This article is tagged "thief". I thought it was standard/. wisdom that copyright infringement isn't theft?
Slashdot's readership is a large heterogeneous group. Individual readers have widly varying opinions on intellectual property law and language. Pretending that Slashdot's readership is of a single mind and insinuating that the resulting hive-mind is being hypocritical isn't clever, it just makes you an ass.
huh, I didn't know that software verification had been perfected such that FLOSS was "verifieable" as "secure".
You're missing the point.
If you wanted to verify the security of, say, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, you can download the source and start reading. It'll be slow, and may not be practical. But you're free to do it. You can pay someone else that you trust to do the review for you. And while reviewing the entire system probably isn't feasible, you can certainly review subsets that you consider important. You don't have to trust Linus or Red Hat or anyone else.
If you're like to verify the security of, say, Windows XP on the other hands, you're out of luck. You trust Microsoft or you don't. If you're really brave (and willing to violate the EULA you probably agreed to), you can reverse engineer it, but that adds a whole new level of difficulty to the problem.
And lets say you find a security vulnerability. With open source software you can fix it yourself, or pay someone else to fix it, and be on your way. With closed source software you're stuck waiting, or boldly trying to patch a binary (probably in violation of that EULA again). If the software is particularly old (perhaps because you need an old version), with the open source version you can fix it yourself; but with closed source software you may be out of luck if they've dropped support.
If someone else finds a security hole, it's much easier for you to check the problem yourself and confirm that the offered fix actually closes the hole with open source software than with proprietary software. A proprietary software company may promise that the bug is fixed, but have done a half-assed job. You're back to reverse engineering to check.
Openness leads to security. The ability to read and modify the source can make you safer. Maybe you're not making use of that capability, but others are.
Would slashdot post a counter-terror expert talking about computer security if he had no experience whatsoever in that field?
If that counter terror expert offered cogent arguments, sure, why not? If the arguments are wrong, refute them, don't engage in the logical fallacies of ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority. Security isn't some magical concern that only a few high priests can speak on. Security is a day-to-day issue that everyone needs to consider. Security is a matter of government a politics, an area that every interested citizen can debate and try to influence our government.
"It Just Don't Look Right" is a time-tested law enforcement mantra.
If the market will bear it, that's the correct price.
If the producer is making significant profits, it's not the correct price. After all, if the profit is significant, someone else should quickly produce a clone and undercut the original manufacturer. A free market is a two-way street, and properly functioning it doesn't leave much profit.
So, where are the cheap iPhones? They're not here because we don't have a free market. Apple is being protected by government granted monopolies. Patents and copyright are nothing less than government interferance in the free market.
So is the current price the "correct" price? We'll never know while the market is corrupt. Me, I'm okay with it, but it's silly to suggest that the price we're seeing is somehow special and shouldn't be questioned.
So why couldn't that "positive" information be brought together into some sort of format that would quickly and simply provide positive evidence that we should be granted admittance to wherever we wanted to go?
I highly recommend "An Easy Path for Terrorists," written by security expert Bruce Schneier. He's talking about the "Trusted Traveler" and "Registered Traveler" programs designed to speed up the airport security lines, but it's the same problem, the same proposed solution, and has the same flaws in the solution. In short: if you create a low security route ("I've got a card that says I'm safe, so don't search me"), some terrorists will manage to get into the low security route. You've created a more complex system with more possibilities for attack.
...the civil war was the US fighting other parts of the US. Of course it was possible for the US to win.
The US government had a clear goal: stop the secession and reabsorb the states involved. It was possible to fail at that goal. If they had failed, the Confederated States of America would have been an independent country. The CSA would have won and the US would have lost.
What is the difference between what Lincoln did during the Civil War and what President Bush is doing right now?
The most obvious difference is that it was possible for the US to win the Civil War. The Confederacy could surrender and accept reintegration into the US. You could look to the future and see this possible case.
When, exactly, will we defeat terrorism? How will we know we have won? Who can surrender on terrorism's behalf?
Terrorism, like crime, drugs, hunger, and poverty, isn't something you can go to war against. Sure, you can have a War on Terror like we have a War on Drugs, but it's a colorful metaphor, not a basis for policy. These are problems that we will probably never resolve and we can only limit the problem through constant and eternal effort. I'm willing to discuss limiting my civil rights for a war with concrete end goal. I'm not willing to limit them until we defeat an abstract noun.
Why do we now see him [Lincoln] as one of our greatest presidents?
Perhaps because most people's knowledge of him is limited to what they learned in grade and high school, which tends to gloss over the negative bits? Perhaps because while he did do many terrible things (like suspending habeas corpus), he did accomplish many great things? This is in contrast to Bush, who does lots of terrible things and so far hasn't shown any signs of great things. What few good things he's done (overthrown the Taliban and Hussein) tend to be overshadowed by the catastrophies he's dumping on his successor.
