It could theoretically overcome the limits of thermodynamics on computers. Basically, AFAICT it requires us to (nearly) perfectly observe the computer so that we could reverse any changes that take place in the system, so they would generate very, very little entropy (limited by how well we could build them.) Essentially, they can reuse any energy already used in computation with a very low degree of loss. Also, you might want to look at "Adiabatic quantum computation". Essentially this low-entropy system, but with quantum computers (so faster at brute-forcing).
Regardless, the point of TFA is that AES isn't perfectly secure, so strict brute-forcing isn't necessary. And we have no real evidence that the construction of a perfect system is possible. Nor, for that matter, that P!=NP, which is a more or less essential assumption in public-key cryptography. If it isn't, then as the key size grows, time to brute-force increases linearly, not exponentially as we think it does. It might be entirely possible that a new mathematical system could calculate a 256-bit key in hours, instead of billions of years. Doubtful, but no one really knows.
Ah. So it might be enough time to develop a new standard.
Incidentally, do any of these calculations of "a billion years" take into account Moore's Law? Has anyone developed an actual calculation taking into account the rate of computer advancement? (It'd still be secure enough for daily use, but still.) Some quick math shows that if computers double in power every 2 years, then the time to break it halves every 2 years. Or, in 60 (2*2^30=~ 1 billion) years computers will be 1 billion times more powerful and will be able to break AES in a few years, instead of a few billion. Assuming Moore's law continues, and that we don't switch to an entirely new computational system (i.e. quantum computers) in the mean time. .
Of course, you can always increase the key length (8196-bit encryption, anyone?)...
Is Linus Torvalds (implicitly, at least) criticizing ARM because it is open and therefore anyone can create their own version of it? As opposed to x86, which has a restricted licensing set (AMD/Intel/Via... Via still exists, right?)? Because that is, AFAICT, exactly why ARM is so varied: anyone can roll their own. With the result that many do.
Kinda ironic (and I do mean *ironic*) that the creator of Linux would be complaining about this. I guess he is finally discovering why, in some cases, a regulated and restricted environment can be good (note: if x86 was a monopoly, I would not be saying that. But AMD and Intel are fierce competitors, so it isn't at all monopolistic). Open environments often become "hodgepodges" and lend themselves to non-standardization. Closed ones don't (well, they can, but generally they don't. Definitely not as fast as an open one) and can be easily standardized (witness how Intel accepted AMD's x86-64 set for consumers over their own I64 system). The result is, in the case of CPUs, good for consumers.
Note: I am note proclaiming the virtues of proprietary systems, or claiming they are better than free and open ones. Just pointing out the irony of the situation.
They also made a few technical errors in the report, at least surrounding Opera. At one point, they list "Opera 10" as having 6.1% block rate, yet earlier in the report they list that as the rate for Opera 11 and Opera 10's rate as 0.00%. That, combined with the absolutely gushing praise for IE9 and its App block (or w/e they call it) filter lead me to suspect quite strongly that this is just another MS paid add by an "independent" (i.e. not directly MS-owned) company.
No technical examination of any other browser's malware blocking was mentioned. Nor did they seem to do any testing of add-ons or extensions. I imagine Add-block alone probably blocks many malicious sites. Oh, and no list of URL's tested was given. Even if this wasn't horribly biased (which I doubt), it was terribly conducted technically speaking.
Best part was that Righthaven tried claiming they shouldn't have to pay the defense's fees because they had no right to sue in the first place and therefore the court had no jurisdiction at all. I love the defense's response:
Righthaven deserves some credit for taking this position, as it requires an amazing amount of chutzpah. Righthaven seeks a ruling holding that, as long as a plaintiff’s case is completely frivolous, then the court is deprived of the right to make the frivolously sued defendant whole, whereas a partially frivolous case might give rise to fee liability.
Isn't this the sort of situation disbarment was designed to handle?
