Funny. Wikipedia seems to think that behavior is standard operating practice for HTTPS->non-https connections.
If a website is accessed from a HTTP Secure (HTTPS) connection and a link points to anywhere except another secure location, then the referrer field is not sent.
Part of the reason the console platform became so appealing to game developers is the reduced amount of piracy compared to the PC platform. In other words, they can actually make money from their work, money that is used to make more games. You can't have a functioning long-term economy in which people never get compensated for anything; people are trying to make a living, and they use the income to produce more contributions to society.If your boss withheld your paycheck and told you that the code you wrote is now theirs free of charge because "information wants to be free," you'd sue for the wages and win. But if the code you wrote is included in a game, and the game appears on Pirate Bay, downloaders will happily pirate it and never even dream of spending a time, and they'll justify it until they're red in the face.
And if I go out and pay $50-60 for a video game which crashes every 20-30 minutes, runs like shit on a PC that should be able to handle it easily, takes 2-3 minutes to boot up because it uses highly intrusive DRM that for some reason tries to phone home every single time it runs, and can't be installed more than three times even if the installer fucks up (which of course it often did), can I return it as defective product and get a full refund?
Hell no. BTW this isn't a theoretical example: that was almost my exact experience with Mass Effect (I didn't have installer issues, but many people did. It was also only $50, but many new games are $60). But the rest of it happened to me. I swore then that that would be the last game I bought without looking at the DRM system it used, and I have skipped several games entirely because they used Tages or some other crap. I didn't even consider buying Starcraft 2 (although I also wasn't particularly excited for it), much less any of the new Assassin's Creed games (actually, I won't touch any Ubisoft games anymore and rejoiced when they said they would stop making PC games). I also might not buy Diablo 3 (although that is still in the air). PC gamers got sick of that shit, so they turned to piracy which gave far, far better experiences. The result was idiot game developers turning to ever more restrictive DRM until PC gamers simply stopped buying their games (again, Ubisoft).
Game makers that don't do that make still make tons of money: hell, Oblivion had zero copy protection: literally, you could make an ISO of the disc, burn it, and it would work fine. Fallout 3 technically had Securom, but only on the installer: the executable didn't require it. And Skyrim just has Steamworks, which it is pretty easy to pirate, but the game still sold like crazy on Steam (still has 94,000 players ATM despite being released 2 months ago), and despite costing $60 dollars (which I would balk at if it was almost any other game). Why? Because they made a damn good game which was worth buying.
Indie game makes often have zero copy protection. Hell, any Humble Bundle game can be downloaded directly from their site with the tiniest effort. Yet they make money. How? Because they make good games and price them properly and don't put shitty DRM on it. Any game maker could do this: instead, they keep shoveling out bucketloads of expensive shit (like Call of Duty) and then wonder why PC gamers keep pirating it instead of paying for it.
And yes, I do pay for my games now that I have a job: bought tons during the Christmas Steam sale.
This is also why I don't buy almost any modern music: it just isn't worth it. Wouldn't even be worth the bandwidth to torrent. I will still buy albums I like, but that is incredibly rare.
SELinux Android is OSS, same as SELinux. Look at the code yourself if you are convinced there are backdoors. That is part of the point of OSS after all.
Indeed. Point of fact: Google has rolled out fiber to the general population for at least one city. Anyone using that fiber network will be using an IP registered to Google. That and the claim of an individual over the phone are the only evidence this was in fact Google.
Well, in the 13-18 year old category, this isn't surprising. Guys are usually more interested in... well, in the practical aspects of biology during that period.
Oh wow shocking, Apple gained sales market share right after releasing a brand new super-hyped phone and lowering their old prices! Android is doomed! DOOOOMED, I tell you!
Anyways, fragmentation is good for the market. Allows for true competition and drives features. The newest Android phones are far and away more featureful than any iPhone, plus you can choose from any carrier and any range of features you want. I would have liked Google to encourage manufacturers to release more updates to their phones so people didn't get stuck on 2.1 or whatnot, but the fact that most Android programs work on most Android devices is nothing short of amazing when you think about the vast array of different hardware they can contain.
