Heh. I'm sorry I find this statement amusing. Do you honestly seriously think, and don't forget how outspoken the industry has been about used games, that the lack of ability to sell games isn't on their minds? Really?
Seeing as how I work in the industry, have talked to DRM vendors, and have talked to people implementing DRM in games I helped create... Yes, I really believe that. The secondary market is a concern for console executives that they're combating with free downloadable content for the original purchaser. Consoles (with certain exceptions) have enough built-in protections that you don't need to add additional layers to prevent copying. By comparison, selling used computer software was a no-no in US law until 2008. It's is still a grey area and unprofitable, and as such major chains shy away from it. All of the PC executives I've worked with were terrified about bittorrenting, and were implementing DRM to combat that. They're the ones implementing draconian DRM, and they're all doing it to combat copying.
You really should look up the history of electronic download of content. Nobody wanted to leave physical media.
Niche development houses that couldn't get on the shelf in Target wanted to leave physical media. Do you really think Jonathan Blow didn't try to get a distributor to carry Braid before going XBLA? Just listen to his GDC 2007 talk. Or the thousands of other, smaller houses that would have an impossible time breaking into a model that can only support about 100 titles per console at a time? A game generally has to sell 500k units at retail to break even after distribution and development. I can really only name offhand 1 console downloadable title that has hit that mark. A Final Fight re-release would have a hard time muscling into shelf space at any big-box retailer. This is especially true with the embarassment of good titles that have been released on disk over the last 6 months.
Similarly, all the developers wanted to cut out the middlemen of distribution and retail for pure financial reasons. Publishers seemed mixed, as they also wanted to cut out retail but they themselves didn't want to get cut out. They can provide funding for a title's development, but the actual "publishing" is handled by the console company. I think the secondary market is more of a concern to major publishers, who are bitter at Game Stop.
They talk about it all the time, especially on the PC side. There have been a number of headlines since the start of the year about exactly this topic. Honestly I'm not even sure how you missed all that.
In context, I meant that the forms of console DRM that I had previously mentioned hardly ever get discussed as they aren't a problem for players. Players accept CD-key based DRM, hardware DRM, and have begrudgingly accepted region controls. but there was enough pushback on region coding that the PS3 by and large is region free. They listened.
Not all copyprotection is bad. Not all DRM is bad. But having a game that was purchased by 100k users phone home from over a million computers will panic any game executive (many of which are toothbrush salesmen, sadly). And restrictive always-on, always-phoning-home DRM is just hurting your legitimate customers.
What we as gamers have to do is come to a conclusion on the amount and type of DRM that we will accept in our purchased products. Is a disk-check OK? Is phoning home for multiplayer OK? Is phoning home once for singleplayer OK? Always on? Dongles? What about restrictive DRM that is removed when a crack surfaces? What about a DX12 DRM lockout chip on all subsequent graphics cards that only plays signed content?
All of the above have been discussed. And if we can't come to a conclusion about how much we're willing to accept, and what we're not, those decisions are going to be made for us. If we don't present a solution to executives, StarForce and Macrovision will be sure to fill their head with ideas. Having tried and failed to dislodge the ideas Macrovision has put into studio heads, gamers need to be part of the discussion.
Saying that all DRM of all kinds is blanket bad and unacceptable just scedes the discussion to DRM vendors.
Can you lay out the exact differences between schemes where a game runs from the HDD but requires a disk as a key to play and one where a game runs from the HDD but requires a login as a key to play? It still seems like the distinction here is DRM is draconian copy protection, and Copy Protection is stuff we're OK with. And before you say "They're trying to profit by re-selling us the same junk!" the DRM contained in Final Fight is clearly intended to prevent unauthorized copying. This has nothing to do with killing the secondary market, or re-selling the song for play at home and at work.
DRM can mean a lot more, like charging extra to listen to music in your car instead of just on your computer. But requiring physical dongles to run, requiring always-on internet connections to run, requiring sheets of code papers to work, or requiring a disk, are all methods of locking content away unless a copy-proof key is available. They all manage the user's rights over digital content usage. Some of them are just more objectionable than others, and some are widely accepted.
BTW, every console after the 2600 has included a lockout chip that prevents unauthorized content from playing. Circumventing this has required everything from huge solder boards to piggybacking an authorized cartridge onto an unauthorized one. Further, most of these are region-locked to some degree or another (The SNES had prongs on the american version that would physically stop japanese cartridges, others are software based). This can be annoying to the high-end gamer, but most people buy their games locally anyway. Recently, accessory DRM lockouts have become the norm.
Why do most people not talk about that as awful, awful stuff? Because it doesn't really effect the average end-consumer. They're invisible enough. Sure, it might annoy the heck out of businesses attempting to break onto a console without paying the console manufacturer tithe. But for the most part, the restrictions imposed align relatively neatly with what the consumer expects to be able to do with their console.
