here in New Zealand, our main ISP/telco states in their t&c's that they will throttle p2p traffic.
it'll be interesting to watch the outcome to see what precedent will be set that we can exploit here.
I always thought that something like rapidshare or megashares would take off for distributing large content like demo games and linux ISOs, but the reality is that there are so many file sharing sites out there that the only way one will become a "standard" is if it is free, and currently all http file sharing sites require money.
back to the point, with my ISP stating the obvious in their t&c's and not hiding from the fact that they are for all intents and purposes censoring part of the internet -- while they still allow people to use p2p services, it's so slow as to be an exercise in redundancy.
i'm not an engineer, but radio controlled cars use 2.4GHz spread spectrum and they have developed a method which I thought was original, but has solved a lot of problems for that industry. Modern radio gear for RC cars (and boats, planes, etc) uses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Spread_Spectrum and use it in such a way that the radio gear is constantly "bandwidth hopping" within the 2.4GHz range. A few manufacturers are battling it out to see who can provide the fastest frequency hopping. Two leaders in the technology are Spektrum (who call their technology DSM, or Digital Spectrum Modulation), and Futaba (who call theirs FASST, or Futaba Advanced Spread Spectrum Technology -- I guess ASS just didn't have the right ring to it;)
While software folks may not understand the hardware world, its quite sad that hardware folks rarely understand the software side as well.
Not any more. back when coding apps/games/demos in assembly was the thing to do, you had *plenty* of guys that knew the hardware and software inside and out. And while they're only 30-40 years old now, it's just a redundant practise.
But if we just ignore him, then that leaves him unopposed to sucker in grieving families. When he gets no retorts, he will believe he is right and this will fuel his arguments and his fervour. If there is no opposition, then by the time it gets to the legislative stage, it will be too late.
The thing to do in response is to intelligently break down his arguments. In the same that that Frederick Wertham managed to effectively censor all comic books in the 1950's because he believed that they caused child delinquency, Jack Thompson is trying to do the same to video games now. Comic books have only recently broken free of the "Comics Code Authority" which censored every mainstream American comic book for 50 years.
While video games are rated, that isn't enough for people like Jack Thomson. he is under the mistaken belief that video games are for kids, and that all video games should be kid friendly. Well, that among other mistaken beliefs.
If we just ignore him, are you ready for half a century of watered down video games? I'm not.
When building servers for my company, if I was asked to enable a volatile repository, I would say no. When I think of volatile, I think of something that is prone to violence, or explosive, or fickle. Or in computer terms, volatile tends to refer to RAM. You wouldn't save your configs or data on a volatile storage device. And I certainly wouldn't want to sign off a server that had access to fickle or explosive data.
I've always been a staunch opposer of Debian and this is just another picket in the fence between us.
Wouldn't a better name for this repository be something like versatile, or variable, or modifiable? Those words certainly give me a better feeling about enabling this sort of feature on a business critical system.
Modchips for consoles are 3rd party add-ons. Will this set a precedent for them? If so, why didn't they dig up this ancient law to support their cases?
Will those who were sued into oblivion or shut down by Sony/MS be able to now claim back that they are legitimate 3rd party add-ons? or will Apple use them as a precedent to support their stance for the iPhone?
Re:Read between the lines
on
Halo 3 Review
·
· Score: 1
no, from the point of view of the Halo fanboy. I am a 360 owner, but I'm saving my money for Sega Rally.
just interested in knowing how you do your rating. Are you referring to Linux the kernel, or the OS/distributions?
If it's the latter, what is technically superior about Linux and the Linux environment? The package management? The broad range of binary distributed packages that are distro specific? The ease of package compilation? The consistency in the look and feel of GUI programs? The consistency of the GUIs (ie; window managers)? The consistency of the libraries? The consistency of applications' use of libraries? Is it the excellent driver support from hardware vendors? The file system? The OS system calls?
I've grown tired of my entertainment imitating real life. Sure Marvel comics have always been tied to the real world to some degree (as opposed to DCU which is set in a fictional version of Earth), but I think over the last decade things are getting worse. All the stories are tied to real world events in ways which has taken the fun out of them for me.
No I'm not getting old. I still read plenty of comics, just none by Marvel. Conan is fun. Fear Agent is fun. Usagi Yojimbo is fun. I can escape real life and be entertained.
