Yes, let's all thank Apple for being gracious enough to allow us to run an application of our choice on our hardware.
Once network neutrality is completely dead and website->customer ISP payments are common, Apple will probably use their position to operate another toll booth as the first hardware vendor to benefit from a non-neutral internet. Can we look forward to petitioning Apple to pretty, pretty please add our favorite website to their whitelist, as well?
This practice sickens me. Enjoy your pretty noose!
Traffic signal timing is nothing new, we've known about it a long time. Unfortunately, there is much money to be made fleecing motorists for traffic violations. As a result, our road systems are tweaked to generate revenue, not expedite traffic. Good luck getting these algorithms used in anywhere but a handful of places without a fight.
Sir, your attitude is a breath a fresh air. Any programmer who doesn't submit a formal and rigorous proof of every algorithm they write to a peer reviewed academic research journal is an incompetent hack who couldn't program his way out of a cardboard box.
Programmers who pick and choose their development practices based on the specific requirements of the project at hand are ignorant fools who reduce the beautiful and perfect art of programming to a mere act of common labor. It's disgraceful, I tell you!
It looks like the bots must be built using BWAPI, an open source API layer for Starcraft that uses ChaosLauncher, an unofficial Starcraft hack. Seeing as how Blizzard is a super litigious bunch of assholes (read up on bnetd [1], WOW Glider [2], and Scapegaming [3] for a sample) won't they just file a baseless lawsuit against the people responsible for this competition? Given their past behavior, I can't imagine that they would be able to restrain themselves.
<rant> Honestly, Blizzard makes great games, but they have always fought against free speech, intellectual, and technical freedoms. I hope that Starcraft II falls flat on its face for forcing Internet registration to play the single player game [4] and disabling LAN play [5] in the hopes of increasing profit. The sooner that company fails, the better. </rant>
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd#Blizzard_takedown_demand_and_lawsuit [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOWGlider [3] http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?id=51340 [4] This has not yet been announced, but it's naive to think that it won't be the case [5] http://kotaku.com/5304113/no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii
Sure, you can turn off the NXDOMAIN redirection, but why would I want to use a DNS service that has it enabled by default, censors political speech, and is slower than my ISP's existing DNS?
You realize what OpenDNS is, right? Essentially, a bunch of investors bought the OpenDNS project and said to themselves "How can we squeeze money out of this?", completely discarding the goal that brought the project into existence: AN OPEN DNS SYSTEM. Today, OpenDNS is open in name only, and exists only to profit from people who are foolish enough to willingly hand over their private information (essentially, a list of every site you ever visit).
They hijack NXDOMAIN results to provide ads. They host DNS servers that are farther away (hop-wise) than your ISP's probably are (despite their misleading claims to the contrary). They censor certain domains and redirect others. Given that they do all of the above, they probably practice the "industry standard" of selling NXDOMAIN logs to domain squatters. Anything to make a buck, huh?
No thanks. Just because it has the word "Open" in it, doesn't make it a good thing.
Yes, it sounds like it has. Bitterness is like a poison pill, prepared out of anger, that you swallow yourself. When you define yourself by who (and what) you hate, you succumb to crass tribalism and limit your ability to make decisions logically and dispassionately. Who cares what the "shaggy haired guys" are doing? Only the man who is dissatisfied with his own life.
To me, it sounds like you have surrended choice and control over your own life to the false short term ideals of mainstream society. If you had control over your own life, you wouldn't feel that repressed anger that all slaves feel when they see someone who is truly free. That anger leads to the frantic desire to control others, as you've demonstrated with your posts.
Personally, I think the real story is that two noblemen (Warner Bros & News Corp) have acted to ensure that commoners (in this case, Edwyn Collins, but really any non-corporate entity) cannot own property. Of course the nobility believes that only a nobleman can own property! If a commoner claims to own property, he's obviously lying. Commoners cannot own property. Welcome to Feudalism 2.0(TM).
And what exactly was my point? Let me quote myself:
After a little reading, the issue is not as clear cut as you seem to think it is.