And quite simply, to game companies it's all to stop people from casually copying games, and slow down the downloaded hacks. It's all copyprotection to the companies involved.
The nice thing about Microsoft's model, is that everything works everywhere if you have your Xbox Live ID logged in. If your console dies, and you replace it with an Xbox Arcade unit, you can just pop the old HDD off and pop it onto the new one. So long as you keep logging in, things should work.
However, in muti-person households, this gets weird. Suddenly, purchased games work for one person in the house but not the others. If the controller tied to an ID that bought, say, a 4-player game of Bomberman runs out of batteries, everyone is kicked out. That's when you need the transfer tool.
MS's actually works quite well for some people in dead-console situations. But not others.
I stand corrected on the Wii. I'm glad to hear Nintendo has a console ID transfer service. Do they have something similar for the DSI? Also, it looks like while the Wii's DRM scheme is very effective at preventing casual copying amongst friends, it is trivially easy to download wiiware games from the internet. I didn't know that.
WRT Steam's Offline mode... it is possible to play some singleplayer games offline under Steam. You do still have to be logged into the steam application to play (less of an issue these days, now that it isn't a complete buggy mess). And you have to be logged in online to set offline mode, run each game once online first, set a couple of preferences WRT auto-logging in, then go offline. And some games just won't work in offline mode, either due to DRM or bugs in Steam. It's a nice bonus for subway rides, but don't count on it working all the time.
While I agree that this shouldn't have been an issue, I doubt this is because of "a generation raised with calculators." Anyone with a calculator should have pressed "2" "/" "3" "=" and gotten a much better answer.
According to the article, the only reason it was an issue is because the town accountant used a mental shortcut and substituted.66 for 2/3rds. For accounting, this is a basically workable shortcut. It's fundamentally wrong, and it's rounded wrong, but usually it works fine. Understandable mistake to make.
Honestly, the part of the article that shocks me is calling around to decide how other counties calculate 2/3rds votes, then leaving it up to the state to determine. I can't even come up with a more simplistic non-math example, as what they're facing is basically axiomatic. Which is to say, the accountant is failing junior high level math, and should be fired immediately.
Wait! I've got an inappropriate car example!
"What's the make of this Chevy?" "I don't know. Might it be a Chevy?" "Maybe. But this Chevy might be a Ford. Or this Chevy might be a Toyota. We'll let the courts decide this deep connundrum."
Xbox 360: Everything you download is tied to your gamertag and your console. Either your gamertag must be logged in, or it must be running on the specific console that the content is licensed to. Microsoft provides a license transfer tool that you can use to migrate your licensed console in case of system death, which you can use once a year (more if you talk to the service agents). You can re-download content as much as you want as long as the purchasing gamertag is logged in.
- Advantages: Very difficult to illicitly share content. For the most part, it happens behind the scenes without the user ever knowing. Content can follow you to other consoles with your gamertag.
- Disadvantages: When the console breaks, licensing issues become very confusing and unexpected. License transfer & re-download is easy, but time consuming.
PS3: You get 5 downloads, tied to the purchasing PSN account. This can be onto your console, or the consoles of bunches of friends. If you choose to download to the consoles of a group of friends, you won't be able to re-download in the future if your console dies. As the grandparent poster pointed out, this leads to sharing groups on PSN... groups of friends who buy once, share 5 times.
- Advantages: Relatively straightforward. Easy to understand. Trusts the user. Can use content on friend's machines (afterward, so can they).
- Disadvantages: Lots of cheating. Migration is a lot less streamlined. After a certain point, the user simply cannot re-download to new consoles.
Wii & DSi: Downloads are tied to the system, not the account. If your system breaks, your content needs to be re-purchased on the new one.
- Advantages: Extremely simple & hard to cheat.
- Disadvantages: Any console failure means all of your digital items are lost.
Steam (for comparison): Downloads are tied to the account, which must be logged in to the steam application to play. Additionally, steam may or may not require being online at the time of play. However, player can download and connect to as many machines as they install steam on, and can switch freely between them so long as they are only logged in once.
- Advantages: Relatively easy to understand. Download anytime, anywhere. No need to keep old games on your HDD that can be re-downloaded later.
- Disadvantages: Requires frequent network access. Some games install secondary DRM.
The prosecutor realized it was a bad charge and dropped it. That really is the proper response. It didn't even get to the point of "is he guilty? No. Case Dismissed." The prosecutor just dropped it.
Misdemeanors are pretty low down the priority queue. Because of this, in the poorly underfunded criminal justice system these can take a really, really long time. It's unfortunate how poorly funded it is, but that's not malice on the part of the prosecutor. It's also not like he was sitting in jail this entire time... there were probably a few discovery and other hearings about the charge, each a few months between eachother.
