You mean your ISP accepts false identities...? How do they know where to send the bills?
Here in Malaysia you can pay for your dialup using scratch cards available at 7-Eleven as well as zillions of smaller shops that don't have security cameras. They ask for your national identity card number when you first register online but if you say you're a foreigner they just ask for your passport number which they have no way of validating. I am sure there are similar arrangements in many other places.
False. They own the rights to the name, to the specific wording of the rules, and to those aspects of the board's appearance which are not necessary for its function - that is, they own the rights to the particular color that they use for double-word score, but they don't own the right to a 15x15 grid.
And they only own those rights in North America.
In no way do they own the rights to the "game". The concept of the game itself is in the public domain.
Given how easy it would have been for them to create a non-infringing version of their game, and that they are based in India, where there's not really any good way for a US court to land a judgment against them, I have to wonder if they knew this was coming from the start. Maybe their plan was just to cash in for as long as they could before they got sued, and then disappear quietly.
If they were smart...
They would have started with the blatant rip-off version that helped people feel familiar with the game and allowed them to build up a critical mass of players. But then, every week, they could make some subtle changes (slowly alter the colors for the special squares, change the fonts and placement of the letters and numbers on the tiles, etc.) which would get them farther from Hasbro's clutches without confusing their users.
By now they would have had no copyright issues left, and all Hasbro could get them to do is change the name. Scrabulous would get so much press over the name change that it would be like a gift from Hasbro. And that would be that.
There are still plenty of us who don't really care about myspace / facebook. Not every person on the internet is on one (or both) of those. I don't see why this article justifies front-page status.
I don't see a single article on the front page that affects everyone.
Your post strikes me as a lame excuse for trumpeting your awesome coolness for not using Facebook or Myspace. Consider your awesome coolness recognized, now leave us alone to talk about things that affect many thousands of people.
The difference is that the green-marker people fail, in blind tests, to identify which CDs have been thus enhanced, or are being played through $5000 cables. I (and others like me who genuinely care about the appearance of words on the printed page), on the other hand, am always correct about which documents were produced in Word.
If you have any reasonably recent version of Word, it actually has all the things you want, and it is easier to use and create publishable content than almost any other modern word/document processor for documents of the type that you seem to be interested in generating. It's not QuarkExpress or InDesign, but that type of publishing isn't what you seem to be talking about.
Huh? Word is a non-starter out of the box because it is totally incapable of producing typography that doesn't look like ass. The kerning doesn't work, control over every sort of spacing and positioning is far too coarse. Every document that comes from Word can immediately be recognized as such, and even if you personally aren't observant enough to, there's still a subliminal effect that whispers to everyone "this is an amateur production".
The point is that if you add the extension and use google, you get useful results plus previews.
If you use Cuil, you get totally irrelevant search results and a lot of redirect loops. At least I did. Not one search came up with anything I would have expected or hoped for.
The problem with SIP is that few people actually use it whereas skype is everywhere.
Several orders of magnitude more daily minutes are done with SIP than Skype. SIP is used for corporate networks and calling card providers and lots of other situations.
That said, would it be fair to say that a lack in programming interest might be to do with the English language bias of most available programming languages?
I'm not sure. I live in an English-speaking Asian country (Malaysia) so if that were the only barrier I'd expect a little more genuine hacking and a little less pirated-game-trading.
China is pretty hopeless when it comes to English, so that could definitely be a factor on top of whatever else is stopping them from doing interesting things.
A brief surf around turned up widespread agreement that the 1998 iMac was the first computer to use exclusively USB for desktop I/O, eschewing RS232 serial, parallel, joystick, and PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports.
Guess that's not exactly the same thing, but it does show that Apple was the first company to believe in it enough to really stake the machine's usability on it.
The context makes it quite clear which usage of "geek" is intended. The word "computer" was once commonly used to refer to people who sat around adding up numbers, do you think that needs clarification and explanation too? For that matter, "IT" used to be the loud version of a pronoun. Ah, those were the days.
Spending the better part of a decade as a computerist in Asia has led me to the conclusion that most "geeks" there are pretty lightweight. Of course there are many exceptions among Asia's 2 billion people, but by and large, those who fancy themselves computer boffins tend to be content with installing pirated software on Windows, and most of them couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. Per capita, geek culture in Europe and the Americas is a whole lot more interesting and impressive.
