CmdrTaco hasn't exactly redeemed himself this time around, but he has wiped out most of the worst of his last reviews from my memory. His review starts of slow and it takes until half the review to really start to get coherent. But the final paragraphs seem to really feel like English again. Read on for my full review- I'll try not to shoot down the lone gunman on this
I really don't feel the review was that bad. If you ignore every misspelling, and the occasional attempt at the 10 dollar word there's a really good review in there. I read this hoping to get an increased desire to see the movie this Friday, support that going wouldn't be a waste of time and he mostly has give me that.
Much of the same blah de blah is back. Unfortunately none of the 10 dollar words really seem to stand out.
Most notable this time is how notable he though the CGI characters were. With the occasional reference to Menance and a couple times where I wasn't sure if he was talking about Episode I or II I found some of the information curious and some that just didn't make sense but those are the exception, not the rule.
The review as a whole seems to work great. Many of the paragraphs bleed into one another where you can follow a coherent thought and altogether it wasn't too bad. I hope his reviews continue to improve
I'd like to note that I didn't get to see it on my nice 17" monitor at home. I plan on seeing it there after 5:00 but I wanted to make sure this review didn't suck before I thought of maybe using my Lunch break to drive home to read it there.
The rest of this review of the review would focus on the Grammatical and spelling insights, but was I found none I won't digress into that. A couple sentences were so awkward that they seemed like they would rather have been in different reviews. Their utter lack of chemistry is almost amusing.
As usual, with the posts CmdrTaco gets some smack, and so other posts go to rescue him, only to end up compounding the level of smack around for other/.ers. Meanwhile Congress does its thing and a major shift in power occurs. We don't learn who is responsible for the clone army but we can guess, and what the plan for it is ( Perhaps enforcement of the DMCA? )
The last paragraph of this review is the Payoff. Several sentences that actually make sense together but I'm not going to go into it because that might spoil the shock of it, but let make the following points. First, we finally have enough correct spelling of words in one place. The massive amounts of coherent thoughts we all knew these reviews could offer us. I don't know if it was worth the wait but it's nice to see
The packed posts that I saw seemed to feel the same way as me. A few awkward FUNNY +3 even the occasion INSIGHTFUL +5 here and there.
That really sums it up. It took 11.75 paragraphs of text to get us to the payoff. For some it might not have been worth the wait... but for me, I'm just happy to finally to see most of what was promised delivered. And I'm reinvigorated towards CmdrTaco. If Episode III's review can pick up where II left off, it should finally be the Star Wars Prequel review that we've been waiting for.
That this information is useful to many people... true That this information has a dollar value to the PVR business... true That this information can be given without breaking traditionaly privacy grounds... true
BUT, let's look at the facts
This information is useful, but does the court have a right to give that information based on the belief that something might have been done illegally. As the Amici discusses this is like saying "We're not sure if they broke the law, we believe they may have. You should have somebody monitor them at all times to see if they will". As much as SonicBLUE has the capabilities and possibly future plans for this technology doesn't matter. It is beyond the powers of the court to set a precedent like this
Also, once again it doesn't matter if there is a possible dollar value to this. The court shouldn't have the power to force SonicBLUE to give this info. even if it is of value to them. What if SonicBLUE did want to sell this. This would be like the court saying "Give it to them for free". The fact that this information has a value is not the point. The point is the scope of the case involved and the data requested is beyond the scope of what may or might be, it's what IS and what should be allowed.
Also, this information can be given without breaking privacy concerns. But that's not what the industry is asking for. First, they don't just want information about ad skipping ( which is obscure since most people don't sign contracts about watching them anyway... but I digress ) and sending files. They want EVERYTHING. That's beyond what they would need IF they were to have it. Also, the information wouldn't be aggregate it would be personally identifiable by a unique number ( why is this necessary? this is beyond the info they need )
A. It's set to off by default ( it shows the mic level just to show that it is receiving a signal, not that it's giving the movie access ) .