Original poster seems to think ELF's claims are patently impossible, there exists conflicting and ongoing research on the issue, therefore issue is not 100% clear cut. QED.
Yes, but this kind of garbage is symptomatic of the larger bout of anti-intellectualism that's afflicting our society.
That's a silly thing to say considering the number of scientific studies that have shown an increased risk of childhood Leukemia for kids living near AM transmitters. After a little reading, the issue is not as clear cut as you seem to think it is.
There is some evidence pointing toward an increased risk of Leukemia for children living near A.M. radio transmitters, but because of the commercial implications, the research is controversial.
Here's the abstract from a South Korean study on the issue from PubMed. Wired did a piece on it in 2004, also.
Nope. There's a famous historical anecdote about this very issue.
Twice a year a celebrated Misereri by Allegri, an early seventeenth-century composer, was performed by the choir, but the work, which existed only in MS., was so highly esteemed that to copy it was a crime visited with excommunication. Young Mozart nevertheless determined that he would secure a copy, and after two hearings he had the whole thing so perfectly on paper that next year Dr. Burney, the musical historian, was able to publish it in London.
Mozart had to worry about excommunication as punishment for his piracy at the time. If the RIAA were functioning in Mozart's time as it is today (100+ year copyrights), he would have been prosecuted.
It doesn't have to be called a constitution nor have "constitution" written at the top in big letters in order to be a constitution.
Correct. But a constitution does have to provide a foundation for the law of the land. A whole bunch of disparate court rulings and royal edicts do not meet the definition. There is no legal definition or agreement for what is or is not part of the UK constitution. These components of the "constitution" can be easily overridden.
You are arguing that the amorphous legal traditions of the UK are its constitution. This is silly. You might as well argue that English common law is a "constitution" as well. It's equally as silly.
Of course, arguing definitional semantics is pretty silly in and of itself...:)
What a silly comment you've made. The UK has no constitution. The Wikipedia article you link points out that the power vacuum created by the lack of a constitution is partially filled by various court rulings and decrees put in place by the ruling body.
You might as well argue that a blind man has "sight" because he has memorized the layout of his house. This semantic argument doesn't change the fact that he'll be bumbling around for a while if you rearrange the furniture.
And neither does your argument change the fact that without a constitution, UK citizens' individual rights and freedoms are worse for wear.
You're kidding, right? Paypal didn't send a mass e-mail to all its users saying "Dear Customers, We're jacking up our fees!". Instead, they sent out a mass mail that said "Dear Customers, We updated our Terms of Service. By doing nothing, you agree that you accept the changes."
Take a look at Paypal's legal page. The Paypal "Terms of Service" are actually 14 different agreements, all written in legalese, all saying that they can be changed at any time for any reason by Paypal. All together, the agreements add up 4000 lines, give or take. Not every user is subject to every agreement (some are for specific services), but many are.
So can you really say with a straight face that you believe it is reasonable to expect Paypal users to reread 4000 lines of legalese every time Paypal announces that they've made some change to the agreement? It's not like they're providing diffs. They do not want their customers to understand these agreements or how they have changed because they are dishonest. That's the crux of the issue - Paypal is acting in bad faith to screw their own customers and hiding behind legalese when called out on it.
They could allow installing on any number of machines, but disallow more than one copy from connecting to Battle.net at once.
Sure, they could do that, but they won't. I personally guarantee you that they will have an arbitrarily small number of installs allowed per game copy. It's too attractive an option for game publishers not to pursue. Just wait for it.
It's a little premature to assume Blizzard will be using Microsoft-level DRM tactics on SC2.
I disagree. First, "Blizzard", the company that gives us all warm tinglies because we loved their early games so much no longer exists. We're talking about Activision, who is no stranger to this kind of nonsense. The WoW Glider and bnetd incidents taught us all we need to know about Activision's feelings about control. They want it for themselves and they don't want users to have it.
Sounds like someone is bitter about not having much choice in their life. You probably don't have any hobbies, either, since your employer wouldn't approve. Have fun tilling the land for your lord. The rest of us will be making real money for ourselves, out-competing your boss because of productivity gains from using decent tools, as opposed to whatever tools your boss thinks are the cheapest to teach monkeys to use.