It's ironic that Marvel comics are aimed at a broad spectrum of readers, including kids, where the fun and entertaining titles are more "mature" titles.
BTW - nobody dies forever in the Marvel Universe. Marvel told us that Hawkeye was "really" dead too. Death loses its impact when you know they're not really dead. They've done it so many times before that I'm betting half the readers' first instinct was "he'll be back."
I stopped going to LAN games years ago, because while the majority of guys I'd game with were awesome, there were a couple of really loud tossers screaming "YEH BITcH!" "I'M GONNA PWN JU BITCH!" It got to the point that every time they opened their mouths or walked past me I wanted to punch them in the face.
I ended up with a headache and the fun factor started dwindling. However, I could happily play a game online in the sublime tranquility of my own house.
That and the fact that I don't have to pack up my whole rig, transport it across the city, unload, and do it all again that evening or the evening after.
right click on any search box and choose "add a keyword for this search"
for example, if you add a keyword for google's search box, and call it 'g' then you can just type 'g ' and it will feed those search words into google.
I'm all for vigilante justice, but unfortunately, I believe the reality is that in a situation like this, a jury is much more likely to convict because this guy scared or hurt the "poor" burglar. Juries in this country are always filled with losers and morons who side with criminals.
No, I think juries are filled with politically correct losers and morons who unconditionally feel sorry for victims. They think that all human life is sacred. That's how rapists and pedophiles walk free, or get released back into public after jail time. Stupid PC wankers. People should just get hard. Criminals don't deserve the same air as humans. That and I believe that public hangings and beheadings would do wonders for our economies and overpopulation problems.
Computers are the best way to catch people. On eBay for thieves, and in Germany, they're scouring credit card transactions for pedophiles. It's brilliant. We don't even need those stupid juries. Just judges who look at evidence and send people to the gallows. And aren't allowed liquid lunches.
for all those people they pay for, they could be pumping money into actually making Windows a usable and enjoyable product.
Or maybe MSR are scamming microsoft as much as microsoft marketers are scamming the world.
A few random MSR scams:
- "hey Wordperfect are making lots of money selling a word processor, let's make our own."
- "hey, over 50% of Sony's global profits are from a games console. let's make our own."
- "hey Apple came up with this fancy MOV movie container format. let's make our own."
- "hey Apple are selling a music player and have an online music store. let's make our own."
These alleged innovations from Microsoft are nothing more than their having an uncanny ability to review the current market leaders and imitating.
Or maybe we're just misreading their website. Maybe it really does say "imitations" and our minds are reading it as "innovations." Where are those psychologists?
Yeh, I don't know if that's such a big problem. I've been using computers for about 23 years and I own about half a dozen For Dummies books. My thirst for knowledge in clear concise language outweighs any perceived insult in the title. Would calling people "non-geeks" as opposed to dummies really make that big a difference in sales?
I guess the way I look at it is this way: I'm a geek, so a book for non-geeks wouldn't interest me, even if it's on a topic I know nothing about. However, a For Dummies book is more appealing because I'm a geek, but I'm a dummy on the topic I'm buying the book about. However, with the help of the book, I intend on adding the knowledge gleaned to my geekiness, thus making me even geekier.
It's entirely possible they're aiming at different markets.
As an addendum to this I'd like to add that most users will double click on anything, and when nothing happens, they will continue to double click until something either does happen or their mouse finger falls off, or their computer dies. Whichever happens first.
Not really an article, so much as a quick pointer of what we may get in the future.
It would have been better if the writer had actually analysed some of the things he spoke about and discussed them. I can sum up the article in one sentence using as much depth, research and intelligence as he did:
"In the future computers may be able to predict your work habits, but some people will use it for bad and stuff."
The (ex)Apple employees are protesting that they came clean and yet endured the same punishment they'd have endured if they had not come forward but been caught anyway. The complaint is not that they were punished at all, it's that the punishment was excessive and gives nobody any incentive to be honest.
The definition of honesty is being skewed here for the sake of Political Correctness. The honest thing to do would have been to *not* pirate the software. What sort of a message are we sending to people if they get off with a lighter punishment because they admitted to it? Yes it's OK to steal, as long as you fess up? We'll forgive you.