Most carriers in the USA provide a rent-to-own phone for you.
Close, but no cigar. You do in fact own the phone they sold you (or even gave you for free). It's not a rental. You aren't making payments on the phone. If you break your contract, you don't need to return the phone to them. Indeed, if you walk into a store and ask to return the phone and break your contract, they'll laugh at you. They won't want the phone back. However, they will (unhappily) terminate your service and charge you the fee.
You are under contract, and the contract says there is an early termination fee. If you break the contract, you pay the fee. While the fee is designed to replace the cost of the subsidized phone, it's not a loan nor a payment, it's just a term of the contract.
Thus, you're perfectly free to do whatever you like with your phone, including unlocking it. Of course, they're under no obligation to let you keep using your modified phone on their network.
The OLPC project's primary interest is helping children in the poorest parts of the world. I expect that providing US children with an inexpensive toy is pretty low on their list of goals.
Do they really say users should rip to MP3? All I'm seeing are suggestions that you back up your collection since you won't be able to re-download them. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
The real question is how are the tracks locked to a given purchaser? If you need to authenticate to some Virgin Digital service when you, say, move to a new computer, then there is a problem.
A review is a subjective thing that covers the REVIEWER'S experience.
A good reviewer tries to look beyond themself and strives to make the review useful to the experiences readers will have. What's the option? "Only the first thirty minutes are any fun. However, as I recieved a review copy for free, the value for money is exceptional and I highly recommend getting the game for those exceptional first thirty minutes." Or perhaps, "I received exceptional service from the waitstaff. I also found it flattering that they had my photo next to the maitre de stand, labeled 'food critic. VIP service!'"
That said, given that the reviewer was focusing on the 360 release, the DRM might have been a bit off-topic.
Re:Why no mention?
on
BioShock Review
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If it's a factor in whether or not you enjoy the actual game, that's what I like to call "a you problem".
A review should cover the entire experience, and that includes the DRM. To make up a tortured example, if a movie's distributor is so terrified of people making copies that theaters have to agree to strip search everyone who sees the movie, yeah, that should be noted in any good review in addition to the quality of the film itself. Or to be less contrived, it's fair game for a theater review to note that, say, the theater is in a very dangerous neighborhood, or that you'll end up spending as much on parking or cab fare as on the tickets themselves. Similarly, if a game's installer fails on a large number of systems, rendering the game effectively unplayable, that should be mentioned in a review as well. The publishers included the DRM in the box and as part of the game, so it should get reviewed along with the game.
Nobody gives a shit what OS you like, just play the game.
People are looking for a pseudononymous handle. It should ideally be unique and memorable, so friends can easily add you, and people you meet online can remember who you are if they bump into you again. Since you're pretty much making something up out of nothing, why not base it upon your hobbies and your preferences? It lets you express yourself in a small way, becomes a name you can easily self-identify as, and may be easier for your friends who know you to remember. It seems better than just assigning people random IDs. If I'm going to be playing with pseudononymous people, I'd rather play with GingerPunkfan, SadLittleEmoBoy937, StockCarRacingFan, SupahLinuxHacker, and Sycraft-fu instead of USER#813741, USER#12873, USER#937771, USER#2331, and USER#314770.
...an argument could be made that if a police officer is investigating a potential crime, they have the right to ask for identification from relevant parties.
(For the pendants, I'm reading "have the right to ask for" as "can legally demand.")
Sure. But there was no potential crime. The officer searched the man's bags and compared the contents to the receipt. There was no shoplifting. The only possible crime here is refusing to produce ID, which is a bit of circular logic.
I loathe the involuntary searches many stores try, but in the case of wholesale clubs, it might be legal. For many wholesale clubs you have to sign an agreement before you can become a member and shop there. If the agreement says you consent to letting them check, well, that's their right. Me, I avoid the problem by avoiding the wholesale clubs.
You have 5 installs. You use one when you install, you get it back when you do an uninstall.
I forgot. This is, of course, simply wrong. If I want to uninstall today, I don't get the license back, because the tool to the return a license doesn't exist. The "revoke" application is coming, but isn't here.
Was there really anything wrong with the launch of their product? Not really.
Other than that the authentication servers weren't properly functioning on the launch date, meaning many early adopters hoping to play that day didn't get to. Oh, and the people who ran into problems with it and had to reinstall a few times, but the uninstaller didn't always successfully return the license, so they got locked out of their game. Oh, and people noticed that the software installed a driver they didn't want and couldn't uninstall. But other than that, it was a flawless launch.
Was there really anything wrong in this game that we haven't seen before in games like the GTA series? No.
Can you kill little girls in the GTA series (III and beyond, mind you)? No. People are understandably protective of children. That's going to cause controversy, like it or not.
At some point in the future, the whole procedure will go away.
