This is not about lost sales. In fact it's actually a fantastic sales idea. Not only do you get the kid (highly motivated customer with little money) to associate his life's work (aka. school) with video games, but you get him to drag in his parent (wary customer with tons of money) to vouch for his good grades. So the kid comes in to get his game and while the kids in the back picking out the latest Pokemon his dad's in the front checking out the latest PS3 release.
No, this isn't about lost sales. This is about fear of federal/state legislation.
If they let this guy run his operation and it became successful then they would be establishing a VERY strong precedent for preventing children from buying games. And the Organization of Out-of-Touch Parents or whoever will jump all over any whiff of such a thing. A short way down this slippery slope is a federal age-limit for buying video games and something of a disaster for the entire gaming industry. And that's why this guy got spanked.
if I had the points. It's strange to see people defending the phone company on this. Maybe they're knee-jerk IPhone enthusiasts. I keep seeing this same "responsibility" post over and over again. And there's inevitably the same bunch of replies over and over again pointing out the obvious.
Perhaps this graphic representation will help them understand why these charges are so outrageous. Or maybe the "responsibility" people are just trolling.
I know we've gone off the rails of the original discussion, but I find your post disturbing.
No...for most people most of the time, your options aren't really realistic. The only way you're gonna get around this behavior is to ban alcohol from being served in public. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
only if you define "most people" as the drunks who close down the bar. which, I hate to break it to you, is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the country.
the way to get around this behavior is for people like you to take responsibility for themselves. if you can't keep yourself under the limit (and the cops are most likely pulling you over because you're exhibiting signs of intoxication) and you're incapable of planning your evening around that fact then you can't (and shouldn't) be trusted to drive.
Well, let's see. The story is about a new software patent that appears to place a lot of currently ubiquitous software/devices in violation. The GP's post is about FDR. And it asserts the rather flimsy premise that the New Deal prolonged the Depression. Since FDR and the depression have nothing to do with WorldLogic or their patent, it's hard to imagine why the poster brings up either point.
So I would say that the GP contributes very little of value to the current discussion. On top of that he injects this questionable revisionist history. Now, I'm willing to believe that the New Deal wasn't all roses and lolly-pops. It's possible that the GP has a point. The article he links to is a troll.
This is from the article:
Roosevelt's revolution began with his inaugural address, which left no doubt about his intentions to seize the moment and harness it to his purposes. Best remembered for its patently false line that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," it also called for extraordinary emergency governmental powers.
So considering that his post had little of interest except this non-sequitor reference to FDR, and considering that his reference to FDR is likely to be inflammatory and is based on a silly article written in 1995, I'd say that it's pretty fair to label it a troll.
erm... I am not a historian and it's been a while since high school history, but even your reference disagrees with you. Certainly the Canadians fought in the war of 1812 and they clearly held their own, but it would seem that the British burned DC.
Saying it was Canada is like a little kid bragging about how he beat someone up by getting his older brother to do it.
I don't know what city you live in, but there certainly IS a gigantic problem with private cars and trucks congesting the New York's roads. Apparently you haven't noticed this since you're on the subway. The problem is there is more business going on between 8am-6pm than Manhattan's infrastructure can support. And there's a ton of rich people who don't give a crap about paying $40,000 a year in parking tickets.
Those rich people certainly wont care about paying $10 for their trip into the city every day. But I believe enough people will change their habits and take mass transit (which has improved remarkably in the last 20 years) that the congestion will ease. And the amazing thing about congestion is that you don't need to get all the cars off the road, just enough so that the road is below capacity. And then, like magic, the congestion goes away.
And that means no smog, no cars blocking the box, fewer drivers honking and cursing, faster buses. And since the toll money should be going to mass transit it also means, cleaner cars & buses, more personnel, more options, and better service for you.
You seem to have missed the Vonage or any telco part of that quote. Customer turnover is cause by a lot of things, not just unsatisfactory service. People move, lose their jobs, get a good deal from their Cable company, etc. Yes, Vonage's customer service is mediocre at best and their cancellation policies and procedures are screwy. But Vonage as a whole is not particularly worse than Comcast, Verizon, or any other telephone provider.
