Basically, they need to run fiber to every home. Which they aren't going to do.
Why not? I'm Swedish but lived abroad for a lot of years. I recently moved back to Sweden (Stockholm) and was looking at buying an apartment. I didn't even look at apartments that didn't have a 100/100 fiber connection. I can tell you that around half the apartments listed in the area I was looking did in fact have a fiber connection. So... if Sweden can do it I'm certain it can be done in the U.S too. It simply has to be done!
As a side-note, I had forgotten how great Sweden was in regards to technology. I now have a 100MBit bi-directional internet connection with no download limits, and I'm paying $65 a month for it. Then, I have a 7,2MBit 3G modem for my laptop, again no download limit, price is $30 a month, and it works quite well. Went on a 3,5h drive to my parents and was able to stream internet radio in the car the whole way. Laptop + 3G modem + FM transmitter is the way to go:)
They should make a list of dumb cheats, think it'd be even more amusing than the title names...
I think it was fifteen years ago I last played New Zealand Story, but I'll never forget the cheat.
Since it's a little vulgar I'll just link the cheat code.
"A scholar or student of natural history, the science of the natural world; see also natural science. It may also refer to a Wildlife enthusiast or a Conservationist"
Not a naturist or nudist.
Sorry, the funny part is I translated it from Swedish to English without really reflecting over it, and had to check the dictionary (in Swedish) and realized I was wrong even there.
Oh well, hope you still got the point:)
If you say so, but Apple doesn't make you download iTunes or Safari. You don't have to buy an iPod. This is a different situation to Windows and IE.
If you want to continue that logic, you don't have to buy a computer at all, or any electronics for that matter. In fact, you could be a naturalist and live without even clothes.
Not that I dislike apple more now then I did before I RTFA, which is to say I have a fairly neutral view on them, but if you look at a lot of articles lately I do believe that in general, they are a little less liked now then they were when they initially released the iPod.
Anyways, going back to the article, I think the EULA is just a mistake and believe they will correct it. It does however bring up a valid point about the usefulness and legalities around EULA's.
It seems to me that the people who primarily have a problem with WoW are the asshole griefers
I understand this is your opinion but I very much disagree with it, since I think that many of the people _playing_ WoW are whiners and griefers. If nothing else, the WoW forums prove this.
This is in fact my primary reason for leaving the game. My first MMO was Star Wars Galaxies, and I have tried a lot of them since. In no game have I seen soooo much whining and griefing as I have in WoW.
I am one of the few who stayed in SWG even after SOE made the ridiculous changes they did, like the CU and NGE. What kept me playing it was not the game itself, it was the interaction with other people. Say what you will of SWG (and trust me when I say that for the game itself, positive is not what you should call my opinion), but the people playing it were, generally, amazing.
Not that anything could get me to ever play WoW again, and this is due to Blizzard's lawsuits and random banning*, as well as the fact that I dislike soooo many things that Vivendi does, that I simply do not want anything produced by them. I do however believe that if Blizzard created a premium server, similar to what SOE did with EQ, the "mature" crowd could find a home in the game too... plus, they'd earn more money.
* (Not complaining here, just explaining what I mean with random banning): I received a three day ban in WoW, the only ban I have ever had in any MMO. I got it because I was running the game, got a call from work and quickly needed to check my email, started the VPN client and was thrown out and banned. I understand the sudden IP change was strange, but I never got the chance to explain this, only thing I could do was to wait it out.
I've got the perfect answer. How about a PORNTCHA? Use hi-res porn images as the CAPTCHA images, and use hard-to-automate anatomical questions like "are the blonde's boobs bigger than the brunette's?" or "Are these two lesbians?" Any wrong answer brings up another PORNTCHA challenge. Any correct answer ends the porn session and proceeds to the signup. The porn users probably won't "feel the need" to answer a lot of questions correctly, and the service users have a way to get past.
