The single player isn't that great, but the multiplayer, and the ability to make your own single player is what NWN is all about. The Bioware included single player adventure is basically a dog and pony show, showing off all the little gizmos you can set up with the toolset. Not much more than that.
Go over to MacSoft's webpage. They're the guys working on the Mac port.
http://www.wizworks.com/macsoft
Neverwinter is listed as a Summer/Fall 2002 (so probably Fall.. =) including the Toolset! I'm actually going to buy a seperate Mac copy just for the toolset, as it'll be easier for me to find time to work on mods on my iBook (hopefully TiBook by then) than having to sit at my desktop Win/Linux box.
Well, I'm glad you actually work for a consultancy that is actually able to DO stuff.
I worked for two different computer consulancies during the dot.con, one a small infosec consultancy that was shuffled between security software companies, and Lucent, in the consulting portion that was INS. I must've been lucky to get all the crap, 'cause my experiences there were brain bashingly frustrating in almost every way. With the small consultancy, I was basically an installer for the software company that owned us, and eventually was a casualty of an attempted coup by a couple people there who just didn't like me. At Lucent, I was sent to a 10 month+ project, where we sat around at the client's expense for two thirds of the time. I alternated between hating the fact that we were basically stealing this company's money and wanting out of there, to just telling myself to enjoy the ride. Free food wherever we wanted to eat (I could've eaten at my favorite sushi place every day, every meal if I'd wanted to, and they would've have blinked). Free rent. Free car. Half the time we just went back to our apartments at noon 'cause there was just nothing to do but wait for the client to get ready for us.
Now, I'm working with my father, doing small time Mac/PC consulting/support. Basically a roving IT guy for companies that can't afford/don't want a permanent on staff IT person. I love fixing problems (however much I spit and curse at the machines while I'm fixing them). I'm actually able to do something USEFUL for people. At least half of what I did when I went out at my previous two jobs was a pet project of a manager, or the result of some slimy salemanship, so what I did never, ever got used. They might as well have just sent my company the money and left me at home. When I walk in to my regular clients, I hear something I only heard once while working in the big time (because %90 of the time, when I wasn't an installer, I was being brought in to fix another consultant's mess) "Thank God you're here". It's a good feeling to be needed, not because they're desperate, but because they trust you can do the job right.
Maybe if you take care of your DVDs, they wouldn't get scratched. You know, maybe kept them in the case when you weren't watching them? Not put them down on whatever surface happens to be handy? I've a quite large DVD collection, and every one of them is pristine, because I take care of 'em.
This whole "backup" thing I'm getting less and less sympathetic to, when I see how people treat their various media. The only CDs, DVDs, or software CDs I own that have scratches on them are the ones I bought used. How about taking care of your shit people, and not treating it like you can just do whatever the hel you want to it and are owed a replacement if you fuck it up.
The DVDs I have that have these kinds of extras (commentary, deleted scenes, etc) I use the extras alot. Sometimes more than the movie itself, because often I know the movie very well. Sometimes it's nice to watch Brazil, but there's something about watching Brazil while Terry Gilliam talk about it as well, or listening to a Japanese film guy talk about Kurosawa and the Japanese film industry of the 50s while the Seven Samurai is playing. Not all extras are worth it, but I definitely believe these ones will be. I'm waiting (but I may pick it up anyway, as a gift to less movie fanatical friends).
This is pretty damn pathetic, IMNSHO. How much time do you waste on getting rid of this stuff? How many times can you possibly watch whatever movie in that it makes up for that time? How much extra money are you spending on DVD-Rs to re-burn your entire DVD collection? I can't believe the extra minute of time you're saving on each viewing is worth however much money you're spending on it.
If that's what you want to do, I'm not going to say no, but it just does not compute to me, at all.
How is Amazon sellign software at a loss going to "send a message" to Apple?
Because if Apple sells hardly any copies of Jaguar through their Apple Stores, the online Apple Store, or retailers such as CompUSA (which has a special Apple section) and Amazon keeps reordering them, they may figure that their price point was a bit too high. If they don't care, they don't care, but a message will certainly be sent.