The problem seems to be how bloody slow the justice system works. Also, cops should know not to arrest solely on based upon refusing to show ID. But comparing that to RIAA getting judgements of hundreds of thousands of dollars for sharing music, or the BART police shooting a cooperative subject and stealing cellphones to cover it up, or continuing to pull people over for driving while black, or the hundreds of thousands of people rotting in jail for casual personal pot use... This dude was drinking and in a rowdy group of stick-wielding golf houlagans. Dude refused to show ID. Dude was arrested for being non-cooperative. Dude's charges were dropped.
For certain, it's not great. But in the grand scheme of police brutality and miscarriages of justice, it ranks pretty low.
Second this. Vista / Windows 7 were both scheduled to handle resolution-independent UI rendering, and neither of them can. Until the OS can render icons at 3/4ths of an inch at super-high DPI, most people will want a screen appropriately sized for their inputs. Similarly, web pages and other rendering will need to be resolution-independent... though the OS comes first.
I'm a bit surprised this rant is coming from a Microsoft Evangelist, considering that this is something that Microsoft has promised to fix for years.
In this case, the dishonest part was "we don't have the videos." Which probably either equates to "Look, your case is over. I'm busy trying to save people. Go away." or "Frank in acquisitions said George in IT sent Lucy from internal to Gary in servers to get the tape you were looking for, and they said they don't have VHS tapes anymore. I don't know what VHS means, but we don't have it." Neither of these are particularly good reasons, but painting it as a conspiracy to protect these police officers from a technical call about a misdamenor seems a bit grandiose.
Otherwise, it sounds like a bunch of beat cops arresting drunk guys for being drunk, in an attempt to quiet down the streets. They left later that night, and had small charges filed against them that the county defender could have beaten. One person didn't buy an expensive lawyer, and spent a sunday cleaning up trash. It's not perfect. Its probably not the right call to pursue charges. But "dishonest?" Again, it just seems like some beat cops that wanted to break up a rowdy bunch of drunk guys with sticks before something bad happened. They overstepped their bounds a bit, but not a whole lot.
Make the attorneys aware that they can request the logs. Make the police know to take the video and log requests seriously. Done. Not really a big problem.
Looking at the events that led up to this trial, apparently he refused to give out the root passwords to the city's network while Human Resources, the Police, and a bunch of junior engineers were listening in.
I don't care what agreements you have in place ahead of time. That right there should give this guy a free pass from the law. Sure, he should have sought out appropriate people, defined appropriate circumstances, and given the keys to the kingdom actively. But that the people bringing charges would have such an idiotic view of network security as to attempt to force him to give root access to a city to a bunch of unrelated cops, some HR people, and junior engineers is just criminal. They have enough blood on their hands, so to speak, that this shouldn't be an issue. He gave the passwords to the highest authority after a few days of refusing to compromise the network. It should end there.
And in the future, maybe the city will run their network in such a way that obviously dedicated employees aren't marginalized by bad management, and that IT is given enough thought that intelligent failsafes are put into place. This is exactly the kind of OCD security freak that you want watching over security.
There seems to be an underlying belief in the US that anything good or pleasurable must also be productive or lead to a higher cause. Biking can be fun, but it's also exercise so it's OK. Vacationing can be fun, but it's about educating the kids in the ways of the world.
But sex? Sex for sex's sake? Where is the productivity in that?
"Forcing our schools to instruct children on how to utilize contraceptives encourages our children to engage in sexual behavior, whether as a victim or an offender," he wrote. "It is akin to teaching children about alcohol use, then instructing them on how to make mixed alcoholic drinks."
Considering how successful we've been at teaching Math and Science, I think teaching about sex is just about guaranteed to make kids never want to have sex again in their lives.
"And then there was this time with Miss Floundeberg in the lunchroom while all you students were gone." "AAA! Can't you just teach us about creationism again?"
You do realize that Wikipedia has at least a page on pretty much every game ever published, plus every publisher,development house, and some individual developers. Here's a partial list of puzzle games on wikipedia, linking to 175 separate multi-page articles on puzzle games alone, and it's not exhaustive. Wikipedia actually has a list of Video Game Lists, with 67 similar articles. Assuming similar numbers of articles, that's already 11,725 multi-page documents to print. Or you could jump right to the source, with the list of all video games, list of all canceled games, and list of all vaporware. It looks like most systems have received between 500 and 5,000 games, and 1/2 of all of those have articles.