Part of this is probably a result of the widespread piracy in the region. The financial incentive that draws some to Linux elsewhere doesn't really exist there. Also, Chinese and its satellites are follower cultures, and it's not so common to do things that are truly strange or new.
Ok, good, I'd rather face the prospect of life with what seems to be a broken sarcasm detector, than a world where someone would seriously be asking that question...
One reason why I'll stay with the iPhone is that it is near on impossible for a 6 foot 2 person nearing 220 pounds to work those tiny keys.
I'm considerably taller than you and I don't have a problem with the E61i keyboard. For the first couple of weeks I was really slow and error-prone and worried I was going to hate it. But now I can barely remember what that dark and somber period was like.
The so-called "candybar" format is the best use of space and with either auto-locking, or just a habit of pressing the appropriate key combination to lock the keypad
Agreed. I have the E61i, and I keep it in my pocket all the time. It's not a problem, in fact sometimes I worry that I've lost it and have to tap my pocket to check that it's still there.
As for QWERTY phones, I just don't get it. How often does anyone who supposedly needs that degree of "connectivity", actually require a real keyboard (or rough approximation of one) when there isn't a laptop near at hand ?
With this phone I can go on unauthorized vacations with only a carry-on bag and know that I can still deal with problems that come up at the office. Having a keyboard that provides for reasonably-quick shell typing is well worth it in my opinion.
And on a day-to-day basis, it means I can go to the park or the bar when my colleagues are still working, in cases when all that's expected of me is being in rapid email contact.
I have some problems with the E61i but the form factor ain't one of 'em. It's been great for my lifestyle.
Actually Netherlands is the proper name for 'Holland' as in the country. Holland is one region in the western part of the Netherlands. Benelux countries are Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Yes, but "Netherlands" literally means "low countries", a designation that commonly includes all three of those countries.
You can live pretty cheap in Israel (spending half of what you'd spend in Silicon Valley would put you well ahead of the game) so long as you're willing to go local and not try to recreate California in your surroundings (and stomach).
You can also get by with English for almost all daily-routine tasks. If your employer doesn't mind then it won't be a problem. Walking around the streets of some cities (e.g., hipper areas of Jerusalem) you'll hear American-accented English spoken as much as anything else.
Moving to another country, you need to familiarize yourself with the important laws and assumptions that are being made there. So, go direct to the source: find a reputable lawyer to talk to, and swallow the few $100 it will cost for several hours of his time. And, that's a LAWYER IN THE COUNTRY YOU ARE MOVING TO.
Pfft.
I've moved all over the place - Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North America, Australia. Unless you are given to starting fistfights on the street or screaming obscenities at passing royalty, you'll find out everything you need to know, right about when you need to know it. Just make friends, talk to people, read the newspapers. And above all, keep your eyes open and exercise common sense. It's not all that hard (or scary).
wondering why you would want to leave Australia, as I recently began considering moving there myself
As someone who lived in Australia for years, I'm pretty sure it's not a mistake I would repeat.
Insanely high prices ensure your standard of living will be lower than in Canada.
The cities have almost no nightlife compared to major world cities (including major Canadian cities). People go to their wine bars at 6pm to show off their new clothes, then head home to watch TV by 9. After that you've got nothing but feral suburban kids, drunk old men, and bewildered Japanese tourists.
Even the once-vibrant Aussie music scene has dried up to a bunch of derivative USA-wannabe hip hop acts and a few random electronicists hiding in their cellars.
The Australian work ethic and customer service ethic is shockingly slack compared to Canada. Getting anything done takes far longer than you'd ever imagine because nobody gives a shit about doing their jobs.
Other than a few nice areas in the city centres, the architecture is overpoweringly bleak. Normally I wouldn't make a major issue of this - for example, I really enjoy New York which is quite an ugly city when you get down to it - but those endless long stretches of half-vacant cheap two-storey shop buildings in Australia made my soul ache.
While not every Australian is a gibbering racist, the country is certainly well-endowed in that regard. Too many of the rest tend to be reactionary, preachy leather-wearing vegetarians who rail at random against things they don't even begin to understand.
All these things annoyed me, but really it was the feeling of starvation for informed, interested, conversation that really sent me packing in the end.
Seriously, spend a month or two there before committing your life to it. There's definitely some natural beauty to be found, but you can find that in far more stimulating and pleasant places if you look around a bit.
Which part of America are you considering, it's a large continent... The southern bit, Chile ? Equador ? The northern bit, Mexico ?