Enjoy your job. Maybe if you're a good, your employer will give you a 1% raise next year? As long as it doesn't cut into executive bonuses, that is.
It goes without saying, though, that this "phone home" feature will be used to enforce an inevitable lifetime install limit. It also goes without saying that this limit will be arbitrarily small.
What I find more troubling, however, is that this DRM is a vehicle to violate the privacy of the user and otherwise subvert the operation of the computer it is running on against the interests of its owner. I have no interest in joining Blizzard's organization (Battle.net) or being subjected to its terms of service, which Blizzard considers legally binding and may change at any time. I have no interests in my personal information being stored indefinitely in Blizzard's marketing database - ready to be sold to the highest bidder, should the company ever become desperate enough for the cash.
If I play this game, it will be a pirated and cracked version that does not have these defects.
I agree that Chrome and Firefox will support anything they can legally, but I do not think that Safari will implement Theora. Here's my rationale:
Right now, Apple sees Google as a threat, as evidenced by the recent hostility Apple is showing toward Google. Specifically, Apple's blocking of Google Voice and Lattitude on the iPhone. They are "partners" in name only.
This is because the smart people at Apple realize that Google's philosophy of inexpensive lowest bidder open platforms is the antithesis of Apple's closed, locked down, and tightly controlled vision for the future. Internally, Apple attributes their closed platform philosophy for their current successes. They realize also that trouble for Google is good for Apple.
The backdrop for all this is the entire telecommunications industry on the verge of a paradigm shift. A growing number of people are foregoing landlines for owning cell phones only. Cell phones themselves have become ubiquitous. Cell phone lag, audio compression artifacts, and frequent drop outs have reduced the phone service expectations of the general public to a point that modern voice over IP, with a modern internet connection is a valid competitor in the phone service arena.
Today's smart phones are basically VOIP clients on a proprietary, closed network (the phone carrier's network), with access to a larger, also closed, network (the international telephone system). Carriers profit tremendously from the closed nature of the network. Byte for byte, a data feed to the moon is cheaper than the text messages on most phone carrier networks. Apple also profits from this closed arrangement via its iPhone exclusivity deal with AT&T, who pays them handsomely for the privilege.
Google aims to open the phone network by implementing its functionality using open Internet based protocols. Google Talk will replace SMS messages and traditional phone calls. Other Google services will be tied in for a richer communications experience than what the telephone networks can provide on their own. Eventually, any phone with Internet connectivity will be able to use Google's services. Once this happens, the phone networks will be mere data providers for an open network, instead of gatekeepers of a closed network. This will drive down prices, telco profits, and the cost of accessing Google's services. Apple will have lost a source of revenue, as networks will not be able to afford to pay them for exclusivity.
Apple pays lip service to open source philosophies when it benefits them, but have no intentions to further these philosophies or their influence. By this, I mean that they love being able to use the work of others, and will contribute back to open source projects they've used (BSD, KHTML, etc.), but it will be a cold day in hell before we ever see an open source version of iTunes because they do not believe in the ideology. Apple is committed internally to the closed platform vision of the future, where they are the sole gatekeeper. Open formats and standards are a threat to the dominance of the gatekeeper model that Apple is committed to. This is also why we'll never see official support for FLAC, Ogg, Theora, Matroska, or any other open codec in iTunes, Safari, or iPhoneOS.
Why do these OpenDNS posts keep getting modded up? OpenDNS utilizes the very practices this article bemoans! If you query a domain that does not exist, your browser is redirected to OpenDNS's ad-laden spam site.
Despite their claims to the contrary, OpenDNS's servers are likely farther away from you than your local ISP's. They also keep permanent logs of all queries, which could be subpoenaed by a government entity. Their joke of a privacy policy allows them to sell your logs to "Affiliated Businesses", which pretty much means anybody. Not that it really matters - they could amend their privacy policy tomorrow morning and be selling your info by the afternoon.
I think many people read the "Open" part of the OpenDNS name and turn their brains off.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, let's all thank Apple for being gracious enough to allow us to run an application of our choice on our hardware.