What inventions, exactly? If it is something like a compact power-efficient cell radio, then fine. If it is something like "method for displaying notifications of newly received email", then that doesn't even count as an "invention" (unless it is something like "notification by direct brain-link", but I very much doubt that) by any reasonable standard. The problem is it could be either of those two kinds of things: MS isn't saying and they aren't letting anyone else say either, which is extremely fishy. And the system is broken enough that it certainly could be as stupid as "a phone with a color screen." We have no way of knowing, and given the circumstances (MS and an NDA) it is logical to assume the stupid kind of "invention."
Look at it this way: patents expire after 20 years, so the faster they get approved the faster they will expire. Otherwise, you can have patents first requested 20 years ago that get granted and then allow the company to sue the pants off someone who used it 5 years ago, and it is still valid for another 20. Now, they would get approved 19 years ago and someone would be able to use it next year. If they patent everything now, 20 years from now there won't be any patents left.
Wait, Alaska is pretty damn close to Russian territory. How would they not not be able to see their satellite while it was over HAARP? An honest question, adblock doesn't seem to be letting me get past the paywall like it usually does, so I can't read TFA.
Not in the US. At least not generally speaking. It was in fact ruled by the SCOTUS that loitering itself couldn't be outlawed (Chicago tried). It can only be illegal if done in a way that shows criminal intent. Stalking, for example. Watching a person's house may or may not be illegal, it would depend, but the police could likely warn someone who tried.
BREIN isn't a US organization. Note how it is representing Dutch movie and recording studios? Nor is there any sign they need the US to encourage them. Believe it or not, the US is not the only source of corporate greed or stupidity in the world, despite what many Slashdot commentators seem to think.
Actually, Blizzard Entertainment is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard which is in turned owned by Vivendi. Blizzard however is considered a separate entity which is run by independent management. So it is far more accurate to say Blizzard is owned by Activision than to say they are Activision. Both are, in turn, owned by Vivendi. It was the merger of Activision with Vivendi Games (which owned Blizzard) that created Activision Blizzard, the holding company for Blizzard. Activision and Blizzard themselves never actually merged, Activision only merged with the holding company for Blizzard. See Wikipedia
Video game companies are a bit of a mess to sort out.
Yes it is speculative. But this is the company that also added restrictive DRM to SC2, removing Lan play, and is doing the same thing to Diablo 3 plus removing single-player entirely and forbidding mods. I've honestly never been a huge fan of Blizzard, but those kinds of actions make me lose all the respect for them that I had before. Hell, the only reason I ever played WC3 was the custom maps (DotA in particular). I don't play WoW (not since before Burning Crusade, anyways) but I've heard that their expansions now tend towards the money-grabbing variety (this is hearsay only though). But as you say, I am engaging in speculation. I just mean that it would be perfectly in line with the trend of their current actions.
I suppose, eventually. But we aren't, at this moment, even close to the point where climate change would cause that. We might be close to the point where climate change inevitably will, I suppose, but then you would have to say "Doomsday" is the point where that becomes irreversible. And we really don't know enough to be able to say when that happens. If it ever does: the climate is amazingly complex and tends to be self-adjusting in certain ways.
The real problem is that the clock wasn't intended to represent things like climate change. The entire idea was to show how close we were to the world ending tomorrow. Climate change and the like won't end the world tomorrow. The clock really only even makes sense in the context of nuclear war or other dramatic world-changing events (Doomsday). It isn't called the "Doomcentury" clock for good reason.
I've seen many people claim this. What, exactly, are you searching for that it doesn't come up quickly? 90% of the things I search for are answered in the first 3-4 links. The only time I even have to go to the second page is if it is an obscure and/or very specific piece of information that I'm looking for. Facts are usually answered directly by Google even before the first link. Out of curiosity I did a quick comparison of searches for two facts (release date of The Darkness 2, one of the first things to spring to mind) by searching them on Google and Bing. Google knew the answer without my even visiting a link and told me what websites had the information. Bing didn't. I'd say that is pretty much a win.
For fun, I also did an Altavista search. Google is considerably better IMO.