That is why the court should examine Apple's claim. If they found it would have been valid, the case merely gets dismissed due to Apple's lying/incompetence. If it wouldn't have been valid, not only should Apple pay a major fine to Samsung for lost sales (restorative), they should have an injunction filed against their own iPad (either the 2 right now or possibly the 3 when it comes out... not sure if the latter would work) as punitive damages for what they did.
a man who was driving at 70MPH while texting on one phone and talking on another has been banned from driving for a year.
If he managed to pull that off without crashing or injuring someone, my guess is he (would be/is) actually a fairly safe driver. I couldn't do that. Maybe they should get this guy to teach others how to actually drive. Minus the phones, of course. Couldn't possibly make most drivers worse, anyways./p.
The GPL parts of the code for Android are freely available. Google provides them, and I'd assume any licensee would just point to that if asked for the code (if they don't already make it freely available themselves. Can a redistributor just point to the original source under the GPL if they don't modify it? I assume they can). AFAIK most licensees don't modify the GPL portions of the code, only the front-end etc. which are licensed under Apache. I'm no expert on the GPL, but really this is just FUD created by (as others have commented) Florian Mueller, who just seems to glance at issues and post whatever he "thinks", without actually doing, well, any real thinking, much less actual research.
Now, if RMS said this, I might stand up and take notice. Doubt he would though, he knows well enough that poisoning GPL code like that would mean the death of OSS.
No, even that isn't true. Record companies don't finance the recording or advertising of the work.
They issue a loan to the artist called an 'advance' (Which is spent on making the record.) and require the artist to pay it back before they start making any money.
That is, by one definition, "financing". Just like a bank finances a mortgage for you to buy a house. The record company takes a chance (albeit a fairly small one) by advancing the money. However, you are correct, the artist is expected to pay it back (hence my comment about many artists not seeing any royalties: those go back to the record company). My point is that many artists (at least in the past) couldn't have succeeded without this financial aid and the resources of the recording industry, and I am willing to grant them (some) credit for that. Sure, it's like giving the devil credit for your musical talent in return for your soul... but still, the record companies do have something of a genuine role.
I still wish they would crawl into a corner and die (or better yet be lined up against a wall and shot), since they are no longer really needed and serve mainly to steal money from creative artists. And shove their crap music down our throats via radio and TV.
He might have. I don't think the government has, though. Seriously, I'd bet quite a few of them don't even know about that right, having never actually read whatever equates to the Constitution in England. Assuming that is a right in the UK, maybe it isn't.
Either that or they just don't care anymore. I'll give most of them the benefit of the doubt and call them ignorant rather than willfully tyrannical. This is the government we're talking about here, and not the competent branches like MI-6 either.
'We believe the termination right doesn’t apply to most sound recordings,' said Steven Marks, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America, a lobbying group in Washington that represents the interests of record labels. As the record companies see it, the master recordings belong to them in perpetuity,
Really? I definitely didn't see that coming. It is absolutely shocking that the RIAA and co. would think that they own the recording artist's soul.... er music for all time./sarcasm
OF COURSE the RIAA is going to say that. Nevermind that the law was specifically created to handle this kind of situation, the RIAA doesn't care about the law, the artists, or consumers, they only care about the profits of their cartel. It isn't "work for hire": if that were the case, the artists would get absolutely no royalties (royalties are more or less an admission that you still own the copyright in part). Of course, they often don't get any actual royalties, but that is besides the point. Again, the artist wouldn't go on tour performing the music, the music wouldn't be released under the artist's name, all sorts of things.
The record companies finance the recording and advertising of the work, but they don't create it in any way, neither in the performance nor the writing. They deserve some recompense for that, but 35 years worth is far, far more than enough. They didn't actually do the creative effort, and they shouldn't be able to control the ultimate destiny of the recording. Work for hire might go if they wrote a song and asked someone to sing it. But generally, all creative effort belongs solely to the artist, and they deserve control of their work.
