the current situation might have gotten better, but I see no reason to encourage someone to go to a company that treats their customers like that. How long until they intentionally break something again?
If I was involved in a project and it was suddenly closed-sourced around me, after I had contributed with the idea that it would be open, I'd fork it too.
If you want to play "what have you done" it's almost always the person who closes the source who has done the least. They can't make something on their own, but they get greedy later and want to own it, despite being unable to make it without help.
Not that this was done with SkyOS. But if it was, forking the code is a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
If he ever released it under a redistributable (BSD or GPL) type license in order to solicit people's help, then it's not possible (or morally right) for him to take it away.
While he can stop releasing new versions in such a fashion (in he ever did) he can't revoke the old license.
If (and this is a big if) he closed the source after implying that it would always be open, I think that anyone with the old code is justified in forking it at the last public version. After all, if he was the driving force, the main branch will get better and the forks will die off. If he merely cribbed the work of others, they will become dominant when his stagnates.
Slashdot Mirror
Romero would have said that all of Q3 was cheese.
I merely think that charging for an add-on pack of mediocre quality is a blatant milking of the cash cow.
I agree. If you simply make a copy yourself because you refuse to buy it, you're not hurting the developer. But if you buy a forged copy from someone, you're encouraging them to profit at the expense of the developer.
The forger has incentive to cut into actual sales, which (IMHO) casual piracy does not.
People talk about how Q3 and Halflife Counterstrike both encouraged people to purchase the game because of the CD keys... Bull. Everyone I know who was serious about Quake 1 and Quake 2 had purchased a copy. Ditto with Q3. The ones who only played it casually at LANs didn't.
What most people do is try a new game at a LAN party or by downloading it, then buy it if they like it. That's why nobody I know bought Shogo, or Blood 2, or Heist. Even though all sounded interesting. But I know some who saw (and got to install and play) Deus Ex, Evil Islands, and recently AvP2 and went out and bought them, even though from what they'd seen in reviews they weren't planning on it.
You're right, it wasn't a troll. Perhaps it's inflamatory, but it's an honest opinion.
I wouldn't mind (much) a perfect copy protection that kept me from distributing copies of a game yet didn't get in the way. A smart-card you have to let the computer read when you install the game, or something similarly strong but unobtrusive. It'd be nice if it allowed backup copies to function properly as well.
What I mind is having to fish through my CDs every time I want to play a different game. I hate how Diablo 2's copy protection didn't work in my CD drive and Blizzard's response was that I should buy a new drive.
I hate how Q3's CD-Key authorization server went down for a while and instead of sticking a computer up that just authorized everything they didn't let anyone play. Instead of risking a few warez copies being able to play for a few hours, they said how terribly sorry they were, but they had no choice...
It's that kind of crap that makes me crack games when I buy them. I'm not going to let them dictate how I use my computer. Diablo 2 worked well when played off the HD (though it did take a big hunk of space.) My Q3A server (gone now) worked through the authorization problems by being cracked on ignoring the master servers anyways. It let everyone one, regardless.
Oh yeah, text hanging in your view. That makes it so much more lifelike!
The only reason that argument even begins to make sense when the Anime nuts use it is because they dub OVER the original voices with no-name voice actors. Here, the English was the original.
This is really a lot more realistic. BJ (the main character) can speak German, so this is what it would feel like to be him, hearing the guards talk and understanding them.
Yeah, I'm sure the game would sell well at the original price of $60 USD or more.
Come crying when piracy actually hurts sales. That means, when someone who would have purchased the game doesn't because of downloading it.
Sure, thousands will play the game for free, but what does it really hurt? They wouldn't have paid for it, so they get something for free and the developer doesn't lose anything. Everyone who bought the game still has it too, so they didn't lose.
Who's the victim?
Not compared to Team Arena. That was a cheap hack that they sold just to rake in a bit more. Wolf3d is the same engine and very little else. And it actually has a single-player element, one that doesn't involve out-railing bots. (God, their AI is crap.)