Let's pick some numbers. There are about 100 video game platforms out there, and about 1,000 games on each one. Half of those games have articles, and most articles average 4 pages printed. To take into consideration developers and publishers (who usually have really long articles), let's double that again. Now let's assume that 1 piece of paper weighs.013 oz, and is 0.0038 inches thick. Without including other gaming-related articles (spin off series, cartoons, gaming events, etc), you're looking at 400,000 pages. That would weigh in at 325 pounds, and would be 126 feet thick... without covers or bindings. And that's not even all of video games.
Want a professional's estimation? Here's one that's just 5,000 pages printed, covering 3,000 articles. It's about 2 feet tall. The pages are compressed a bit, and double-sided, but nice. That represents the "featured" articles on wikipedia, or about 1 in 1,140. Hence, all 3,242,544 english - speaking articles would print out in a book about 1/2 of a mile long. Of course, for the full 9,474,000 international articles, you'd need a mile-and-a-half long bookshelf.
There really isn't any reason to have a printed version of Wikipedia. Either the information is obscure enough that you wouldn't reasonably be able to include it in a printed copy, or it's so specific that you pretty much have to know it ahead of time to include it in a printed version. It just doesn't work outside of the digital realm, any more than you'd try to get a theater-sized print of every frame of every movie available on Netflix.
Since when are lawsuits intended as a revenue stream? I thought they were supposed to be reparations for real damages incurred with a side of punitive hand slapping.
I'm all for shutting down pirates, and sending the message that expensive to produce media isn't free. But specifically "monetizing" the lawsuits, in the hope of getting rich off pirates? That just reeks of evil.
That's easy to say when your justice has been delayed. When your justice has actually been denied, a little delay looks really good.
Re:Seven years for eight hours work
on
Novell Wins vs. SCO
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Who the heck would let someone short SCO? I mean, for there to be a short, someone has to be holding them. At 50c a share, SCO was probably still wildly overvalued. Really, the only way that SCO was going to recover was with a court victory, and while the probability of that wasn't 0, it was as damn near to it as possible for practical applications.
The flip side to this is that patents have always covered inventions, not discoveries. One couldn't, for example, patent Quantum Physics. Or Florida. They could patent ways of using quantum physics for computing or other applications, but not the basic discovery itself. Patents by law cover inventions and nothing else. Discovering genes that do something is not a form of invention, but pure research. Whether or not you think there should be protection for pure research in the US (besides trade secrets, of course), there currently isn't.
Gene companies will have to get their patents the old fashioned way: by actually inventing a cure for something. Simply saying "anyone who wants to cure or treat Lou Gherig's disease needs to pay us a royalty for discovering it first" is simply no longer viable.
Yesterday it wasn't a fringe platform? x86 hardware has basically caught up with the Cell in power, whose major innovation was an architecture that reduced loss due to chip imperfections.
It's not a bad chipset, and it poses interesting questions. But the only non-fringe main chipsets right now are x86, ARM, those people still using 68000's, and MIPS. OK, there are a few others mixed in there for embedded applications. But the Cell definitely has very little going for it compared to other platforms.
A customer can ask you to replace the driver of the watch with 3 interlocking gears that all connect, but that doesn't mean it will reach their goal of telling time.
Similarly, if you're on a project where the 3rd party forced limitations prevent reaching stated goals, it would be easier to step aside. "We want you to make a heroic, gritty action film, that launches a popular character and isn't at all campy. And it has to make back it's 100 million dollar budget" "Can do." "Oh, and the bad guys are made of toxic healthcare practitioners, the hero is in a wheelchair, and he fights by throwing his theatans from his brain at them." "What?" "The hero can only be in 20% of the film, and at least 95% of overall showtime needs to be expository dialog. Remember, it can't be campy and it has to make back it's budget." "Can't be done." "Fine, we'll find someone else who will claim that it can." Who they found was Corey Mandell, who penned an unused script for a TV show before being given a 100 million dollar movie.
Huge credit for accepting a Razzie in person, even if it was to deflect claim for it.
Also, he didn't know how the rewrite would go at the time he would be associated with the movie. He says the first and only time he saw the movie was at the premier.
Personally, I wish the original script would "accidentally leak," so we can see if there is any validity to the assertions. Having been involved in licensed projects before, I know how much clueless meddling hands can screw up an otherwise talented team.
And he's a writer. In Hollywood. Getting paid. For a writer that's better, and rarer, than free sex from religious fundamentalists.
How much oversight did the consultants have into the system? At this point, would it be possible to rescind payments for non-delivery, or give the consultants 6 months on complete on their dime or be blacklisted from all NYC / NY State contracts again?
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. I'm sorry I find this statement amusing. Do you honestly seriously think, and don't forget how outspoken the industry has been about used games, that the lack of ability to sell games isn't on their minds? Really?