The point here is that Vonage offers the same call quality and crappy service that your traditional telephone company offers, but they charge 50%-80% less. You, apparently, had a bad experience with them. But destroying Vonage (and other independent VOIP providers, who have just as much to lose here) would only empower Verizon to sue other competitors and keep their inflated, monopolistic rates.
You seem to not understand that saying that Foxpro is only good at running Foxpro code makes no sense..NET is only good at running.NET code. And Python is only good at running Python code.
The mistake you're making is that you look at VFP and you see a DBMS package that's forcing you to program in Foxpro. You have it backwards. VFP's DBMS system is an extra bonus (especially if you're at a company that doesn't have the resources or the need for a SQL Server/PostgreSQL database).
Yes, all the BDMS systems you mentioned in your post are better in a myriad of ways than VFP. And Python, C#, what-have-you are more modern programming languages (though in this discussion that's besides the point). But PostgreSQL isn't a programming language and Python isn't a database language. Whereas VFP is both.
Have you considered using PostgreSQL with a VFP front-end (I'm going to assume that you're involved your company's upgrade)? Well, of course you haven't. Because Python is totally badass! And besides, you don't really know anything about Foxpro and don't want to learn. So it would be a waste of time for you. Which is fine. Go with what you know. But IMO if three years ago your company had decided to go with a Postgre+VFP they would have been done with their upgrade two years ago, instead of still thunking away at a "decent, modern solution".
FoxPro is glacially slow. Its proponents will swear up and down that it's the fastest database environment in the world, but the reality is that it's only fast at running FoxPro code.
It's only fast at running code in it's own language? You don't say! I'd be pretty impressed at any language that could run code written in another language.
Perhaps what you meant to say was that Foxpro is only fast when dealing with data. In that case you are correct. I wouldn't write a protein-folding program in Foxpro, because, well, that would be stupid. But there's no language in the world that works with data as well as FP.
Fortunately for you, though, Microsoft is not really making anything of significance open-source. Though Foxpro's death will only be assured when they turn out the lights in 2015.
The article is vague and misleading. Alan Griver (who heads Microsoft's VFP team has been talking alot on his blog about it). Here's the straight-dope...
How about open sourcing the core product too? We've been asked this for years. That's not going to happen. The main reason is that there is too much intellectual property in the VFP core codebase.
That seems pretty definitive to me.
For clarification: Sedna (the stuff that's going into CodePlex) is not now (nor was it ever intended to be) the next version of Visual Foxpro. It's just a set of VFP-based tools intended to help current VFP developers to make better use of new features in Vista/SQL Server/etc...
Meanwhile, VFP 9 is getting a final service pack and then that's it as far as Microsoft is concerned. There's certainly no plans to open-source the IDE or the VFP engine because, frankly, Microsoft would never do that. Some of the technology (and people) from VFP is going towards the LINQ project, but.NET is still a long way from offering the kind of streamlined data-oriented programming that Foxpro offers.
It would appear that over the last five years Microsoft (profit over 5 years: ~$50B) has consistently made quite a bit more money than Apple (~$3.7B) has (and profits at both companies are growing quickly).
I guess his point is that Apple's making money and selling stuff. Which is nice for them, but that's what companies are supposed to do.
You may or may not have something worthwhile to say in your post. However, your use of the word "rape" leads me to believe that you have no concept of the meaning of that word.
Paying federal income tax code may be burdensome, but it does not involve forced sexual penetration. Might I suggest, if you believe that the services provided by the US government are not commensurate with the taxes they collect, you might use the words "rob", "steal", or "swindle".
Thank you for this post. If I had mod points I would mod you up.
I'm having a really hard time understanding some of the vitriol about this. Not only is it an encyclopedia, it's an encyclopedia on the web. Which means you should suspect all the information you find in it, regardless of the author's credentials.