Probably. If you read TFA, it was an 'ex parte" decision. Samsung wasn't even allowed to respond to or see the complaint before the ruling was issued, and Apple's complaint was the basis for the decision. It is also temporary, and this sort of thing bodes very (very very) badly for Apple. Hopefully they get slapped silly for this. Accident or not, it clearly indicates a contempt of the legal system.
Then again, it should have been obvious Apple had no true respect for the legal system when they sued Samsung for making a thin rounded-edge rectangle.
Commemorative of what, exactly? Does Niue have anything to do with Star Wars?
And technical question: it looks like they are printing the images in color, which means non-silver inks. How fast will those degrade when the silver tarnishes etc.? Why wouldn't they just use an engraving like most coins, especially for a near-pure silver coin like this? I would be much more tempted to buy it, too. This just looks like a (not so) cheap gimmick.
Yeah, which is why I said sea ice. Which you notice the article is about. As opposed to land ice. Which, with only reading the summary, doesn't enter into it at all.
Notice that the rise of sea levels he calculated, if all sea and floating ice shelf ice melted, is ~4cm. Wow, that's almost two inches! A massive threat to mankind and the future of our way of life!
Sorry if I ignored a 2.6% volume increase due to the rise of salinity. But seriously, cities aren't going to flood because of sea ice. Land ice, maybe, but not sea ice. There is a reason most scientists completely ignored the melting of sea ice. Because it really isn't a problem. Might be a (very) tiny contributing factor.
In this case, even that much won't happen. It's sea ice, melting won't affect the ocean levels one bit. Floating objects displace water equal to the volume of an equivalent weight of water. Since the ice is water, when it melts the net displacement won't go up. The effects of global warming may be bad, but this will not cause flooding.
Do you know anything about space elevators? Seriously. They're a great idea. Practically speaking, they are also very difficult, but if we could build one, the cost of traveling to orbit would become relatively speaking extremely cheap (technically, the energy requirements would stay the same. But the delta-v required would become as low as we please, making very cheap and low-power sources effective). Long term, unless we find a much better way to get to space, they are very likely to be built.
I agree that that is a very stupid question. Obviously, whoever uses it would pay for its use. Aka, commercial companies, NASA, military, etc. Since lots of people want to put stuff into space, lots of people could fund its operation.Probably it would be run by a company or government who would charge for its use (preferably, there would be at least two to introduce competition). That part is relatively easy. Its construction, on the other hand, is quite a problem. Financially and technically. However, it is a very good idea. Keep in mind, 150 years ago space travel on rockets was also just an idea in a few peoples minds. Turns out it isn't such a bad idea after all.
Plus, having an actual stairway to heaven would be pretty awesome...
Exactly. It was the development of the theory of the aether that led to many of the experiments surrounding the properties of light that allowed the theory of relativity to be developed. For instance, we knew if aether existed it would create a "wind" that would slow light in some directions as the earth moved. The experiment to test that wind helped found the theory of relativity (although, interestingly enough, Einstein supposedly hadn't heard of the experiment when he postulated the constancy of the speed of light.)
Aether was by no means a stupid theory, but it required a number of new properties previously unseen in material bodies, and it was theorized solely as a kludge to explain the motion of light through a vacuum. The analogy with dark matter is quite strong. Dark matter, too, has never been observed, and possesses properties of matter previous unseen or indeed thought impossible, and exists solely to bridge a gap between our model of how things should behave, and how things actually behave. This does not bode well for it. However, the experiment to test for its existence is quite likely to lead to something interesting, even if we have no idea what.
I believe what he meant to say was "excessive force", a term I have heard. It does say that shooting someone who has a popsicle stick, and this goes double for police, is a crime (or at least a civil lawsuit.) Usually, it's defined as "proportinal force": i.e. if you fear grave or deadly bodily harm, you can inflict the same in self-defence. As a rule, use no more deadly a weapon than your opponent. For an unarmed opponent, a baton is acceptable in self-defense, but not a knife, as an unarmed opponent is unlikely to kill, as is a knife. For a knife wielder, however, a knife or gun is definitely proportional (a knife can easily kill). It's a little open to interpretation, but suffice to say, if you feel the need actually to use a gun: shoot to kill.