Q3:TA was a few new runes, some new models, and some new maps. Nothing amazing either. A day or so picking over planetquake for 3rd-party levels will get you the same quality. Ca-ching.
You think we should teach kids to use MS products? Heh. It'd do the average person about as much good if the course taught them to use McDonald's cash registers, for the jobs they'd be likely to get with those skills.
Instead, kids need to learn about computers in general, how to work-process in general, and so on. Then if they're bright enough to find a real job they'll have the basic skills they need to pick up the specific word processor their new company uses in a matter of hours, as opposed to being tied to a specific dead-end package.
Really, for all that 95% of people do, they could pick up any package in a few minutes. Most people never touch the advanced options. Not because they can't but because word processors are becoming page-layout programs and very few people have the need to do anything like that to write a memo.
Redhat *has* done that. They've donated a copy of Redhat to every person on the planet. Go and pick yours up.
You may claim that it has no cash value, but I claim it has as much or more than Microsoft's donation.
If you need an OS, Redhat's is a viable solution and can save you from having to buy 2k (or XP) Advanced Server, so it can be up to a $1500 value. More if you count the fact that it works, where most MS products barely do. (Setup a heavy-volume site on either OS, without purchasing any additional software...)
The other way to see this is that the cost of software is that of duplication. Redhat's potential donation is 1 to 4 CDs (if you want docs, source, extras, etc) times 6B people.
At that, Microsoft's donation is in the few-thousand dollar range. One CD per school. I can burn them at $.30 myself, I'd imagine they could have them pressed MUCH cheaper than that. In fact, the postage is likely to be the higher cost.
Microsoft should be required to donate cash. The schools can then decide what computer-related needs they wish to fill and how to best go about that.
Anything else is as hollow a gesture as their donation of licenses to the Red Cross after the attacks.
Most of those products you mention don't lock the consumer into a specific brand.
Craftsman tools are standard sizes. They work interchangably with all other brands of tools.
Makita power tools use standard hex-bits and the one or two standards for drill bits (either round bits, or the newer hex ones).
Donations of these products increases name recognition, but doesn't force the students into future purchases.
Using Windows increases MS lock-in. Your apps run on an MS OS, your documents need an MS product to open, which again runs only on an MS OS. If you're not technically savy you can't get an MS OS pre-installed with any other OS.
The only other thing this nasty is when Coke or Pepsi makes a deal with the school and excludes all other brands of soft-drinks and the schools start expelling students who speak out against this or import the other beverages.
And here MS is with this tired game of "donating" a large ammount, retail value, of software. Then they usually make back more than their costs by claiming the full retail version as a charitable donation while paying pennies per disk to make it.
Sounds like they might benefit from the optimization of not putting newly freed blocks back into the main B+ trees until it's got some dead time...
If they build another B tree (only trivially balanced) as they delete files they could return control to the system quickly, and then they could pull the free blocks out of the temp tree and spend the time to properly balance the main trees as it builds them.
In the event that it needs those blocks *now* it could stop and take the time to merge them into the tree immediately.
The benefit is that it would only have bad performance on very full drives, where it is writing immediately following a delete, into the freed space. As opposed to how it sounds now where it has bad performance on all deletes.
Deletes are a common enough action that I think you'd want to optimize for them.
I think that kind of thing is covered under freedom of religion. If you have to mark yourself as a believer in an unpopular religion and might suffer violence as a result, you're not really free to practice your religion.
Much like passing a law saying that people saying unpopular things need to speak in some obscure language. Technically it'd still let them say what they want, but it would artificially reduce the potential audience much the same as if you forbid them to speak.
I think both would be found to violate the constitution.
(But I'm not from the US either, so I haven't studied constitutional law much.)
What a troll.
The tech slide was caused by people blowing millions of VC on Aeron chairs and hiring rock stars to play at huge parties instead of spending that money hiring people to develop a product.
And if you lost a bunch of money in MS stock during the crash... Good. Serves you right for trying to profit from their illegal actions. Stockholders need to face stiffer penalties for investing in companies they know are breaking the law.