Wikipedia's appeal is quick and easy access to generally accurate information. Want to know, generally, the population of the capital of Uganda? It's just a mouse-click away. But that number, just like anything on the web, could be completely bogus. Since the person who contributed that piece of information is essentially anonymous, I can't ever be sure. If it was important to me that I get the actual population of Uganda, I would go to a more authoritative source.
Essjay lying about his credentials, while pointless, does not impugn his authorship any more than using "Essjay" as his name on the wikipedia does. And being credentialed is not useful in itself. I have a bachelors degree from a prestigious university (you'll have to trust me), but I wouldn't be able to do one-tenth of what Essjay does for the wikipedia.
When this begins to happen then the MPAA comporations will really be up shit creek
Copyright holder organizations have shown a consistent behavior in the face of technological change: seek special protection through lawsuits and legislation. They will do the same with the scenario you envision. When hardware & software improve to allow tools to play and produce real-time film-quality images, they will also allow the tools needed to identify and report "infringing" material in real-time. (Just as they are doing now with MP3s and Flash video)
Dated: Oct 12, 2020
Dear MPAA Customer,
Our software (part of Windows Awesome! Control) has indicated that you have played/created a Video Game or Reenactment which contains scenes similar to works copyrighted by one or more of our members. This action is in violation of the Think Of the Children! Copyright Extension Act of 2017. This letter is to inform you, as per section 16C of the TCCEA, we have been authorized to remove $300,000 from your checking/saving/federal loan package. Please note, this action does not prevent the MPAA or any of its members from taking further legal action against you for this or any other offense.
Have a nice day,
The MPAA
You can be assured that when people start making movies on their own computers, the MPAA will start suing people who use themes, characters, dialog, music, lighting, etc... similar to those used in the studios' films. Then as now, they will go after the people least able to challenge them and most likely to settle. And then as now they will do a full-media blitz to convince people that they're doing all this in defense of the poor, oppressed artist.
It's possible that at some point in the future, the people the MPAA goes to for their custom-made legislation will be the same people the RIAA/MPAA are now suing and maybe then their well of new legislation will finally run dry. And maybe, just maybe, some courageous legislators will actually fix the copyright law to favor musicians and their fans over media conglomerates.
What John Glenn is actually saying is that the ISS should be getting more money so that it can fulfill its purpose and reach its true potential. There's been no follow-up with Glenn, but I'd imagine what he's really saying is that instead of cutting the ISS's budget to pay for manned missions to the Moon and Mars, how about increasing NASA's budget so it can make the ISS successful and also go to the moon?
Another poster pointed out that erstwhile "maverick" McCain has sponsored a similar bill in the US Congress. My question is, do these bills have any regulations regarding the release of this information to the general public? Or will they tacitly authorize spammers, script-kiddies and soccer-moms to go whole-hog on this particular group of untouchables?
They are probably under the tightest lock & key system microsoft has because you _don't_ want anybody, even most of your own employees, to be able to create valid keys.
it's reasonable to expect that MS will protect their incredibly popular software from piracy (whether or not these systems have anything but a negligible effect on piracy is a different question). however, MS has become so paranoid about keeping pirates out that they've made a system that's a hassle for themselves and their legitimate customers.
And thus the "defectivebydesign" tag is applied to this story. The key generation system is so locked down that even in cases where they're clearly in the wrong and would like to help, they CANNOT easily generate new keys. MS put a lot of time & effort perfecting a system to make it extremely difficult (even for themselves) to resolve installation issues.
If the computer thinks you're saying a command, it should disable output to the speakers. If I am talking to my computer then it should stop making its own noises. Otherwise, that's just rude.
I am all for preventing telecoms and cable companies from filtering the internet and giving priority to their own services. Tiered internet is a dead-end road leading right back to how cable television works now.
So on the face of it, a law mandating Net Neutrality is a good thing.