Interesting exception: an unarmed martial arts expert fists' can be considered lethal weapons, and can therefore justify the use of a gun in self-defense. Of course, IANAL.
Ah, fair enough. And looking at the full article, I do see that they claim to have created Team Fortress and CS in the press release. I suspect, however, that they meant TF2 and CS:S, or that they were responsible for maintaining the franchises. True, it's a loose and incorrect way of speaking.
Riiiight. I know you're trolling, but I might as well bite. So, you're mad because they hire people who do good work, probably would never be able to succeed if Valve didn't "buy them out" (most were community modders), pays them lots of money, and lets both them and the community have open access to their moderately powerful and extremely moddable engine? All because you happen to prefer the original versions? Which, AFAIK, still exist? Ok. You can keep doing that.
It is pretty much a modders dream to be hired on by a major studio to continue developing their product. And TF2, BTW, is considerably different from the TF Classic, so i think they deserve a bit of credit. Not to mention building the engine they run on. Would you prefer Activision to be developing these games? Or perhaps Half-life, Portal, and Left4Dead to never exist? Yeah, go back to your troll cave.
You're right, anyone who is surprised by this is, well, lacking in foresight, to put it diplomatically. The merger was obviously about anti-competition, especially given that T-Mobile is one of only two contract companies (Sprint is the other) to undercut Verizon and At&T prices and data caps. This deal should not only not go through, the attempt should result in massive penalties against AT&T (splitting the company? Forced regulation of prices or removal of data caps? Ah, one can dream.) More likely, this will be brushed under the table, the right people will get "campaign donations", and everything will go smoothly. For AT&T. And the customers will get screwed. More screwed, that is. But, in the wireless provider business in America, that's pretty much how these things go.
Slashdot Mirror
Reversible Computing
It could theoretically overcome the limits of thermodynamics on computers. Basically, AFAICT it requires us to (nearly) perfectly observe the computer so that we could reverse any changes that take place in the system, so they would generate very, very little entropy (limited by how well we could build them.) Essentially, they can reuse any energy already used in computation with a very low degree of loss. Also, you might want to look at "Adiabatic quantum computation". Essentially this low-entropy system, but with quantum computers (so faster at brute-forcing).
Regardless, the point of TFA is that AES isn't perfectly secure, so strict brute-forcing isn't necessary. And we have no real evidence that the construction of a perfect system is possible. Nor, for that matter, that P!=NP, which is a more or less essential assumption in public-key cryptography. If it isn't, then as the key size grows, time to brute-force increases linearly, not exponentially as we think it does. It might be entirely possible that a new mathematical system could calculate a 256-bit key in hours, instead of billions of years. Doubtful, but no one really knows.
Ah. So it might be enough time to develop a new standard.
Incidentally, do any of these calculations of "a billion years" take into account Moore's Law? Has anyone developed an actual calculation taking into account the rate of computer advancement? (It'd still be secure enough for daily use, but still.) Some quick math shows that if computers double in power every 2 years, then the time to break it halves every 2 years. Or, in 60 (2*2^30=~ 1 billion) years computers will be 1 billion times more powerful and will be able to break AES in a few years, instead of a few billion. Assuming Moore's law continues, and that we don't switch to an entirely new computational system (i.e. quantum computers) in the mean time. .
Of course, you can always increase the key length (8196-bit encryption, anyone?)...
Yeah, it'd be more needle-like. Meaning easier to stab yourself with. Or others. Wait, maybe this is a good thing....
Is Linus Torvalds (implicitly, at least) criticizing ARM because it is open and therefore anyone can create their own version of it? As opposed to x86, which has a restricted licensing set (AMD/Intel/Via... Via still exists, right?)? Because that is, AFAICT, exactly why ARM is so varied: anyone can roll their own. With the result that many do.
