Ignoring the fact of what the contract says, its perfectly legitimate for VU to not want HL2 on STEAM before it ships to stores. The simple fact is that if you have any game available from one distribution point (especially one like STEAM which doesnt make any money for the publisher) before its available everywhere, someone somewhere is going to get less sales because of it and will get annoyed.
If it was available on STEAM now, a fair few people who are (with the current release date) going to buy a physical copy (perhaps with a preorder) would be likely to jump for STEAM because its there NOW which means even less $ for VU (not that I have any great love for VU though)
The issues with the linux port are partly driver issues (and not IDs fault). Also, I suspect they are working to make it better and released what they did just to say "here it is, its not finished yet but you can mess with it anyway". As for the linux SDK, I expect that will appear once they release the "stable/finished" version of the linux port.
The fact is, the police (at least in australia where I live) DO go after perverts and scumbags in chatrooms. And after Child Porn.
Not saying that parents shouldnt be responsible for what their kids do online but that doesnt mean that we should do nothing to go after scumbags and perverts and etc, wherever they may hide.
And there are probobly good reasons for wanting ISPs to keep this information. For example, things like child porn. Or like scumbags or perverts in chat rooms. I think a good answer is to have the law such that you need a court order to get the logs. That would mean that the BPI can still get the logs to sue people but only after they have gone to court to prove that was in fact sharing illegal files.
Re:We need to keep re-inventing the browser
on
Netscape Turns 10
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· Score: 1
The right answer is to use something that is browser neutral in the first place.
I know some people dont like it but web apps (including most of the sort of things currently written with various browser-specific stuff like ActiveX) are one of the things JAVA is very good at. There are some reasons JAVA isnt there for application software yet but for web stuff, its great. (well great compared to all alternatives anyway).
And, despite what some here like to say, it is Open. Anyone can come along and write a JAVA VM if they want.
Why dont they just add all this stuff to the online MSDN library along with all the other documentation on APIs and etc.
I guess they are getting their lawyers to find a licence for the documents that complies with the court order (or at least enough of it to keep the current DOJ/courts off their back) but contains a clause like "no-one other than microsoft can disttribute this information in any form" (which would be banning open source stuff from using it by stealth)
The advantage of systems like what MS does is that the signature is checked automatically. Others like a signed text file would require user action to check the signature.
It may not be on a school server but people seeing a domain name like UCSDuncensored.com could assume that it is supported/endorsed/authorized/whatever by UCSD when in fact it is not.
This happens elsewhere too. For example, anyone using the trademarked name LEGO (of plastic building bricks fame) in a domain name will get hit with a lawsuit (again because of the confusion)
Basicly, they dont want any sites that are critical of the university set up in such a way that people may think they are associated with UCSD.
I remember back in high school when I was going to a private cristian school (not because of religious reasons, but because it was a good school).
At one point, a friend of mine had a website on the school server and he put some stuff on there about his views on religion (something about atheisim or something) and the admins got annoyed (for obvious reasons) and he had to take it down.
Be a great way to enforce their population control policies too (especially since anyone having a baby without government approval can be locked up, tortured, executed or more likely all 3, see movies like Fortress for examples of what might happen:)
Remember that (depsite all the effort put into it) even Firefox is still heaver on RAM, CPU, disk space etc (especially given that on modern windows, IE is always installed and taking up disk and large parts of it reside in RAM at all times because of its use by components like Explorer)
Also remember that the target market for stuff like this probobly doesnt have the latest and greatest hardware. Therefore, mozilla/firefox will not have the same performence as IE on these machines. And the users will notice that "the new AOL feels slower than the old AOL".
Also, another big thing to remember is that there is a HUGE collection of web content (both external and on the AOL network itself) within the AOL/Time Warner empire. A chunk of that content makes money for AOL/TW in various ways (ads, cross-promotion etc etc etc). Part of the problem is that they need to check all of this content under gecko to see that it works. And remember, if a page (either an AOL/TW page or something else) doesnt look exactly the same in "the new AOL" as it did in "the old AOL", AOL users are going to blame "the new AOL" (instead of the page itself)
Is there anyone those in america can vote for who DONT support these stupid lame pro-big-corperation IP laws?