Oh, well, gosh, we've got their promise. I'm sure there is absolutely no chance they'll reneg on that, even though if they do reneg in few years almost no one will notice because the game is so old.
If they'd like to make that promise in writing (say, in the EULA I have to agree to), I might take it more seriously, especially if it includes a penalty cause for failure on their part.
Even if they deliver this patch, will they be shipping it to me for free on a pressed CD? Or do I need to download it myself and make my own backup, then occasionally reburn the backup because CD-Rs have a shorter lifespan than good pressed CDs? (Not making a backup would be stupid, because I can't be sure if I'll be able to get a copy in 10 years.) Part of the reason I prefer buying games on disk is that the disk acts as a long term archival copy. Part of why I resent Half-Life 2 is that if I want a long term archival copy of the a game I bought at retail, I have to burn several CDs of the unlocked game. (A sad wart on an otherwise brilliant game.)
You have 5 installs. You use one when you install, you get it back when you do an uninstall. Inconvenience? Yes. A bit insulting? Yes. But it doesn't actually prevent you from installing it each of the 50 times you wipe your OS.
It does if you're wiping your OS because it no longer boots, so you have no way to uninstall it. It does if you're wiping your OS because the networking is totally screwed, so the uninstall license returner won't work. It does if I wipe my system without thinking about, erroneously thinking "I've got all the original media, so I can just reinstall everything. Why waste my time uninstalling stuff if I'm just going to wipe it?" It does if the game is installed on a system you share with someone less computer literate (or perhaps used to Mac OS, where the idioms are different), who thinks that deleting the program's directory is a fine way to uninstall it and free up some space for another game.
The activation system sucks. For end users it's all bad. The best you can say (like for most DRM) is, "Most users won't notice it." That's crap and they deserve to be called on it.
I don't agree. While you're playing the game, you have some sort of an adrenaline rush, that effectively makes you immune to any kind of scare the developers might devise. That, and the inherent stupidity of the monsters you'll encounter surely makes them less of a threat.
Mind you, if your adrenaline is kicking in, it's because you're scared and your body is entering a fight-or-flight response. So, yeah, video games can be scary.
That said, really good video games horror requires good pacing and design. In lots of games, yeah, it's all action. But it doesn't need to be that way. F.E.A.R. did a great job on pacing, intermixing the terror and adrenaline of high speed combat with the creeping dread and occasional scares in the slower parts. And while I was downright bored with Resident Evil 4 by the end, the initial buildup was great. The first time the true nature of the situation appeared, it scared the hell out of me. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth has an hour or two of great dread at the beginning before the "real" action starts. The transition from buildup to action in the hotel is full of adrenaline, but it's very much a "oh crap, oh hell, what next" scared sort of adrenaline. (It does lose a lot of it's scariness after then 10th time you've retried it. It's a bit unforgiving.) The original Call of Duty was amazingly good at scaring me, not in a traditional horror sense, but in making me fearful and cautious with brief spasms of terror as things seemed to go to hell. Meanwhile, you can totally avoid the adrenaline rush if you're willing to play games with slower pace. I highly recommend Anchorhead, which is the finest horror game I've ever played. For the first three quarters of the game, it's relatively slow paced and all about the slow buildup of information as you discover the terrible things going on, and then discovering that it's worse than it originally seemed.
Ultimately, you're screwed. If he really thinks managing by spreadsheet is a good idea for knowledge workers, you have no hope. However, you might get lucky and this is a temporary infection of the stupids. Everyone gets such infections occasionally, even us geeks. The best cure is rational discussion, and he deserves a sincere effort to explain why this is a bad idea before you chalk him up as incurable and start working around him.
Point out that you're knowledge workers and it's impossible to come up with useful metrics. You can come up with non-useful metrics, but that will just encourage your presumably intelligent employees to game the system. Measure uptime? Sysadmins are encouarged to leave machines technically up but deeply disfunctional instead of actually fixing them when the fix requires a reboot or hardware change. It also encourages sinking lots of money into virtual machine systems with transparent migration on systems that really don't need 24/7 uptimes. Measure tickets resolved? Every stupid little thing will be submitted as a ticket. Don't let the admins submit tickets? Users will be turned away until they submit tickets. (That's particularly amusing when the problem is that the user can't submit tickets.) Tickets will be closed with only part of the task resolved with a note to submit a new ticket for the rest. Measure problems fixed? Encourages sloppy maintenence so you have more things to fix. Money made? Admins are a cost, not a source of profits. The value of your admins is that the parts of your company that make money continue to do so.
Try asking him what metrics he's providing on himself to his superiors. Presumably if knowledge workers can have their complex jobs with a wild mix of problems reduced to a series of numbers, a manager can. That may give him the insight to clear the fog of management by spreadsheet.
Love your EV1 electric car and would happily pay to own it? Too bad, the manufacturer wants it back and would rather destroy the car than sell it to you.