Seeing as how I work in the industry, have talked to DRM vendors, and have talked to people implementing DRM in games I helped create... Yes, I really believe that. The secondary market is a concern for console executives that they're combating with free downloadable content for the original purchaser. Consoles (with certain exceptions) have enough built-in protections that you don't need to add additional layers to prevent copying. By comparison, selling used computer software was a no-no in US law until 2008. It's is still a grey area and unprofitable, and as such major chains shy away from it. All of the PC executives I've worked with were terrified about bittorrenting, and were implementing DRM to combat that. They're the ones implementing draconian DRM, and they're all doing it to combat copying.
You really should look up the history of electronic download of content. Nobody wanted to leave physical media.
Niche development houses that couldn't get on the shelf in Target wanted to leave physical media. Do you really think Jonathan Blow didn't try to get a distributor to carry Braid before going XBLA? Just listen to his GDC 2007 talk. Or the thousands of other, smaller houses that would have an impossible time breaking into a model that can only support about 100 titles per console at a time? A game generally has to sell 500k units at retail to break even after distribution and development. I can really only name offhand 1 console downloadable title that has hit that mark. A Final Fight re-release would have a hard time muscling into shelf space at any big-box retailer. This is especially true with the embarassment of good titles that have been released on disk over the last 6 months.
Similarly, all the developers wanted to cut out the middlemen of distribution and retail for pure financial reasons. Publishers seemed mixed, as they also wanted to cut out retail but they themselves didn't want to get cut out. They can provide funding for a title's development, but the actual "publishing" is handled by the console company. I think the secondary market is more of a concern to major publishers, who are bitter at Game Stop.
They talk about it all the time, especially on the PC side. There have been a number of headlines since the start of the year about exactly this topic. Honestly I'm not even sure how you missed all that.
In context, I meant that the forms of console DRM that I had previously mentioned hardly ever get discussed as they aren't a problem for players. Players accept CD-key based DRM, hardware DRM, and have begrudgingly accepted region controls. but there was enough pushback on region coding that the PS3 by and large is region free. They listened.
Not all copyprotection is bad. Not all DRM is bad. But having a game that was purchased by 100k users phone home from over a million computers will panic any game executive (many of which are toothbrush salesmen, sadly). And restrictive always-on, always-phoning-home DRM is just hurting your legitimate customers.
What we as gamers have to do is come to a conclusion on the amount and type of DRM that we will accept in our purchased products. Is a disk-check OK? Is phoning home for multiplayer OK? Is phoning home once for singleplayer OK? Always on? Dongles? What about restrictive DRM that is removed when a crack surfaces? What about a DX12 DRM lockout chip on all subsequent graphics cards that only plays signed content?
All of the above have been discussed. And if we can't come to a conclusion about how much we're willing to accept, and what we're not, those decisions are going to be made for us. If we don't present a solution to executives, StarForce and Macrovision will be sure to fill their head with ideas. Having tried and failed to dislodge the ideas Macrovision has put into studio heads, gamers need to be part of the discussion.
Saying that all DRM of all kinds is blanket bad and unacceptable just scedes the discussion to DRM vendors.
Can you lay out the exact differences between schemes where a game runs from the HDD but requires a disk as a key to play and one where a game runs from the HDD but requires a login as a key to play? It still seems like the distinction here is DRM is draconian copy protection, and Copy Protection is stuff we're OK with. And before you say "They're trying to profit by re-selling us the same junk!" the DRM contained in Final Fight is clearly intended to prevent unauthorized copying. This has nothing to do with killing the secondary market, or re-selling the song for play at home and at work.
DRM can mean a lot more, like charging extra to listen to music in your car instead of just on your computer. But requiring physical dongles to run, requiring always-on internet connections to run, requiring sheets of code papers to work, or requiring a disk, are all methods of locking content away unless a copy-proof key is available. They all manage the user's rights over digital content usage. Some of them are just more objectionable than others, and some are widely accepted.
BTW, every console after the 2600 has included a lockout chip that prevents unauthorized content from playing. Circumventing this has required everything from huge solder boards to piggybacking an authorized cartridge onto an unauthorized one. Further, most of these are region-locked to some degree or another (The SNES had prongs on the american version that would physically stop japanese cartridges, others are software based). This can be annoying to the high-end gamer, but most people buy their games locally anyway. Recently, accessory DRM lockouts have become the norm.
Why do most people not talk about that as awful, awful stuff? Because it doesn't really effect the average end-consumer. They're invisible enough. Sure, it might annoy the heck out of businesses attempting to break onto a console without paying the console manufacturer tithe. But for the most part, the restrictions imposed align relatively neatly with what the consumer expects to be able to do with their console.
And quite simply, to game companies it's all to stop people from casually copying games, and slow down the downloaded hacks. It's all copyprotection to the companies involved.
