Tivo's biggest problem isn't technical, it's legal. A lot of the really cool functionality that TIVO designers and engineers have wanted to include or used to include do things like piss off the networks, the RIAA, the MPAA, etc.
A significant portion of their efforts are devoted to avoiding legal battles. They used to automagically skip commercials. The networks and their advertisers rasied a total stink about it, so now TIVO doesn't skip the ads any more, it records them as a part of the show. The RIAA had a cow over the ability of TIVO to share music so now you can only share your MP3 file share to a TIVO you own. You can no longer go to a friends house and say "Connect to my music, I've got this song you have to hear". Additionally, you can no longer share your TIVO'd shows or movies so "I TIVO'd this show you need to see" is also out since you can only transfer recorded shows to TIVO's you personally own and have registered with the TIVO service.
All in all, I blame the RIAA, the MPAA and things like the DMCA for restricting my TIVO from being the coolest thing ever. For that reason, and many like, I urge everyone to stop buying music, videos, DVD's or anything else that puts money in the pocket of these loosers. Perhaps if they loose their funding, they'll eventually go away!
What no one seems to have mentioned is that there would be a person invading my personal space and having a nice chat with my key ring. Since my key ring normally lives either in my hand, coat pocket, or purse, you'd definitely be "in my space", in which case I'd notice you, and move away. If you move to follow me, you're going to make me really uncomfortable and if you do it a couple of times, you're going to get either asked WFT or maced.
This is more difficult than than you think to do this, which is why TI isn't particulary worried about it.
I don't know about where you are, but where I am the state appoints an executor from a pool of attorneys who have signed up at the county court house to be exectuors in their county if someone dies without a will.
Once that happens, the court appointed executor manages the estate.
In the rush to make cell phones smaller and lighter, the designers have left out an important consideration - namely the size of a the human finger tip.
I've passed on several cell phones because the buttons were too small for me to operate the phone. I tend to sport long nails and this only complicates my issues.
At least with a rotary phone, I could dial it with my fingers easily.
2) Will the me on Mars be a duplicate/clone or will it be me?
3) Won't cloning be obsolete? Why bother cloning yourself when you can just make a "photocopy" that pops out of the printer.
4) How do you decide who is the "real" person? I mean what if I need part of a spinal cord or some other item that has to be harvested from a fully developed "me"?
It's not about dumbing things down for the geeks, it's about dumbing things down for the MBA's in the board room (you've seen the FedEx commercial??). They don't know a widget from a gizmo or a packet from a frame. Having techincal sounding words they can say and sort of understand makes them feel important. They are generally excluded from our circle and this makes them feel like they are "in" (even though we all know they'll NEVER be "in").
All you have to do is either price it be below their signature limit or make it sound good enough that the next guy up the chain, who has sufficient purchasing authority, will sign the PO.
When stuff like this actually starts making it to slashdot, we're doomed.
Personally, I don't feel sorry for them at all. It seems like just desserts to me since they are responsible for a LARGE portion of the spyware that we end up removing from PC's on a regular basis.
My reply to them is WAAAAAA!!! We (the internet community) asked you not to do a bunch of things which were "bad" (spam and spyware). You went ahead and did the "bad" things and now someone who is "badder" is doing "bad" things to you and you want us to help you.
Hmmmm...let me think about this - help the spamming spywaring jackesses - no, not today.....eat sh**, die, turn green, and bloat. I think that about covers it. Asking us to be upset about the possible demise of gambling on the internet, with the problems you have caused, is like asking someone to be upset because their hemmorhoid has suddenly and painlessly fallen off.
In addition, I fail to see what benefit you provide anyone. Someone mentioned taxes. Most of the gambling sites are located in a few countries in Central America (like Belize) where the money is usually paid to a corrupt goverment that uses it to more efficiently repress the local population. There is strong evidence that the cocaine cartels are involved.
If you don't agree to accept their religion, they use their character to kill yours. Hmmm...that seems to violate both the old and new testament.
Old Testament - Thou shalt not kill.
New Testament - Love thy neighbor as thy self.
They protest about being stereo typed but they offer up a pretty grim stereo type of gamers that isn't even accurate. Stastically speaking, the average gamer is 23 year old male with a life who likes to game to blow off steam.
I personally like to game. I scuba, rollerblade, and ride horses when I'm not gaming, so I'd say that the no sports thing is probably a wash too.
Then they actually brag about following people around to annoy them in to converting or staging "conversion duels". Frankly, if they are free to express their religion, I'm free to express mine.
There are several adaptive technologies that would allow your father to actually use a computer, not just display photos, although he could easily do that as well.
