Everyone knows that MS is stronarming companies like Dell and Gateway about their products. In this case, are they going to try and force Dell to use CE or whatever other PDA software they may have? Or can Dell opt for embedded Linux, PalmOS, or others?
PDAs suffer from OEM Syndrome, since it's rather difficult to go out and nab up parts to build your own, unlike PCs. We PC users can go get what hardware we want, what OS we want, and go to town. PDAs aren't that easy. They're pretty much factory only, unless you're an UberGeek with connections beyond that of mortal geeks.
Microsoft admitting that it's going to disable a user's option to turn off their "hey, we're coming in, making changes, and not telling you" function? They should have just plead Guilty in the first few days of the Antitrust Trial. This is just going to get them into more trouble, and assist the competition. It may not happen right away, but MS is slowly digging their own grave. If Medical and Financial institutions can't use MS products because of the information security issue, then they won't buy MS products and be forced to find an alternative.
Either this goes to the Supreme Court and gets fixed, or we have to take it upon ourselves.
Being a web designer, my main goal is to get my work "seen" by as many people as possible. This includes anyone with a disability, as they're people, too. I say bad form. The ADA should apply to ALL situations, allowing ALL people to do whatever they can within any given limitation. If software exists to help a blind person "view" a website via audible text playback, then they should not be singled out like this.
Web sites already cater to the hearing impaired (duh), but does the ability to see entitle them to more? People with vision problems (blindness or otherwise) should be granted the ability to "view" whatever site they choose, be it with a text reader or otherwise. This decision will make those with disabilities that render Internet use all but impossible out to be second class citizens again, which is why the ADA was enacted.
If anything, we're going to see a whole mess of discrimination lawsuits come out of this. And we all know what kind of chaos can ensue when someone files a lawsuit. If you're in charge of web content, I'm urging you to ignore this court decision and go the extra mile for people with disabilities. If you do, at least one person out there will certainly appreciate the extra effort, and you'll avoid a costly lawsuit in the process (aka CYA)...
I wanted one of these ever since I saw it in "The Lawnmower Man"
Maybe this can relieve my 'net cramp," the sharp pain in my right shoulder that I have come to blame on using a mouse in an awkward setting (my desk was higher than my shoulder at my old apartment). I'd gladly pay whatever they're asking to eliminate that pain forever...
A new use for .su
on
See Ya .su
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Assign them to Teacher's Pets, high ranking corporate and political subordinates, Slashdot Karma Whores, and other such people. Reason?
...The whiney neighborhood kid who doesn't like the way the game is being played, so he takes his ball and goes home. Wah fucking wah.
I say let them pull the XBox. They'll be shooting themselves in the foot by denying themselves revenue. If I were an Aussie, I'd buy an XBox, mod the hell out of it and call Microsoft and tell them all about it. Encourage them to pull it from shelves. And when their sales go down because of it, I'd call them again and laugh. But that's just me...
Ahh, the joys of Lego.
on
Lego Segway
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Now, if they could only make a Lego Lobbyist for Open Source down in Washington. Seems like the Lego AI would be a whole lot smarter than any politician we have in there at present...
Scientists said that, in a study of teenage boys nationwide, the old "Yawn Play" works just as well on the Living Room couch, thus reducing the need to take a girl to the theater in order to make their move. Not to mention it skips the middleman and they don't have to wait to get home to "get it on." And the $20 they save on each date (at $10 a seat) is enough to buy most of their favorite movies once they reach DVD retailer shelves.
1. Ebay Fraud Article on MS sponsored site (MSNBC) with links to MS auction partner (uBid Ads). 2. Switch (from Unknown Mac OS version to Windows XP) story written (apparently on a Mac OSX version of Word) by a contracted MS PR employee. 3. Sudden change of license for a Source Forge clone site geared to supporting.NET development. 4. ? Stay tuned to Slashdot for the latest Microsoft Blunder...
