The Warcraft "story" is completely stagnant in WoW; nothing ever changes. Are you ignoring the Opening the Dark Portal storyline, which is being played out as new Caverns of Time events are opened, and looks to be aiming to culminate with a return to the Battle of Mount Hyjal?
Are you ignoring the return to Outland and the revelation of how events have been progressing there since the portal was unavailable?
Are you ignoring the fact that players finally get to meet and interact with some of the most powerful characters in the Warcraft Universe (both Horde and Alliance get to save Thrall for their own reasons; Illidan Stormrage is defeated; etc. etc.)
I think the problem is that some players get into a "grind" to get gear, and ignore the story that they're interacting with. Stand back, take a look. Go explore new content that's being added all the time, don't just try to beat it. Read the quest text. Check out the dialogs.
There's an interesting nod to one of his games in World of Warcraft as well. There's a quest chain, It's a Secret to Everybody, which is long and involved, and has many references to The Legend of Zelda, including a green-cloaked gnome named "Linken" who is the central character in the quest chain through which you help him recover his sword.
utilizing link analysis (sixth paragraph down under 'Subtly Softer Trigger') or more rightfully known as Stanley Milgram's "degrees of separation," the "conspiracy theories" quickly materialize into hard and substantive fact. Sadly, no. They materialize into (in some cases) fairly reasonable, and substantive conjecture. If I know Joe, and Joe knows Tom, and Tom's a hit-man and I have something to gain from a killing, that doesn't mean that you've proven that I hired Tom to do the killing. It just means that there's opportunity for me to have done so. Demonstrating means, motive and opportunity is pretty excellent circumstantial evidence, but that's all it is.
And as a sidebar, it bears mentioning that the horrible throwaway mission, Operation Eagle Claw (the abortive attempt to rescue the American hostages held in Iran - and it certainly appeared to be nothing more than a BS mission by many of us combat vets), was planned by no other than General Richard Secord, latter deeply involved in Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal and an individual with a very shady past.... I didn't want to get into the conspiracy theories surrounding the hostage crisis, because it's always too easy to rat-hole in such discussions. It's not that there isn't merit to the theories, and the name you mention isn't the only Reagan administration official who had influence over U.S. response. It's also not that I disagree that the resolution right on top of Reagan's inauguration was likely to have been coincidence. It's just that these discussions have no practical use without a way to substantiate them beyond doubt. The fact of the matter is that Carter handled the incident poorly on the PR-level, and beyond that we have too little information. So, that's what I said.
Sure, you can change the default to InnoDB but why isn't it set to InnoDB already?
Why sacrifice performance by default for transactional integrity when most database applications require only statement atomicity?
My spam token DB, photo album manager and Wiki back-end simply don't have the ACID requirements of a bank, and I DO NOT want to pay the performance penalty for some theoretical need that I might have in the future. I'll happily lock when I need to, and track completion of complex actions. If I need true transactional integrity, I'll turn it on in a new table that I only use for that purpose, and take the performance hit there.
Open Source is now the foundation of many businesses and thus should have to play by the same rules as everyone else. If they can't afford to license the patent, too fricking bad, they should sell more t-shirts or find another business model to be able to afford to pay the required licensing fees. No. First off, I don't know of any business that makes money from open source software. Support, yes, but you don't need a license on a patent to provide support. Auto garages would go out of business tomorrow if they needed such.
Second, you're confusing a "right to profit" (which does not exist) with the reasons for the patent system.
The question is, is the software itself infringing, when it's available for modification and redistribution without restriction?
I can't see any interpretation of the Constitution that leads us to believe that the founders would have wanted to retard such an enrichment of the "sciences and useful arts," as they put it. We also have clear evidence that proprietary software can continue to play a roll in the market. So what exactly is the problem, here?
I remember Carter VERY well. Why would you consider him worse than Bush?
Where do I begin:
Carter was more in the "Religious Right's" pocket than Bush ever will be. Carter was a Fundamentalist Christian (a religious affiliation), but it consistently galled the religious right (a political affiliation) that he wouldn't champion their causes. For example, he was politically pro-choice, but privately held that abortion was wrong.