I know that some years back, I did some work with a local charity here to assist them in adapting the IHADS targeting system to be an on screen head-mounted pointing device. Combined with an on screen keyboard like this http://march-of-faces.org/resources/vkt.html and there are several of these available, your father could have full use of a computer.
I don't know if your father is interested in using a computer but this seems that he would be. I know that several alternative access methods exist and depending on his specific disabilities something should be available that will allow him full access to the internet.
If you need contact information, drop me a line. I think I still have the stuff from those guys.
Actually, if you've been following the news reports closely, WMD's were found and that's been totally downplayed by everyone.
Link 1 - http://middleeastreference.org.uk/ios030912.html This describes the UK's (not the USA's) dossier on IRAQ. They felt like he was working on a nuclear program, which we now know to be the case, in mobile units, which are most likely no longer in Iraq.
http://osborn-scientific.com/PDF/Positive_test_f or _terror_toxins_in_Iraq.htm This link confirms that WMD's were being produced in Iraq.
This is what the BBC had to say http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/29022 59.stm
The French even thought that they had WMD's before we invaded.
I'm pretty ticked over all of this. After 9-11 happened, all these people sat around, whining and wringing their hands "Why didn't the government DO something?"
Now that something's being done, the same people are sitting around whining and wringing their hands "Why are we in Iraq?"
The major factor that seems to be lacking in a lot game reviews is honesty. Far too many of the commercial game reviews seem to be either written by the devlopers or their marketing cohorts. I know of one game who had to get an employee to put up their first fan site!
If there are problems in the game, I'd like to see them reported. I've yet to see anything like that in anyone's reviews, unless they are another end user who's not associated with the game or a web site who sells the game. None of the magazines or on line review sites give you this kind of information. Just to illustrate, I'll name some examples.
I've purchased several games only to be severely disappointed. I purchased Morrowind III Bethesda Softworks and it took me 3 months just to get to a point where I could create a character without the game causing me to get the BSOD thanks to an illegal call to my video driver. I was not alone in this problem. How hard it is to tell people that your game isn't compatible with the NVIDIA chipset? At the time the NVIDIA chipset was the hottest card around and in order to meet their sales projections, they kept mum.
I purchased Sacred by Ascaron Entertainment and it's so full of bugs as more annoying than fun to play. The on line forums are full of people who state that they have moved on to other games because of the bugs. Their patches only seem to make matters worse and many of the bugs only affect high level characters (over lvl 100).
Guild Wars is still in beta because of issues. Worlds of War Craft recent extended its "grace" period for paying customers because of it's problems. The whole Prince of Persia series has been problematic for me and I've never been able to get even their demos to work properly for me, so I've been spared shelling out $50 for something that didn't work.
Lest everyone think I only flame, I will list some of the positives. I've purchased I of the Dragon and it's been nearly flawless even though it's written by a small team who's relatively new to game development in Russia. It's also one of the more inventive games I've played in a while. Nothing like being able to eat your enemies! I also purchased Rise of Nations and it too has been nearly flawless even though its just a nicer version of AOE. I'm also a big fan of Neverwinter Nights and the Gothic series.
It's nice to know that my safety has been compromised by a bunch of jackasses who can't code their way out of a paper bag. In my business, if you don't deliver, you don't get paid. If you've already been paid, you have to refund the client.
Since the project tanked, I want a refund. The FBI should get their money back from the vendor and have to return it to all of us. Since the last census showed about 240,000,000 tax payers, I'm due a refund of 42 cents. I'd also go so far as to say that every tax payer in the USA is also due a refund of 42 cents.
Great! In addition to Joe Bob and Billy Jack sitting in the back room guzzling beer and sending out porn spam, now we have it becoming insitutionalized by the venture capitalists.
Next thing you know, you'll be forced to accept delivery of it since they'll hire a lobbist to go to Congress and shove that legislation through like the MPAA & RIAA did with the DMCA.
When does it end? The USA needs to make spamming illegal and make it illegal to invest in companies that spam. We should filter traffic at the perimeter and dump the traffic from any country that doesn't have laws against spam.
Unfortunately, the Borg Collective (aka M$) seems to think that if they hold the license for stuff they can control how you use it. Up to now, they've been right. Given their track record, I'd be very wary of this move and I'm surprised that the IETF and/or IEEE hasn't made some moves to block their liceseing based on the grounds that several of the protocols predate the existence of The Collective.