You don't want to use CAPTCHA's that people fail on purpose, although the image of a parent passing their teenager's computer saying "you still haven't managed to sign up for service X? You've been trying for weeks now" did make me laugh a bit.
The reason I don't use Linux on my main machine is very simple, my games don't work
When vista came, I decided to give it a try, so I installed Vista, and after getting annoyed for a few hours I downloaded and installed Ubuntu. I spent some time in Ubuntu and do trust me when I say, I wanted nothing more than getting everything to run under Ubuntu. After a few days of using it I was happy, everything I used to do in XP could be done in Ubuntu, except for gaming.
I don't play games that much, but I do like logging in to an MMO I've been playing for a few years every now and then (SWG). After searching a bit on the web I actually bough Cedega and installed it. After a few hours I was able to log in to SWG, but whenever I tried to go into the space part, it crashed. Went to the Cedega forums and found that the space part was not supported.
I also found that another game I play from time to time was working, but it was really slow, the FPS was horrible (and my computer is far above average).
I decided that what I need from an OS is that everything I'd like to use should work. I wanted to use Ubuntu and was considering running XP in VMWare under Ubuntu, but in the end decided that Ubuntu simply wasn't usable for me.
I _strongly_ believe that if games would work better under Linux (and maybe they do and it's just me who is missing something, in which case I am happy to be corrected), Linux would really grow as a desktop OS!
If a person like me, who I can add is running two Linux servers at home (one Ubuntu server and one Debian server) cannot get everything to work, and with everything I obviously mean the games, then what chance does the average-Joe have?
Even if games isn't everything, playing games is something a lot of people like to do every now and then, they need to work for Linux to be a good desktop OS.
Space exploration is one of the few things I am actually willing to pay tax money for.
However, seeing how NASA is mainly US funded, I am not going to complain. I've gotten to see a lot of interesting things from NASA and I haven't really paid for any of it with my tax money.
I had high hopes for the ESA (European Space Agency) when I firt heard about it, but it will probably take quite some time still before their projects are even half as interesting as NASA's.
However, maybe this is where we should place our hope for human missions to mars.
tell me why Google should ignore criminal abuse of its networks and services.
tell me why someone shouldn't have the right to ask Google for help in the prosecution of a crime.
tell me when "the right to privacy" became a right to injure others anonymously - safe from any consequences.
... and you know this guy is guilty?
There is a reason there are courts, what will you think of google if it turns out he isn't guilty?
TFA isn't about protecting criminals, it isn't about not being able to ask for help, nor does it have anything to do with "the right to privacy". TFA is about Google giving out information to lawyers, without a court order, and tbh, that scares me wayyyy more than insulting people anonymously on the internet does.
It frustrates me seeing people defend this kind of behavior, especially when the same people were applauding ISP's for not giving out information to the xxAA.
This is exactly the same thing, next time it could be the xxAA asking for IP addresses for people that searched for "crappy artist +torrent". Google has proved they couldn't care less about court orders.
Last weekend however my son had a friend over for cooperative HALO3 fest. On the second evening they're setting up the friends system when my son decides to "stand up XBox so it can get some cooling". After this the system says the disk is unreadable, and it's discovered that their is a perfectly circular series of scratches about a quarter inch from the out edge and an eighth of an inch wide.
Had this happen to a few discs, and just so you know you probably dont have to buy a new disc.
Those machines they sometimes have in gameshops / CD stores, where they charge you like $5 to replace the plastic on CDs / DVDs work great for this type of damage. So far I've had this happen to four discs, each one has been fixed by that CD fixing machine (no idea whats its called) for a total cost of $20.
I doubt it makes any difference. There are plenty of countries in the world where producing the modchips is not a crime, so the only thing this does is delays shipment of the stuff by a few weeks until someone else starts producing it in a country with (imho) sane laws.
As long as people are willing to pay for the modchips, there will be someone that produces them. Even if Nintendo managed to close down 90% of the modchip makers, the only result would be that the remaining 10% would produce more and earn more money.