But big ISPs are also big campaign contributors. The cable and phone companies have long since learned to cover their asses by bribing our elected officials on both sides of the aisle. So odds are good that if Congress does pass such legislation it will be with the blessing of the big ISPs. Which means that either the bill will so watered down as to be useless in hampering any tiering or we can expect another series of bills (with little fanfare) giving the ISPs special powers so their fiefdoms and profit margins can be assured.
I'm guessing that once Congress gets started, they wont stop legislating how the intertubes work until it's well and truly borked.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not about lost sales. In fact it's actually a fantastic sales idea. Not only do you get the kid (highly motivated customer with little money) to associate his life's work (aka. school) with video games, but you get him to drag in his parent (wary customer with tons of money) to vouch for his good grades. So the kid comes in to get his game and while the kids in the back picking out the latest Pokemon his dad's in the front checking out the latest PS3 release.
No, this isn't about lost sales. This is about fear of federal/state legislation.
If they let this guy run his operation and it became successful then they would be establishing a VERY strong precedent for preventing children from buying games. And the Organization of Out-of-Touch Parents or whoever will jump all over any whiff of such a thing. A short way down this slippery slope is a federal age-limit for buying video games and something of a disaster for the entire gaming industry. And that's why this guy got spanked.
The printer comes free with your doctor's prescription. But it only comes with enough ink for one patch and refills are $1000.
sounds good to me!
if I had the points. It's strange to see people defending the phone company on this. Maybe they're knee-jerk IPhone enthusiasts. I keep seeing this same "responsibility" post over and over again. And there's inevitably the same bunch of replies over and over again pointing out the obvious.
Perhaps this graphic representation will help them understand why these charges are so outrageous. Or maybe the "responsibility" people are just trolling.
only if you define "most people" as the drunks who close down the bar. which, I hate to break it to you, is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the country.
the way to get around this behavior is for people like you to take responsibility for themselves. if you can't keep yourself under the limit (and the cops are most likely pulling you over because you're exhibiting signs of intoxication) and you're incapable of planning your evening around that fact then you can't (and shouldn't) be trusted to drive.
So I would say that the GP contributes very little of value to the current discussion. On top of that he injects this questionable revisionist history. Now, I'm willing to believe that the New Deal wasn't all roses and lolly-pops. It's possible that the GP has a point. The article he links to is a troll.
This is from the article:
So considering that his post had little of interest except this non-sequitor reference to FDR, and considering that his reference to FDR is likely to be inflammatory and is based on a silly article written in 1995, I'd say that it's pretty fair to label it a troll.
erm... I am not a historian and it's been a while since high school history, but even your reference disagrees with you. Certainly the Canadians fought in the war of 1812 and they clearly held their own, but it would seem that the British burned DC.
Saying it was Canada is like a little kid bragging about how he beat someone up by getting his older brother to do it.
First, remove your tinfoil hat...
I don't know what city you live in, but there certainly IS a gigantic problem with private cars and trucks congesting the New York's roads. Apparently you haven't noticed this since you're on the subway. The problem is there is more business going on between 8am-6pm than Manhattan's infrastructure can support. And there's a ton of rich people who don't give a crap about paying $40,000 a year in parking tickets.
Those rich people certainly wont care about paying $10 for their trip into the city every day. But I believe enough people will change their habits and take mass transit (which has improved remarkably in the last 20 years) that the congestion will ease. And the amazing thing about congestion is that you don't need to get all the cars off the road, just enough so that the road is below capacity. And then, like magic, the congestion goes away.
And that means no smog, no cars blocking the box, fewer drivers honking and cursing, faster buses. And since the toll money should be going to mass transit it also means, cleaner cars & buses, more personnel, more options, and better service for you.
mod parent up please.
You seem to have missed the Vonage or any telco part of that quote. Customer turnover is cause by a lot of things, not just unsatisfactory service. People move, lose their jobs, get a good deal from their Cable company, etc. Yes, Vonage's customer service is mediocre at best and their cancellation policies and procedures are screwy. But Vonage as a whole is not particularly worse than Comcast, Verizon, or any other telephone provider.