I find that the fact that they are trying to license things to which they are not entitled to be highly suspcicious. Any time they start down a path like this, they are up to something. Most of us have refused to be assimilated so we should be working to break their licenses now. Don't wait for the DOJ to do it and don't ignore them. They've made a serious move and it's time for open source to make a serious counter move.
Instead of "Remember the Alamo", it's "Remember Netscape!".
My favorite is that fat gal at the grocery store with 6 kids in the cart. Instead of BUYING a package of cookies, she steals them from the store. You've all seen her, she just opens up a bag, takes some out, hands them to the kids, and puts the bag back on the shelf - open. My second favorite is that moron who has to stick her thumbnail into all the produce that she doesn't buy. My third favorite is the jackass who steals gasoline by tanking up and driving off.
You know what all these things have in common - they make the price I pay for things go up. I buy the things I want with my hard earned cash. So it really ticks me off when some people start trying to get something for nothing. For every person who gets something for nothing, there are usually a lot of folks who get nothing for something. You may not be paying the tab, but I guarantee you that the tab is there and it's getting paid by someone.
I hope stores do this. I think it will help them lower their prices, which will be good for me.
Have you people listened to yourselves? You're no better than the gay guy that votes for Kerry because Kerry's not against gay marriage. Personally, I think if gays want to get married, have community property, get divorced, pay alimony and childsupport, more power to them. I feel no need to try to legislate what happens in someone else's bedroom. They keep out mine and I keep out of theirs.
As much as I hate the current system, rule by committe is even worse. SomeONE has to be in charge and delegating authority. That's why we elect a president. We get together and decide who's orders we'll take for 4 years. We also elect a lot of his underlings (i.e. the House and Senate). Frankly, IMHO we're at a delicate phase in our history and we need someone who can make decisions. I don't always agree with Bush's decisions but at least he does make them and stick to them. We might not end up where I want to go, but we'll definitely not be where we are now in 4 years.
Further more, many of you are IT people. How many of you have ever seen a good product come out of a "design by committee" process? It's always a CF and you know it. For the rest of you, when have you EVER seen anything accomplished in a committee meeting at work that was more important than someone's birthday party or shower?
Next time you go to a meeting at the office, watch what happens and what doesn't get done. Then decide if you want your entire government run like that.
Let's face up to some hard facts. Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Israel - who cares? All those people have been fighting with other groups in their respective areas for THOUSANDS of years. They aren't going to stop just because we ask them to nicely. The only way to end this is to END it. Someone finally has to win the conflict and do away with the others.
Personally, I say we build a big fence around the groups that wish to continue squabbling, toss all the extra muntions we can find over the fence and let them go at it. We check in peroidically until they've quit fighting. This should make it relatively easy for us to pick off the now weakened survivors. After all, we don't want really violent people around and if they've managed to survive all that....
You should not do this. The ONLY way that I've ever seen this work out well is if the venture is successful enough to pay out what the participants feel entitled to but without being too successful that they feel entited to more than what they're actually getting.
It's been my experience and the experience of several people that I know, that you family feels ENTITLED to f*** you over. You are just the same old "Bob", "Tim" or "Jimmy" that they've known for ever and so they have a sense of ownership of you. They will justify this by telling themselves that "They made you what you are." If they bought you a computer in 3rd grade, they feel entited to a portion of the profits of your programming business today.
Strangers are more trustworthy in this regard because they are not related to you and so don't have that sense of entitlement to your gains from your hard work. Outsiders have no way to rationalize that sense of entitlement.
It also helps NOT to hire family if you non-related employees working for you. It's too easy for someone to claim "nepotism" and "favoritism" in an environment where you have close personal ties to one employee but not others. It can also open the door for "sexual harrassment" suits when one of the employee's is your significant other. I know of one business that changed hands over that very circumstance.
Personally, I'd vote for the $165,000,000.00 judgement to be paid by HER PARENTS. Maybe that will get parents to pay attention to what their kids are doing on line. Just as you don't (if you are a good parent) park your kid in front of the cable or sattelite TV, you don't just park your kid in front of the computer.
Sure your kid can be watching Discovery channel, but they could just as easily be watching the Playboy channel, if you aren't paying attention to what they are doing. Why didn't her parent's know what she was doing with the computer? What if she had set up her own version of "Debbie's Web Cam"? The RIAA shouldn't have to bring things like this to parent's attention.
I have never had much respect for Yahoo. I had an experience with them early on where I reported a site that they were hosting (then free) for spamming me. I was informed that they had no control over the websites that they hosted and flatly refused to make one of the them stop spamming me. I replied to them that if they didn't stop the spam, I would be doing some spamming of my own, by posting their reply, in full, to all the usenet news groups. They did reply after that they would be shutting the site down.