The fact is Jaguar is worth the upgrade price. Apple has charged for its software for half a decade now and charging for Jaguar is to be expected-- and STILL a good deal.
I'm happy someone believes it's a good deal, because I'm having a hell of a time coming to that conclusion myself. I am not a.mac subscriber, not can I forsee ever subscribing to it, so that's half or more of the new features right out. Accelterated Quartz is useless to me, as my iBook doesn't have the required 32MB of video RAM. Nor does my G4 Cube. The only new "feature" of the operating system that I would even slightly be able to use and interested in is iChat, and that's frankly not worth the $130 upgrade pricing. If I wasn't a member of the Apple Consultants Network, and got OS X client software free as part of that package, and need a Mac to do my work (the reason I'm part of the ACN), I'd ditch the whole mess now and move to Linux on x86, forget paying $130 to get all these features I can't use.
I've been running the 6C106 developers release and this has to be one of the biggests upgrades in apple history in terms of big and little things that are different. I'm not goign to violate my NDA, but I will say that Jaguar is worth paying for.
Bullshit. I call so much bullshit on this. I've played with Jaguar plenty, at ACN info meetings, beat the thing up for a good long time on the 17" iMacs in New York, and on the client side, there's not a damn thing I've seen that is as much of a change as you claim. There are several additional command line tools that help on the server side of the equation (many of these being included with the build of 10.1 Server included with the Xserve) but as far as the client goes, joe bob laptop or desktop user gets hardly anything for their $129 purchase, unless they pay an extra $100/year so all the new features are actually usable.
This has nothing to do with Apple. The only thing this issue brings up is that Apple users are apparently rather cheap, just as Linux users are. Or at least the people who whine online are cheap. So it goes.
I'm not cheap. I and my family have been paying premium prices for Apple machines since the Mac Plus came out. What I object to is being ripped off, which is what Apple is doing to me.
IF you don't want to upgrade, then don't. Wait a year and Jaguar will be on sale for $10. If you do upgrade you'll find the value is there in the product and it was worth it. But its a free country and its your choice. Just don't expect something for nothing-- that is not a right you have.
I don't want to upgrade, however, I have to upgrade, and it's going to gall me every step of the way. The "wait a year for it to get to $10 on sale" is ludicrous and you know it. 10.1 is still being hawked for $130, even now. The only time Apple EVER drops their prices is when they bring out a new line, or update a line. Then the old models get a price drop. 10.2 will stay at $130 until 10.3 comes out. Bank on it.
I couldn't care less that you find enough value in 10.2 to justify the purchase price for yourself. Have a ball. However, your condescending attitude is, probably not coincidentally, the same attitude that Apple has taken, and it's one that drives me completely up the wall, and it's not one that's going to win them or you any friends. It certainly is a free country. Free enough that I can call a ripoff a ripoff when I see one. That's not expecting something for nothing. Apple is the one that is trying to get me to give them something for nothing.
Discounts? What discounts? Oh, you mean those now worthless coupons that I got with my copy of OS 10.1 that claimed to give me a discount on the next version?
Good info? A bunch of Apple marketing drivel is all you ever get from them, chock full of such good grammar as "blazingly fast" and such ad-ese.
Well, then just give me the powerbook now, because they're not going to change it. They're not going to back down because people are pissed about it. I seriously doubt that they're stupid enough to think that no one would be pissed once they announced it. They probably figured that the benefit outweighed the cost, same as every other company makes business decisions.
This expo is pretty much tapped out after the first day. Unfortunately for me, I'm stuck here another day (maybe you like New York, I'm not so fond of it) which is most likely going to be spent in the gaming section (which is rather nice, I must admit) ogling the new 17" iMac (I've been unable to touch one yet, with the crush of people over there, so I've just stayed away from the Apple pavillion pretty much all of the day) and wishing I could spare the money for an EyeTV, if they haven't already been sold out. Other than that, there's just nothing to do but lurk outside the only open access wireless network like everyone else. Whooptie do.
And they're having trouble with that wireless access point too...