Buy video to watch online through Google? Google's a good company with a long view, there is no risk there. Oops, again.
This is why a world where you don't own anything is a bad idea. The people leasing or licensing the access to you can and will take it away from you. It's alright to agree upon fixed terms up front (I'm only guaranteed my apartment for a year; I'm only guaranteed access to a given NetFlix video stream for a day or two), but when I decide I want access forever, it damn well better be forever.
A lot of posters are complaining that the author has been to clever, that it won't help convince people to read the documentation, that people shouldn't have to search for it. These posters need to look more closely at the situation.
Let's take a look for this super hidden documentation. Here's the opening, cleverly hidden as a comment as the very first thing in the file named lguest.c. That seems a pretty freaking obvious place to put an introduction to the system. For all the article's spin, all the author has done is place his documentation in comments with the code; perhaps the most obvious place for it. The "make Preparation!" and friends simply extract and collect the documentation scattered around the code into a single place, sort of like Doxygen, JavaDoc, or any of a pile of other documentation systems.
That the documentation contains some mild humor is irrelevant. Does it convince people to read it when they wouldn't have otherwise? Probably not. But it can lighten the mood for both author and reader, inspiring people to read on a little more. It can help relax the reader and make them more receptive to the ideas presented. I'd be suspicious of any non-trivial code base completely free of humor; suggests someone operating on the mistaken belief that programming must be Serious Work, the sort of person who ignores basic human behavior and thinks people can behave like robots.
Those comparisons are inaccurate. They fail to support your point. If we take wire cutters away from someone accused of vandalizing electrical lines, it's because the wire cutters are evidence. If someone is accused of that crime, we don't remove every sharp object from their house, nor do we forbid hardware stores from selling them new wire cutters. As for someone on in a murderous rage, we don't solve the problem by taking away their gun, no, we put them in jail until their trial. As for drunk driving, if the crime isn't serious enough to justify jailing the driver until their trial, yes, we let them return to driving. Anything less is punishment without a trial, an affront to the foundations of our country.
You can eliminate someone's freedom if you're charging them with a crime and a judge refuses bail, but that's really about limiting a flight risk. We only seize property as evidence, or after a trial as punishment. (There are also forfeiture, but that sickening violation of the fifth amendment has nothing to do with protection (does seizing the car of someone busted carrying some pot really protect us?) and everything to do with profiteering.)
I'm re-reading the Potter books for the first time, and yes, Rowlings weaknesses as a writer do shine through.
So what?
It's still a fun series. Not every movie needs to be Casablanca; the occasional plot light, special effects heavy movie can be fun sometimes. Not every song needs to be the Ode to Joy, sometimes it's fun to just sing along to some mindless, repetitive pop. We should eat our veggies, but the occasional candy is just fine for our health and a pleasant treat. Not every novel needs to be Brave New World, sometimes I want to enjoy some light fantasy about a kid exploring a magical world.
As for the claim that Potter is somehow bad for kids, that is utter nonsense. The reality is that most American kids really don't like reading. Hell, most American adults don't like reading. Forcing them to read "good" books (for just about any definition of "good") will just make them resentful and believe that books are something unpleasant to be avoided. I believe that's why so many Americans don't read; their emotional response to books linked mandatory book lists full of books that don't interest them. I can assure you that absent the Potter series those kids aren't going to magically start reading the Alice books. Books that the kids enjoy, even bad ones, encourage kids to read, convince them that books and other long form reading can be good. They may not enjoy any given "enduring classic" (for whatever definition you like), but any kid whose made it through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix isn't going to be terribly daunted when facing 1984. Indeed, during my childhood I was strongly encouraged to read, but given wide freedom in what I read. I chose to read trashy fantasy. When I grew up and was assigned, say Madame Bovary in translation*, I blew through it while my classmates were bitching about how long and hard it was. After reading the first few Shannara novels in grade school, it was nothing. Reading begets reading. People who become serious readers tend to devour anything they can get their hands on. Maybe the bulk of their reading diet is romance novels, technothrillers, or fantasy, but they do occasionally read branch out and read other things. The people who fear books never do.
You and the Guardian writer are not enlightening all us ignorant savages that Rowling is a bad writer. No, you're just being a pretentious ass. It's not enough for you to enjoy the books you enjoy, you need to reach out and actively piss on the books other people enjoy. You're not changing anyone's mind. You're just enjoying being superior by your own tortured definition of superior. That makes you an ass.
* (Unless your goal is to make kids resent books as a source of long, boring, completely pointless crap, don't assign them Madame Bovary. I promise you that high school students will not appreciate it on any level.)
You appear to be confused. How does Adobe "own" PostScript? The newer revisions may be hindered by patents, but the earlier language levels are decades old at this point and long past the point of having patents. The language is highly standardized and well documented.