With regards to #3: Didn't they say they were going to squash Open Source? Then why are they trying to do the same thing as the Open Source community? What, trying to beat them at their own game? Not happening. MS's "In The Know" bunch is a few hundred (maybe thousand) big business honchos and a few schools. The Open Source community's "In The Know" bunch is anyone with half a brain that wants to lend a hand, probably numbering in the millions.
We Are Open Source. Windows Existance Is Futile. You Will Be Humiliated...
Microsoft's favorite song must be "Oops, I Did It Again." After the MSNBC article about Ebay fraud (riddled with ads for uBid, hmmm), this looks to be the latest in what could become a series of goofs by MS.
Where do you want to find us tooting our own horn today?
...Who thinks that Bill Gates will be doing a whole bunch of globetrotting in the near future? I'll bet he's at the terminal now, with a briefcase full of "Free Software" for the Indonesian Government, and a Switch Story for them to read... Oh, wait...
While I loved Akira, I don't think making a live action version will be a good idea. Let's go through the list of similar (near) failures:
1. Super Mario Brothers - Boy, didn't that one screw up. Only good thing about that movie was John Leguizamo, who is awesome no matter what. 2. Final Fantasy - While a good film in my opinion, it didn't do too hot at the box office. Not to mention the story could have been way better, and should have been more along the lines of classic FF. 3. Resident Evil - Good flick, but still didn't do too hot in theaters. Saving Graces: The ladies, of course. Hot hot HOT! 4. Tomb Raider - Too much Angelina Jolie. Good story, but could have been better. This one did OK at the box office, but still not _that_ big.
And here's the big one... 5. G Savior. I'm sure alot of you are saying "What the hell is G-Savior?" It was a live action attempt at a Gundam movie. And boy, did it tank. Not one mention of the word Gundam, and even less big robots blowing stuff up.
It's easy to see why a fan of a masterpiece like Akira wouldn't have their hopes set too high for a live action flick. If it does work, though, I'm sure we can expect to see alot more Anime translated to live-action. I can see Mononoke Hime, Ghost In The Shell, hell FUNimation might go for broke and try to do Live Action DBZ. Wouldn't that be interesting (and frightening).
Now all we need is for MS to back off and rewrite their EULAs so they don't have the power to just mosey in, make changes to your system, and never tell you a thing.
For DRM reasons, I wasn't planning on getting a digital TV. The more steps backward that MS takes, the more inclined I'll be to improve my TV viewing experience. Now all that we as consumers have to do is keep up the pressure and let Gates and Company know that we're not about to just give in to their ideals. See? If consumers just speak up, we can get companies to listen. It's not fiction, and this is just a small snippet of proof. I'm looking forward to more stories like this one...
$497,989 - Royalties that the RIAA says you owe the original artist (AKA Your Parents)
And out of that $497,989 --
$493,000 - RIAA Fees $4,979.89 - Artist Royalty (1% of total Royalty Fee mentioned above) $9.11 Actual RIAA loss due to P2P Network downloading of Gene Map ISO.
Cut to image of Brittany Spears selling her implants to prevent starvation...
It took a judge to figure that one out? Any of us could have come up with that.
The verdict should be simple: That the DMCA and DRM are unconstitutional. Why? Because they give a few people (ie Businesses and Copyright Holders) the power to control consumer's rights. Once you start taking rights of any kind away, you violate the one document that we hold most dear over all others. If this passes and the public is made aware of the implications, woe be unto those who tried to undermine the very foundation of America...
When I first started using Opera (I use it exclusively now, save for.NET things like FastCounter and Hotmail), mouse guestures were really tough to get used to, all the way to the point where I just turned them off. Every once in a while, I'll fumble around and hit the wrong button, move the mouse a little, and end up backing up or something annoying like that when I'm trying to read, say, an NYT article.
If they kept it down to just a few guestures, I'd consider using them again. But there are just too many ways for it to get in my way right now.
I'm still trying to find intelligent life on Earth...