The point here is that Vonage offers the same call quality and crappy service that your traditional telephone company offers, but they charge 50%-80% less. You, apparently, had a bad experience with them. But destroying Vonage (and other independent VOIP providers, who have just as much to lose here) would only empower Verizon to sue other competitors and keep their inflated, monopolistic rates.
I can't see how you could be in favor of that.
You seem to not understand that saying that Foxpro is only good at running Foxpro code makes no sense. .NET is only good at running .NET code. And Python is only good at running Python code.
The mistake you're making is that you look at VFP and you see a DBMS package that's forcing you to program in Foxpro. You have it backwards. VFP's DBMS system is an extra bonus (especially if you're at a company that doesn't have the resources or the need for a SQL Server/PostgreSQL database).
Yes, all the BDMS systems you mentioned in your post are better in a myriad of ways than VFP. And Python, C#, what-have-you are more modern programming languages (though in this discussion that's besides the point). But PostgreSQL isn't a programming language and Python isn't a database language. Whereas VFP is both.
Have you considered using PostgreSQL with a VFP front-end (I'm going to assume that you're involved your company's upgrade)? Well, of course you haven't. Because Python is totally badass! And besides, you don't really know anything about Foxpro and don't want to learn. So it would be a waste of time for you. Which is fine. Go with what you know. But IMO if three years ago your company had decided to go with a Postgre+VFP they would have been done with their upgrade two years ago, instead of still thunking away at a "decent, modern solution".
It's only fast at running code in it's own language? You don't say! I'd be pretty impressed at any language that could run code written in another language.
Perhaps what you meant to say was that Foxpro is only fast when dealing with data. In that case you are correct. I wouldn't write a protein-folding program in Foxpro, because, well, that would be stupid. But there's no language in the world that works with data as well as FP.
Fortunately for you, though, Microsoft is not really making anything of significance open-source. Though Foxpro's death will only be assured when they turn out the lights in 2015.
That seems pretty definitive to me.
For clarification: Sedna (the stuff that's going into CodePlex) is not now (nor was it ever intended to be) the next version of Visual Foxpro. It's just a set of VFP-based tools intended to help current VFP developers to make better use of new features in Vista/SQL Server/etc...
Meanwhile, VFP 9 is getting a final service pack and then that's it as far as Microsoft is concerned. There's certainly no plans to open-source the IDE or the VFP engine because, frankly, Microsoft would never do that. Some of the technology (and people) from VFP is going towards the LINQ project, but
It seems obvious that he picked the 4th quarter because Apple had a revenue spike.
Microsoft's Balance Sheet vs. Apple's Balance Sheet
It would appear that over the last five years Microsoft (profit over 5 years: ~$50B) has consistently made quite a bit more money than Apple (~$3.7B) has (and profits at both companies are growing quickly).
I guess his point is that Apple's making money and selling stuff. Which is nice for them, but that's what companies are supposed to do.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
You may or may not have something worthwhile to say in your post. However, your use of the word "rape" leads me to believe that you have no concept of the meaning of that word.
Paying federal income tax code may be burdensome, but it does not involve forced sexual penetration. Might I suggest, if you believe that the services provided by the US government are not commensurate with the taxes they collect, you might use the words "rob", "steal", or "swindle".
Thank you for this post. If I had mod points I would mod you up.
I'm having a really hard time understanding some of the vitriol about this. Not only is it an encyclopedia, it's an encyclopedia on the web. Which means you should suspect all the information you find in it, regardless of the author's credentials.
Wikipedia's appeal is quick and easy access to generally accurate information. Want to know, generally, the population of the capital of Uganda? It's just a mouse-click away. But that number, just like anything on the web, could be completely bogus. Since the person who contributed that piece of information is essentially anonymous, I can't ever be sure. If it was important to me that I get the actual population of Uganda, I would go to a more authoritative source.