And I mean someone who actually stands a remote chance of winning...
Hopefully us aussies can kick howard out on saturday and get a government who is NOT pro-big-business on IP laws (although I dont see any specific statement one way or the other on this issue on the ALP website)
holding off in the hopes they can get an injunction in the court preventing valve from releasing HL2 over steam untill the legal mess is sorted out. If they can secure that quickly, they will approve HL2 and release.
What I dont get is why Valve doesnt come to some aggreement with VU that allows Valve to release via Steam and pay some amount of money to VU for every copy sold/downloaded. (i.e. VU gets some cash out of it but valve still gets all the cash that would otherwise go on production costs for the CD, box and manual, costs/profit for the store and so on)
AOL, ICQ, Yahoo and MSN will continue to rule the roost and people will continue to be forced to use the crappy lame official clients or risk having their third party client locked out because the protocol was changed for the umpteenth time.
Hardware wise, the PS2 is totally different to the PS1. It does contain a PS1 CPU to act as the IO processor (I think) and the processor for PS1 games.
As for Sony Digital Cameras, I have a DSC-P32 and its good.
Firstly, it is highly unlikely that algorithims such as RSA contain backdoors. There may be specific programs containing NSA backdoors.
If you are that worried about NSA backdoors, download a 100% Open Source encryption solution (I think GPG fits that definition) and compile it yourself.
Basicly, the biggest problems with the patent system are: 1.not enough examination of a patent before its rubber stamped (if what some people here say about prior art for and how there exists great easy to find prior art for a bunch of these patents, then the PTO needs people who can find that prior art) 2.futher to 1, the next problem is that the whole system is geared towards approving as many patents as possible. It is more fanantially benificial to the PTO to approve a patent than to reject it. This has to change so that the PTO gets the same finantial outcome regardless of if the patent is passed. 3.It should be easier to get a patent overturned if proof of prior art is discovered. Also, the method of dealing with patent infringements should be changed. There should be a single "Patent Infringements Tribunal" or something. All patent infringements and all cases where someone has claimed to find prior art would be heard there. There would be some kind of steps taken to ensure that friviolous prior art claims are not made. For infringements, if the patent is found not to infringe in the case in question (or is overturned), the patent holder will be penalized. Ditto if prior art is found that makes the patent invalid. (although if that was introduced, things like the eolas vs microsoft case may not have happened because the MS lawyers are 800kg gorillas and the eolas lawyers are little tiny ants)
With the right changes, it is possible to allow genunely inovative software patents (although I dont like it, something like RSA does represent the investment of a fair bit of time Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman and does deserve some level of protection) to exist but the crappy patents (software and otherwise) to go away.
People suing over patent infringement are usually after 2 things. 1 is money (especially if the infringer has deep pockets) and the second is to ensure that is the only one.
For example, if a big company makes money of a piece of software covered by a software patent, its in the interests of said big company to sue a little guy who makes free software that infringes on the patent. Even if the little guy has absolutly no money, it doesnt matter. The aim of the lawsuit is to ensure that distrbution of the software is stopped and that it can no longer hurt sales of the big companys software.
Although as has been proven many times over, stoppnig distrbution of any piece of software is truely impossible (just look at DeCSS)
Its the same with other patent infringements. For example, a big drug company will sue to make sure that cheaper versions of its patented drugs wont be sold. And a big biotech will sue to make sure that farmers wanting to use their genericly modified crops (and as we have seen, quite a few who dont want their GM crap but have become "infected" by mistake) pay up big.
is that Microsoft should have made this app look for and identify any copies of the vulnerable windows components (including GDIPLUS) stored anywhere on the system. Then there should be a simple way to get the latest version and replace the old copy with it.
Course, that then results in dll hell because breaks with the new version which is why they shipped the old version in their app folder in the first place:P
Slashdot Mirror
Ignoring the fact of what the contract says, its perfectly legitimate for VU to not want HL2 on STEAM before it ships to stores.
The simple fact is that if you have any game available from one distribution point (especially one like STEAM which doesnt make any money for the publisher) before its available everywhere, someone somewhere is going to get less sales because of it and will get annoyed.