Kinda ironic (and I do mean *ironic*) that the creator of Linux would be complaining about this. I guess he is finally discovering why, in some cases, a regulated and restricted environment can be good (note: if x86 was a monopoly, I would not be saying that. But AMD and Intel are fierce competitors, so it isn't at all monopolistic). Open environments often become "hodgepodges" and lend themselves to non-standardization. Closed ones don't (well, they can, but generally they don't. Definitely not as fast as an open one) and can be easily standardized (witness how Intel accepted AMD's x86-64 set for consumers over their own I64 system). The result is, in the case of CPUs, good for consumers.
Note: I am note proclaiming the virtues of proprietary systems, or claiming they are better than free and open ones. Just pointing out the irony of the situation.
They also made a few technical errors in the report, at least surrounding Opera. At one point, they list "Opera 10" as having 6.1% block rate, yet earlier in the report they list that as the rate for Opera 11 and Opera 10's rate as 0.00%. That, combined with the absolutely gushing praise for IE9 and its App block (or w/e they call it) filter lead me to suspect quite strongly that this is just another MS paid add by an "independent" (i.e. not directly MS-owned) company.
No technical examination of any other browser's malware blocking was mentioned. Nor did they seem to do any testing of add-ons or extensions. I imagine Add-block alone probably blocks many malicious sites. Oh, and no list of URL's tested was given. Even if this wasn't horribly biased (which I doubt), it was terribly conducted technically speaking.
Best part was that Righthaven tried claiming they shouldn't have to pay the defense's fees because they had no right to sue in the first place and therefore the court had no jurisdiction at all. I love the defense's response:
Righthaven deserves some credit for taking this position, as it requires an amazing amount of chutzpah. Righthaven seeks a ruling holding that, as long as a plaintiff’s case is completely frivolous, then the court is deprived of the right to make the frivolously sued defendant whole, whereas a partially frivolous case might give rise to fee liability.
Isn't this the sort of situation disbarment was designed to handle?
Never happen, though.
a man who was driving at 70MPH while texting on one phone and talking on another has been banned from driving for a year.
If he managed to pull that off without crashing or injuring someone, my guess is he (would be/is) actually a fairly safe driver. I couldn't do that. Maybe they should get this guy to teach others how to actually drive. Minus the phones, of course. Couldn't possibly make most drivers worse, anyways. /p.
You'd think a bunch of accountants wouldn't fall for a Ponzi scheme.
The GPL parts of the code for Android are freely available. Google provides them, and I'd assume any licensee would just point to that if asked for the code (if they don't already make it freely available themselves. Can a redistributor just point to the original source under the GPL if they don't modify it? I assume they can). AFAIK most licensees don't modify the GPL portions of the code, only the front-end etc. which are licensed under Apache. I'm no expert on the GPL, but really this is just FUD created by (as others have commented) Florian Mueller, who just seems to glance at issues and post whatever he "thinks", without actually doing, well, any real thinking, much less actual research.
Now, if RMS said this, I might stand up and take notice. Doubt he would though, he knows well enough that poisoning GPL code like that would mean the death of OSS.
No, even that isn't true. Record companies don't finance the recording or advertising of the work.
They issue a loan to the artist called an 'advance' (Which is spent on making the record.) and require the artist to pay it back before they start making any money.
That is, by one definition, "financing". Just like a bank finances a mortgage for you to buy a house. The record company takes a chance (albeit a fairly small one) by advancing the money. However, you are correct, the artist is expected to pay it back (hence my comment about many artists not seeing any royalties: those go back to the record company). My point is that many artists (at least in the past) couldn't have succeeded without this financial aid and the resources of the recording industry, and I am willing to grant them (some) credit for that. Sure, it's like giving the devil credit for your musical talent in return for your soul... but still, the record companies do have something of a genuine role.