Pretty much, the people who wanted an Xbox originally have already gotten it. The people who were waiting for a price drop have already gotten it as well (or may by Christmas, but everything game-wise gets a Christmas boost). Microsoft ought to be looking to expand into the casual gamer crowd/those of us who don't like, don't care, or actively dislike the Xbox.
The preception remains, true or not, that "Halo is the only reason to get an Xbox". They just removed that reason by announcing it's release, ever. If people have waited for this long, they'll wait another year, and not bother with the $200 for the Xbox.
Personally, I don't care about Halo, and I'm one of those actively against the Xbox, for reasons beyond its pathetic library of games (PC ports, PS2 and Dreamcast ports, and crappy games, with the odd good one hidden here and there under the massive piles of crap) its crappy controller, and the fact that unless you have an HDTV, it doesn't look any better than a PS2 or Dreamcast. It's Microsoft trying to dominate another industry and that's worth fighting against actively in my opinion. Microsoft, if their Xbox people were at all thinking straight, should never have allowed a PC port of Halo to exist, ever. Even 2 years after the fact. As one of the meager few games that were both worth anything, and original to the system, their shooting the Xbox in the foot allowing others to play it. That's like Nintendo releasing Mario Sunshine for the PC, stupid.
You obviously haven't been on an archaelogical expidition ever. Most of what archaeologists and the anthropologists who tag along with them are concerned with, is the trash of past societies and cultures. Most often, the shards of pottery that they laboriously extract from the ground are in so many shards because they were discarded by their original owners/makers.
Your trash says an awful lot about you, as does the random splay of stuff strewn around your room. Future archaeologists may not be interested in the porn on your hard drive (unless they have to dig it out), but future anthropologists would find it very interesting (and not in the normal manner people find porn interesting, though that may be there too, never know). It says alot about you, an inhabitant of wherever you are, living in the year 2002, as does all the collected sundry data on your drive. It may certainly seem boring as hell to anyone else, but historians and anthropologists can get a whole lot of useful information out of it. It's no less boring than reading through book after book, or letter after letter in the dead tree sense, and in some ways it's alot easier, as you can't write a regular expression to pull whatever interesting tidbits you are looking for out of a book.
How exactly does the DMCA not apply here? Modders (of all console systems) are bypassing technological measures designed to stop illegally copied software from functioning. That it allows you to run Linux on it is irrelevant in the eyes of the law, as the case against 2600 magazine, which they themselves gave up on, establishes the precedent for. See also the Elcomsoft case, but less so. DECSS has no bearing on the actual copying of DVDs, it gives anyone who puts out a DVD the mechanism to control what their media will play on, and the courts have upheld the DMCA's blanket protection of such mechanisms so far as completely constitutional.
The things that an Xbox mod circumvents is such a technological mechanism. The actual purpose of those doing the modding is irrelevant, just as it has been in the Elcomsoft and 2600 Magazine cases, they courts ruled that the circumvention, for any reason, is the illegal activity, not the intent.
Not that I mind that people are doing it, but if you believe that those creating and distributing mod chips for the Xbox are on any kind of solid legal ground, you are fooling yourself. I expect Microsoft has a team of lawyers working hard on creating a case for this, whenever they determine they want to go to trial over it.
Yes, I am seriously saying that a third party would not modify the binary, give it back to the Software Publisher and have the Software Publisher redistribute the modified binary to the public through their corporate FTP server.
Then you are seriously deluded. Did YOU even read your comment, because what you are saying is complete and utter nonsense.
This guy didn't offer it as a patch which was then incorporated into BitchX. The software was modified, the FTP server distributing the software was rooted, the software replaced with the backdoored software (obviously in a sophisticated enough manner to evade casual inspection of the server), and people downloaded it.
Binaries are an even more useful tool for distributing back doors, because it's even harder to notice, and those as blind to this avenue of attack as you appear to be will cheerfully run these back-doored binaries, believing erroneously that because it is a binary, it's safe. You couldn't be more wrong, and I hope you're never subject to the consequenses of your blindness in this area in the future.
The editors, obviously, beg to differ... You're more than able to turn off the anime-related stories in your priferences.