Essjay lying about his credentials, while pointless, does not impugn his authorship any more than using "Essjay" as his name on the wikipedia does. And being credentialed is not useful in itself. I have a bachelors degree from a prestigious university (you'll have to trust me), but I wouldn't be able to do one-tenth of what Essjay does for the wikipedia.
Copyright holder organizations have shown a consistent behavior in the face of technological change: seek special protection through lawsuits and legislation. They will do the same with the scenario you envision. When hardware & software improve to allow tools to play and produce real-time film-quality images, they will also allow the tools needed to identify and report "infringing" material in real-time. (Just as they are doing now with MP3s and Flash video)
Dated: Oct 12, 2020
Dear MPAA Customer,
Our software (part of Windows Awesome! Control) has indicated that you have played/created a Video Game or Reenactment which contains scenes similar to works copyrighted by one or more of our members. This action is in violation of the Think Of the Children! Copyright Extension Act of 2017. This letter is to inform you, as per section 16C of the TCCEA, we have been authorized to remove $300,000 from your checking/saving/federal loan package. Please note, this action does not prevent the MPAA or any of its members from taking further legal action against you for this or any other offense.
Have a nice day,
The MPAA
You can be assured that when people start making movies on their own computers, the MPAA will start suing people who use themes, characters, dialog, music, lighting, etc... similar to those used in the studios' films. Then as now, they will go after the people least able to challenge them and most likely to settle. And then as now they will do a full-media blitz to convince people that they're doing all this in defense of the poor, oppressed artist.
It's possible that at some point in the future, the people the MPAA goes to for their custom-made legislation will be the same people the RIAA/MPAA are now suing and maybe then their well of new legislation will finally run dry. And maybe, just maybe, some courageous legislators will actually fix the copyright law to favor musicians and their fans over media conglomerates.
I wouldn't hold my breath.
The summary and the article are pretty misleading (here's a better article: http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9806/1066/).
What John Glenn is actually saying is that the ISS should be getting more money so that it can fulfill its purpose and reach its true potential. There's been no follow-up with Glenn, but I'd imagine what he's really saying is that instead of cutting the ISS's budget to pay for manned missions to the Moon and Mars, how about increasing NASA's budget so it can make the ISS successful and also go to the moon?
who modded this insightful? at best it's offtopic.
I can't wait to read the book, Dr Spock.
How did this get modded "Insightful"?
Another poster pointed out that erstwhile "maverick" McCain has sponsored a similar bill in the US Congress. My question is, do these bills have any regulations regarding the release of this information to the general public? Or will they tacitly authorize spammers, script-kiddies and soccer-moms to go whole-hog on this particular group of untouchables?
And thus the "defectivebydesign" tag is applied to this story. The key generation system is so locked down that even in cases where they're clearly in the wrong and would like to help, they CANNOT easily generate new keys. MS put a lot of time & effort perfecting a system to make it extremely difficult (even for themselves) to resolve installation issues.
Money well spent!
If the computer thinks you're saying a command, it should disable output to the speakers. If I am talking to my computer then it should stop making its own noises. Otherwise, that's just rude.
Clearly, once other languages get involved we'll need a different acronym.
I propose Asynchronous Scripting Embracing XML Using Any Language
ASEXUAL. It works to both describe the technique and many of the people who use it. Bah-dum-ching! Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.
I am all for preventing telecoms and cable companies from filtering the internet and giving priority to their own services. Tiered internet is a dead-end road leading right back to how cable television works now.
So on the face of it, a law mandating Net Neutrality is a good thing.
But big ISPs are also big campaign contributors. The cable and phone companies have long since learned to cover their asses by bribing our elected officials on both sides of the aisle. So odds are good that if Congress does pass such legislation it will be with the blessing of the big ISPs. Which means that either the bill will so watered down as to be useless in hampering any tiering or we can expect another series of bills (with little fanfare) giving the ISPs special powers so their fiefdoms and profit margins can be assured.
I'm guessing that once Congress gets started, they wont stop legislating how the intertubes work until it's well and truly borked.