More recently (last month), we had a 14 year old girl post to one of the security mailing lists that I'm on. Her best friend moved out of state and their parents both bought web cams so that the girls could remain in contact. She was on line using the Yahoo service to chat with her friend when a man broke into their chat session and started trying to get the girls to remove their clothing.
She was able to obtain some information from this induhvidual that was quite interesting - apparently Yahoo's service will allow other the people to come in over the wire and turn on your web cam remotely WITHOUT your knowledge or consent. It will allow them to monitor your conversations again WITHOUT informing you.
This particular man had been watching both the girls for months. He also particpated in a chat room that swapped URL's of Yahoo user's web cams. According to the man that she spoke with, she and her friend had achieved rather high ratings in this chat room, which lead him to try contacting the girls directly.
Fortunately, this young lady had the presence of mind to contact her parents who were able to coach her off camera on how to deal with this pervert to obtain as much information as possible. Yahoo, when contacted, said that they do not currently have any plans to upgrade their service to stop this kind of incident from happening to anyone else. They were very informative about the fact that this has been a "known issue" with their web chat service for "quite some time".
Moral of the story - dictionary definition of yahoo - A crude or brutish person. Go check www.dictionary.com.
You know, as a US resident and citizen, I don't expect our laws to carry weight around the world. I routinely hunt spammers and get their sites yanked, accounts revoked, etc. Most of my spam doesn't even arrive in english much less originate from within our borders.
How in the world is this going to stop some nimrod in Uzbeckistan or Korea from spamming me?
A wise man once said that there are "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statitics". According to the RIAA, they are "loosing money" because all of us are burning not buying. Now, they are spending less in recruiting new acts, promoting CD's, promoting tours, and generally doing less of everything that generates revenue for them. The kicker is that now they want to complain because they are making less money. In my workd, when I work less I make less. Hmmm, guess the RIAA thinks that they should be exempt from having to work to earn a living?
I suppose that they have decided that they are going to make up the "difference" by taking it out of the artists pockets. The most telling piece I have seen was an independent audit conducted on 1000 randomly chosen musicans/groups by a music magazine. All of the musicians/groups were represented by the RIAA. All but 2 of them had been underpaid by the RIAA. The amounts ranged from $163 to over $500,000.
If I want to buy a song, why can't the band just post an reduced-sample rate mp3 on the internet and make me pay a minimal fee to download it? If I want something of higher quality, I'd be willing to go to the store and buy a digitally mastered CD. But I don't want to pay $16.99 for a CD that has 1 good song and 14 other bits of cheesy crappy filler that you slapped together and tossed on the CD so JUST so that you can call it an album and go on tour with it.
They are too smart to make their entire catalog digitally available at the record store. I can't just walk in anywhere and get Etta James or Chee-Yun or Ledbelly or Complete Mushroom or any of the other stuff that I'm really interested in. If I could walk in and get them to burn me a CD with the tracks I want, include the lyrics, and let me pick my cover art, I'd be probably be quite happy to pay.
Instead, they are hide bound dinosaurs that offer nothing of value either to the artist or the consumer.
They take a perfectly good artist, repackage them into some generic format that "will sell" and turn out one hit wonders by the truck load. People don't eat cornflakes all the time. They like things that are a bit different. This is unfair to the artist because they have now been robbed of their intital following and since this is not their style, they are now unable to follow up with anything of merit. They also extort unbelivable percentages of the gross, net, concessions, etc. in exchange for screwing the up like this. It's as unnatural as "Processed Cheese Food".
It is unfair to the consumer because we end up with a 1000 Brittany Spears wanna-be's and very few artists of substance. It's like trying to live on McFish Sandwiches. In 10 years, who is really going to care that Brittany "did it again"? or that NSYNC went "bye bye bye"? If you don't want your stuff downloaded and passed around, maybe you shouldn't cater to 12 year old little girls that have no taste yet??? not to mention no money! You should try catering to segements of the population that are gainfully employed and have disposable income. We're less likely to download and more likely to buy....
Slashdot Mirror
Tivo's biggest problem isn't technical, it's legal. A lot of the really cool functionality that TIVO designers and engineers have wanted to include or used to include do things like piss off the networks, the RIAA, the MPAA, etc.
A significant portion of their efforts are devoted to avoiding legal battles. They used to automagically skip commercials. The networks and their advertisers rasied a total stink about it, so now TIVO doesn't skip the ads any more, it records them as a part of the show. The RIAA had a cow over the ability of TIVO to share music so now you can only share your MP3 file share to a TIVO you own. You can no longer go to a friends house and say "Connect to my music, I've got this song you have to hear". Additionally, you can no longer share your TIVO'd shows or movies so "I TIVO'd this show you need to see" is also out since you can only transfer recorded shows to TIVO's you personally own and have registered with the TIVO service.