Were visiting dignitaries allowed a glass of wine with dinner while visiting the White House in 1978? Nope! Alcohol was banned in the White House by Carter. Ok... and that makes him a poor president, why? Remember, we're comparing him to a man who hired a flunky with no experience to head up FEMA!
Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!!
Inflation was through the roof (12%).
Unemployment was high (7%). The economy sucked under Carter. However, any economist worth their salt will tell you that this was an unavoidable consequence of global factors, including our exit from Viet Nam. There was also the fact that the Fed was still applying, what Greenspan would later prove to be a losing strategy for managing inflation. None of this was under Carter's control.
Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion).
Devaluation of the dollar. These are consequences of a poor economy. Again, not Carter's doing.
Gas shortages. Gas shortages are a tough problem, and I have to give R.R. credit for enhancing our oil options. Carter may or may not have responded in similar ways, but by the time any response was possible, he was out of office.
Iranian hostage crisis.
Failure to rescue Iranian hostages. This was a very touchy situation, and I doubt we'll ever know for sure what happened. All I'll say is that, from the PR perspective, Carter hosed this one and hosed it good. Beyond that, there's just too much that was never disclosed.
Demoralization and dismantling of the US military Well, the dismantling of large chunks of the military was inevitable, after the buildup during Viet Nam. Even Reagan's huge buildup in the mid/late 80s was only a stopgap that lasted as long as the end of the cold war.
Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK) I see no reason that those were badly needed to cope with the Soviets, and Carter's dealings with the Soviets and with arms issues were a major accomplishment of his presidency.
It's actually kind of sad. Carter was probably the most intelligent president in US history. He just sucked as president. I think he was the best president we ever had. He refused to allow congress to continue to play their games, and effectively gridlocked them for 4 years. A better 4 years, I couldn't ask for.
but things were better when he took office than when he left and things were much, MUCH better after four years of Reagan. Military spending was through the roof. Deficit spending dwarfed Carter's administration. The CIA and NSA were dealing drugs for international power-plays. No, things were not "MUCH better" after four years of Reagan - not by a long shot.
I have no problem with software patents, and would even be happy to see them expanded... IF we didn't grant every patent that's re-submitted after every first-round rejection, but rather awarded a small number of patents per year (say, 10,000 across all fields) to those innovators that their peers feel have contributed the most to their field through their inventions. If the most respected CS researchers really feel that the most innovative contribution this year was someone's take on tabbed browsing, then award that person a lock on commercial use (but exempt open source) of their idea for, say, 10 years with mandatory licensing. This is essentially a cash reward for having moved the state of the art forward. THAT is what patents are meant to do. The current system retards innovation and makes lawyers rich.
dobe owns the world of online video thanks to patent strong-arming against Macromedia.
Patent strong-arming? Adobe has bought Macromedia some while ago....
Correct, and they were able to do so because they won a patent suit, making a buyout a reasonable option for Macromedia, who previously had far more to gain by remaining independent.
If we had a good SVG-based video player today, this might not have happened, but it's too late in the game, and sites like YouTube aren't likely to convert to something new, risking their viewership.
Nope, Adobe owns the world of online video thanks to patent strong-arming against Macromedia.
Could you cite the bug # for Mozilla? I'm curious of the specifics, and not to say that you're not a trustworthy guy, but this is Slashdot after all. It reminds me of the time that Linus Torvalds said that Linux was a waste of his time....
In addition, the OLED panel features an ultra-wide viewing angle, a thinner profile due to the eliminated backlighting system and other peripheral elements, and energy conservation offering eco-friendly advantages.
Woohoo! I can't wait to buy one (though I'll likely wait for 32+" versions.
Do you happen to know if these are the hybrid backlit/OLED displays, or are these purely OLED? Originally the promise of OLED was that the fact that the display produced its own light, and did not require a backlight was going to mean substantially higher contrast, lower power consumption and longer life. However, at some point they discovered that it was not currently practical, as OLEDs weren't capable of sufficient luminosity, and thus hybrid displays with backlights took over.