500Mbps seems to be the original source. However, this source, which seems considerably more reliable, being written by an expert in the field, states it could be up to 500 megabytes, and points out how a high-res camera can use 75 megabytes to stream. Speculative, but by far the best source I've seen. 50mbit/s is far too low. Even a single truly highres camera (keep in mind these are probably more than HD cameras) can use more than that.
The Global Hawk is capable of carrying a 2,000 pound sensor suite. IR, SA radar with moving target indicator, optical, SIGINT, ELINT, and who knows what else. 500MB/s is not unbelievable when you account for all of that.
I've found after reading a lot of ancient Greek and Roman authors that his prose style starts to make a lot more sense. As the OP said, he really wrote more in the style of the ancient epic writers, which makes it a bit... dry, I suppose, at times. The Silmarillion shows this quite strongly, as it basically was a Greek-style mythic tale, while on the other side the Hobbit was basically a kids book. I wouldn't call Tolkien's writing "low quality", exactly, it just doesn't have the kind of flow you expect from a novel.
C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, has amazingly easy to read prose, but none of his works have nearly the epicness of Tolkien's. A trade-off, I suppose.
Yes, it is like selling a fuel-wasting car and then forcing the consumer to purchase fuel from you and only you. And advertising the fuel inefficiency as a feature. And rationing the fuel and switching from unlimited fuel to rationed fuel... ok maybe the analogy breaks down somewhere around there.
The carriers want their cake, that is selling phones with data-heavy features that people love, and they want to eat it too: i.e. not expanding their network with all the profits they are making in order to handle the load from the phones they just sold. Greedy bastards. The solution would be to create some genuine competition instead of the cartel-like operation we have in the US right now, but the barrier to entry is so high that is next to impossible. Maybe some government regulation might even be in order (much as I usually hate such things), given that these companies often have what amounts to a government-granted monopoly on certain EM spectra.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, are you telling me we can download planes now? Sweet!
Yes, RIAA, I totally would download a plane.
If a website is accessed from a HTTP Secure (HTTPS) connection and a link points to anywhere except another secure location, then the referrer field is not sent.
Part of the reason the console platform became so appealing to game developers is the reduced amount of piracy compared to the PC platform. In other words, they can actually make money from their work, money that is used to make more games. You can't have a functioning long-term economy in which people never get compensated for anything; people are trying to make a living, and they use the income to produce more contributions to society.If your boss withheld your paycheck and told you that the code you wrote is now theirs free of charge because "information wants to be free," you'd sue for the wages and win. But if the code you wrote is included in a game, and the game appears on Pirate Bay, downloaders will happily pirate it and never even dream of spending a time, and they'll justify it until they're red in the face.
And if I go out and pay $50-60 for a video game which crashes every 20-30 minutes, runs like shit on a PC that should be able to handle it easily, takes 2-3 minutes to boot up because it uses highly intrusive DRM that for some reason tries to phone home every single time it runs, and can't be installed more than three times even if the installer fucks up (which of course it often did), can I return it as defective product and get a full refund?
Hell no. BTW this isn't a theoretical example: that was almost my exact experience with Mass Effect (I didn't have installer issues, but many people did. It was also only $50, but many new games are $60). But the rest of it happened to me. I swore then that that would be the last game I bought without looking at the DRM system it used, and I have skipped several games entirely because they used Tages or some other crap. I didn't even consider buying Starcraft 2 (although I also wasn't particularly excited for it), much less any of the new Assassin's Creed games (actually, I won't touch any Ubisoft games anymore and rejoiced when they said they would stop making PC games). I also might not buy Diablo 3 (although that is still in the air). PC gamers got sick of that shit, so they turned to piracy which gave far, far better experiences. The result was idiot game developers turning to ever more restrictive DRM until PC gamers simply stopped buying their games (again, Ubisoft).
Game makers that don't do that make still make tons of money: hell, Oblivion had zero copy protection: literally, you could make an ISO of the disc, burn it, and it would work fine. Fallout 3 technically had Securom, but only on the installer: the executable didn't require it. And Skyrim just has Steamworks, which it is pretty easy to pirate, but the game still sold like crazy on Steam (still has 94,000 players ATM despite being released 2 months ago), and despite costing $60 dollars (which I would balk at if it was almost any other game). Why? Because they made a damn good game which was worth buying.