If it was available on STEAM now, a fair few people who are (with the current release date) going to buy a physical copy (perhaps with a preorder) would be likely to jump for STEAM because its there NOW which means even less $ for VU (not that I have any great love for VU though)
The issues with the linux port are partly driver issues (and not IDs fault).
Also, I suspect they are working to make it better and released what they did just to say "here it is, its not finished yet but you can mess with it anyway".
As for the linux SDK, I expect that will appear once they release the "stable/finished" version of the linux port.
No, the answer is to prohibit exporting personal data to these countries that dont have strong laws.
The fact is, the police (at least in australia where I live) DO go after perverts and scumbags in chatrooms. And after Child Porn.
Not saying that parents shouldnt be responsible for what their kids do online but that doesnt mean that we should do nothing to go after scumbags and perverts and etc, wherever they may hide.
And there are probobly good reasons for wanting ISPs to keep this information.
For example, things like child porn.
Or like scumbags or perverts in chat rooms.
I think a good answer is to have the law such that you need a court order to get the logs.
That would mean that the BPI can still get the logs to sue people but only after they have gone to court to prove that was in fact sharing illegal files.
The right answer is to use something that is browser neutral in the first place.
I know some people dont like it but web apps (including most of the sort of things currently written with various browser-specific stuff like ActiveX) are one of the things JAVA is very good at.
There are some reasons JAVA isnt there for application software yet but for web stuff, its great. (well great compared to all alternatives anyway).
And, despite what some here like to say, it is Open. Anyone can come along and write a JAVA VM if they want.
Why dont they just add all this stuff to the online MSDN library along with all the other documentation on APIs and etc.
I guess they are getting their lawyers to find a licence for the documents that complies with the court order (or at least enough of it to keep the current DOJ/courts off their back) but contains a clause like "no-one other than microsoft can disttribute this information in any form" (which would be banning open source stuff from using it by stealth)
The advantage of systems like what MS does is that the signature is checked automatically.
Others like a signed text file would require user action to check the signature.
It may not be on a school server but people seeing a domain name like UCSDuncensored.com could assume that it is supported/endorsed/authorized/whatever by UCSD when in fact it is not.
This happens elsewhere too. For example, anyone using the trademarked name LEGO (of plastic building bricks fame) in a domain name will get hit with a lawsuit (again because of the confusion)
Basicly, they dont want any sites that are critical of the university set up in such a way that people may think they are associated with UCSD.
I remember back in high school when I was going to a private cristian school (not because of religious reasons, but because it was a good school).
At one point, a friend of mine had a website on the school server and he put some stuff on there about his views on religion (something about atheisim or something) and the admins got annoyed (for obvious reasons) and he had to take it down.
The same would apply in any similar circumstance.
Be a great way to enforce their population control policies too (especially since anyone having a baby without government approval can be locked up, tortured, executed or more likely all 3, see movies like Fortress for examples of what might happen :)
Remember that (depsite all the effort put into it) even Firefox is still heaver on RAM, CPU, disk space etc (especially given that on modern windows, IE is always installed and taking up disk and large parts of it reside in RAM at all times because of its use by components like Explorer)
Also remember that the target market for stuff like this probobly doesnt have the latest and greatest hardware. Therefore, mozilla/firefox will not have the same performence as IE on these machines.
And the users will notice that "the new AOL feels slower than the old AOL".
Also, another big thing to remember is that there is a HUGE collection of web content (both external and on the AOL network itself) within the AOL/Time Warner empire. A chunk of that content makes money for AOL/TW in various ways (ads, cross-promotion etc etc etc). Part of the problem is that they need to check all of this content under gecko to see that it works. And remember, if a page (either an AOL/TW page or something else) doesnt look exactly the same in "the new AOL" as it did in "the old AOL", AOL users are going to blame "the new AOL" (instead of the page itself)
Why not just have a smart chip or something where they can put the card into a reader.
That way, no-one can read the info on it unless they have the card in their posession.
Is there anyone those in america can vote for who DONT support these stupid lame pro-big-corperation IP laws?