Minors don't really own any property... your parents can take away any of your property, legally, at any time!
You understand the the second statement contradicts the first, right? There can be no seizure without property ownership. What you wanted to say is that minors do not have the same rights over their property as adults. This is true, but does not contradict what I said.
IBM has been very clear that they want to see open source software as prior art, and they've created an open source only pool of patent licensing for many of their patents. It's true that they've not been as forward as OSDL, EFF and others about the need to allow open source development to use patents, but where they're attempting to move the process is clearly well along the way to that goal, and one could argue that by partnering with OSDL on this, they've tacitly endorsed that long-term outcome, even if their rhetoric has not specifically gone that far.
It's not a step forward. It's a step back in a sense. This has been how large transformers have been build for decades. I'm sure that this application will use the same oil as street transformers, and I've seen a number of hobby applications of this in machine cooling before.
You surrender your right to bear arms by being a minor.
Well damn. I guess we've come a long way since my days shooting rifles and shotguns in Boy Scouts. I don't think anyone would argue that being allowed to use a gun under supervised conditions would in any way meet the requirements of the 2nd amendment. The point to the amendment was to specifically allow for individuals to possess weapons for use when a militia was called upon by local or state government (an idea which is a bit obsolete, but none the less, requires that you actually own a gun).
Put another way, the right to "bear arms" does not mean the right to use weapons, but to own them. Most states don't allow minors to own guns as far as I know.
Why Google wouldn't want this: 1) Google's own patents on search techniques, distributing advertisement, etc. Yes, I understand that you are talking about the need for certain limits to patent law - but this could as easily hurt Google as help them. Google takes the same stand on patent reform as IBM, as far as I know: the current law hurts innovation. They're not looking to have all of their patents stripped, just to reform the system so that innovation is encouraged. At the very least, IBM has (and I think Google too) lobbied for open source exemption. Keep in mind that IBM and Google hold tons of patents, but they mostly use them as a "warchest" to dissuade others from filing patent-related suits.
2) They are already challenging the copyright laws with GooTube, I don't see any sense in tackling both at the same time. I don't buy that one. Patent and copyright law are radically different, and in the copyright case Google is just trying to argue for existing interpretation of the law, not a change.
Google is doing this under appropriate conditions there shouldn't be concern of suits That's not how patent law works. If someone holds a patent on looking at the pixel to the left of the the one you're evaluating, and Google's software does that, then the holder could sue. What's more, there are many dozens of such simple patents surrounding OCR. It's probably the second-most over-patented area of CS next to color-space management.[1]
While it's long been shown that when students are on campus, they surrender a number of their constitutional rights (free speech, search and seizure, right to bear arms, etc.) ... uh, no. You don't surrender your right to bear arms in school. You surrender your right to bear arms by being a minor. Most states don't allow minors to get FIDs, and the Supreme Court has never even commented, as far as I know.
The goal of the project is to stop the damn email image spammers.
among other things, sure, but it's got to be a high priority for google. I don't buy either one. I think the goal of the project is to get sued.
Google knows darned well that there are tons of patents around OCR, so they're not going to roll their own internally. Instead, they'll open source the project and make as much noise about enhancing the state of the art through collaboration as possible. Then, when they get sued (and they will), they can bring this case front-and-center in the debate surrounding patent reform, citing this as the textbook example of how the promotion of the sciences and useful arts (as specified by the Constitution) is hobbled by current patent law surrounding software.
I could be wrong, but they'd be stupid to think that high-profile, open source OCR software won't be challenged by those who hold the patents....
It's neither. It's a mistake, and human beings make mistakes. They hired someone who did the wrong thing, and I'm sure that mistake is being rectified.... Opening foriegn offices is tricky stuff, and controling them is tricker. Google is just starting to figure this out.
Wow Glider = Cheating, therefore Blizz should do what it can to keep it out of the mix. WoW Glider use is cheating. WoW Glider itself is just a program.