That might work in an ideal Christian world, but in real life, if you break the rules/laws/contracts, there are consequences. Just because you're "man enough" to admit you did something illegal does not change the fact that you did something illegal.
Further, it has made its own future investigations harder because it will not get the cooperation of employees who see themselves as ultimately loyal.
You mean other loyal employees who are also stealing software, but have not been caught yet, or just everyone in general? I think you'll find that nobody thinks the same, and you'll have some extremist loyalists who will be disgusted at the actions of these 5 rogue employees, and will cooperate above and beyond. Then you will have the loyal employees who haven't stolen anything, but will start questioning their motivations for staying loyal if Apple are just going to fire them for piracy anyway. And others will simply not give a frag.
Ultimately, people are stupid. When you mix political correctness into the vat of stupidity, you get all new highs for cranial malfunction.
That whole article was him trying to convince people that his game isn't a Diablo clone, yet he went on about how much he loved Diablo and all the other Blizzard games.
Near the end he said that WoW is killing the gaming industry, but then admitted to playing it because it's "extra fun" and he can play with his wife.
So the whole article came across as him just whining that his game hasn't sold better and he's just bitter about it.
Here are my suggestions to Brian:
1. STFU. 2. Don't make clones -- make original games. 3. If you do make clones, don't charge full price. We've played them all before: Diablo, Diablo 2, Darkstone, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale 1&2, etc. The list goes on. We can't be bothered spending our hard earned cash on yet another frickin action RPG.
OR:
1. STFU. 2. Get a new job.
Publishers and game designers just have not got it through their thick skulls that we want new and fresh games, not rehashes and sequels. We're trying to get the message through by not spending our money on their games. They're not taking the hints.
so you think that Cleanflix should exist to save you from parenting? If parents all did their jobs right, kids wouldn't be watching TV at the hours that there is swearing. And they wouldn't be letting their kids watch R16s at 10.
Slashdot Mirror
here in New Zealand, our main ISP/telco states in their t&c's that they will throttle p2p traffic.
it'll be interesting to watch the outcome to see what precedent will be set that we can exploit here.
I always thought that something like rapidshare or megashares would take off for distributing large content like demo games and linux ISOs, but the reality is that there are so many file sharing sites out there that the only way one will become a "standard" is if it is free, and currently all http file sharing sites require money.
back to the point, with my ISP stating the obvious in their t&c's and not hiding from the fact that they are for all intents and purposes censoring part of the internet -- while they still allow people to use p2p services, it's so slow as to be an exercise in redundancy.
"your" 195 grand will go to the FCC's coffers.
the only way you'll see any money is if *you* sue them or if this becomes a class action suit.
Those of us who have no choice but to use windows
everybody has a choice. what sort of defeatist talk is that?
i'm not an engineer, but radio controlled cars use 2.4GHz spread spectrum and they have developed a method which I thought was original, but has solved a lot of problems for that industry. Modern radio gear for RC cars (and boats, planes, etc) uses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Spread_Spectrum and use it in such a way that the radio gear is constantly "bandwidth hopping" within the 2.4GHz range. A few manufacturers are battling it out to see who can provide the fastest frequency hopping. Two leaders in the technology are Spektrum (who call their technology DSM, or Digital Spectrum Modulation), and Futaba (who call theirs FASST, or Futaba Advanced Spread Spectrum Technology -- I guess ASS just didn't have the right ring to it ;)
http://www.spektrumrc.com/Articles/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1624
The Futaba link has a bit of info on how theirs works:
http://www.futaba-rc.com/radioaccys/futl8926.html
the C64's and early Amigas were pretty static, hardware-wise. so once you knew what the CPU and custom chips did, you knew the hardware.
:)
Commodore released excellent books in the way of the ROM Kernel Manuals for the Amiga.
what was the topic about?
While software folks may not understand the hardware world, its quite sad that hardware folks rarely understand the software side as well.
Not any more. back when coding apps/games/demos in assembly was the thing to do, you had *plenty* of guys that knew the hardware and software inside and out. And while they're only 30-40 years old now, it's just a redundant practise.
But if we just ignore him, then that leaves him unopposed to sucker in grieving families. When he gets no retorts, he will believe he is right and this will fuel his arguments and his fervour. If there is no opposition, then by the time it gets to the legislative stage, it will be too late.