Humor aside, I'm looking forward to this move. After 2618 hours spent plugging away at Arecibo's data, it'll be refreshing to get some new data to work with. I'm of the belief that the Universe is just too damned big for us to be that special in terms of intelligent life. With our galaxy as big as it is, not to mention other galaxies beyond it, it's hard to believe that we're all alone in the great void. Bring on the Aussie telescope's data!
Well, one of my stories, anyway. I used a grand total of 6 metatags in my index header. When I submitted it to AltaVista, I found that three of them turned my page up number one on the results list. The other three put me in the top 10 results easy. That's the one and only time I've ever used a metatag. The result? Well, I can't really say that all of the nearly 100,000 hits I've gotten this past year has come from that search engine (I also had a listing on the Anime Web Turnpikefor a time), but since my other listings have been removed, I can safely say that it hasn't hurt my counter stats at all.
Pr0n mongers aren't the only ones who have used them successfully. Of course, they're targeting a 'niche' audience (a big one), and I'm targeting a smaller one. But hey, beggers can't be choosers, right? I never expected to see my counter get anywhere close to 100,000 in the short time it has, and I can partially thank metatags for that result.
Guess I won't be making millions on my super-secret MI6-type gung-ho classified Microsoft-Monopoly licensed Crypto-Magic 5000 All-In-Wonder program for encrypting Slashdot Sig files. And South Africa was my number one target market, too...
Oh, wait... BrainRAM (TM) fried again. You may now return to your regularly scheduled thread...
Anyway, this is just another example of how incredibly insane the Patent Process has gotten in the last few years. Hell, I could go out and get a patent on sex, and sue the hell out of anyone who does the hunka-chunka in any of my patented positions. It's that stupid these days!
Want easy money? Patent something simple like online auctions, then sue the big boys. Patent the way an online retail outfit would set up their shopping cart, then sue Amazon or AnimeNation. Patent the listing and catagorization of a collection of links, and sue the Anime Web Turnpike. I'm only using Anime examples because I'm a fan, BTW.
But still, my point is this: This is getting way out of hand, and needs to be stopped, and soon. Pretty soon online chat will be patented and Yahoo will be fending off their own suit. Web site hosting, followed by suits against Bravenet, Yahoo Geocities, and Terra-Lycos Tripod.
Stop the insanity (with appologies to Susan Powter), and stop it soon, or else we won't have an economy left to speak of online...
Aren't NT, 2000 and XP derivatives in descending order? Wasn't 2000 based on NT? XP on 2000? And we all know that they all have security issues (not to mention XP slows the HELL out of people's machines), so why even bother banning NT/2K without banning XP as well? If they're so worried about security, why not make the latest service packs available to students instead?
And why does this announcment not mention anything about alternate solutions? Why not make Linux readily available, along with its latest security patches, as well as any other *NIX OSs (BSDs, etc)? If the kids want XP for wasting time playing overpriced, overhyped games, fine. But give them the option, will ya? At least spread the word to those "not-so-geek-ish" students who might not otherwise know that they have a choice beyond the "Seattle Solution."
Good call. Shadowrun would be a great MMORPG. The "D&D" style fantasy games, even with FF's added technology aspects, are played out to beat the band. Give us Seattle, plus (with game technology's capabilities these days) an expanded Shadowrun universe (worldwide, perhaps?), and you have something that would put MMORPG on the map for keeps. Deckers, Mercs, Street Docs, awesome weapons and wild magic. This game is screaming to be made for the online audience.
This game is one of only two reasons I'll be buying a PS2 (the other is Kingdom Hearts). So, if ertain aspects/details in Final Fantasy XI will only be able to be accomplished with a geForce4 card, will that leave PS2 users out of those aspects and details? I'm not a hardware junkie, so I'm not sure of the specifics of the PS2, nor do I much care. I just want a kickass game experience. But if there are going to be GeeWhizForce4-only parts, am I really going to get what I pay for if I buy the PS2 port? As an FF fan since FF1, I'd feel a little jaded...
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone knows that MS is stronarming companies like Dell and Gateway about their products. In this case, are they going to try and force Dell to use CE or whatever other PDA software they may have? Or can Dell opt for embedded Linux, PalmOS, or others?