The nice thing about Microsoft's model, is that everything works everywhere if you have your Xbox Live ID logged in. If your console dies, and you replace it with an Xbox Arcade unit, you can just pop the old HDD off and pop it onto the new one. So long as you keep logging in, things should work.
However, in muti-person households, this gets weird. Suddenly, purchased games work for one person in the house but not the others. If the controller tied to an ID that bought, say, a 4-player game of Bomberman runs out of batteries, everyone is kicked out. That's when you need the transfer tool.
MS's actually works quite well for some people in dead-console situations. But not others.
I stand corrected on the Wii. I'm glad to hear Nintendo has a console ID transfer service. Do they have something similar for the DSI? Also, it looks like while the Wii's DRM scheme is very effective at preventing casual copying amongst friends, it is trivially easy to download wiiware games from the internet. I didn't know that.
WRT Steam's Offline mode... it is possible to play some singleplayer games offline under Steam. You do still have to be logged into the steam application to play (less of an issue these days, now that it isn't a complete buggy mess). And you have to be logged in online to set offline mode, run each game once online first, set a couple of preferences WRT auto-logging in, then go offline. And some games just won't work in offline mode, either due to DRM or bugs in Steam. It's a nice bonus for subway rides, but don't count on it working all the time.
While I agree that this shouldn't have been an issue, I doubt this is because of "a generation raised with calculators." Anyone with a calculator should have pressed "2" "/" "3" "=" and gotten a much better answer.
According to the article, the only reason it was an issue is because the town accountant used a mental shortcut and substituted .66 for 2/3rds. For accounting, this is a basically workable shortcut. It's fundamentally wrong, and it's rounded wrong, but usually it works fine. Understandable mistake to make.
Honestly, the part of the article that shocks me is calling around to decide how other counties calculate 2/3rds votes, then leaving it up to the state to determine. I can't even come up with a more simplistic non-math example, as what they're facing is basically axiomatic. Which is to say, the accountant is failing junior high level math, and should be fired immediately.
Wait! I've got an inappropriate car example!
"What's the make of this Chevy?"
"I don't know. Might it be a Chevy?"
"Maybe. But this Chevy might be a Ford. Or this Chevy might be a Toyota. We'll let the courts decide this deep connundrum."
Xbox 360: Everything you download is tied to your gamertag and your console. Either your gamertag must be logged in, or it must be running on the specific console that the content is licensed to. Microsoft provides a license transfer tool that you can use to migrate your licensed console in case of system death, which you can use once a year (more if you talk to the service agents). You can re-download content as much as you want as long as the purchasing gamertag is logged in.
- Advantages: Very difficult to illicitly share content. For the most part, it happens behind the scenes without the user ever knowing. Content can follow you to other consoles with your gamertag.
- Disadvantages: When the console breaks, licensing issues become very confusing and unexpected. License transfer & re-download is easy, but time consuming.
PS3: You get 5 downloads, tied to the purchasing PSN account. This can be onto your console, or the consoles of bunches of friends. If you choose to download to the consoles of a group of friends, you won't be able to re-download in the future if your console dies. As the grandparent poster pointed out, this leads to sharing groups on PSN... groups of friends who buy once, share 5 times.
- Advantages: Relatively straightforward. Easy to understand. Trusts the user. Can use content on friend's machines (afterward, so can they).
- Disadvantages: Lots of cheating. Migration is a lot less streamlined. After a certain point, the user simply cannot re-download to new consoles.
Wii & DSi: Downloads are tied to the system, not the account. If your system breaks, your content needs to be re-purchased on the new one.
- Advantages: Extremely simple & hard to cheat.
- Disadvantages: Any console failure means all of your digital items are lost.
Steam (for comparison): Downloads are tied to the account, which must be logged in to the steam application to play. Additionally, steam may or may not require being online at the time of play. However, player can download and connect to as many machines as they install steam on, and can switch freely between them so long as they are only logged in once.
- Advantages: Relatively easy to understand. Download anytime, anywhere. No need to keep old games on your HDD that can be re-downloaded later.
- Disadvantages: Requires frequent network access. Some games install secondary DRM.
The prosecutor realized it was a bad charge and dropped it. That really is the proper response. It didn't even get to the point of "is he guilty? No. Case Dismissed." The prosecutor just dropped it.
Misdemeanors are pretty low down the priority queue. Because of this, in the poorly underfunded criminal justice system these can take a really, really long time. It's unfortunate how poorly funded it is, but that's not malice on the part of the prosecutor. It's also not like he was sitting in jail this entire time... there were probably a few discovery and other hearings about the charge, each a few months between eachother.