I shut off John Katz's tripe and all the Star Wars idiocy long ago, and it's made my/.ing much easier on my blood pressure. This site is about as configurable as it gets...use the tools provided. If they don't work then you can whine about it.
They're no different. Those subsidies are just as bad. A President who claims to support the free market, then raises subsidies on farm products, and impose a new tarrif, isn't advancing the cause. It just lets the rest of the world get away with the same things. The administration can talk a good line about free trade, but no one cares, because they've seen that the administration doesn't really believe what they're preaching.
I'm just thanking my stars that (so far) the politicians havent fscked up like they did after the '29 stock market crash. The US enacted protectionist trade tarrifs which effectively were the first blow in killing off the *world* economy.
I guess you haven't noticed the trade war brewing over the imposition of steel tarrifs and heavily increased farm subsidies that the current administration signed into law? The Bush administration has a good track recordn at breaking their own promises with regard to trade policy.
I actually taped that broadcast, and I think a history lesson is really necessary. I thought it was a very good history lesson, because I sat, starting, remembering watching half of the clips when they were happening (like the VA Linux IPO) and staring slack-jawed at the screen, wondering how we could've been so idiotic.
I think many people forget the kind of craziness that actually happened back then. A good history lesson is what we need, and what we need to impress on our Representatives and Senators that we are unwilling to repeat.
1. It's a brand name that hopefully, through the efforts of many people using it, will go the way of asprin and cease to be a trademarked brand name here (asprin is a brand name everywhere except the US).
2. I certainly do pay for the operating system on my Mac. However, unless you can point out how much that is (not like Apple charges itself OEM licensing costs) or find me a way to buy a Mac new, without the operating system installed, and show the price difference, we'll talk.
Apple is a hardware company. Iron (well, plastic too). Darwin is free for the taking if I want it. The only thing I pay some small amount for is the interface, which is certainly worth it to me. They don't slap extra charges for each bit of everything that comes with it. Here's what you get. Here's the price. Don't like it? Next customer please. They're in the game the same way IBM is (and they're using FreeBSD the same way IBM is using Linux). To get their iron out the door. A different class of iron, but iron nonetheless.
Please get your head out of your rear. Apple isn't even trying to play the same game as Microsoft is with Windows, let alone compete. They don't want their OS to work on anything under the sun. The DO NOT WANT their operating system to run on your cheapo homebuilt machine, or your cheapo Dell, or your expensive homebuilt machine, or your expensive prebuilt machine, becuase they aren't getting money from the hardware, which is how they pay their bills, ya know?
Sorry, we Mac users already have a highly functional, highly stable, and highly usable UNIX operating system that comes free when you buy the machine, that also happens to run most free software (beer or speech) you might want to use.
Knowing a bit of how mass mailings work, specifically how you figure out who is where through zip codes, the actual city that gets printed on things mailed to you in that fasion is determined by checking the Post office database, usually through a program such as AccuZip.
Lots of times, the city the post office has you in isn't the city you actually live in, but it will get to you all the same, because the Post Office can't assign multiple municipalities to a single zip code. They probably picked the small town because it didn't have any other zip code, or whatever criteria they have. Don't blame the software for something that isn't it's fault. It's just doing a query based on the official database.
Get the new testing version of Mozilla. 1.01a I believe. Quartz rendering, and it's FAST, and very stable. Never had it crash once, looks great. I've stopped using Chimera altogether, it's so fast and stable.
Still have IE for the few sites that require it, but I can't remember the last time I used it.
This is nothing new. Ever read the FBI WARNING that comes on before movies on VHS/DVD/etc? Unauthorizedending isn't allowed. Most CD audio, especially from the big labels, has a prohibition against unauthorized lending of the CD to anyone if you look hard enough.
While making me technically a criminal because I lent my copy of Alpha Centauri or the latest Britney Spears album to a friend, they really don't want to go after me. This basically allows them to come down on anyone who rents movies, video games, CDs, etc, without paying them a juicy licensing fee for the priviledge. Of course, regular public libraries get around this somehow, either by statute or custom, or both, not sure.
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The single player isn't that great, but the multiplayer, and the ability to make your own single player is what NWN is all about. The Bioware included single player adventure is basically a dog and pony show, showing off all the little gizmos you can set up with the toolset. Not much more than that.