I still wish they would crawl into a corner and die (or better yet be lined up against a wall and shot), since they are no longer really needed and serve mainly to steal money from creative artists. And shove their crap music down our throats via radio and TV.
He might have. I don't think the government has, though. Seriously, I'd bet quite a few of them don't even know about that right, having never actually read whatever equates to the Constitution in England. Assuming that is a right in the UK, maybe it isn't.
Either that or they just don't care anymore. I'll give most of them the benefit of the doubt and call them ignorant rather than willfully tyrannical. This is the government we're talking about here, and not the competent branches like MI-6 either.
'We believe the termination right doesn’t apply to most sound recordings,' said Steven Marks, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America, a lobbying group in Washington that represents the interests of record labels. As the record companies see it, the master recordings belong to them in perpetuity,
Really? I definitely didn't see that coming. It is absolutely shocking that the RIAA and co. would think that they own the recording artist's soul.... er music for all time. /sarcasm
OF COURSE the RIAA is going to say that. Nevermind that the law was specifically created to handle this kind of situation, the RIAA doesn't care about the law, the artists, or consumers, they only care about the profits of their cartel. It isn't "work for hire": if that were the case, the artists would get absolutely no royalties (royalties are more or less an admission that you still own the copyright in part). Of course, they often don't get any actual royalties, but that is besides the point. Again, the artist wouldn't go on tour performing the music, the music wouldn't be released under the artist's name, all sorts of things.
The record companies finance the recording and advertising of the work, but they don't create it in any way, neither in the performance nor the writing. They deserve some recompense for that, but 35 years worth is far, far more than enough. They didn't actually do the creative effort, and they shouldn't be able to control the ultimate destiny of the recording. Work for hire might go if they wrote a song and asked someone to sing it. But generally, all creative effort belongs solely to the artist, and they deserve control of their work.
Probably. If you read TFA, it was an 'ex parte" decision. Samsung wasn't even allowed to respond to or see the complaint before the ruling was issued, and Apple's complaint was the basis for the decision. It is also temporary, and this sort of thing bodes very (very very) badly for Apple. Hopefully they get slapped silly for this. Accident or not, it clearly indicates a contempt of the legal system.
Then again, it should have been obvious Apple had no true respect for the legal system when they sued Samsung for making a thin rounded-edge rectangle.
Commemorative of what, exactly? Does Niue have anything to do with Star Wars?
And technical question: it looks like they are printing the images in color, which means non-silver inks. How fast will those degrade when the silver tarnishes etc.? Why wouldn't they just use an engraving like most coins, especially for a near-pure silver coin like this? I would be much more tempted to buy it, too. This just looks like a (not so) cheap gimmick.
Yeah, which is why I said sea ice. Which you notice the article is about. As opposed to land ice. Which, with only reading the summary, doesn't enter into it at all.
Notice that the rise of sea levels he calculated, if all sea and floating ice shelf ice melted, is ~4cm. Wow, that's almost two inches! A massive threat to mankind and the future of our way of life!
Sorry if I ignored a 2.6% volume increase due to the rise of salinity. But seriously, cities aren't going to flood because of sea ice. Land ice, maybe, but not sea ice. There is a reason most scientists completely ignored the melting of sea ice. Because it really isn't a problem. Might be a (very) tiny contributing factor.
In this case, even that much won't happen. It's sea ice, melting won't affect the ocean levels one bit. Floating objects displace water equal to the volume of an equivalent weight of water. Since the ice is water, when it melts the net displacement won't go up. The effects of global warming may be bad, but this will not cause flooding.
Do you know anything about space elevators? Seriously. They're a great idea. Practically speaking, they are also very difficult, but if we could build one, the cost of traveling to orbit would become relatively speaking extremely cheap (technically, the energy requirements would stay the same. But the delta-v required would become as low as we please, making very cheap and low-power sources effective). Long term, unless we find a much better way to get to space, they are very likely to be built.