To be safe from scummy lawyers, all you have to do is take reasonable precautions. Unless you are an expert this usually means consulting experts.
Hire a security company, follow their advice. If they don't recommend you stop allowing bags, you can essentially do so without worry. If it comes to a lawsuit, you point to the experts who gave you the advice and explain why you had reason to believe them to be experts.
Banning everying can probably cause more problems then carefully analyzing the situation and taking apropriate actions.
If there's a reason behing the ban then it should be stated, not the simple fact of the ban. If the ban is intended to stop someone from smuggling in a weapon then you instruct the security it stop anything that could be used for that purpose, not just "bags". (How about purses and fanny packs? Boxes of "papers"?)
Furthermore, no good can be served by preventing outside bags because a would-be-terrorist would simply leave, put a weapon in the bag, and come back.
You could prevent anyone from bringing in anything bag-like, but then again, you've got to know the real purpose or you get stuck on the issue of "is it a bag?"
It's not a problem with his English skills, it's a problem with his typing.
Even if it wasn't, not everyone speaks or writes English fluently. Even those who grew up with it. And you know, nobody really cares, other than you, and nobody (I mean that, not even your mother) cares what you think. If they did, you'd have better things to do than flame Linus over a typo.
I don't think Windows moves the swap file while defraging. At least, Win2k with the default defrag program (which sucks btw) doesn't.
As soon as I install 2k I move the swap to another drive, reboot, defrag, move the swap back, make it fixed size, and reboot.
You want the swap on the first drive, if possible, because that's the fastest part of the hard drive. There's often a noticable speed difference between the first and last quarter.
>They're making 5-10 times more than they would be making anywhere else,
Correct. People endure dangerous conditions and very long shifts because they can get a lot of money, compared to people without overseas jobs.
But look at what it does. The economy adjusts to having an overseas factory in town. People know the workers have money so they charge more for rent and food. This affects everyone, including those who don't make nice factory wages (of $.50 / hour, tops) and ends up lowering the standard of living in the area.
> NOT buy their products. End it the capitalist
> consumer way, don't get government involved.
So the government should provide the protection of law to the companies. Making sure that the people don't just take these valuable western machines and sell them, but the government shouldn't provide the protection of law to the people, making sure they're paid a living wage for a safe and fair job?
That's a bit of a double standard.
For people to lobby against Nike is for them to use the same "force" against Nike that Nike uses against the people it employs. The force of law. If you want it to work for you, you have to accept it when it works against you.
It's a good idea. Tournament games need to be like this, making sure than random events don't influence the outcome more than skill. In fairly random games you need to make sure that they influence everyone equally.
The problem with displaying the seed beforehand is that it'd be possible to predict what you'd get if you polymorphed a specific pile of stuff, and not do it unless you'd get something good out of it, etc.
Of course, you could do the same thing anyways, but if you weren't running the server it'd be harder. (There are still ways though to figure out what seed was used.)
As to the bones and save files... They could be exported into a text file, something platform independant. In fact, some XML-ish format would probably be the best. That way other games could implement import and export features for Nethack characters, keeping as much as they can and translating items into close equivalents.
There's no real issue of cheating because
1) You can already cheat, you just need to edit a binary file.
2) You can sign the text file, and put the user into 'no score' mode if the signature doesn't match. (Cheatable though, see #1)
3) Wizard mode is available, so it's not like anyone is trying to stop newbies from exploring.
I personally think it's a great idea. In fact, I'll make a note about looking at the source and seeing if it's within my skill.
Yep. A free, ad-free, open-source, embeddable version of Opera.
With Opera you can get it free, or ad-free, not both.
You also can't get the source, extend the functionality (Spellchecker.xpi) or embed the rendering engine into a project of yours (Galleon, K-Meleon, or anything else).
Opera is great, but there are many things for which it's not the best.
You can install the Netscape spellchecker in Mozilla.