The thing to do in response is to intelligently break down his arguments. In the same that that Frederick Wertham managed to effectively censor all comic books in the 1950's because he believed that they caused child delinquency, Jack Thompson is trying to do the same to video games now. Comic books have only recently broken free of the "Comics Code Authority" which censored every mainstream American comic book for 50 years.
While video games are rated, that isn't enough for people like Jack Thomson. he is under the mistaken belief that video games are for kids, and that all video games should be kid friendly. Well, that among other mistaken beliefs.
If we just ignore him, are you ready for half a century of watered down video games? I'm not.
When building servers for my company, if I was asked to enable a volatile repository, I would say no. When I think of volatile, I think of something that is prone to violence, or explosive, or fickle. Or in computer terms, volatile tends to refer to RAM. You wouldn't save your configs or data on a volatile storage device. And I certainly wouldn't want to sign off a server that had access to fickle or explosive data.
I've always been a staunch opposer of Debian and this is just another picket in the fence between us.
Wouldn't a better name for this repository be something like versatile, or variable, or modifiable? Those words certainly give me a better feeling about enabling this sort of feature on a business critical system.
Modchips for consoles are 3rd party add-ons. Will this set a precedent for them? If so, why didn't they dig up this ancient law to support their cases?
Will those who were sued into oblivion or shut down by Sony/MS be able to now claim back that they are legitimate 3rd party add-ons? or will Apple use them as a precedent to support their stance for the iPhone?
no, from the point of view of the Halo fanboy. I am a 360 owner, but I'm saving my money for Sega Rally.
just interested in knowing how you do your rating. Are you referring to Linux the kernel, or the OS/distributions?
If it's the latter, what is technically superior about Linux and the Linux environment? The package management? The broad range of binary distributed packages that are distro specific? The ease of package compilation? The consistency in the look and feel of GUI programs? The consistency of the GUIs (ie; window managers)? The consistency of the libraries? The consistency of applications' use of libraries? Is it the excellent driver support from hardware vendors? The file system? The OS system calls?
GDW. there's a company I've not heard of in years...
:)
This article is about Games Workshop, not Game Designers' Workshop. GDW shut down down in 1996.
Don't we have enough real life in real life?
I've grown tired of my entertainment imitating real life. Sure Marvel comics have always been tied to the real world to some degree (as opposed to DCU which is set in a fictional version of Earth), but I think over the last decade things are getting worse. All the stories are tied to real world events in ways which has taken the fun out of them for me.
No I'm not getting old. I still read plenty of comics, just none by Marvel. Conan is fun. Fear Agent is fun. Usagi Yojimbo is fun. I can escape real life and be entertained.
It's ironic that Marvel comics are aimed at a broad spectrum of readers, including kids, where the fun and entertaining titles are more "mature" titles.
BTW - nobody dies forever in the Marvel Universe. Marvel told us that Hawkeye was "really" dead too. Death loses its impact when you know they're not really dead. They've done it so many times before that I'm betting half the readers' first instinct was "he'll be back."
I stopped going to LAN games years ago, because while the majority of guys I'd game with were awesome, there were a couple of really loud tossers screaming "YEH BITcH!" "I'M GONNA PWN JU BITCH!" It got to the point that every time they opened their mouths or walked past me I wanted to punch them in the face.
I ended up with a headache and the fun factor started dwindling. However, I could happily play a game online in the sublime tranquility of my own house.
That and the fact that I don't have to pack up my whole rig, transport it across the city, unload, and do it all again that evening or the evening after.
Firefox can do this too.
right click on any search box and choose "add a keyword for this search"
for example, if you add a keyword for google's search box, and call it 'g' then you can just type 'g ' and it will feed those search words into google.
No, I think juries are filled with politically correct losers and morons who unconditionally feel sorry for victims. They think that all human life is sacred. That's how rapists and pedophiles walk free, or get released back into public after jail time. Stupid PC wankers. People should just get hard. Criminals don't deserve the same air as humans. That and I believe that public hangings and beheadings would do wonders for our economies and overpopulation problems.
Computers are the best way to catch people. On eBay for thieves, and in Germany, they're scouring credit card transactions for pedophiles. It's brilliant. We don't even need those stupid juries. Just judges who look at evidence and send people to the gallows. And aren't allowed liquid lunches.
anybody with a brain would be a good start.
for all those people they pay for, they could be pumping money into actually making Windows a usable and enjoyable product.