Go over to MacSoft's webpage. They're the guys working on the Mac port.
http://www.wizworks.com/macsoft
Neverwinter is listed as a Summer/Fall 2002 (so probably Fall.. =) including the Toolset! I'm actually going to buy a seperate Mac copy just for the toolset, as it'll be easier for me to find time to work on mods on my iBook (hopefully TiBook by then) than having to sit at my desktop Win/Linux box.
Well, I'm glad you actually work for a consultancy that is actually able to DO stuff.
I worked for two different computer consulancies during the dot.con, one a small infosec consultancy that was shuffled between security software companies, and Lucent, in the consulting portion that was INS. I must've been lucky to get all the crap, 'cause my experiences there were brain bashingly frustrating in almost every way. With the small consultancy, I was basically an installer for the software company that owned us, and eventually was a casualty of an attempted coup by a couple people there who just didn't like me. At Lucent, I was sent to a 10 month+ project, where we sat around at the client's expense for two thirds of the time. I alternated between hating the fact that we were basically stealing this company's money and wanting out of there, to just telling myself to enjoy the ride. Free food wherever we wanted to eat (I could've eaten at my favorite sushi place every day, every meal if I'd wanted to, and they would've have blinked). Free rent. Free car. Half the time we just went back to our apartments at noon 'cause there was just nothing to do but wait for the client to get ready for us.
Now, I'm working with my father, doing small time Mac/PC consulting/support. Basically a roving IT guy for companies that can't afford/don't want a permanent on staff IT person. I love fixing problems (however much I spit and curse at the machines while I'm fixing them). I'm actually able to do something USEFUL for people. At least half of what I did when I went out at my previous two jobs was a pet project of a manager, or the result of some slimy salemanship, so what I did never, ever got used. They might as well have just sent my company the money and left me at home. When I walk in to my regular clients, I hear something I only heard once while working in the big time (because %90 of the time, when I wasn't an installer, I was being brought in to fix another consultant's mess) "Thank God you're here". It's a good feeling to be needed, not because they're desperate, but because they trust you can do the job right.
Maybe if you take care of your DVDs, they wouldn't get scratched. You know, maybe kept them in the case when you weren't watching them? Not put them down on whatever surface happens to be handy? I've a quite large DVD collection, and every one of them is pristine, because I take care of 'em.
This whole "backup" thing I'm getting less and less sympathetic to, when I see how people treat their various media. The only CDs, DVDs, or software CDs I own that have scratches on them are the ones I bought used. How about taking care of your shit people, and not treating it like you can just do whatever the hel you want to it and are owed a replacement if you fuck it up.
The DVDs I have that have these kinds of extras (commentary, deleted scenes, etc) I use the extras alot. Sometimes more than the movie itself, because often I know the movie very well. Sometimes it's nice to watch Brazil, but there's something about watching Brazil while Terry Gilliam talk about it as well, or listening to a Japanese film guy talk about Kurosawa and the Japanese film industry of the 50s while the Seven Samurai is playing. Not all extras are worth it, but I definitely believe these ones will be. I'm waiting (but I may pick it up anyway, as a gift to less movie fanatical friends).
This is pretty damn pathetic, IMNSHO. How much time do you waste on getting rid of this stuff? How many times can you possibly watch whatever movie in that it makes up for that time? How much extra money are you spending on DVD-Rs to re-burn your entire DVD collection? I can't believe the extra minute of time you're saving on each viewing is worth however much money you're spending on it.
If that's what you want to do, I'm not going to say no, but it just does not compute to me, at all.
How is Amazon sellign software at a loss going to "send a message" to Apple?
.mac subscriber, not can I forsee ever subscribing to it, so that's half or more of the new features right out. Accelterated Quartz is useless to me, as my iBook doesn't have the required 32MB of video RAM. Nor does my G4 Cube. The only new "feature" of the operating system that I would even slightly be able to use and interested in is iChat, and that's frankly not worth the $130 upgrade pricing. If I wasn't a member of the Apple Consultants Network, and got OS X client software free as part of that package, and need a Mac to do my work (the reason I'm part of the ACN), I'd ditch the whole mess now and move to Linux on x86, forget paying $130 to get all these features I can't use.