PDAs suffer from OEM Syndrome, since it's rather difficult to go out and nab up parts to build your own, unlike PCs. We PC users can go get what hardware we want, what OS we want, and go to town. PDAs aren't that easy. They're pretty much factory only, unless you're an UberGeek with connections beyond that of mortal geeks.
...MS Goof-up to add to my list.
Microsoft admitting that it's going to disable a user's option to turn off their "hey, we're coming in, making changes, and not telling you" function? They should have just plead Guilty in the first few days of the Antitrust Trial. This is just going to get them into more trouble, and assist the competition. It may not happen right away, but MS is slowly digging their own grave. If Medical and Financial institutions can't use MS products because of the information security issue, then they won't buy MS products and be forced to find an alternative.
Either this goes to the Supreme Court and gets fixed, or we have to take it upon ourselves.
Being a web designer, my main goal is to get my work "seen" by as many people as possible. This includes anyone with a disability, as they're people, too. I say bad form. The ADA should apply to ALL situations, allowing ALL people to do whatever they can within any given limitation. If software exists to help a blind person "view" a website via audible text playback, then they should not be singled out like this.
Web sites already cater to the hearing impaired (duh), but does the ability to see entitle them to more? People with vision problems (blindness or otherwise) should be granted the ability to "view" whatever site they choose, be it with a text reader or otherwise. This decision will make those with disabilities that render Internet use all but impossible out to be second class citizens again, which is why the ADA was enacted.
If anything, we're going to see a whole mess of discrimination lawsuits come out of this. And we all know what kind of chaos can ensue when someone files a lawsuit. If you're in charge of web content, I'm urging you to ignore this court decision and go the extra mile for people with disabilities. If you do, at least one person out there will certainly appreciate the extra effort, and you'll avoid a costly lawsuit in the process (aka CYA)...
I wanted one of these ever since I saw it in "The Lawnmower Man"
Maybe this can relieve my 'net cramp," the sharp pain in my right shoulder that I have come to blame on using a mouse in an awkward setting (my desk was higher than my shoulder at my old apartment). I'd gladly pay whatever they're asking to eliminate that pain forever...
Assign them to Teacher's Pets, high ranking corporate and political subordinates, Slashdot Karma Whores, and other such people. Reason?
.s(uck)u(p)
Error 420: User is unable to comprehed first half of paragraph, as user is not quite that geeky. Please use English.
Error 336: This space reserved for future errors.
...The whiney neighborhood kid who doesn't like the way the game is being played, so he takes his ball and goes home. Wah fucking wah.
I say let them pull the XBox. They'll be shooting themselves in the foot by denying themselves revenue. If I were an Aussie, I'd buy an XBox, mod the hell out of it and call Microsoft and tell them all about it. Encourage them to pull it from shelves. And when their sales go down because of it, I'd call them again and laugh. But that's just me...
Now, if they could only make a Lego Lobbyist for Open Source down in Washington. Seems like the Lego AI would be a whole lot smarter than any politician we have in there at present...
Scientists said that, in a study of teenage boys nationwide, the old "Yawn Play" works just as well on the Living Room couch, thus reducing the need to take a girl to the theater in order to make their move. Not to mention it skips the middleman and they don't have to wait to get home to "get it on." And the $20 they save on each date (at $10 a seat) is enough to buy most of their favorite movies once they reach DVD retailer shelves.
1. Ebay Fraud Article on MS sponsored site (MSNBC) with links to MS auction partner (uBid Ads). .NET development.
2. Switch (from Unknown Mac OS version to Windows XP) story written (apparently on a Mac OSX version of Word) by a contracted MS PR employee.
3. Sudden change of license for a Source Forge clone site geared to supporting
4. ? Stay tuned to Slashdot for the latest Microsoft Blunder...