All in all, I blame the RIAA, the MPAA and things like the DMCA for restricting my TIVO from being the coolest thing ever. For that reason, and many like, I urge everyone to stop buying music, videos, DVD's or anything else that puts money in the pocket of these loosers. Perhaps if they loose their funding, they'll eventually go away!
2 cents,
Queen B
What no one seems to have mentioned is that there would be a person invading my personal space and having a nice chat with my key ring. Since my key ring normally lives either in my hand, coat pocket, or purse, you'd definitely be "in my space", in which case I'd notice you, and move away. If you move to follow me, you're going to make me really uncomfortable and if you do it a couple of times, you're going to get either asked WFT or maced.
This is more difficult than than you think to do this, which is why TI isn't particulary worried about it.
2 cents,
Queen B
I don't know about where you are, but where I am the state appoints an executor from a pool of attorneys who have signed up at the county court house to be exectuors in their county if someone dies without a will.
Once that happens, the court appointed executor manages the estate.
2 cents,
Queen B
In the rush to make cell phones smaller and lighter, the designers have left out an important consideration - namely the size of a the human finger tip.
I've passed on several cell phones because the buttons were too small for me to operate the phone. I tend to sport long nails and this only complicates my issues.
At least with a rotary phone, I could dial it with my fingers easily.
2 cents,
Queen B
This presents several interesting questions:
1) Will I be able to fax myself to Mars?
2) Will the me on Mars be a duplicate/clone or will it be me?
3) Won't cloning be obsolete? Why bother cloning yourself when you can just make a "photocopy" that pops out of the printer.
4) How do you decide who is the "real" person? I mean what if I need part of a spinal cord or some other item that has to be harvested from a fully developed "me"?
2 cents,
Queen B
It's not about dumbing things down for the geeks, it's about dumbing things down for the MBA's in the board room (you've seen the FedEx commercial??). They don't know a widget from a gizmo or a packet from a frame. Having techincal sounding words they can say and sort of understand makes them feel important. They are generally excluded from our circle and this makes them feel like they are "in" (even though we all know they'll NEVER be "in").
All you have to do is either price it be below their signature limit or make it sound good enough that the next guy up the chain, who has sufficient purchasing authority, will sign the PO.
When stuff like this actually starts making it to slashdot, we're doomed.
2 cents,
Queen B
Personally, I don't feel sorry for them at all. It seems like just desserts to me since they are responsible for a LARGE portion of the spyware that we end up removing from PC's on a regular basis.
My reply to them is WAAAAAA!!! We (the internet community) asked you not to do a bunch of things which were "bad" (spam and spyware). You went ahead and did the "bad" things and now someone who is "badder" is doing "bad" things to you and you want us to help you.
Hmmmm...let me think about this - help the spamming spywaring jackesses - no, not today.....eat sh**, die, turn green, and bloat. I think that about covers it. Asking us to be upset about the possible demise of gambling on the internet, with the problems you have caused, is like asking someone to be upset because their hemmorhoid has suddenly and painlessly fallen off.
In addition, I fail to see what benefit you provide anyone. Someone mentioned taxes. Most of the gambling sites are located in a few countries in Central America (like Belize) where the money is usually paid to a corrupt goverment that uses it to more efficiently repress the local population. There is strong evidence that the cocaine cartels are involved.
2 cents,
Queen B
If you don't agree to accept their religion, they use their character to kill yours. Hmmm...that seems to violate both the old and new testament. Old Testament - Thou shalt not kill.
New Testament - Love thy neighbor as thy self.
They protest about being stereo typed but they offer up a pretty grim stereo type of gamers that isn't even accurate. Stastically speaking, the average gamer is 23 year old male with a life who likes to game to blow off steam.
I personally like to game. I scuba, rollerblade, and ride horses when I'm not gaming, so I'd say that the no sports thing is probably a wash too.
Then they actually brag about following people around to annoy them in to converting or staging "conversion duels". Frankly, if they are free to express their religion, I'm free to express mine.
BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP ME NOW, PUNY MORTAL!!!!There are several adaptive technologies that would allow your father to actually use a computer, not just display photos, although he could easily do that as well.
I know that some years back, I did some work with a local charity here to assist them in adapting the IHADS targeting system to be an on screen head-mounted pointing device. Combined with an on screen keyboard like this http://march-of-faces.org/resources/vkt.html and there are several of these available, your father could have full use of a computer.