Because if Apple sells hardly any copies of Jaguar through their Apple Stores, the online Apple Store, or retailers such as CompUSA (which has a special Apple section) and Amazon keeps reordering them, they may figure that their price point was a bit too high. If they don't care, they don't care, but a message will certainly be sent.
The fact is Jaguar is worth the upgrade price. Apple has charged for its software for half a decade now and charging for Jaguar is to be expected-- and STILL a good deal.
I'm happy someone believes it's a good deal, because I'm having a hell of a time coming to that conclusion myself. I am not a
I've been running the 6C106 developers release and this has to be one of the biggests upgrades in apple history in terms of big and little things that are different. I'm not goign to violate my NDA, but I will say that Jaguar is worth paying for.
Bullshit. I call so much bullshit on this. I've played with Jaguar plenty, at ACN info meetings, beat the thing up for a good long time on the 17" iMacs in New York, and on the client side, there's not a damn thing I've seen that is as much of a change as you claim. There are several additional command line tools that help on the server side of the equation (many of these being included with the build of 10.1 Server included with the Xserve) but as far as the client goes, joe bob laptop or desktop user gets hardly anything for their $129 purchase, unless they pay an extra $100/year so all the new features are actually usable.
This has nothing to do with Apple. The only thing this issue brings up is that Apple users are apparently rather cheap, just as Linux users are. Or at least the people who whine online are cheap. So it goes.
I'm not cheap. I and my family have been paying premium prices for Apple machines since the Mac Plus came out. What I object to is being ripped off, which is what Apple is doing to me.
IF you don't want to upgrade, then don't. Wait a year and Jaguar will be on sale for $10. If you do upgrade you'll find the value is there in the product and it was worth it. But its a free country and its your choice. Just don't expect something for nothing-- that is not a right you have.
I don't want to upgrade, however, I have to upgrade, and it's going to gall me every step of the way. The "wait a year for it to get to $10 on sale" is ludicrous and you know it. 10.1 is still being hawked for $130, even now. The only time Apple EVER drops their prices is when they bring out a new line, or update a line. Then the old models get a price drop. 10.2 will stay at $130 until 10.3 comes out. Bank on it.
I couldn't care less that you find enough value in 10.2 to justify the purchase price for yourself. Have a ball. However, your condescending attitude is, probably not coincidentally, the same attitude that Apple has taken, and it's one that drives me completely up the wall, and it's not one that's going to win them or you any friends. It certainly is a free country. Free enough that I can call a ripoff a ripoff when I see one. That's not expecting something for nothing. Apple is the one that is trying to get me to give them something for nothing.
Discounts? What discounts? Oh, you mean those now worthless coupons that I got with my copy of OS 10.1 that claimed to give me a discount on the next version?
Good info? A bunch of Apple marketing drivel is all you ever get from them, chock full of such good grammar as "blazingly fast" and such ad-ese.
Well, then just give me the powerbook now, because they're not going to change it. They're not going to back down because people are pissed about it. I seriously doubt that they're stupid enough to think that no one would be pissed once they announced it. They probably figured that the benefit outweighed the cost, same as every other company makes business decisions.
I'll add another thing to the bad:
- Hardly anyone is here.
This expo is pretty much tapped out after the first day. Unfortunately for me, I'm stuck here another day (maybe you like New York, I'm not so fond of it) which is most likely going to be spent in the gaming section (which is rather nice, I must admit) ogling the new 17" iMac (I've been unable to touch one yet, with the crush of people over there, so I've just stayed away from the Apple pavillion pretty much all of the day) and wishing I could spare the money for an EyeTV, if they haven't already been sold out. Other than that, there's just nothing to do but lurk outside the only open access wireless network like everyone else. Whooptie do.
And they're having trouble with that wireless access point too...
Pretty much, the people who wanted an Xbox originally have already gotten it. The people who were waiting for a price drop have already gotten it as well (or may by Christmas, but everything game-wise gets a Christmas boost). Microsoft ought to be looking to expand into the casual gamer crowd/those of us who don't like, don't care, or actively dislike the Xbox.