The problem is that Blizzard (and their legal department have always been MUCH less cool than their coders, sadly) has decided to try to use the law to force people to not cheat. This is dubious at best, the way they're trying to do it, and sets frightening legal precident if they win.
If they win, then any attempt to analyze and modify a running program would constitute copyright violation. That means that programs which debug, dissassemble and tweak performance of running programs would no longer be allowed on 3rd party software. It would also bring into question the relationship between emulators and the software they run. Mame, Wine and a number of other projects might be useless if this becomes precident.
Cheating in WoW is one thing. Setting precident that hurts consumers is another.
I'm an anthropogenic global warming skeptic... and even I'm begging: for pete's sake, can we please keep it out of any j-random article that just happens to mention the Sun, any aspect of the atmosphere or dog breathing rates?! I mean, come on, this is as bad as the old, "we have to have a PostgreSQL vs MySQL fight every time an article about Web site mentions MySQL in the fine print."
Just take a deep breath and try to have a conversation ABOUT THE SUN for once.
PS: The Daily Show is on my must-watch list. I don't watch it because it's news (I have Google News for that), I watch it for the same reason I watch Slashdot: to know what my peers find interesting these days, and get the occasional laugh.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you ignoring the return to Outland and the revelation of how events have been progressing there since the portal was unavailable?
Are you ignoring the fact that players finally get to meet and interact with some of the most powerful characters in the Warcraft Universe (both Horde and Alliance get to save Thrall for their own reasons; Illidan Stormrage is defeated; etc. etc.)
I think the problem is that some players get into a "grind" to get gear, and ignore the story that they're interacting with. Stand back, take a look. Go explore new content that's being added all the time, don't just try to beat it. Read the quest text. Check out the dialogs.
World of Warcraft is expanding the Warcraft lore base all the time.
There's an interesting nod to one of his games in World of Warcraft as well. There's a quest chain, It's a Secret to Everybody, which is long and involved, and has many references to The Legend of Zelda, including a green-cloaked gnome named "Linken" who is the central character in the quest chain through which you help him recover his sword.
Sure, you can change the default to InnoDB but why isn't it set to InnoDB already?
Why sacrifice performance by default for transactional integrity when most database applications require only statement atomicity?My spam token DB, photo album manager and Wiki back-end simply don't have the ACID requirements of a bank, and I DO NOT want to pay the performance penalty for some theoretical need that I might have in the future. I'll happily lock when I need to, and track completion of complex actions. If I need true transactional integrity, I'll turn it on in a new table that I only use for that purpose, and take the performance hit there.
Open Source is now the foundation of many businesses and thus should have to play by the same rules as everyone else. If they can't afford to license the patent, too fricking bad, they should sell more t-shirts or find another business model to be able to afford to pay the required licensing fees. No. First off, I don't know of any business that makes money from open source software. Support, yes, but you don't need a license on a patent to provide support. Auto garages would go out of business tomorrow if they needed such.
Second, you're confusing a "right to profit" (which does not exist) with the reasons for the patent system.
The question is, is the software itself infringing, when it's available for modification and redistribution without restriction?
I can't see any interpretation of the Constitution that leads us to believe that the founders would have wanted to retard such an enrichment of the "sciences and useful arts," as they put it. We also have clear evidence that proprietary software can continue to play a roll in the market. So what exactly is the problem, here?
Where do I begin:
Carter was more in the "Religious Right's" pocket than Bush ever will be. Carter was a Fundamentalist Christian (a religious affiliation), but it consistently galled the religious right (a political affiliation) that he wouldn't champion their causes. For example, he was politically pro-choice, but privately held that abortion was wrong. Were visiting dignitaries allowed a glass of wine with dinner while visiting the White House in 1978? Nope! Alcohol was banned in the White House by Carter. Ok... and that makes him a poor president, why? Remember, we're comparing him to a man who hired a flunky with no experience to head up FEMA! Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!!
Inflation was through the roof (12%).
Unemployment was high (7%). The economy sucked under Carter. However, any economist worth their salt will tell you that this was an unavoidable consequence of global factors, including our exit from Viet Nam. There was also the fact that the Fed was still applying, what Greenspan would later prove to be a losing strategy for managing inflation. None of this was under Carter's control. Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion).