That CUPS is "built around" PostScript is unsurprising, as it's been the Unix standard for printing for decades. Applications write PostScript and hand it off to a printer demon. And this is hardly a CUPS issue. If your printer natively handles PostScript, CUPS doesn't do any PostScript processing; it just merrily hands your input off to the printer. CUPS only cares if your printer doesn't support PostScript, in which case it hands the PostScript input to GNU GhostScript (another old open source product) which interprets the PostScript and converts it to something your printer can handle. If PostScript were somehow proprietary, I'm pretty sure the Free Software Foundation wouldn't be shipping GhostScript.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot's readership is a large heterogeneous group. Individual readers have widly varying opinions on intellectual property law and language. Pretending that Slashdot's readership is of a single mind and insinuating that the resulting hive-mind is being hypocritical isn't clever, it just makes you an ass.
You're missing the point.
If you wanted to verify the security of, say, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, you can download the source and start reading. It'll be slow, and may not be practical. But you're free to do it. You can pay someone else that you trust to do the review for you. And while reviewing the entire system probably isn't feasible, you can certainly review subsets that you consider important. You don't have to trust Linus or Red Hat or anyone else.
If you're like to verify the security of, say, Windows XP on the other hands, you're out of luck. You trust Microsoft or you don't. If you're really brave (and willing to violate the EULA you probably agreed to), you can reverse engineer it, but that adds a whole new level of difficulty to the problem.
And lets say you find a security vulnerability. With open source software you can fix it yourself, or pay someone else to fix it, and be on your way. With closed source software you're stuck waiting, or boldly trying to patch a binary (probably in violation of that EULA again). If the software is particularly old (perhaps because you need an old version), with the open source version you can fix it yourself; but with closed source software you may be out of luck if they've dropped support.
If someone else finds a security hole, it's much easier for you to check the problem yourself and confirm that the offered fix actually closes the hole with open source software than with proprietary software. A proprietary software company may promise that the bug is fixed, but have done a half-assed job. You're back to reverse engineering to check.
Openness leads to security. The ability to read and modify the source can make you safer. Maybe you're not making use of that capability, but others are.
If that counter terror expert offered cogent arguments, sure, why not? If the arguments are wrong, refute them, don't engage in the logical fallacies of ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority. Security isn't some magical concern that only a few high priests can speak on. Security is a day-to-day issue that everyone needs to consider. Security is a matter of government a politics, an area that every interested citizen can debate and try to influence our government.
Indeed, it is. And Schneier agrees (although he calls it acting "hinky," a word a custom's agent used to describe someone's behavior that led to their arrest). But you're suggesting a false dichotomy between ignoring everything and calling in the most minor of suspicions. Schneier's proposal is pretty clear: you need knowledge to be able to accurately identify hinky.
If the producer is making significant profits, it's not the correct price. After all, if the profit is significant, someone else should quickly produce a clone and undercut the original manufacturer. A free market is a two-way street, and properly functioning it doesn't leave much profit.
So, where are the cheap iPhones? They're not here because we don't have a free market. Apple is being protected by government granted monopolies. Patents and copyright are nothing less than government interferance in the free market.
So is the current price the "correct" price? We'll never know while the market is corrupt. Me, I'm okay with it, but it's silly to suggest that the price we're seeing is somehow special and shouldn't be questioned.
I highly recommend "An Easy Path for Terrorists," written by security expert Bruce Schneier. He's talking about the "Trusted Traveler" and "Registered Traveler" programs designed to speed up the airport security lines, but it's the same problem, the same proposed solution, and has the same flaws in the solution. In short: if you create a low security route ("I've got a card that says I'm safe, so don't search me"), some terrorists will manage to get into the low security route. You've created a more complex system with more possibilities for attack.
The US government had a clear goal: stop the secession and reabsorb the states involved. It was possible to fail at that goal. If they had failed, the Confederated States of America would have been an independent country. The CSA would have won and the US would have lost.
The most obvious difference is that it was possible for the US to win the Civil War. The Confederacy could surrender and accept reintegration into the US. You could look to the future and see this possible case.
When, exactly, will we defeat terrorism? How will we know we have won? Who can surrender on terrorism's behalf?
Terrorism, like crime, drugs, hunger, and poverty, isn't something you can go to war against. Sure, you can have a War on Terror like we have a War on Drugs, but it's a colorful metaphor, not a basis for policy. These are problems that we will probably never resolve and we can only limit the problem through constant and eternal effort. I'm willing to discuss limiting my civil rights for a war with concrete end goal. I'm not willing to limit them until we defeat an abstract noun.
Perhaps because most people's knowledge of him is limited to what they learned in grade and high school, which tends to gloss over the negative bits? Perhaps because while he did do many terrible things (like suspending habeas corpus), he did accomplish many great things? This is in contrast to Bush, who does lots of terrible things and so far hasn't shown any signs of great things. What few good things he's done (overthrown the Taliban and Hussein) tend to be overshadowed by the catastrophies he's dumping on his successor.