Indie game makes often have zero copy protection. Hell, any Humble Bundle game can be downloaded directly from their site with the tiniest effort. Yet they make money. How? Because they make good games and price them properly and don't put shitty DRM on it. Any game maker could do this: instead, they keep shoveling out bucketloads of expensive shit (like Call of Duty) and then wonder why PC gamers keep pirating it instead of paying for it.
And yes, I do pay for my games now that I have a job: bought tons during the Christmas Steam sale.
This is also why I don't buy almost any modern music: it just isn't worth it. Wouldn't even be worth the bandwidth to torrent. I will still buy albums I like, but that is incredibly rare.
SELinux Android is OSS, same as SELinux. Look at the code yourself if you are convinced there are backdoors. That is part of the point of OSS after all.
Indeed. Point of fact: Google has rolled out fiber to the general population for at least one city. Anyone using that fiber network will be using an IP registered to Google. That and the claim of an individual over the phone are the only evidence this was in fact Google.
Well, in the 13-18 year old category, this isn't surprising. Guys are usually more interested in... well, in the practical aspects of biology during that period.
Or leveling up their Chaotic-Good Drow Rogue.
No I haven't, and you are quite right I did.
And that makes me happy.
Oh wow shocking, Apple gained sales market share right after releasing a brand new super-hyped phone and lowering their old prices! Android is doomed! DOOOOMED, I tell you!
Anyways, fragmentation is good for the market. Allows for true competition and drives features. The newest Android phones are far and away more featureful than any iPhone, plus you can choose from any carrier and any range of features you want. I would have liked Google to encourage manufacturers to release more updates to their phones so people didn't get stuck on 2.1 or whatnot, but the fact that most Android programs work on most Android devices is nothing short of amazing when you think about the vast array of different hardware they can contain.
What inventions, exactly? If it is something like a compact power-efficient cell radio, then fine. If it is something like "method for displaying notifications of newly received email", then that doesn't even count as an "invention" (unless it is something like "notification by direct brain-link", but I very much doubt that) by any reasonable standard. The problem is it could be either of those two kinds of things: MS isn't saying and they aren't letting anyone else say either, which is extremely fishy. And the system is broken enough that it certainly could be as stupid as "a phone with a color screen." We have no way of knowing, and given the circumstances (MS and an NDA) it is logical to assume the stupid kind of "invention."
Look at it this way: patents expire after 20 years, so the faster they get approved the faster they will expire. Otherwise, you can have patents first requested 20 years ago that get granted and then allow the company to sue the pants off someone who used it 5 years ago, and it is still valid for another 20. Now, they would get approved 19 years ago and someone would be able to use it next year. If they patent everything now, 20 years from now there won't be any patents left.
Hey, I didn't say it was much better this way.
Wait, Alaska is pretty damn close to Russian territory. How would they not not be able to see their satellite while it was over HAARP? An honest question, adblock doesn't seem to be letting me get past the paywall like it usually does, so I can't read TFA.
Not in the US. At least not generally speaking. It was in fact ruled by the SCOTUS that loitering itself couldn't be outlawed (Chicago tried). It can only be illegal if done in a way that shows criminal intent. Stalking, for example. Watching a person's house may or may not be illegal, it would depend, but the police could likely warn someone who tried.
Don't worry, the more they tighten their grip the more files will slip through their fingers.
BREIN isn't a US organization. Note how it is representing Dutch movie and recording studios? Nor is there any sign they need the US to encourage them. Believe it or not, the US is not the only source of corporate greed or stupidity in the world, despite what many Slashdot commentators seem to think.
Actually, Blizzard Entertainment is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard which is in turned owned by Vivendi. Blizzard however is considered a separate entity which is run by independent management. So it is far more accurate to say Blizzard is owned by Activision than to say they are Activision. Both are, in turn, owned by Vivendi. It was the merger of Activision with Vivendi Games (which owned Blizzard) that created Activision Blizzard, the holding company for Blizzard. Activision and Blizzard themselves never actually merged, Activision only merged with the holding company for Blizzard. See Wikipedia
Video game companies are a bit of a mess to sort out.