Essentially, the MPAA said "we will give you anything if you rat these people out and obtain evidence for us", yet "didn't know" he was doing it illegally? Please, just shows how desperate they can be and what kind of morale these people have.
Well, they knew it would make a huge difference on the pirate copying in the world which is why they went this far.
Haven't everyone noticed how CD / Movie sales went through the roof after torrentspy went down?
It was like the whole world just changed over night... so one can completely understand why xxAA want to close down one specific torrentsite and are willing to break laws to get there.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, this cannot be a joke since it was initially posted yesterday
As a side-note, I had forgotten how great Sweden was in regards to technology. I now have a 100MBit bi-directional internet connection with no download limits, and I'm paying $65 a month for it. Then, I have a 7,2MBit 3G modem for my laptop, again no download limit, price is $30 a month, and it works quite well. Went on a 3,5h drive to my parents and was able to stream internet radio in the car the whole way. Laptop + 3G modem + FM transmitter is the way to go
A) Apple
B) iPhones
They should make a list of dumb cheats, think it'd be even more amusing than the title names...
I think it was fifteen years ago I last played New Zealand Story, but I'll never forget the cheat.
Since it's a little vulgar I'll just link the cheat code.
Oh well, hope you still got the point
Not that I dislike apple more now then I did before I RTFA, which is to say I have a fairly neutral view on them, but if you look at a lot of articles lately I do believe that in general, they are a little less liked now then they were when they initially released the iPod.
Anyways, going back to the article, I think the EULA is just a mistake and believe they will correct it. It does however bring up a valid point about the usefulness and legalities around EULA's.
Guess this article was right!
This is in fact my primary reason for leaving the game. My first MMO was Star Wars Galaxies, and I have tried a lot of them since. In no game have I seen soooo much whining and griefing as I have in WoW.
I am one of the few who stayed in SWG even after SOE made the ridiculous changes they did, like the CU and NGE. What kept me playing it was not the game itself, it was the interaction with other people. Say what you will of SWG (and trust me when I say that for the game itself, positive is not what you should call my opinion), but the people playing it were, generally, amazing.
Not that anything could get me to ever play WoW again, and this is due to Blizzard's lawsuits and random banning*, as well as the fact that I dislike soooo many things that Vivendi does, that I simply do not want anything produced by them. I do however believe that if Blizzard created a premium server, similar to what SOE did with EQ, the "mature" crowd could find a home in the game too... plus, they'd earn more money.
* (Not complaining here, just explaining what I mean with random banning): I received a three day ban in WoW, the only ban I have ever had in any MMO. I got it because I was running the game, got a call from work and quickly needed to check my email, started the VPN client and was thrown out and banned. I understand the sudden IP change was strange, but I never got the chance to explain this, only thing I could do was to wait it out.
... it turns out, his site is vulnerable to the slashdot effect :)
The "Encyclopedia of Life" went off-line even before it was slashdotted, this must be one of the signs for the end of the world!
The reason I don't use Linux on my main machine is very simple, my games don't work
When vista came, I decided to give it a try, so I installed Vista, and after getting annoyed for a few hours I downloaded and installed Ubuntu. I spent some time in Ubuntu and do trust me when I say, I wanted nothing more than getting everything to run under Ubuntu. After a few days of using it I was happy, everything I used to do in XP could be done in Ubuntu, except for gaming.
I don't play games that much, but I do like logging in to an MMO I've been playing for a few years every now and then (SWG). After searching a bit on the web I actually bough Cedega and installed it. After a few hours I was able to log in to SWG, but whenever I tried to go into the space part, it crashed. Went to the Cedega forums and found that the space part was not supported. I also found that another game I play from time to time was working, but it was really slow, the FPS was horrible (and my computer is far above average).
I decided that what I need from an OS is that everything I'd like to use should work. I wanted to use Ubuntu and was considering running XP in VMWare under Ubuntu, but in the end decided that Ubuntu simply wasn't usable for me.