Close, but no cigar. You do in fact own the phone they sold you (or even gave you for free). It's not a rental. You aren't making payments on the phone. If you break your contract, you don't need to return the phone to them. Indeed, if you walk into a store and ask to return the phone and break your contract, they'll laugh at you. They won't want the phone back. However, they will (unhappily) terminate your service and charge you the fee.
You are under contract, and the contract says there is an early termination fee. If you break the contract, you pay the fee. While the fee is designed to replace the cost of the subsidized phone, it's not a loan nor a payment, it's just a term of the contract.
Thus, you're perfectly free to do whatever you like with your phone, including unlocking it. Of course, they're under no obligation to let you keep using your modified phone on their network.
The OLPC project's primary interest is helping children in the poorest parts of the world. I expect that providing US children with an inexpensive toy is pretty low on their list of goals.
Do they really say users should rip to MP3? All I'm seeing are suggestions that you back up your collection since you won't be able to re-download them. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
The real question is how are the tracks locked to a given purchaser? If you need to authenticate to some Virgin Digital service when you, say, move to a new computer, then there is a problem.
A good reviewer tries to look beyond themself and strives to make the review useful to the experiences readers will have. What's the option? "Only the first thirty minutes are any fun. However, as I recieved a review copy for free, the value for money is exceptional and I highly recommend getting the game for those exceptional first thirty minutes." Or perhaps, "I received exceptional service from the waitstaff. I also found it flattering that they had my photo next to the maitre de stand, labeled 'food critic. VIP service!'"
That said, given that the reviewer was focusing on the 360 release, the DRM might have been a bit off-topic.
A review should cover the entire experience, and that includes the DRM. To make up a tortured example, if a movie's distributor is so terrified of people making copies that theaters have to agree to strip search everyone who sees the movie, yeah, that should be noted in any good review in addition to the quality of the film itself. Or to be less contrived, it's fair game for a theater review to note that, say, the theater is in a very dangerous neighborhood, or that you'll end up spending as much on parking or cab fare as on the tickets themselves. Similarly, if a game's installer fails on a large number of systems, rendering the game effectively unplayable, that should be mentioned in a review as well. The publishers included the DRM in the box and as part of the game, so it should get reviewed along with the game.
Sycraft-fu wrote:
People are looking for a pseudononymous handle. It should ideally be unique and memorable, so friends can easily add you, and people you meet online can remember who you are if they bump into you again. Since you're pretty much making something up out of nothing, why not base it upon your hobbies and your preferences? It lets you express yourself in a small way, becomes a name you can easily self-identify as, and may be easier for your friends who know you to remember. It seems better than just assigning people random IDs. If I'm going to be playing with pseudononymous people, I'd rather play with GingerPunkfan, SadLittleEmoBoy937, StockCarRacingFan, SupahLinuxHacker, and Sycraft-fu instead of USER#813741, USER#12873, USER#937771, USER#2331, and USER#314770.
(For the pendants, I'm reading "have the right to ask for" as "can legally demand.")
Sure. But there was no potential crime. The officer searched the man's bags and compared the contents to the receipt. There was no shoplifting. The only possible crime here is refusing to produce ID, which is a bit of circular logic.
"most "wholesale clubs,""
I loathe the involuntary searches many stores try, but in the case of wholesale clubs, it might be legal. For many wholesale clubs you have to sign an agreement before you can become a member and shop there. If the agreement says you consent to letting them check, well, that's their right. Me, I avoid the problem by avoiding the wholesale clubs.
I forgot. This is, of course, simply wrong. If I want to uninstall today, I don't get the license back, because the tool to the return a license doesn't exist. The "revoke" application is coming, but isn't here.
Other than that the authentication servers weren't properly functioning on the launch date, meaning many early adopters hoping to play that day didn't get to. Oh, and the people who ran into problems with it and had to reinstall a few times, but the uninstaller didn't always successfully return the license, so they got locked out of their game. Oh, and people noticed that the software installed a driver they didn't want and couldn't uninstall. But other than that, it was a flawless launch.
Can you kill little girls in the GTA series (III and beyond, mind you)? No. People are understandably protective of children. That's going to cause controversy, like it or not.
Oh, well, gosh, we've got their promise. I'm sure there is absolutely no chance they'll reneg on that, even though if they do reneg in few years almost no one will notice because the game is so old.
If they'd like to make that promise in writing (say, in the EULA I have to agree to), I might take it more seriously, especially if it includes a penalty cause for failure on their part.