Once network neutrality is completely dead and website->customer ISP payments are common, Apple will probably use their position to operate another toll booth as the first hardware vendor to benefit from a non-neutral internet. Can we look forward to petitioning Apple to pretty, pretty please add our favorite website to their whitelist, as well?
This practice sickens me. Enjoy your pretty noose!
Traffic signal timing is nothing new, we've known about it a long time. Unfortunately, there is much money to be made fleecing motorists for traffic violations. As a result, our road systems are tweaked to generate revenue, not expedite traffic. Good luck getting these algorithms used in anywhere but a handful of places without a fight.
Sir, your attitude is a breath a fresh air. Any programmer who doesn't submit a formal and rigorous proof of every algorithm they write to a peer reviewed academic research journal is an incompetent hack who couldn't program his way out of a cardboard box.
Programmers who pick and choose their development practices based on the specific requirements of the project at hand are ignorant fools who reduce the beautiful and perfect art of programming to a mere act of common labor. It's disgraceful, I tell you!
It looks like the bots must be built using BWAPI, an open source API layer for Starcraft that uses ChaosLauncher, an unofficial Starcraft hack. Seeing as how Blizzard is a super litigious bunch of assholes (read up on bnetd [1], WOW Glider [2], and Scapegaming [3] for a sample) won't they just file a baseless lawsuit against the people responsible for this competition? Given their past behavior, I can't imagine that they would be able to restrain themselves.
<rant>
Honestly, Blizzard makes great games, but they have always fought against free speech, intellectual, and technical freedoms. I hope that Starcraft II falls flat on its face for forcing Internet registration to play the single player game [4] and disabling LAN play [5] in the hopes of increasing profit. The sooner that company fails, the better.
</rant>
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd#Blizzard_takedown_demand_and_lawsuit
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOWGlider
[3] http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?id=51340
[4] This has not yet been announced, but it's naive to think that it won't be the case
[5] http://kotaku.com/5304113/no-lan-play-for-starcraft-ii
Nope, not making up the censorship claim:
Read more here.
Sure, you can turn off the NXDOMAIN redirection, but why would I want to use a DNS service that has it enabled by default, censors political speech, and is slower than my ISP's existing DNS?
You realize what OpenDNS is, right? Essentially, a bunch of investors bought the OpenDNS project and said to themselves "How can we squeeze money out of this?", completely discarding the goal that brought the project into existence: AN OPEN DNS SYSTEM. Today, OpenDNS is open in name only, and exists only to profit from people who are foolish enough to willingly hand over their private information (essentially, a list of every site you ever visit).
OpenDNS is garbage.
They hijack NXDOMAIN results to provide ads. They host DNS servers that are farther away (hop-wise) than your ISP's probably are (despite their misleading claims to the contrary). They censor certain domains and redirect others. Given that they do all of the above, they probably practice the "industry standard" of selling NXDOMAIN logs to domain squatters. Anything to make a buck, huh?
No thanks. Just because it has the word "Open" in it, doesn't make it a good thing.
Yes, it sounds like it has. Bitterness is like a poison pill, prepared out of anger, that you swallow yourself. When you define yourself by who (and what) you hate, you succumb to crass tribalism and limit your ability to make decisions logically and dispassionately. Who cares what the "shaggy haired guys" are doing? Only the man who is dissatisfied with his own life.
To me, it sounds like you have surrended choice and control over your own life to the false short term ideals of mainstream society. If you had control over your own life, you wouldn't feel that repressed anger that all slaves feel when they see someone who is truly free. That anger leads to the frantic desire to control others, as you've demonstrated with your posts.
Sincerely,
A shaggy haired guy who's hair you'd love to cut
Personally, I think the real story is that two noblemen (Warner Bros & News Corp) have acted to ensure that commoners (in this case, Edwyn Collins, but really any non-corporate entity) cannot own property. Of course the nobility believes that only a nobleman can own property! If a commoner claims to own property, he's obviously lying. Commoners cannot own property. Welcome to Feudalism 2.0(TM).