Or maybe MSR are scamming microsoft as much as microsoft marketers are scamming the world.
A few random MSR scams:
- "hey Wordperfect are making lots of money selling a word processor, let's make our own."
- "hey, over 50% of Sony's global profits are from a games console. let's make our own."
- "hey Apple came up with this fancy MOV movie container format. let's make our own."
- "hey Apple are selling a music player and have an online music store. let's make our own."
These alleged innovations from Microsoft are nothing more than their having an uncanny ability to review the current market leaders and imitating.
Or maybe we're just misreading their website. Maybe it really does say "imitations" and our minds are reading it as "innovations." Where are those psychologists?
Yeh, I don't know if that's such a big problem. I've been using computers for about 23 years and I own about half a dozen For Dummies books. My thirst for knowledge in clear concise language outweighs any perceived insult in the title. Would calling people "non-geeks" as opposed to dummies really make that big a difference in sales?
I guess the way I look at it is this way: I'm a geek, so a book for non-geeks wouldn't interest me, even if it's on a topic I know nothing about. However, a For Dummies book is more appealing because I'm a geek, but I'm a dummy on the topic I'm buying the book about. However, with the help of the book, I intend on adding the knowledge gleaned to my geekiness, thus making me even geekier.
It's entirely possible they're aiming at different markets.
3. People will double-click anything.
As an addendum to this I'd like to add that most users will double click on anything, and when nothing happens, they will continue to double click until something either does happen or their mouse finger falls off, or their computer dies. Whichever happens first.
Not really an article, so much as a quick pointer of what we may get in the future.
It would have been better if the writer had actually analysed some of the things he spoke about and discussed them. I can sum up the article in one sentence using as much depth, research and intelligence as he did:
"In the future computers may be able to predict your work habits, but some people will use it for bad and stuff."
Good on ya mate.
The (ex)Apple employees are protesting that they came clean and yet endured the same punishment they'd have endured if they had not come forward but been caught anyway. The complaint is not that they were punished at all, it's that the punishment was excessive and gives nobody any incentive to be honest. The definition of honesty is being skewed here for the sake of Political Correctness. The honest thing to do would have been to *not* pirate the software. What sort of a message are we sending to people if they get off with a lighter punishment because they admitted to it? Yes it's OK to steal, as long as you fess up? We'll forgive you. That might work in an ideal Christian world, but in real life, if you break the rules/laws/contracts, there are consequences. Just because you're "man enough" to admit you did something illegal does not change the fact that you did something illegal. Further, it has made its own future investigations harder because it will not get the cooperation of employees who see themselves as ultimately loyal. You mean other loyal employees who are also stealing software, but have not been caught yet, or just everyone in general? I think you'll find that nobody thinks the same, and you'll have some extremist loyalists who will be disgusted at the actions of these 5 rogue employees, and will cooperate above and beyond. Then you will have the loyal employees who haven't stolen anything, but will start questioning their motivations for staying loyal if Apple are just going to fire them for piracy anyway. And others will simply not give a frag. Ultimately, people are stupid. When you mix political correctness into the vat of stupidity, you get all new highs for cranial malfunction.
just because it sucked doesn't remove it from the genre. sadly.
That whole article was him trying to convince people that his game isn't a Diablo clone, yet he went on about how much he loved Diablo and all the other Blizzard games.
Near the end he said that WoW is killing the gaming industry, but then admitted to playing it because it's "extra fun" and he can play with his wife.
So the whole article came across as him just whining that his game hasn't sold better and he's just bitter about it.
Here are my suggestions to Brian:
1. STFU.
2. Don't make clones -- make original games.
3. If you do make clones, don't charge full price. We've played them all before: Diablo, Diablo 2, Darkstone, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale 1&2, etc. The list goes on. We can't be bothered spending our hard earned cash on yet another frickin action RPG.
OR:
1. STFU.
2. Get a new job.
Publishers and game designers just have not got it through their thick skulls that we want new and fresh games, not rehashes and sequels. We're trying to get the message through by not spending our money on their games. They're not taking the hints.
so you think that Cleanflix should exist to save you from parenting? If parents all did their jobs right, kids wouldn't be watching TV at the hours that there is swearing. And they wouldn't be letting their kids watch R16s at 10.