I agree that that is a very stupid question. Obviously, whoever uses it would pay for its use. Aka, commercial companies, NASA, military, etc. Since lots of people want to put stuff into space, lots of people could fund its operation .Probably it would be run by a company or government who would charge for its use (preferably, there would be at least two to introduce competition). That part is relatively easy. Its construction, on the other hand, is quite a problem. Financially and technically. However, it is a very good idea. Keep in mind, 150 years ago space travel on rockets was also just an idea in a few peoples minds. Turns out it isn't such a bad idea after all.
Plus, having an actual stairway to heaven would be pretty awesome...
Exactly. It was the development of the theory of the aether that led to many of the experiments surrounding the properties of light that allowed the theory of relativity to be developed. For instance, we knew if aether existed it would create a "wind" that would slow light in some directions as the earth moved. The experiment to test that wind helped found the theory of relativity (although, interestingly enough, Einstein supposedly hadn't heard of the experiment when he postulated the constancy of the speed of light.)
Aether was by no means a stupid theory, but it required a number of new properties previously unseen in material bodies, and it was theorized solely as a kludge to explain the motion of light through a vacuum. The analogy with dark matter is quite strong. Dark matter, too, has never been observed, and possesses properties of matter previous unseen or indeed thought impossible, and exists solely to bridge a gap between our model of how things should behave, and how things actually behave. This does not bode well for it. However, the experiment to test for its existence is quite likely to lead to something interesting, even if we have no idea what.
Yes and no. Until we see it happening, we won't know if we can or not.
I believe what he meant to say was "excessive force", a term I have heard. It does say that shooting someone who has a popsicle stick, and this goes double for police, is a crime (or at least a civil lawsuit.) Usually, it's defined as "proportinal force": i.e. if you fear grave or deadly bodily harm, you can inflict the same in self-defence. As a rule, use no more deadly a weapon than your opponent. For an unarmed opponent, a baton is acceptable in self-defense, but not a knife, as an unarmed opponent is unlikely to kill, as is a knife. For a knife wielder, however, a knife or gun is definitely proportional (a knife can easily kill). It's a little open to interpretation, but suffice to say, if you feel the need actually to use a gun: shoot to kill.
Interesting exception: an unarmed martial arts expert fists' can be considered lethal weapons, and can therefore justify the use of a gun in self-defense. Of course, IANAL.
Ah, fair enough. And looking at the full article, I do see that they claim to have created Team Fortress and CS in the press release. I suspect, however, that they meant TF2 and CS:S, or that they were responsible for maintaining the franchises. True, it's a loose and incorrect way of speaking.
Riiiight. I know you're trolling, but I might as well bite. So, you're mad because they hire people who do good work, probably would never be able to succeed if Valve didn't "buy them out" (most were community modders), pays them lots of money, and lets both them and the community have open access to their moderately powerful and extremely moddable engine? All because you happen to prefer the original versions? Which, AFAIK, still exist? Ok. You can keep doing that.
It is pretty much a modders dream to be hired on by a major studio to continue developing their product. And TF2, BTW, is considerably different from the TF Classic, so i think they deserve a bit of credit. Not to mention building the engine they run on. Would you prefer Activision to be developing these games? Or perhaps Half-life, Portal, and Left4Dead to never exist? Yeah, go back to your troll cave.
You're right, anyone who is surprised by this is, well, lacking in foresight, to put it diplomatically. The merger was obviously about anti-competition, especially given that T-Mobile is one of only two contract companies (Sprint is the other) to undercut Verizon and At&T prices and data caps. This deal should not only not go through, the attempt should result in massive penalties against AT&T (splitting the company? Forced regulation of prices or removal of data caps? Ah, one can dream.) More likely, this will be brushed under the table, the right people will get "campaign donations", and everything will go smoothly. For AT&T. And the customers will get screwed. More screwed, that is. But, in the wireless provider business in America, that's pretty much how these things go.