I don't know if your father is interested in using a computer but this seems that he would be. I know that several alternative access methods exist and depending on his specific disabilities something should be available that will allow him full access to the internet.
If you need contact information, drop me a line. I think I still have the stuff from those guys.
2 cents, Queen BActually, if you've been following the news reports closely, WMD's were found and that's been totally downplayed by everyone.
f or _terror_toxins_in_Iraq.htm
2 59.stm
Link 1 - http://middleeastreference.org.uk/ios030912.html
This describes the UK's (not the USA's) dossier on IRAQ. They felt like he was working on a nuclear program, which we now know to be the case, in mobile units, which are most likely no longer in Iraq.
http://osborn-scientific.com/PDF/Positive_test_
This link confirms that WMD's were being produced in Iraq.
This is what the BBC had to say http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2902
The French even thought that they had WMD's before we invaded.
I'm pretty ticked over all of this. After 9-11 happened, all these people sat around, whining and wringing their hands "Why didn't the government DO something?"
Now that something's being done, the same people are sitting around whining and wringing their hands "Why are we in Iraq?"
To which I reply - DUH!!!!!!!!!
2 cents,
Queen B
The major factor that seems to be lacking in a lot game reviews is honesty. Far too many of the commercial game reviews seem to be either written by the devlopers or their marketing cohorts. I know of one game who had to get an employee to put up their first fan site!
If there are problems in the game, I'd like to see them reported. I've yet to see anything like that in anyone's reviews, unless they are another end user who's not associated with the game or a web site who sells the game. None of the magazines or on line review sites give you this kind of information. Just to illustrate, I'll name some examples.
I've purchased several games only to be severely disappointed. I purchased Morrowind III Bethesda Softworks and it took me 3 months just to get to a point where I could create a character without the game causing me to get the BSOD thanks to an illegal call to my video driver. I was not alone in this problem. How hard it is to tell people that your game isn't compatible with the NVIDIA chipset? At the time the NVIDIA chipset was the hottest card around and in order to meet their sales projections, they kept mum.
I purchased Sacred by Ascaron Entertainment and it's so full of bugs as more annoying than fun to play. The on line forums are full of people who state that they have moved on to other games because of the bugs. Their patches only seem to make matters worse and many of the bugs only affect high level characters (over lvl 100).
Guild Wars is still in beta because of issues. Worlds of War Craft recent extended its "grace" period for paying customers because of it's problems. The whole Prince of Persia series has been problematic for me and I've never been able to get even their demos to work properly for me, so I've been spared shelling out $50 for something that didn't work.
Lest everyone think I only flame, I will list some of the positives. I've purchased I of the Dragon and it's been nearly flawless even though it's written by a small team who's relatively new to game development in Russia. It's also one of the more inventive games I've played in a while. Nothing like being able to eat your enemies! I also purchased Rise of Nations and it too has been nearly flawless even though its just a nicer version of AOE. I'm also a big fan of Neverwinter Nights and the Gothic series.
2 cents,
Queen B
It's nice to know that my safety has been compromised by a bunch of jackasses who can't code their way out of a paper bag. In my business, if you don't deliver, you don't get paid. If you've already been paid, you have to refund the client.
Since the project tanked, I want a refund. The FBI should get their money back from the vendor and have to return it to all of us. Since the last census showed about 240,000,000 tax payers, I'm due a refund of 42 cents. I'd also go so far as to say that every tax payer in the USA is also due a refund of 42 cents.
42 cents,
Queen B
Great! In addition to Joe Bob and Billy Jack sitting in the back room guzzling beer and sending out porn spam, now we have it becoming insitutionalized by the venture capitalists.
Next thing you know, you'll be forced to accept delivery of it since they'll hire a lobbist to go to Congress and shove that legislation through like the MPAA & RIAA did with the DMCA.
When does it end? The USA needs to make spamming illegal and make it illegal to invest in companies that spam. We should filter traffic at the perimeter and dump the traffic from any country that doesn't have laws against spam.
2 cents,
Queen B
Unfortunately, the Borg Collective (aka M$) seems to think that if they hold the license for stuff they can control how you use it. Up to now, they've been right. Given their track record, I'd be very wary of this move and I'm surprised that the IETF and/or IEEE hasn't made some moves to block their liceseing based on the grounds that several of the protocols predate the existence of The Collective.
I find that the fact that they are trying to license things to which they are not entitled to be highly suspcicious. Any time they start down a path like this, they are up to something. Most of us have refused to be assimilated so we should be working to break their licenses now. Don't wait for the DOJ to do it and don't ignore them. They've made a serious move and it's time for open source to make a serious counter move.