The preception remains, true or not, that "Halo is the only reason to get an Xbox". They just removed that reason by announcing it's release, ever. If people have waited for this long, they'll wait another year, and not bother with the $200 for the Xbox.
Personally, I don't care about Halo, and I'm one of those actively against the Xbox, for reasons beyond its pathetic library of games (PC ports, PS2 and Dreamcast ports, and crappy games, with the odd good one hidden here and there under the massive piles of crap) its crappy controller, and the fact that unless you have an HDTV, it doesn't look any better than a PS2 or Dreamcast. It's Microsoft trying to dominate another industry and that's worth fighting against actively in my opinion. Microsoft, if their Xbox people were at all thinking straight, should never have allowed a PC port of Halo to exist, ever. Even 2 years after the fact. As one of the meager few games that were both worth anything, and original to the system, their shooting the Xbox in the foot allowing others to play it. That's like Nintendo releasing Mario Sunshine for the PC, stupid.
You obviously haven't been on an archaelogical expidition ever. Most of what archaeologists and the anthropologists who tag along with them are concerned with, is the trash of past societies and cultures. Most often, the shards of pottery that they laboriously extract from the ground are in so many shards because they were discarded by their original owners/makers.
Your trash says an awful lot about you, as does the random splay of stuff strewn around your room. Future archaeologists may not be interested in the porn on your hard drive (unless they have to dig it out), but future anthropologists would find it very interesting (and not in the normal manner people find porn interesting, though that may be there too, never know). It says alot about you, an inhabitant of wherever you are, living in the year 2002, as does all the collected sundry data on your drive. It may certainly seem boring as hell to anyone else, but historians and anthropologists can get a whole lot of useful information out of it. It's no less boring than reading through book after book, or letter after letter in the dead tree sense, and in some ways it's alot easier, as you can't write a regular expression to pull whatever interesting tidbits you are looking for out of a book.
Obligatory Preface: I am not a lawyer.
How exactly does the DMCA not apply here? Modders (of all console systems) are bypassing technological measures designed to stop illegally copied software from functioning. That it allows you to run Linux on it is irrelevant in the eyes of the law, as the case against 2600 magazine, which they themselves gave up on, establishes the precedent for. See also the Elcomsoft case, but less so. DECSS has no bearing on the actual copying of DVDs, it gives anyone who puts out a DVD the mechanism to control what their media will play on, and the courts have upheld the DMCA's blanket protection of such mechanisms so far as completely constitutional.
The things that an Xbox mod circumvents is such a technological mechanism. The actual purpose of those doing the modding is irrelevant, just as it has been in the Elcomsoft and 2600 Magazine cases, they courts ruled that the circumvention, for any reason, is the illegal activity, not the intent.
Not that I mind that people are doing it, but if you believe that those creating and distributing mod chips for the Xbox are on any kind of solid legal ground, you are fooling yourself. I expect Microsoft has a team of lawyers working hard on creating a case for this, whenever they determine they want to go to trial over it.
Yes, I am seriously saying that a third party would not modify the binary, give it back to the Software Publisher and have the Software Publisher redistribute the modified binary to the public through their corporate FTP server.
Then you are seriously deluded. Did YOU even read your comment, because what you are saying is complete and utter nonsense.
This guy didn't offer it as a patch which was then incorporated into BitchX. The software was modified, the FTP server distributing the software was rooted, the software replaced with the backdoored software (obviously in a sophisticated enough manner to evade casual inspection of the server), and people downloaded it.
Binaries are an even more useful tool for distributing back doors, because it's even harder to notice, and those as blind to this avenue of attack as you appear to be will cheerfully run these back-doored binaries, believing erroneously that because it is a binary, it's safe. You couldn't be more wrong, and I hope you're never subject to the consequenses of your blindness in this area in the future.
The editors, obviously, beg to differ... You're more than able to turn off the anime-related stories in your priferences.
/.ing much easier on my blood pressure. This site is about as configurable as it gets...use the tools provided. If they don't work then you can whine about it.