B. You can set the filesize to 0 ( Try doing that with IE? ) or to unlimited or just about anywhere between ( well, almost )
C. The secure settings are set to default.
I understand some people hate Macromedia Flash but you got to consider that back when Cookies were still a majorly unknown thing for the Average user e.g. Clue = 0 and browser had all kinds of nice little Frame issues that Flash had security for what a movie could send. E.g. it would only allow data to be posted/get to the domain the movie was from.
" I'll bet Peter Parker's adventure surpasses the upcoming opening weekend of Attack of the Clones and teaches George Lucas something about the power and nature of myth. "
Can you moderate a post as Flamebait?
Tell me that throwing this into a nerd discussion isn't like throwing raw steak into a den of hungry lions
so this is the same saying that the right to assemble peacefully is still enforced even in a situation where the person is tied up, gagged and held in jail for 2 weeks until the protest date has passed. Basically, the right exists, but it's harder to do.
The inability to use a right is the same as not having the right itself.
Also the fair use is not harder because of the DMCA. It's Illegal
AND YES. I know that Fair use is not a guaranteed right. But even the Supreme Court has sayed that it is infered
Let's have a recap of all but one of these ( I don't think carjacking applies )
decapitation - Deborah one of the 12 tribes of israel put a stake through a man's head. AND David, when he had defeated Goliath decapitated him with his sword. Not to mention John the baptists head being brought on a silver platter.
amputation - Jesus talked about casting your hand from you ( Figuratively ) lest it causes you to go to Hell
killing of humans with lethal weapons or through hand-to-hand combat - Israelite occupation of Canaan. King Saul, King David... etc. etc.
rape - Amnon raped Tamar in 2nd Samuel
aggravated assault and other violent felonies - Various parts of deuteronomy talk about the punishments for a man who hurts a pregnant woman while fighting another man so on and so forth
So. Again I ask. Since all these things are in the Bible are they going to Ban younger people from reading it?
Here you go. Close enough ''' 'Excel instance Dim xCel As Excel.Application 'Our Assistant Dim Assist As Office.Assistant
'Create a background instance of Excel Set xCel = New Excel.Application 'Make certain it's not visible xCel.Visible = False 'Load our assistant Set Assist = xCel.Assistant
With.NewBalloon .Heading = "Hello..." .Text = "...What's an Aibo dog like you doing in a bar like this?" .Labels(1).Text = """" & "Getting Reprogrammed... Get lost creep!" & """" .Labels(2).Text = """" & "Looking for a Warez copy of OfficeXP so I don't have to " & _ "deal with office scoundrel like you!" & """" .Mode = msoModeModal .Button = msoButtonSetNone
I don't know what's scarier. This article or that a related article at the bottom of this one talks about our "friend" Fritz who wants to "protect" spyware by defining what's sensitive.
Quote
The second is "nonsensitive" information, and among that will include your name, address, and records of anything you buy or surf on the Internet. Under the act, business can't collect or divulge the sensitive bits without your express consent, but anything classified as nonsensitive can be freely collected and sold at will. End Quote
I personally believe the judge was fair and informed. This can be seen by his A. Wrong use of 2 of the titles
"Mortal Combat" and "Resident of Evil Creek" B. Only looked at 4 titles.
The judge didn't play the games. He was shown video clips ( More likely to be the gory ones such as a MK Fatality ) and of the games he did see all 4 were basically the Gory ones in the industry. He didn't see Final Fantasy. He didn't see Metal of Honor. He didn't see any of the other more robust and story/plot/idealistic driven games.
This is similar to judging all movies value as Free Speech based on
Nightmare on Elm St.
Halloween
Friday the 13th
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Anybody can see how ridiculous a judgement based on such a small set of evidence is. However, I do believe that the Gaming industry should have done a better job. Why didn't he see anything else?!? Why did he only see the "plots" of specific games and not a showing of those games themselves including cut-scenes. gameplay and the likes?
This is not a good idea for Adobe since you have to consider who their market is
Flash does something that most other products are NOT able to do. Make interactive sites easy enough for even GRAPHIC developers to create. Most of the people I find that LOVE Flash love it for it's ease of use. All of those people are graphic designers the same people who buy Adobe Photoshop. Adobe has a bad PR hurricane just ready to brew over this if they decide to push for Macromedia to pull Flash
Also, what I find absolutely hilarious is Adobe's Front Page which, of all things, uses Flash
You insensitive PIG
Are you my wife? Sounds like my wife's online
How dare you assume that we're all in your time zone!