Devaluation of the dollar. These are consequences of a poor economy. Again, not Carter's doing. Gas shortages. Gas shortages are a tough problem, and I have to give R.R. credit for enhancing our oil options. Carter may or may not have responded in similar ways, but by the time any response was possible, he was out of office. Iranian hostage crisis.
Failure to rescue Iranian hostages. This was a very touchy situation, and I doubt we'll ever know for sure what happened. All I'll say is that, from the PR perspective, Carter hosed this one and hosed it good. Beyond that, there's just too much that was never disclosed. Demoralization and dismantling of the US military Well, the dismantling of large chunks of the military was inevitable, after the buildup during Viet Nam. Even Reagan's huge buildup in the mid/late 80s was only a stopgap that lasted as long as the end of the cold war. Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK) I see no reason that those were badly needed to cope with the Soviets, and Carter's dealings with the Soviets and with arms issues were a major accomplishment of his presidency. It's actually kind of sad. Carter was probably the most intelligent president in US history. He just sucked as president. I think he was the best president we ever had. He refused to allow congress to continue to play their games, and effectively gridlocked them for 4 years. A better 4 years, I couldn't ask for. but things were better when he took office than when he left and things were much, MUCH better after four years of Reagan. Military spending was through the roof. Deficit spending dwarfed Carter's administration. The CIA and NSA were dealing drugs for international power-plays. No, things were not "MUCH better" after four years of Reagan - not by a long shot.
I have no problem with software patents, and would even be happy to see them expanded... IF we didn't grant every patent that's re-submitted after every first-round rejection, but rather awarded a small number of patents per year (say, 10,000 across all fields) to those innovators that their peers feel have contributed the most to their field through their inventions. If the most respected CS researchers really feel that the most innovative contribution this year was someone's take on tabbed browsing, then award that person a lock on commercial use (but exempt open source) of their idea for, say, 10 years with mandatory licensing. This is essentially a cash reward for having moved the state of the art forward. THAT is what patents are meant to do. The current system retards innovation and makes lawyers rich.
dobe owns the world of online video thanks to patent strong-arming against Macromedia.
Patent strong-arming? Adobe has bought Macromedia some while ago....
Correct, and they were able to do so because they won a patent suit, making a buyout a reasonable option for Macromedia, who previously had far more to gain by remaining independent.If we had a good SVG-based video player today, this might not have happened, but it's too late in the game, and sites like YouTube aren't likely to convert to something new, risking their viewership.
Nope, Adobe owns the world of online video thanks to patent strong-arming against Macromedia.
Could you cite the bug # for Mozilla? I'm curious of the specifics, and not to say that you're not a trustworthy guy, but this is Slashdot after all. It reminds me of the time that Linus Torvalds said that Linux was a waste of his time....
Oddly enough, he died while I and some co-workers were watching Mother Night (based on his story).
A rather disturbing coincidence in the light of the next day....
Woohoo! I can't wait to buy one (though I'll likely wait for 32+" versions.
Do you happen to know if these are the hybrid backlit/OLED displays, or are these purely OLED? Originally the promise of OLED was that the fact that the display produced its own light, and did not require a backlight was going to mean substantially higher contrast, lower power consumption and longer life. However, at some point they discovered that it was not currently practical, as OLEDs weren't capable of sufficient luminosity, and thus hybrid displays with backlights took over.
Has that changed?
Everyone surrenders their right to bear arms on a school campus except for active law enforcement, or military during the execution of orders
This I did not know. Thanks.Minors don't really own any property ... your parents can take away any of your property, legally, at any time!
You understand the the second statement contradicts the first, right? There can be no seizure without property ownership. What you wanted to say is that minors do not have the same rights over their property as adults. This is true, but does not contradict what I said.IBM has been very clear that they want to see open source software as prior art, and they've created an open source only pool of patent licensing for many of their patents. It's true that they've not been as forward as OSDL, EFF and others about the need to allow open source development to use patents, but where they're attempting to move the process is clearly well along the way to that goal, and one could argue that by partnering with OSDL on this, they've tacitly endorsed that long-term outcome, even if their rhetoric has not specifically gone that far.