With regards to #3: Didn't they say they were going to squash Open Source? Then why are they trying to do the same thing as the Open Source community? What, trying to beat them at their own game? Not happening. MS's "In The Know" bunch is a few hundred (maybe thousand) big business honchos and a few schools. The Open Source community's "In The Know" bunch is anyone with half a brain that wants to lend a hand, probably numbering in the millions.
We Are Open Source. Windows Existance Is Futile. You Will Be Humiliated...
Microsoft's favorite song must be "Oops, I Did It Again." After the MSNBC article about Ebay fraud (riddled with ads for uBid, hmmm), this looks to be the latest in what could become a series of goofs by MS.
Where do you want to find us tooting our own horn today?
...Who thinks that Bill Gates will be doing a whole bunch of globetrotting in the near future? I'll bet he's at the terminal now, with a briefcase full of "Free Software" for the Indonesian Government, and a Switch Story for them to read... Oh, wait...
While I loved Akira, I don't think making a live action version will be a good idea. Let's go through the list of similar (near) failures:
1. Super Mario Brothers - Boy, didn't that one screw up. Only good thing about that movie was John Leguizamo, who is awesome no matter what.
2. Final Fantasy - While a good film in my opinion, it didn't do too hot at the box office. Not to mention the story could have been way better, and should have been more along the lines of classic FF.
3. Resident Evil - Good flick, but still didn't do too hot in theaters. Saving Graces: The ladies, of course. Hot hot HOT!
4. Tomb Raider - Too much Angelina Jolie. Good story, but could have been better. This one did OK at the box office, but still not _that_ big.
And here's the big one...
5. G Savior. I'm sure alot of you are saying "What the hell is G-Savior?" It was a live action attempt at a Gundam movie. And boy, did it tank. Not one mention of the word Gundam, and even less big robots blowing stuff up.
It's easy to see why a fan of a masterpiece like Akira wouldn't have their hopes set too high for a live action flick. If it does work, though, I'm sure we can expect to see alot more Anime translated to live-action. I can see Mononoke Hime, Ghost In The Shell, hell FUNimation might go for broke and try to do Live Action DBZ. Wouldn't that be interesting (and frightening).
Now all we need is for MS to back off and rewrite their EULAs so they don't have the power to just mosey in, make changes to your system, and never tell you a thing.
For DRM reasons, I wasn't planning on getting a digital TV. The more steps backward that MS takes, the more inclined I'll be to improve my TV viewing experience. Now all that we as consumers have to do is keep up the pressure and let Gates and Company know that we're not about to just give in to their ideals. See? If consumers just speak up, we can get companies to listen. It's not fiction, and this is just a small snippet of proof. I'm looking forward to more stories like this one...
$2000 - Getting your DNA mapped
$1 - Cost of CD-R
$10 - Burn Time Charge
$497,989 - Royalties that the RIAA says you owe the original artist (AKA Your Parents)
And out of that $497,989 --
$493,000 - RIAA Fees
$4,979.89 - Artist Royalty (1% of total Royalty Fee mentioned above)
$9.11 Actual RIAA loss due to P2P Network downloading of Gene Map ISO.
Cut to image of Brittany Spears selling her implants to prevent starvation...
chided Congress for being inept and unclear.
It took a judge to figure that one out? Any of us could have come up with that.
The verdict should be simple: That the DMCA and DRM are unconstitutional. Why? Because they give a few people (ie Businesses and Copyright Holders) the power to control consumer's rights. Once you start taking rights of any kind away, you violate the one document that we hold most dear over all others. If this passes and the public is made aware of the implications, woe be unto those who tried to undermine the very foundation of America...
When I first started using Opera (I use it exclusively now, save for .NET things like FastCounter and Hotmail), mouse guestures were really tough to get used to, all the way to the point where I just turned them off. Every once in a while, I'll fumble around and hit the wrong button, move the mouse a little, and end up backing up or something annoying like that when I'm trying to read, say, an NYT article.
If they kept it down to just a few guestures, I'd consider using them again. But there are just too many ways for it to get in my way right now.
Aqua is much better looking than Luna, IMHO.
I'm still trying to find intelligent life on Earth...