The problem seems to be how bloody slow the justice system works. Also, cops should know not to arrest solely on based upon refusing to show ID. But comparing that to RIAA getting judgements of hundreds of thousands of dollars for sharing music, or the BART police shooting a cooperative subject and stealing cellphones to cover it up, or continuing to pull people over for driving while black, or the hundreds of thousands of people rotting in jail for casual personal pot use... This dude was drinking and in a rowdy group of stick-wielding golf houlagans. Dude refused to show ID. Dude was arrested for being non-cooperative. Dude's charges were dropped.
For certain, it's not great. But in the grand scheme of police brutality and miscarriages of justice, it ranks pretty low.
Second this. Vista / Windows 7 were both scheduled to handle resolution-independent UI rendering, and neither of them can. Until the OS can render icons at 3/4ths of an inch at super-high DPI, most people will want a screen appropriately sized for their inputs. Similarly, web pages and other rendering will need to be resolution-independent... though the OS comes first.
I'm a bit surprised this rant is coming from a Microsoft Evangelist, considering that this is something that Microsoft has promised to fix for years.
In this case, the dishonest part was "we don't have the videos." Which probably either equates to "Look, your case is over. I'm busy trying to save people. Go away." or "Frank in acquisitions said George in IT sent Lucy from internal to Gary in servers to get the tape you were looking for, and they said they don't have VHS tapes anymore. I don't know what VHS means, but we don't have it." Neither of these are particularly good reasons, but painting it as a conspiracy to protect these police officers from a technical call about a misdamenor seems a bit grandiose.
Otherwise, it sounds like a bunch of beat cops arresting drunk guys for being drunk, in an attempt to quiet down the streets. They left later that night, and had small charges filed against them that the county defender could have beaten. One person didn't buy an expensive lawyer, and spent a sunday cleaning up trash. It's not perfect. Its probably not the right call to pursue charges. But "dishonest?" Again, it just seems like some beat cops that wanted to break up a rowdy bunch of drunk guys with sticks before something bad happened. They overstepped their bounds a bit, but not a whole lot.
Make the attorneys aware that they can request the logs. Make the police know to take the video and log requests seriously. Done. Not really a big problem.
Looking at the events that led up to this trial, apparently he refused to give out the root passwords to the city's network while Human Resources, the Police, and a bunch of junior engineers were listening in.
I don't care what agreements you have in place ahead of time. That right there should give this guy a free pass from the law. Sure, he should have sought out appropriate people, defined appropriate circumstances, and given the keys to the kingdom actively. But that the people bringing charges would have such an idiotic view of network security as to attempt to force him to give root access to a city to a bunch of unrelated cops, some HR people, and junior engineers is just criminal. They have enough blood on their hands, so to speak, that this shouldn't be an issue. He gave the passwords to the highest authority after a few days of refusing to compromise the network. It should end there.
And in the future, maybe the city will run their network in such a way that obviously dedicated employees aren't marginalized by bad management, and that IT is given enough thought that intelligent failsafes are put into place. This is exactly the kind of OCD security freak that you want watching over security.
I'm kind of surprised that the would want software that deletes suspicious files. Doesn't this:
A: Open them up to large potential liabilities if the software deletes things incorrectly?
B: Delete evidence of a crime?
Even as a proposition this seems a bit stupid. "Let's open ourselves up to a degree of liability for every computer in America. That's a *good* idea!"
Summary: Being broke hurts.
There seems to be an underlying belief in the US that anything good or pleasurable must also be productive or lead to a higher cause. Biking can be fun, but it's also exercise so it's OK. Vacationing can be fun, but it's about educating the kids in the ways of the world.
But sex? Sex for sex's sake? Where is the productivity in that?
"Forcing our schools to instruct children on how to utilize contraceptives encourages our children to engage in sexual behavior, whether as a victim or an offender," he wrote. "It is akin to teaching children about alcohol use, then instructing them on how to make mixed alcoholic drinks."
Considering how successful we've been at teaching Math and Science, I think teaching about sex is just about guaranteed to make kids never want to have sex again in their lives.
"And then there was this time with Miss Floundeberg in the lunchroom while all you students were gone."
"AAA! Can't you just teach us about creationism again?"
You do realize that Wikipedia has at least a page on pretty much every game ever published, plus every publisher, development house, and some individual developers. Here's a partial list of puzzle games on wikipedia, linking to 175 separate multi-page articles on puzzle games alone, and it's not exhaustive. Wikipedia actually has a list of Video Game Lists, with 67 similar articles. Assuming similar numbers of articles, that's already 11,725 multi-page documents to print. Or you could jump right to the source, with the list of all video games, list of all canceled games, and list of all vaporware. It looks like most systems have received between 500 and 5,000 games, and 1/2 of all of those have articles.