It's not a step forward. It's a step back in a sense. This has been how large transformers have been build for decades. I'm sure that this application will use the same oil as street transformers, and I've seen a number of hobby applications of this in machine cooling before.
Well damn. I guess we've come a long way since my days shooting rifles and shotguns in Boy Scouts. I don't think anyone would argue that being allowed to use a gun under supervised conditions would in any way meet the requirements of the 2nd amendment. The point to the amendment was to specifically allow for individuals to possess weapons for use when a militia was called upon by local or state government (an idea which is a bit obsolete, but none the less, requires that you actually own a gun).
Put another way, the right to "bear arms" does not mean the right to use weapons, but to own them. Most states don't allow minors to own guns as far as I know.
1) Google's own patents on search techniques, distributing advertisement, etc. Yes, I understand that you are talking about the need for certain limits to patent law - but this could as easily hurt Google as help them. Google takes the same stand on patent reform as IBM, as far as I know: the current law hurts innovation. They're not looking to have all of their patents stripped, just to reform the system so that innovation is encouraged. At the very least, IBM has (and I think Google too) lobbied for open source exemption. Keep in mind that IBM and Google hold tons of patents, but they mostly use them as a "warchest" to dissuade others from filing patent-related suits. 2) They are already challenging the copyright laws with GooTube, I don't see any sense in tackling both at the same time. I don't buy that one. Patent and copyright law are radically different, and in the copyright case Google is just trying to argue for existing interpretation of the law, not a change. Google is doing this under appropriate conditions there shouldn't be concern of suits That's not how patent law works. If someone holds a patent on looking at the pixel to the left of the the one you're evaluating, and Google's software does that, then the holder could sue. What's more, there are many dozens of such simple patents surrounding OCR. It's probably the second-most over-patented area of CS next to color-space management.[1]
among other things, sure, but it's got to be a high priority for google. I don't buy either one. I think the goal of the project is to get sued.
Google knows darned well that there are tons of patents around OCR, so they're not going to roll their own internally. Instead, they'll open source the project and make as much noise about enhancing the state of the art through collaboration as possible. Then, when they get sued (and they will), they can bring this case front-and-center in the debate surrounding patent reform, citing this as the textbook example of how the promotion of the sciences and useful arts (as specified by the Constitution) is hobbled by current patent law surrounding software.
I could be wrong, but they'd be stupid to think that high-profile, open source OCR software won't be challenged by those who hold the patents....
It's neither. It's a mistake, and human beings make mistakes. They hired someone who did the wrong thing, and I'm sure that mistake is being rectified.... Opening foriegn offices is tricky stuff, and controling them is tricker. Google is just starting to figure this out.
The problem is that Blizzard (and their legal department have always been MUCH less cool than their coders, sadly) has decided to try to use the law to force people to not cheat. This is dubious at best, the way they're trying to do it, and sets frightening legal precident if they win.
If they win, then any attempt to analyze and modify a running program would constitute copyright violation. That means that programs which debug, dissassemble and tweak performance of running programs would no longer be allowed on 3rd party software. It would also bring into question the relationship between emulators and the software they run. Mame, Wine and a number of other projects might be useless if this becomes precident.
Cheating in WoW is one thing. Setting precident that hurts consumers is another.
I'm an anthropogenic global warming skeptic... and even I'm begging: for pete's sake, can we please keep it out of any j-random article that just happens to mention the Sun, any aspect of the atmosphere or dog breathing rates?! I mean, come on, this is as bad as the old, "we have to have a PostgreSQL vs MySQL fight every time an article about Web site mentions MySQL in the fine print."
Just take a deep breath and try to have a conversation ABOUT THE SUN for once.
PS: The Daily Show is on my must-watch list. I don't watch it because it's news (I have Google News for that), I watch it for the same reason I watch Slashdot: to know what my peers find interesting these days, and get the occasional laugh.