Instead of "Remember the Alamo", it's "Remember Netscape!".
2 cents,
Queen B
My favorite is that fat gal at the grocery store with 6 kids in the cart. Instead of BUYING a package of cookies, she steals them from the store. You've all seen her, she just opens up a bag, takes some out, hands them to the kids, and puts the bag back on the shelf - open. My second favorite is that moron who has to stick her thumbnail into all the produce that she doesn't buy. My third favorite is the jackass who steals gasoline by tanking up and driving off.
You know what all these things have in common - they make the price I pay for things go up. I buy the things I want with my hard earned cash. So it really ticks me off when some people start trying to get something for nothing. For every person who gets something for nothing, there are usually a lot of folks who get nothing for something. You may not be paying the tab, but I guarantee you that the tab is there and it's getting paid by someone.
I hope stores do this. I think it will help them lower their prices, which will be good for me.
2 cents,
Queen B
Ok, All BS aside, there's just something a bit creepy about a gay man taking a bunch of little boys out in the woods. 2 cents, Queen B
Have you people listened to yourselves? You're no better than the gay guy that votes for Kerry because Kerry's not against gay marriage. Personally, I think if gays want to get married, have community property, get divorced, pay alimony and childsupport, more power to them. I feel no need to try to legislate what happens in someone else's bedroom. They keep out mine and I keep out of theirs.
As much as I hate the current system, rule by committe is even worse. SomeONE has to be in charge and delegating authority. That's why we elect a president. We get together and decide who's orders we'll take for 4 years. We also elect a lot of his underlings (i.e. the House and Senate). Frankly, IMHO we're at a delicate phase in our history and we need someone who can make decisions. I don't always agree with Bush's decisions but at least he does make them and stick to them. We might not end up where I want to go, but we'll definitely not be where we are now in 4 years.
Further more, many of you are IT people. How many of you have ever seen a good product come out of a "design by committee" process? It's always a CF and you know it. For the rest of you, when have you EVER seen anything accomplished in a committee meeting at work that was more important than someone's birthday party or shower?
Next time you go to a meeting at the office, watch what happens and what doesn't get done. Then decide if you want your entire government run like that.
2 cents,
Queen B
People,
Let's face up to some hard facts. Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Israel - who cares? All those people have been fighting with other groups in their respective areas for THOUSANDS of years. They aren't going to stop just because we ask them to nicely. The only way to end this is to END it. Someone finally has to win the conflict and do away with the others.
Personally, I say we build a big fence around the groups that wish to continue squabbling, toss all the extra muntions we can find over the fence and let them go at it. We check in peroidically until they've quit fighting. This should make it relatively easy for us to pick off the now weakened survivors. After all, we don't want really violent people around and if they've managed to survive all that....
Queen B
You should not do this. The ONLY way that I've ever seen this work out well is if the venture is successful enough to pay out what the participants feel entitled to but without being too successful that they feel entited to more than what they're actually getting.
It's been my experience and the experience of several people that I know, that you family feels ENTITLED to f*** you over. You are just the same old "Bob", "Tim" or "Jimmy" that they've known for ever and so they have a sense of ownership of you. They will justify this by telling themselves that "They made you what you are."
If they bought you a computer in 3rd grade, they feel entited to a portion of the profits of your programming business today.
Strangers are more trustworthy in this regard because they are not related to you and so don't have that sense of entitlement to your gains from your hard work. Outsiders have no way to rationalize that sense of entitlement.
It also helps NOT to hire family if you non-related employees working for you. It's too easy for someone to claim "nepotism" and "favoritism" in an environment where you have close personal ties to one employee but not others. It can also open the door for "sexual harrassment" suits when one of the employee's is your significant other. I know of one business that changed hands over that very circumstance.
2 cents,
The Queen
So the high school kid is smarter than our elected officials.....
I've always suspected this but now we have PROOF!
Personally, I'd vote for the $165,000,000.00 judgement to be paid by HER PARENTS. Maybe that will get parents to pay attention to what their kids are doing on line. Just as you don't (if you are a good parent) park your kid in front of the cable or sattelite TV, you don't just park your kid in front of the computer.
Sure your kid can be watching Discovery channel, but they could just as easily be watching the Playboy channel, if you aren't paying attention to what they are doing. Why didn't her parent's know what she was doing with the computer? What if she had set up her own version of "Debbie's Web Cam"? The RIAA shouldn't have to bring things like this to parent's attention.