You seem to be a bit confused about your geography.
"America" is the common name for the United States of America, which is a country. It contains none of the places you mention (Chile, Ecuador, United States of Mexico).
"North America" and "South America" are continents. Two of them. Unless you consider Europe, Asia, and Africa to be a single continent.
Do you get similarly confused about other countries whose names are similar to broader geographic labels, like South Africa, Ecuador, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Iceland, Malaysia, Australia, and so on? "Which part of South Africa are you considering? Namibia? Mozambique? Lesotho? Which part of Ecuador are you considering? Uganda? Indonesia? Brazil? Which part of the Netherlands are you considering? Belgium? Luxembourg?"
The only thing worse than a sarcastic pedant is a sarcastic pedant who's wrong.
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Here in Malaysia you can pay for your dialup using scratch cards available at 7-Eleven as well as zillions of smaller shops that don't have security cameras. They ask for your national identity card number when you first register online but if you say you're a foreigner they just ask for your passport number which they have no way of validating. I am sure there are similar arrangements in many other places.
Nobody should have to be "grateful" for basic human rights, such as the right to privacy.
To the extent that any government denies these, it is a bad government that deserves criticism.
False. They own the rights to the name, to the specific wording of the rules, and to those aspects of the board's appearance which are not necessary for its function - that is, they own the rights to the particular color that they use for double-word score, but they don't own the right to a 15x15 grid.
And they only own those rights in North America.
In no way do they own the rights to the "game". The concept of the game itself is in the public domain.
What's your mom's email address? I'll send her some non-US proxy servers she can use to go in there and finish you off.
For the record, I also thought Bill was talking about the Indian Scrabulous app and not the "official" Hasbro one.
If they were smart...
They would have started with the blatant rip-off version that helped people feel familiar with the game and allowed them to build up a critical mass of players. But then, every week, they could make some subtle changes (slowly alter the colors for the special squares, change the fonts and placement of the letters and numbers on the tiles, etc.) which would get them farther from Hasbro's clutches without confusing their users.
By now they would have had no copyright issues left, and all Hasbro could get them to do is change the name. Scrabulous would get so much press over the name change that it would be like a gift from Hasbro. And that would be that.
I don't see a single article on the front page that affects everyone.
Your post strikes me as a lame excuse for trumpeting your awesome coolness for not using Facebook or Myspace. Consider your awesome coolness recognized, now leave us alone to talk about things that affect many thousands of people.
The difference is that the green-marker people fail, in blind tests, to identify which CDs have been thus enhanced, or are being played through $5000 cables. I (and others like me who genuinely care about the appearance of words on the printed page), on the other hand, am always correct about which documents were produced in Word.
Huh? Word is a non-starter out of the box because it is totally incapable of producing typography that doesn't look like ass. The kerning doesn't work, control over every sort of spacing and positioning is far too coarse. Every document that comes from Word can immediately be recognized as such, and even if you personally aren't observant enough to, there's still a subliminal effect that whispers to everyone "this is an amateur production".
The point is that if you add the extension and use google, you get useful results plus previews.
If you use Cuil, you get totally irrelevant search results and a lot of redirect loops. At least I did. Not one search came up with anything I would have expected or hoped for.
Several orders of magnitude more daily minutes are done with SIP than Skype. SIP is used for corporate networks and calling card providers and lots of other situations.
I've had a WRT54G for almost two years. I've never had to reboot it, not even once. The trick was installing OpenWRT firmware.
I'm not sure. I live in an English-speaking Asian country (Malaysia) so if that were the only barrier I'd expect a little more genuine hacking and a little less pirated-game-trading.
China is pretty hopeless when it comes to English, so that could definitely be a factor on top of whatever else is stopping them from doing interesting things.
A brief surf around turned up widespread agreement that the 1998 iMac was the first computer to use exclusively USB for desktop I/O, eschewing RS232 serial, parallel, joystick, and PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports.
Guess that's not exactly the same thing, but it does show that Apple was the first company to believe in it enough to really stake the machine's usability on it.
The context makes it quite clear which usage of "geek" is intended. The word "computer" was once commonly used to refer to people who sat around adding up numbers, do you think that needs clarification and explanation too? For that matter, "IT" used to be the loud version of a pronoun. Ah, those were the days.