What bullshit excuse will this "independent" organization use to ban use of GPLv3 in its endeavors?
And what exactly was my point? Let me quote myself:
Original poster seems to think ELF's claims are patently impossible, there exists conflicting and ongoing research on the issue, therefore issue is not 100% clear cut. QED.
I'm just curious what kind of illogical mental gymnastics Linus is going to employ in his thoughtless dismissal of Con's work, this time.
Here are two studies I found with 2 minutes of Google. One is South Korean and the other is Italian.
Considering how easily I found these, I think your arrogant tone is unwarranted.
That's a silly thing to say considering the number of scientific studies that have shown an increased risk of childhood Leukemia for kids living near AM transmitters. After a little reading, the issue is not as clear cut as you seem to think it is.
There is some evidence pointing toward an increased risk of Leukemia for children living near A.M. radio transmitters, but because of the commercial implications, the research is controversial.
Here's the abstract from a South Korean study on the issue from PubMed. Wired did a piece on it in 2004, also.
Nope. There's a famous historical anecdote about this very issue.
Mozart had to worry about excommunication as punishment for his piracy at the time. If the RIAA were functioning in Mozart's time as it is today (100+ year copyrights), he would have been prosecuted.
Source: http://www.music-with-ease.com/mozart.html
Correct. But a constitution does have to provide a foundation for the law of the land. A whole bunch of disparate court rulings and royal edicts do not meet the definition. There is no legal definition or agreement for what is or is not part of the UK constitution. These components of the "constitution" can be easily overridden.
You are arguing that the amorphous legal traditions of the UK are its constitution. This is silly. You might as well argue that English common law is a "constitution" as well. It's equally as silly.
Of course, arguing definitional semantics is pretty silly in and of itself... :)
A constitution is the foundation that provides the law of the land.
Protip: If not everybody agrees which documents are and which documents are not part of the constitution, your country doesn't have one.
What a silly comment you've made. The UK has no constitution. The Wikipedia article you link points out that the power vacuum created by the lack of a constitution is partially filled by various court rulings and decrees put in place by the ruling body.
You might as well argue that a blind man has "sight" because he has memorized the layout of his house. This semantic argument doesn't change the fact that he'll be bumbling around for a while if you rearrange the furniture.
And neither does your argument change the fact that without a constitution, UK citizens' individual rights and freedoms are worse for wear.
You're kidding, right? Paypal didn't send a mass e-mail to all its users saying "Dear Customers, We're jacking up our fees!". Instead, they sent out a mass mail that said "Dear Customers, We updated our Terms of Service. By doing nothing, you agree that you accept the changes."
Take a look at Paypal's legal page. The Paypal "Terms of Service" are actually 14 different agreements, all written in legalese, all saying that they can be changed at any time for any reason by Paypal. All together, the agreements add up 4000 lines, give or take. Not every user is subject to every agreement (some are for specific services), but many are.
So can you really say with a straight face that you believe it is reasonable to expect Paypal users to reread 4000 lines of legalese every time Paypal announces that they've made some change to the agreement? It's not like they're providing diffs. They do not want their customers to understand these agreements or how they have changed because they are dishonest. That's the crux of the issue - Paypal is acting in bad faith to screw their own customers and hiding behind legalese when called out on it.
Sure, they could do that, but they won't. I personally guarantee you that they will have an arbitrarily small number of installs allowed per game copy. It's too attractive an option for game publishers not to pursue. Just wait for it.
I disagree. First, "Blizzard", the company that gives us all warm tinglies because we loved their early games so much no longer exists. We're talking about Activision, who is no stranger to this kind of nonsense. The WoW Glider and bnetd incidents taught us all we need to know about Activision's feelings about control. They want it for themselves and they don't want users to have it.
Sounds like someone is bitter about not having much choice in their life. You probably don't have any hobbies, either, since your employer wouldn't approve. Have fun tilling the land for your lord. The rest of us will be making real money for ourselves, out-competing your boss because of productivity gains from using decent tools, as opposed to whatever tools your boss thinks are the cheapest to teach monkeys to use.