2 cents,
Queen B
I have never had much respect for Yahoo. I had an experience with them early on where I reported a site that they were hosting (then free) for spamming me. I was informed that they had no control over the websites that they hosted and flatly refused to make one of the them stop spamming me. I replied to them that if they didn't stop the spam, I would be doing some spamming of my own, by posting their reply, in full, to all the usenet news groups. They did reply after that they would be shutting the site down.
More recently (last month), we had a 14 year old girl post to one of the security mailing lists
that I'm on. Her best friend moved out of state and their parents both bought web cams so that the girls could remain in contact. She was on line using the Yahoo service to chat with her friend when a man broke into their chat session and started trying to get the girls to remove their clothing.
She was able to obtain some information from this induhvidual that was quite interesting - apparently Yahoo's service will allow other the people to come in over the wire and turn on your web cam remotely WITHOUT your knowledge or consent. It will allow them to monitor your conversations again WITHOUT informing you.
This particular man had been watching both the girls for months. He also particpated in a chat room that swapped URL's of Yahoo user's web cams. According to the man that she spoke with, she and her friend had achieved rather high ratings in this chat room, which lead him to try contacting the girls directly.
Fortunately, this young lady had the presence of mind to contact her parents who were able to coach her off camera on how to deal with this pervert to obtain as much information as possible.
Yahoo, when contacted, said that they do not currently have any plans to upgrade their service to stop this kind of incident from happening to anyone else. They were very informative about the fact that this has been a "known issue" with their web chat service for "quite some time".
Moral of the story - dictionary definition of yahoo - A crude or brutish person. Go check www.dictionary.com.
3 cents,
Queen B
You know, as a US resident and citizen, I don't expect our laws to carry weight around the world. I routinely hunt spammers and get their sites yanked, accounts revoked, etc. Most of my spam doesn't even arrive in english much less originate from within our borders.
How in the world is this going to stop some nimrod in Uzbeckistan or Korea from spamming me?
2 cents,
Queen B
Title says it all.....
For the ignorant....
www.nambla1.de
LOOSER!
QueenB
A wise man once said that there are "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statitics". According to the RIAA, they are "loosing money" because all of us are burning not buying. Now, they are spending less in recruiting new acts, promoting CD's, promoting tours, and generally doing less of everything that generates revenue for them. The kicker is that now they want to complain because they are making less money. In my workd, when I work less I make less. Hmmm, guess the RIAA thinks that they should be exempt from having to work to earn a living?
I suppose that they have decided that they are going to make up the "difference" by taking it out of the artists pockets. The most telling piece I have seen was an independent audit conducted on 1000 randomly chosen musicans/groups by a music magazine. All of the musicians/groups were represented by the RIAA. All but 2 of them had been underpaid by the RIAA. The amounts ranged from $163 to over $500,000.
If I want to buy a song, why can't the band just post an reduced-sample rate mp3 on the internet and make me pay a minimal fee to download it? If I want something of higher quality, I'd be willing to go to the store and buy a digitally mastered CD. But I don't want to pay $16.99 for a CD that has 1 good song and 14 other bits of cheesy crappy filler that you slapped together and tossed on the CD so JUST so that you can call it an album and go on tour with it.
They are too smart to make their entire catalog digitally available at the record store. I can't just walk in anywhere and get Etta James or Chee-Yun or Ledbelly or Complete Mushroom or any of the other stuff that I'm really interested in. If I could walk in and get them to burn me a CD with the tracks I want, include the lyrics, and let me pick my cover art, I'd be probably be quite happy to pay.
Instead, they are hide bound dinosaurs that offer nothing of value either to the artist or the consumer.
They take a perfectly good artist, repackage them into some generic format that "will sell" and turn out one hit wonders by the truck load. People don't eat cornflakes all the time. They like things that are a bit different. This is unfair to the artist because they have now been robbed of their intital following and since this is not their style, they are now unable to follow up with anything of merit. They also extort unbelivable percentages of the gross, net, concessions, etc. in exchange for screwing the up like this. It's as unnatural as "Processed Cheese Food".
It is unfair to the consumer because we end up with a 1000 Brittany Spears wanna-be's and very few artists of substance. It's like trying to live on McFish Sandwiches. In 10 years, who is really going to care that Brittany "did it again"? or that NSYNC went "bye bye bye"? If you don't want your stuff downloaded and passed around, maybe you shouldn't cater to 12 year old little girls that have no taste yet??? not to mention no money! You should try catering to segements of the population that are gainfully employed and have disposable income. We're less likely to download and more likely to buy....
My 3 cents,
QueenB