Even if they deliver this patch, will they be shipping it to me for free on a pressed CD? Or do I need to download it myself and make my own backup, then occasionally reburn the backup because CD-Rs have a shorter lifespan than good pressed CDs? (Not making a backup would be stupid, because I can't be sure if I'll be able to get a copy in 10 years.) Part of the reason I prefer buying games on disk is that the disk acts as a long term archival copy. Part of why I resent Half-Life 2 is that if I want a long term archival copy of the a game I bought at retail, I have to burn several CDs of the unlocked game. (A sad wart on an otherwise brilliant game.)
It does if you're wiping your OS because it no longer boots, so you have no way to uninstall it. It does if you're wiping your OS because the networking is totally screwed, so the uninstall license returner won't work. It does if I wipe my system without thinking about, erroneously thinking "I've got all the original media, so I can just reinstall everything. Why waste my time uninstalling stuff if I'm just going to wipe it?" It does if the game is installed on a system you share with someone less computer literate (or perhaps used to Mac OS, where the idioms are different), who thinks that deleting the program's directory is a fine way to uninstall it and free up some space for another game.
The activation system sucks. For end users it's all bad. The best you can say (like for most DRM) is, "Most users won't notice it." That's crap and they deserve to be called on it.
Mind you, if your adrenaline is kicking in, it's because you're scared and your body is entering a fight-or-flight response. So, yeah, video games can be scary.
That said, really good video games horror requires good pacing and design. In lots of games, yeah, it's all action. But it doesn't need to be that way. F.E.A.R. did a great job on pacing, intermixing the terror and adrenaline of high speed combat with the creeping dread and occasional scares in the slower parts. And while I was downright bored with Resident Evil 4 by the end, the initial buildup was great. The first time the true nature of the situation appeared, it scared the hell out of me. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth has an hour or two of great dread at the beginning before the "real" action starts. The transition from buildup to action in the hotel is full of adrenaline, but it's very much a "oh crap, oh hell, what next" scared sort of adrenaline. (It does lose a lot of it's scariness after then 10th time you've retried it. It's a bit unforgiving.) The original Call of Duty was amazingly good at scaring me, not in a traditional horror sense, but in making me fearful and cautious with brief spasms of terror as things seemed to go to hell. Meanwhile, you can totally avoid the adrenaline rush if you're willing to play games with slower pace. I highly recommend Anchorhead, which is the finest horror game I've ever played. For the first three quarters of the game, it's relatively slow paced and all about the slow buildup of information as you discover the terrible things going on, and then discovering that it's worse than it originally seemed.
Ultimately, you're screwed. If he really thinks managing by spreadsheet is a good idea for knowledge workers, you have no hope. However, you might get lucky and this is a temporary infection of the stupids. Everyone gets such infections occasionally, even us geeks. The best cure is rational discussion, and he deserves a sincere effort to explain why this is a bad idea before you chalk him up as incurable and start working around him.
Point out that you're knowledge workers and it's impossible to come up with useful metrics. You can come up with non-useful metrics, but that will just encourage your presumably intelligent employees to game the system. Measure uptime? Sysadmins are encouarged to leave machines technically up but deeply disfunctional instead of actually fixing them when the fix requires a reboot or hardware change. It also encourages sinking lots of money into virtual machine systems with transparent migration on systems that really don't need 24/7 uptimes. Measure tickets resolved? Every stupid little thing will be submitted as a ticket. Don't let the admins submit tickets? Users will be turned away until they submit tickets. (That's particularly amusing when the problem is that the user can't submit tickets.) Tickets will be closed with only part of the task resolved with a note to submit a new ticket for the rest. Measure problems fixed? Encourages sloppy maintenence so you have more things to fix. Money made? Admins are a cost, not a source of profits. The value of your admins is that the parts of your company that make money continue to do so.
Try asking him what metrics he's providing on himself to his superiors. Presumably if knowledge workers can have their complex jobs with a wild mix of problems reduced to a series of numbers, a manager can. That may give him the insight to clear the fog of management by spreadsheet.
Buy DRM locked music from Microsoft? Surely there is no possible risk. They even labelled it "PlaysForSure", so I know I'll still have access to it in a few years. Oops, you old music doesn't work on the new media player, and your new music doesn't work on your old media player.
Buy DRM locked movies in the form of silver access to DIVX disks? A giant chain like Circuit City won't screw you. Unless they decided it's no longer profitable and take your access away.
Love your EV1 electric car and would happily pay to own it? Too bad, the manufacturer wants it back and would rather destroy the car than sell it to you.
Buy video to watch online through Google? Google's a good company with a long view, there is no risk there. Oops, again.
This is why a world where you don't own anything is a bad idea. The people leasing or licensing the access to you can and will take it away from you. It's alright to agree upon fixed terms up front (I'm only guaranteed my apartment for a year; I'm only guaranteed access to a given NetFlix video stream for a day or two), but when I decide I want access forever, it damn well better be forever.
A lot of posters are complaining that the author has been to clever, that it won't help convince people to read the documentation, that people shouldn't have to search for it. These posters need to look more closely at the situation.