Yes it is speculative. But this is the company that also added restrictive DRM to SC2, removing Lan play, and is doing the same thing to Diablo 3 plus removing single-player entirely and forbidding mods. I've honestly never been a huge fan of Blizzard, but those kinds of actions make me lose all the respect for them that I had before. Hell, the only reason I ever played WC3 was the custom maps (DotA in particular). I don't play WoW (not since before Burning Crusade, anyways) but I've heard that their expansions now tend towards the money-grabbing variety (this is hearsay only though). But as you say, I am engaging in speculation. I just mean that it would be perfectly in line with the trend of their current actions.
I suppose, eventually. But we aren't, at this moment, even close to the point where climate change would cause that. We might be close to the point where climate change inevitably will, I suppose, but then you would have to say "Doomsday" is the point where that becomes irreversible. And we really don't know enough to be able to say when that happens. If it ever does: the climate is amazingly complex and tends to be self-adjusting in certain ways.
The real problem is that the clock wasn't intended to represent things like climate change. The entire idea was to show how close we were to the world ending tomorrow. Climate change and the like won't end the world tomorrow. The clock really only even makes sense in the context of nuclear war or other dramatic world-changing events (Doomsday). It isn't called the "Doomcentury" clock for good reason.
Right, neither one are "required."
Unless you want the good weapons, of course. Or the gear good enough to get the good weapons.
Note: I don't actually know this, it's just an educated guess based on the fact that it's Blizzard/Activision and not just Blizzard.
There's no reason why a big company like Blizzard couldn't do the same... other than greed and laziness, I guess.
Blizzard is owned by Activision, so greed and laziness should probably be considered the norm at this point.
I've seen many people claim this. What, exactly, are you searching for that it doesn't come up quickly? 90% of the things I search for are answered in the first 3-4 links. The only time I even have to go to the second page is if it is an obscure and/or very specific piece of information that I'm looking for. Facts are usually answered directly by Google even before the first link. Out of curiosity I did a quick comparison of searches for two facts (release date of The Darkness 2, one of the first things to spring to mind) by searching them on Google and Bing. Google knew the answer without my even visiting a link and told me what websites had the information. Bing didn't. I'd say that is pretty much a win.
For fun, I also did an Altavista search. Google is considerably better IMO.
500Mbps seems to be the original source. However, this source, which seems considerably more reliable, being written by an expert in the field, states it could be up to 500 megabytes, and points out how a high-res camera can use 75 megabytes to stream. Speculative, but by far the best source I've seen. 50mbit/s is far too low. Even a single truly highres camera (keep in mind these are probably more than HD cameras) can use more than that.
The Global Hawk is capable of carrying a 2,000 pound sensor suite. IR, SA radar with moving target indicator, optical, SIGINT, ELINT, and who knows what else. 500MB/s is not unbelievable when you account for all of that.
I've found after reading a lot of ancient Greek and Roman authors that his prose style starts to make a lot more sense. As the OP said, he really wrote more in the style of the ancient epic writers, which makes it a bit... dry, I suppose, at times. The Silmarillion shows this quite strongly, as it basically was a Greek-style mythic tale, while on the other side the Hobbit was basically a kids book. I wouldn't call Tolkien's writing "low quality", exactly, it just doesn't have the kind of flow you expect from a novel.
C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, has amazingly easy to read prose, but none of his works have nearly the epicness of Tolkien's. A trade-off, I suppose.
Yes, it is like selling a fuel-wasting car and then forcing the consumer to purchase fuel from you and only you. And advertising the fuel inefficiency as a feature. And rationing the fuel and switching from unlimited fuel to rationed fuel... ok maybe the analogy breaks down somewhere around there.
The carriers want their cake, that is selling phones with data-heavy features that people love, and they want to eat it too: i.e. not expanding their network with all the profits they are making in order to handle the load from the phones they just sold. Greedy bastards. The solution would be to create some genuine competition instead of the cartel-like operation we have in the US right now, but the barrier to entry is so high that is next to impossible. Maybe some government regulation might even be in order (much as I usually hate such things), given that these companies often have what amounts to a government-granted monopoly on certain EM spectra.