I _strongly_ believe that if games would work better under Linux (and maybe they do and it's just me who is missing something, in which case I am happy to be corrected), Linux would really grow as a desktop OS!
If a person like me, who I can add is running two Linux servers at home (one Ubuntu server and one Debian server) cannot get everything to work, and with everything I obviously mean the games, then what chance does the average-Joe have?
Even if games isn't everything, playing games is something a lot of people like to do every now and then, they need to work for Linux to be a good desktop OS.
Space exploration is one of the few things I am actually willing to pay tax money for.
However, seeing how NASA is mainly US funded, I am not going to complain. I've gotten to see a lot of interesting things from NASA and I haven't really paid for any of it with my tax money.
I had high hopes for the ESA (European Space Agency) when I firt heard about it, but it will probably take quite some time still before their projects are even half as interesting as NASA's.
However, maybe this is where we should place our hope for human missions to mars.
There is a reason there are courts, what will you think of google if it turns out he isn't guilty?
TFA isn't about protecting criminals, it isn't about not being able to ask for help, nor does it have anything to do with "the right to privacy". TFA is about Google giving out information to lawyers, without a court order, and tbh, that scares me wayyyy more than insulting people anonymously on the internet does.
It frustrates me seeing people defend this kind of behavior, especially when the same people were applauding ISP's for not giving out information to the xxAA.
This is exactly the same thing, next time it could be the xxAA asking for IP addresses for people that searched for "crappy artist +torrent". Google has proved they couldn't care less about court orders.
I cannot believe a company like sony did something stupid, that's _never_ happened before
Let's hope the enforcement is done by the French military (search for "french military victories" in google and hit "I'm feeling lucky").
Guess they should have done a bit more verofication.
(yea yea, a bit lame but c'mon, it's Monday!)
The old /. joke expressed as 4 lines that end with 'Profit' is not really applicable.
It's actually a three-line joke from Southpark.
The kids follow the underpants gnomes, and when ask why the underpant-gnomes are stealing people's underpants, they show a big board where it says:
1) Collect Underpants. 2) ??? 3) Profit
Everytime the kids ask what step two is, they get the answer that step three is profit.
It's imho the best episode of southpark, you should definitely watch it!
They are probably just using some type of QoS that throttles P2P traffic so it doesn't exceed X% bandwidth usage.
Last weekend however my son had a friend over for cooperative HALO3 fest. On the second evening they're setting up the friends system when my son decides to "stand up XBox so it can get some cooling". After this the system says the disk is unreadable, and it's discovered that their is a perfectly circular series of scratches about a quarter inch from the out edge and an eighth of an inch wide.
Had this happen to a few discs, and just so you know you probably dont have to buy a new disc.
Those machines they sometimes have in gameshops / CD stores, where they charge you like $5 to replace the plastic on CDs / DVDs work great for this type of damage. So far I've had this happen to four discs, each one has been fixed by that CD fixing machine (no idea whats its called) for a total cost of $20.
I doubt it makes any difference. There are plenty of countries in the world where producing the modchips is not a crime, so the only thing this does is delays shipment of the stuff by a few weeks until someone else starts producing it in a country with (imho) sane laws.
As long as people are willing to pay for the modchips, there will be someone that produces them. Even if Nintendo managed to close down 90% of the modchip makers, the only result would be that the remaining 10% would produce more and earn more money.
Essentially, the MPAA said "we will give you anything if you rat these people out and obtain evidence for us", yet "didn't know" he was doing it illegally? Please, just shows how desperate they can be and what kind of morale these people have.
Well, they knew it would make a huge difference on the pirate copying in the world which is why they went this far.
Haven't everyone noticed how CD / Movie sales went through the roof after torrentspy went down?
It was like the whole world just changed over night... so one can completely understand why xxAA want to close down one specific torrentsite and are willing to break laws to get there.