Let's pick some numbers. There are about 100 video game platforms out there, and about 1,000 games on each one. Half of those games have articles, and most articles average 4 pages printed. To take into consideration developers and publishers (who usually have really long articles), let's double that again. Now let's assume that 1 piece of paper weighs .013 oz, and is 0.0038 inches thick. Without including other gaming-related articles (spin off series, cartoons, gaming events, etc), you're looking at 400,000 pages. That would weigh in at 325 pounds, and would be 126 feet thick... without covers or bindings. And that's not even all of video games.
Want a professional's estimation? Here's one that's just 5,000 pages printed, covering 3,000 articles. It's about 2 feet tall. The pages are compressed a bit, and double-sided, but nice. That represents the "featured" articles on wikipedia, or about 1 in 1,140. Hence, all 3,242,544 english - speaking articles would print out in a book about 1/2 of a mile long. Of course, for the full 9,474,000 international articles, you'd need a mile-and-a-half long bookshelf.
There really isn't any reason to have a printed version of Wikipedia. Either the information is obscure enough that you wouldn't reasonably be able to include it in a printed copy, or it's so specific that you pretty much have to know it ahead of time to include it in a printed version. It just doesn't work outside of the digital realm, any more than you'd try to get a theater-sized print of every frame of every movie available on Netflix.
Obviously the one who confesses is the good twin, so you should immediately arrest the other.
Since when are lawsuits intended as a revenue stream? I thought they were supposed to be reparations for real damages incurred with a side of punitive hand slapping.
I'm all for shutting down pirates, and sending the message that expensive to produce media isn't free. But specifically "monetizing" the lawsuits, in the hope of getting rich off pirates? That just reeks of evil.
That's easy to say when your justice has been delayed. When your justice has actually been denied, a little delay looks really good.
Who the heck would let someone short SCO? I mean, for there to be a short, someone has to be holding them. At 50c a share, SCO was probably still wildly overvalued. Really, the only way that SCO was going to recover was with a court victory, and while the probability of that wasn't 0, it was as damn near to it as possible for practical applications.
The flip side to this is that patents have always covered inventions, not discoveries. One couldn't, for example, patent Quantum Physics. Or Florida. They could patent ways of using quantum physics for computing or other applications, but not the basic discovery itself. Patents by law cover inventions and nothing else. Discovering genes that do something is not a form of invention, but pure research. Whether or not you think there should be protection for pure research in the US (besides trade secrets, of course), there currently isn't.
Gene companies will have to get their patents the old fashioned way: by actually inventing a cure for something. Simply saying "anyone who wants to cure or treat Lou Gherig's disease needs to pay us a royalty for discovering it first" is simply no longer viable.
Is it just me, or does this imply that someone at Sony found a way to hack the PS3 firmware through the install other OS option?
Yesterday it wasn't a fringe platform? x86 hardware has basically caught up with the Cell in power, whose major innovation was an architecture that reduced loss due to chip imperfections.
It's not a bad chipset, and it poses interesting questions. But the only non-fringe main chipsets right now are x86, ARM, those people still using 68000's, and MIPS. OK, there are a few others mixed in there for embedded applications. But the Cell definitely has very little going for it compared to other platforms.
A customer can ask you to replace the driver of the watch with 3 interlocking gears that all connect, but that doesn't mean it will reach their goal of telling time.
Similarly, if you're on a project where the 3rd party forced limitations prevent reaching stated goals, it would be easier to step aside. "We want you to make a heroic, gritty action film, that launches a popular character and isn't at all campy. And it has to make back it's 100 million dollar budget" "Can do." "Oh, and the bad guys are made of toxic healthcare practitioners, the hero is in a wheelchair, and he fights by throwing his theatans from his brain at them." "What?" "The hero can only be in 20% of the film, and at least 95% of overall showtime needs to be expository dialog. Remember, it can't be campy and it has to make back it's budget." "Can't be done." "Fine, we'll find someone else who will claim that it can." Who they found was Corey Mandell, who penned an unused script for a TV show before being given a 100 million dollar movie.
Huge credit for accepting a Razzie in person, even if it was to deflect claim for it.
Also, he didn't know how the rewrite would go at the time he would be associated with the movie. He says the first and only time he saw the movie was at the premier.
Personally, I wish the original script would "accidentally leak," so we can see if there is any validity to the assertions. Having been involved in licensed projects before, I know how much clueless meddling hands can screw up an otherwise talented team.
And he's a writer. In Hollywood. Getting paid. For a writer that's better, and rarer, than free sex from religious fundamentalists.
How much oversight did the consultants have into the system? At this point, would it be possible to rescind payments for non-delivery, or give the consultants 6 months on complete on their dime or be blacklisted from all NYC / NY State contracts again?