Spending the better part of a decade as a computerist in Asia has led me to the conclusion that most "geeks" there are pretty lightweight. Of course there are many exceptions among Asia's 2 billion people, but by and large, those who fancy themselves computer boffins tend to be content with installing pirated software on Windows, and most of them couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. Per capita, geek culture in Europe and the Americas is a whole lot more interesting and impressive.
Part of this is probably a result of the widespread piracy in the region. The financial incentive that draws some to Linux elsewhere doesn't really exist there. Also, Chinese and its satellites are follower cultures, and it's not so common to do things that are truly strange or new.
Ok, good, I'd rather face the prospect of life with what seems to be a broken sarcasm detector, than a world where someone would seriously be asking that question...
I really hope you're kidding.
I'm considerably taller than you and I don't have a problem with the E61i keyboard. For the first couple of weeks I was really slow and error-prone and worried I was going to hate it. But now I can barely remember what that dark and somber period was like.
Agreed. I have the E61i, and I keep it in my pocket all the time. It's not a problem, in fact sometimes I worry that I've lost it and have to tap my pocket to check that it's still there.
With this phone I can go on unauthorized vacations with only a carry-on bag and know that I can still deal with problems that come up at the office. Having a keyboard that provides for reasonably-quick shell typing is well worth it in my opinion.
And on a day-to-day basis, it means I can go to the park or the bar when my colleagues are still working, in cases when all that's expected of me is being in rapid email contact.
I have some problems with the E61i but the form factor ain't one of 'em. It's been great for my lifestyle.
Yes, but "Netherlands" literally means "low countries", a designation that commonly includes all three of those countries.
You can live pretty cheap in Israel (spending half of what you'd spend in Silicon Valley would put you well ahead of the game) so long as you're willing to go local and not try to recreate California in your surroundings (and stomach).
You can also get by with English for almost all daily-routine tasks. If your employer doesn't mind then it won't be a problem. Walking around the streets of some cities (e.g., hipper areas of Jerusalem) you'll hear American-accented English spoken as much as anything else.
Pfft.
I've moved all over the place - Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North America, Australia. Unless you are given to starting fistfights on the street or screaming obscenities at passing royalty, you'll find out everything you need to know, right about when you need to know it. Just make friends, talk to people, read the newspapers. And above all, keep your eyes open and exercise common sense. It's not all that hard (or scary).
As someone who lived in Australia for years, I'm pretty sure it's not a mistake I would repeat.
Insanely high prices ensure your standard of living will be lower than in Canada.
The cities have almost no nightlife compared to major world cities (including major Canadian cities). People go to their wine bars at 6pm to show off their new clothes, then head home to watch TV by 9. After that you've got nothing but feral suburban kids, drunk old men, and bewildered Japanese tourists.
Even the once-vibrant Aussie music scene has dried up to a bunch of derivative USA-wannabe hip hop acts and a few random electronicists hiding in their cellars.
The Australian work ethic and customer service ethic is shockingly slack compared to Canada. Getting anything done takes far longer than you'd ever imagine because nobody gives a shit about doing their jobs.
Other than a few nice areas in the city centres, the architecture is overpoweringly bleak. Normally I wouldn't make a major issue of this - for example, I really enjoy New York which is quite an ugly city when you get down to it - but those endless long stretches of half-vacant cheap two-storey shop buildings in Australia made my soul ache.
While not every Australian is a gibbering racist, the country is certainly well-endowed in that regard. Too many of the rest tend to be reactionary, preachy leather-wearing vegetarians who rail at random against things they don't even begin to understand.
All these things annoyed me, but really it was the feeling of starvation for informed, interested, conversation that really sent me packing in the end.
Seriously, spend a month or two there before committing your life to it. There's definitely some natural beauty to be found, but you can find that in far more stimulating and pleasant places if you look around a bit.
You seem to be a bit confused about your geography.
"America" is the common name for the United States of America, which is a country. It contains none of the places you mention (Chile, Ecuador, United States of Mexico).
"North America" and "South America" are continents. Two of them. Unless you consider Europe, Asia, and Africa to be a single continent.
Do you get similarly confused about other countries whose names are similar to broader geographic labels, like South Africa, Ecuador, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Iceland, Malaysia, Australia, and so on? "Which part of South Africa are you considering? Namibia? Mozambique? Lesotho? Which part of Ecuador are you considering? Uganda? Indonesia? Brazil? Which part of the Netherlands are you considering? Belgium? Luxembourg?"
The only thing worse than a sarcastic pedant is a sarcastic pedant who's wrong.