And I mean someone who actually stands a remote chance of winning...
Hopefully us aussies can kick howard out on saturday and get a government who is NOT pro-big-business on IP laws (although I dont see any specific statement one way or the other on this issue on the ALP website)
The big question is how this will affect various open-source JAVA thingos (like the GNU java GCC compiler thingo)
holding off in the hopes they can get an injunction in the court preventing valve from releasing HL2 over steam untill the legal mess is sorted out.
If they can secure that quickly, they will approve HL2 and release.
What I dont get is why Valve doesnt come to some aggreement with VU that allows Valve to release via Steam and pay some amount of money to VU for every copy sold/downloaded. (i.e. VU gets some cash out of it but valve still gets all the cash that would otherwise go on production costs for the CD, box and manual, costs/profit for the store and so on)
now that we have the patch and linux client, how about the SDK?
AOL, ICQ, Yahoo and MSN will continue to rule the roost and people will continue to be forced to use the crappy lame official clients or risk having their third party client locked out because the protocol was changed for the umpteenth time.
Try Miranda IM.
I use it and I can talk to all my AIM contacts no problems.
Dont know about the "put the source on the CD" thing if its a console game...
Hardware wise, the PS2 is totally different to the PS1.
It does contain a PS1 CPU to act as the IO processor (I think) and the processor for PS1 games.
As for Sony Digital Cameras, I have a DSC-P32 and its good.
Firstly, it is highly unlikely that algorithims such as RSA contain backdoors. There may be specific programs containing NSA backdoors.
If you are that worried about NSA backdoors, download a 100% Open Source encryption solution (I think GPG fits that definition) and compile it yourself.
Basicly, the biggest problems with the patent system are:
1.not enough examination of a patent before its rubber stamped (if what some people here say about prior art for and how there exists great easy to find prior art for a bunch of these patents, then the PTO needs people who can find that prior art)
2.futher to 1, the next problem is that the whole system is geared towards approving as many patents as possible. It is more fanantially benificial to the PTO to approve a patent than to reject it. This has to change so that the PTO gets the same finantial outcome regardless of if the patent is passed.
3.It should be easier to get a patent overturned if proof of prior art is discovered. Also, the method of dealing with patent infringements should be changed.
There should be a single "Patent Infringements Tribunal" or something. All patent infringements and all cases where someone has claimed to find prior art would be heard there. There would be some kind of steps taken to ensure that friviolous prior art claims are not made.
For infringements, if the patent is found not to infringe in the case in question (or is overturned), the patent holder will be penalized. Ditto if prior art is found that makes the patent invalid. (although if that was introduced, things like the eolas vs microsoft case may not have happened because the MS lawyers are 800kg gorillas and the eolas lawyers are little tiny ants)
With the right changes, it is possible to allow genunely inovative software patents (although I dont like it, something like RSA does represent the investment of a fair bit of time Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman and does deserve some level of protection) to exist but the crappy patents (software and otherwise) to go away.
People suing over patent infringement are usually after 2 things. 1 is money (especially if the infringer has deep pockets) and the second is to ensure that is the only one.
For example, if a big company makes money of a piece of software covered by a software patent, its in the interests of said big company to sue a little guy who makes free software that infringes on the patent. Even if the little guy has absolutly no money, it doesnt matter. The aim of the lawsuit is to ensure that distrbution of the software is stopped and that it can no longer hurt sales of the big companys software.
Although as has been proven many times over, stoppnig distrbution of any piece of software is truely impossible (just look at DeCSS)
Its the same with other patent infringements. For example, a big drug company will sue to make sure that cheaper versions of its patented drugs wont be sold. And a big biotech will sue to make sure that farmers wanting to use their genericly modified crops (and as we have seen, quite a few who dont want their GM crap but have become "infected" by mistake) pay up big.
is that Microsoft should have made this app look for and identify any copies of the vulnerable windows components (including GDIPLUS) stored anywhere on the system. Then there should be a simple way to get the latest version and replace the old copy with it.
:P
Course, that then results in dll hell because breaks with the new version which is why they shipped the old version in their app folder in the first place