Enjoy your job. Maybe if you're a good, your employer will give you a 1% raise next year? As long as it doesn't cut into executive bonuses, that is.
It goes without saying, though, that this "phone home" feature will be used to enforce an inevitable lifetime install limit. It also goes without saying that this limit will be arbitrarily small.
What I find more troubling, however, is that this DRM is a vehicle to violate the privacy of the user and otherwise subvert the operation of the computer it is running on against the interests of its owner. I have no interest in joining Blizzard's organization (Battle.net) or being subjected to its terms of service, which Blizzard considers legally binding and may change at any time. I have no interests in my personal information being stored indefinitely in Blizzard's marketing database - ready to be sold to the highest bidder, should the company ever become desperate enough for the cash.
If I play this game, it will be a pirated and cracked version that does not have these defects.
Wipeout HD? Despite the advertising controversy, it is, IMHO, the best racing game of this console generation.
I agree that Chrome and Firefox will support anything they can legally, but I do not think that Safari will implement Theora. Here's my rationale:
Right now, Apple sees Google as a threat, as evidenced by the recent hostility Apple is showing toward Google. Specifically, Apple's blocking of Google Voice and Lattitude on the iPhone. They are "partners" in name only.
This is because the smart people at Apple realize that Google's philosophy of inexpensive lowest bidder open platforms is the antithesis of Apple's closed, locked down, and tightly controlled vision for the future. Internally, Apple attributes their closed platform philosophy for their current successes. They realize also that trouble for Google is good for Apple.
The backdrop for all this is the entire telecommunications industry on the verge of a paradigm shift. A growing number of people are foregoing landlines for owning cell phones only. Cell phones themselves have become ubiquitous. Cell phone lag, audio compression artifacts, and frequent drop outs have reduced the phone service expectations of the general public to a point that modern voice over IP, with a modern internet connection is a valid competitor in the phone service arena.
Today's smart phones are basically VOIP clients on a proprietary, closed network (the phone carrier's network), with access to a larger, also closed, network (the international telephone system). Carriers profit tremendously from the closed nature of the network. Byte for byte, a data feed to the moon is cheaper than the text messages on most phone carrier networks. Apple also profits from this closed arrangement via its iPhone exclusivity deal with AT&T, who pays them handsomely for the privilege.
Google aims to open the phone network by implementing its functionality using open Internet based protocols. Google Talk will replace SMS messages and traditional phone calls. Other Google services will be tied in for a richer communications experience than what the telephone networks can provide on their own. Eventually, any phone with Internet connectivity will be able to use Google's services. Once this happens, the phone networks will be mere data providers for an open network, instead of gatekeepers of a closed network. This will drive down prices, telco profits, and the cost of accessing Google's services. Apple will have lost a source of revenue, as networks will not be able to afford to pay them for exclusivity.
Apple pays lip service to open source philosophies when it benefits them, but have no intentions to further these philosophies or their influence. By this, I mean that they love being able to use the work of others, and will contribute back to open source projects they've used (BSD, KHTML, etc.), but it will be a cold day in hell before we ever see an open source version of iTunes because they do not believe in the ideology. Apple is committed internally to the closed platform vision of the future, where they are the sole gatekeeper. Open formats and standards are a threat to the dominance of the gatekeeper model that Apple is committed to. This is also why we'll never see official support for FLAC, Ogg, Theora, Matroska, or any other open codec in iTunes, Safari, or iPhoneOS.
Why do these OpenDNS posts keep getting modded up? OpenDNS utilizes the very practices this article bemoans! If you query a domain that does not exist, your browser is redirected to OpenDNS's ad-laden spam site.
Despite their claims to the contrary, OpenDNS's servers are likely farther away from you than your local ISP's. They also keep permanent logs of all queries, which could be subpoenaed by a government entity. Their joke of a privacy policy allows them to sell your logs to "Affiliated Businesses", which pretty much means anybody. Not that it really matters - they could amend their privacy policy tomorrow morning and be selling your info by the afternoon.
I think many people read the "Open" part of the OpenDNS name and turn their brains off.