Humor aside, I'm looking forward to this move. After 2618 hours spent plugging away at Arecibo's data, it'll be refreshing to get some new data to work with. I'm of the belief that the Universe is just too damned big for us to be that special in terms of intelligent life. With our galaxy as big as it is, not to mention other galaxies beyond it, it's hard to believe that we're all alone in the great void. Bring on the Aussie telescope's data!
Well, one of my stories, anyway. I used a grand total of 6 metatags in my index header. When I submitted it to AltaVista, I found that three of them turned my page up number one on the results list. The other three put me in the top 10 results easy. That's the one and only time I've ever used a metatag. The result? Well, I can't really say that all of the nearly 100,000 hits I've gotten this past year has come from that search engine (I also had a listing on the Anime Web Turnpikefor a time), but since my other listings have been removed, I can safely say that it hasn't hurt my counter stats at all.
Pr0n mongers aren't the only ones who have used them successfully. Of course, they're targeting a 'niche' audience (a big one), and I'm targeting a smaller one. But hey, beggers can't be choosers, right? I never expected to see my counter get anywhere close to 100,000 in the short time it has, and I can partially thank metatags for that result.
Guess I won't be making millions on my super-secret MI6-type gung-ho classified Microsoft-Monopoly licensed Crypto-Magic 5000 All-In-Wonder program for encrypting Slashdot Sig files. And South Africa was my number one target market, too...
Oh, wait... BrainRAM (TM) fried again. You may now return to your regularly scheduled thread...
...or was this posted before?
Anyway, this is just another example of how incredibly insane the Patent Process has gotten in the last few years. Hell, I could go out and get a patent on sex, and sue the hell out of anyone who does the hunka-chunka in any of my patented positions. It's that stupid these days!
Want easy money? Patent something simple like online auctions, then sue the big boys. Patent the way an online retail outfit would set up their shopping cart, then sue Amazon or AnimeNation. Patent the listing and catagorization of a collection of links, and sue the Anime Web Turnpike. I'm only using Anime examples because I'm a fan, BTW.
But still, my point is this: This is getting way out of hand, and needs to be stopped, and soon. Pretty soon online chat will be patented and Yahoo will be fending off their own suit. Web site hosting, followed by suits against Bravenet, Yahoo Geocities, and Terra-Lycos Tripod.
Stop the insanity (with appologies to Susan Powter), and stop it soon, or else we won't have an economy left to speak of online...
Aren't NT, 2000 and XP derivatives in descending order? Wasn't 2000 based on NT? XP on 2000? And we all know that they all have security issues (not to mention XP slows the HELL out of people's machines), so why even bother banning NT/2K without banning XP as well? If they're so worried about security, why not make the latest service packs available to students instead?
And why does this announcment not mention anything about alternate solutions? Why not make Linux readily available, along with its latest security patches, as well as any other *NIX OSs (BSDs, etc)? If the kids want XP for wasting time playing overpriced, overhyped games, fine. But give them the option, will ya? At least spread the word to those "not-so-geek-ish" students who might not otherwise know that they have a choice beyond the "Seattle Solution."
Good call. Shadowrun would be a great MMORPG. The "D&D" style fantasy games, even with FF's added technology aspects, are played out to beat the band. Give us Seattle, plus (with game technology's capabilities these days) an expanded Shadowrun universe (worldwide, perhaps?), and you have something that would put MMORPG on the map for keeps. Deckers, Mercs, Street Docs, awesome weapons and wild magic. This game is screaming to be made for the online audience.
This game is one of only two reasons I'll be buying a PS2 (the other is Kingdom Hearts). So, if ertain aspects/details in Final Fantasy XI will only be able to be accomplished with a geForce4 card, will that leave PS2 users out of those aspects and details? I'm not a hardware junkie, so I'm not sure of the specifics of the PS2, nor do I much care. I just want a kickass game experience. But if there are going to be GeeWhizForce4-only parts, am I really going to get what I pay for if I buy the PS2 port? As an FF fan since FF1, I'd feel a little jaded...