Let's take a look for this super hidden documentation. Here's the opening, cleverly hidden as a comment as the very first thing in the file named lguest.c. That seems a pretty freaking obvious place to put an introduction to the system. For all the article's spin, all the author has done is place his documentation in comments with the code; perhaps the most obvious place for it. The "make Preparation!" and friends simply extract and collect the documentation scattered around the code into a single place, sort of like Doxygen, JavaDoc, or any of a pile of other documentation systems.
That the documentation contains some mild humor is irrelevant. Does it convince people to read it when they wouldn't have otherwise? Probably not. But it can lighten the mood for both author and reader, inspiring people to read on a little more. It can help relax the reader and make them more receptive to the ideas presented. I'd be suspicious of any non-trivial code base completely free of humor; suggests someone operating on the mistaken belief that programming must be Serious Work, the sort of person who ignores basic human behavior and thinks people can behave like robots.
Those comparisons are inaccurate. They fail to support your point. If we take wire cutters away from someone accused of vandalizing electrical lines, it's because the wire cutters are evidence. If someone is accused of that crime, we don't remove every sharp object from their house, nor do we forbid hardware stores from selling them new wire cutters. As for someone on in a murderous rage, we don't solve the problem by taking away their gun, no, we put them in jail until their trial. As for drunk driving, if the crime isn't serious enough to justify jailing the driver until their trial, yes, we let them return to driving. Anything less is punishment without a trial, an affront to the foundations of our country.
You can eliminate someone's freedom if you're charging them with a crime and a judge refuses bail, but that's really about limiting a flight risk. We only seize property as evidence, or after a trial as punishment. (There are also forfeiture, but that sickening violation of the fifth amendment has nothing to do with protection (does seizing the car of someone busted carrying some pot really protect us?) and everything to do with profiteering.)
I'm re-reading the Potter books for the first time, and yes, Rowlings weaknesses as a writer do shine through.
So what?
It's still a fun series. Not every movie needs to be Casablanca; the occasional plot light, special effects heavy movie can be fun sometimes. Not every song needs to be the Ode to Joy, sometimes it's fun to just sing along to some mindless, repetitive pop. We should eat our veggies, but the occasional candy is just fine for our health and a pleasant treat. Not every novel needs to be Brave New World, sometimes I want to enjoy some light fantasy about a kid exploring a magical world.
As for the claim that Potter is somehow bad for kids, that is utter nonsense. The reality is that most American kids really don't like reading. Hell, most American adults don't like reading. Forcing them to read "good" books (for just about any definition of "good") will just make them resentful and believe that books are something unpleasant to be avoided. I believe that's why so many Americans don't read; their emotional response to books linked mandatory book lists full of books that don't interest them. I can assure you that absent the Potter series those kids aren't going to magically start reading the Alice books. Books that the kids enjoy, even bad ones, encourage kids to read, convince them that books and other long form reading can be good. They may not enjoy any given "enduring classic" (for whatever definition you like), but any kid whose made it through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix isn't going to be terribly daunted when facing 1984. Indeed, during my childhood I was strongly encouraged to read, but given wide freedom in what I read. I chose to read trashy fantasy. When I grew up and was assigned, say Madame Bovary in translation*, I blew through it while my classmates were bitching about how long and hard it was. After reading the first few Shannara novels in grade school, it was nothing. Reading begets reading. People who become serious readers tend to devour anything they can get their hands on. Maybe the bulk of their reading diet is romance novels, technothrillers, or fantasy, but they do occasionally read branch out and read other things. The people who fear books never do.
You and the Guardian writer are not enlightening all us ignorant savages that Rowling is a bad writer. No, you're just being a pretentious ass. It's not enough for you to enjoy the books you enjoy, you need to reach out and actively piss on the books other people enjoy. You're not changing anyone's mind. You're just enjoying being superior by your own tortured definition of superior. That makes you an ass.
* (Unless your goal is to make kids resent books as a source of long, boring, completely pointless crap, don't assign them Madame Bovary. I promise you that high school students will not appreciate it on any level.)
You appear to be confused. How does Adobe "own" PostScript? The newer revisions may be hindered by patents, but the earlier language levels are decades old at this point and long past the point of having patents. The language is highly standardized and well documented.
That CUPS is "built around" PostScript is unsurprising, as it's been the Unix standard for printing for decades. Applications write PostScript and hand it off to a printer demon. And this is hardly a CUPS issue. If your printer natively handles PostScript, CUPS doesn't do any PostScript processing; it just merrily hands your input off to the printer. CUPS only cares if your printer doesn't support PostScript, in which case it hands the PostScript input to GNU GhostScript (another old open source product) which interprets the PostScript and converts it to something your printer can handle. If PostScript were somehow proprietary, I'm pretty sure the Free Software Foundation wouldn't be shipping GhostScript.