It might only work in 0.94, but I imagine it's a fairly easy fix and someone will have a 0.95 compatible version soon.
Search this thread for '.xpi' as in spellchecker.xpi, the posts mentioning it go into more details about where and how.
On the off chance you're not joking and really don't know...
There's a hackerish "funny" that goes like C|N>K which stands for "Coke piped through the Nose and redirected onto the Keyboard".
I'm assuming that's what the parent poster meant. Laughing while drinking and spraying it onto the keyboard.
Learning curve? For a word processor?
For something like this a 15-minute class on the basic and then an hour or so on "power-user" tips.
The whole idea is to provide a few needed applications and nothing else. People don't need to learn about the control panel because they'll never install any hardware or software.
I've seen Linux setup as a limited terminal and it's as easy or easier than Windows. It boots up, shows just a taskbar with icons and application tabs. Alt-Tab switches apps, everything else works like you'd expect. There was no "start" menu because there were only six (or so) apps that the computer had installed. The users literally could not screw it up, but if they did you'd just open a console (with a hidden program, and a password) and untar the client setup, restart X and it's back to normal.
Most of the time when a user needs Windows (in this kind of setup) it's because they have a job they've only ever done in Windows. If you figure out what it is you can probably find another app to do it. If it does require Windows you can either give them another PC (if it's their main task) or let them run it under VMWare. The ease of use outweighs purchasing a "useless" license for Windows.
Most users I know don't know MS Word for instance, they know how to type, do basic layout, and print a document using MS Word. They'd be just as happy in anythin else. All you need to do is get a decent trainer to use both and teach a short transition class in the difference between the two.
I agree, even though I tend to post with the bonus myself. I figure I might as well use it, but yeah, if all you need to do to get it is karma whore for a while it lowers the respectibility of it.
What I suggested at one point was that ACs who were modded up to 1 would sort above logged-in users, and anyone modded up to 2 would sort above 'bonus using' users.
I mean, it seems fair. My posts may be above average (hence worthy of a global +1) but an AC who got modded up to 2 probably has something more important to say than my post at default score.
It's pretty acurate to call them crooks. They knew what their forced upgrade would do, they designed in the lack of functionality. They (through their online mouthpiece) then called anyone who wanted their product to function as it did at purchase, a "Freeloader".
When presented with ways to make this up to the users, such as providing free service until the patch was made, they blatantly refused.
Many of the people who bought Tivo were in countries where the service wasn't available (no locla listings) so buying the service would have simply been a way to get around the nag screens.
I don't care at all if they lost money on each unit. I simply care about the product description on the back of the earlier units that described their functionality (without service) and how the company later decided that they wouldn't honor it.
Why is it companies can decide not to honor contracts and people support them? Would you support someone on here who said they decided not to continue their car payments, but kept the car anyways? You probably own stock like most of the people on the Tivo forum. The ones who were calling the owners of unsubscribes units thieves and cheats, and demanding that they pay for the monthly service, regardless of the product (at time of purchase) saying it wasn't necessary.
I understand that the current situation might have gotten better, but I see no reason to encourage someone to go to a company that treats their customers like that. How long until they intentionally break something again?
Oh grow up and quit reading Ayn Rand.
If I was involved in a project and it was suddenly closed-sourced around me, after I had contributed with the idea that it would be open, I'd fork it too.
If you want to play "what have you done" it's almost always the person who closes the source who has done the least. They can't make something on their own, but they get greedy later and want to own it, despite being unable to make it without help.
Not that this was done with SkyOS. But if it was, forking the code is a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
If he ever released it under a redistributable (BSD or GPL) type license in order to solicit people's help, then it's not possible (or morally right) for him to take it away.
While he can stop releasing new versions in such a fashion (in he ever did) he can't revoke the old license.
If (and this is a big if) he closed the source after implying that it would always be open, I think that anyone with the old code is justified in forking it at the last public version. After all, if he was the driving force, the main branch will get better and the forks will die off. If he merely cribbed the work of others, they will become dominant when his stagnates.