I shut off John Katz's tripe and all the Star Wars idiocy long ago, and it's made my
They're no different. Those subsidies are just as bad. A President who claims to support the free market, then raises subsidies on farm products, and impose a new tarrif, isn't advancing the cause. It just lets the rest of the world get away with the same things. The administration can talk a good line about free trade, but no one cares, because they've seen that the administration doesn't really believe what they're preaching.
I'm just thanking my stars that (so far) the politicians havent fscked up like they did after the '29 stock market crash. The US enacted protectionist trade tarrifs which effectively were the first blow in killing off the *world* economy.
I guess you haven't noticed the trade war brewing over the imposition of steel tarrifs and heavily increased farm subsidies that the current administration signed into law? The Bush administration has a good track recordn at breaking their own promises with regard to trade policy.
I actually taped that broadcast, and I think a history lesson is really necessary. I thought it was a very good history lesson, because I sat, starting, remembering watching half of the clips when they were happening (like the VA Linux IPO) and staring slack-jawed at the screen, wondering how we could've been so idiotic.
I think many people forget the kind of craziness that actually happened back then. A good history lesson is what we need, and what we need to impress on our Representatives and Senators that we are unwilling to repeat.
1. It's a brand name that hopefully, through the efforts of many people using it, will go the way of asprin and cease to be a trademarked brand name here (asprin is a brand name everywhere except the US).
2. I certainly do pay for the operating system on my Mac. However, unless you can point out how much that is (not like Apple charges itself OEM licensing costs) or find me a way to buy a Mac new, without the operating system installed, and show the price difference, we'll talk.
Apple is a hardware company. Iron (well, plastic too). Darwin is free for the taking if I want it. The only thing I pay some small amount for is the interface, which is certainly worth it to me. They don't slap extra charges for each bit of everything that comes with it. Here's what you get. Here's the price. Don't like it? Next customer please. They're in the game the same way IBM is (and they're using FreeBSD the same way IBM is using Linux). To get their iron out the door. A different class of iron, but iron nonetheless.
Please get your head out of your rear. Apple isn't even trying to play the same game as Microsoft is with Windows, let alone compete. They don't want their OS to work on anything under the sun. The DO NOT WANT their operating system to run on your cheapo homebuilt machine, or your cheapo Dell, or your expensive homebuilt machine, or your expensive prebuilt machine, becuase they aren't getting money from the hardware, which is how they pay their bills, ya know?
Sorry, we Mac users already have a highly functional, highly stable, and highly usable UNIX operating system that comes free when you buy the machine, that also happens to run most free software (beer or speech) you might want to use.
Thanks for drinking Coke. Play again.
Offtopic? Wha? I don't get it...
The Slackware Store has been slashdotted. Good job everyone who's making that server's life hell for a good cause!
Knowing a bit of how mass mailings work, specifically how you figure out who is where through zip codes, the actual city that gets printed on things mailed to you in that fasion is determined by checking the Post office database, usually through a program such as AccuZip.
Lots of times, the city the post office has you in isn't the city you actually live in, but it will get to you all the same, because the Post Office can't assign multiple municipalities to a single zip code. They probably picked the small town because it didn't have any other zip code, or whatever criteria they have. Don't blame the software for something that isn't it's fault. It's just doing a query based on the official database.
Get the new testing version of Mozilla. 1.01a I believe. Quartz rendering, and it's FAST, and very stable. Never had it crash once, looks great. I've stopped using Chimera altogether, it's so fast and stable.
Still have IE for the few sites that require it, but I can't remember the last time I used it.
This is nothing new. Ever read the FBI WARNING that comes on before movies on VHS/DVD/etc? Unauthorizedending isn't allowed. Most CD audio, especially from the big labels, has a prohibition against unauthorized lending of the CD to anyone if you look hard enough.
While making me technically a criminal because I lent my copy of Alpha Centauri or the latest Britney Spears album to a friend, they really don't want to go after me. This basically allows them to come down on anyone who rents movies, video games, CDs, etc, without paying them a juicy licensing fee for the priviledge. Of course, regular public libraries get around this somehow, either by statute or custom, or both, not sure.