There are others?
You're so timezone-centric
hey, no 50 dollar words here. I can barely spell kat
People on Slashdot have got to start being more global
How's this?
Global SlashDotPeople as long
I'm sick of everyone posting things only about YOUR timezone
Other people are posting about MY timezone? Then I guess I can assume you're all in MY timezone
Bastard!
So THAT'S why my momma won't tell me about my daddy
I've looked at the code and it does do what it says. Here's the deal with it.
It runs through the subfolders of the system temp folder
For each file it finds. it opens it to check to see if it's ascii. If it is then it does define te POSSIBILITY of it being an EULA. If that's the case it then checks to see if the file contains the following terms
it also does a second check for the following reverse-[anychar]?(s)[anything]engineer dis-[anychar]assemble de-[anychar]compile as-[ anychar] [anything]is
If either of those shows a match in the file that was found. It asks if you want to overwrite the EULA with a predefined one and if the user selects YES then and ONLY then does it overwrite the specified file
It doesn't modify any other files, it doesn't overwrite files without a specific click on a message box by the user running the script
This code as of 11:53 AM on May 1st is clean and safe to use barring somebody modifies it later
On other news Rico the local drug dealer is planning on making Cocaine more accessible to a younger demographic. When asked what spurred the decision to break into a new business model he said "If Sony can find a way to bring EverCrack to the kids I think I oughta get a share of that too"
I know this might be slightly off-topic but what the company I work for did was cut costs. In 1 year they have cut their costs by over 50%. You find all the little things here and there that are wasting money; things that normally don't bother a company during boon times but now that every dime counts they are cleaning up those little corners. 3K here, 400 bucks there all in all it ended up cutting costs by over 50%. However, even after all of that there still was a need to cut down on employee costs but instead of cutting peoples pay they layed people off ( including severance packages and such )
All in all, considering the economy I think they handled things very well. I know a couple of the people that were layed off and they hold no grudges about it since they understood why it was done and that it wasn't anything personal
For those pirating software what could be cheaper than Free?
This sounds like the RIAA. If you'd stop getting our music for free then we'd be able to be more competitive and only chart 11 dollars for a CD. What a bargain eh?
I agree with you on this but you have to consider that with the internet the bounds have changed. Previously, if you wanted to screw with your employer you had to A. get physical evidence B. get that evidence to somebody
Now it's even simpler. Copy a file, send an email and you're done. The barrier of corporate 'privileged' property from the outside world is as thin as an onion skin and I can understand the fears that companies have. 1 email and your competitor now knows your business plan and direction in a new market. 10 seconds of an employees time ( disgruntled or accidently ) can ruin a business. On top of that peoples usage of the Company Internet has legal ramifications on the company itself. Spam, porn, e-stalking, pings of death, warez all leave a gaping legal hole that scares ( and understandably so ) companies and their executives
"I know that it's not the subject of this hearing, Mr. Chairman, but I hope that you will allow me the opportunity to thank you personally for your long record and commitment on the issue of human rights. Your leadership on behalf of basic human rights for so many people around the world--religious minorities and refugees in particular--is important to so many of us, and I didn't want to let this opportunity pass without publicly thanking you for your commitment to these issues."
So it's not just money that makes things go round. But rather the latitude of your ability to KISS UP
Slashdot Mirror
The site is down but for those who want to see some screens you can go
here
After looking at the level of detail on this and thinking this is supposed to be multiplayer I don't doubt they have "technical" issues
This was made in a post yesterday in CmdrTaco's review of SW EP II. You can find the post here
Just thought I would give the first person to bring this insightful article credit
CmdrTaco hasn't exactly redeemed himself this time around, but he has wiped out most of the worst of his last reviews from my memory. His review starts of slow and it takes until half the review to really start to get coherent. But the final paragraphs seem to really feel like English again. Read on for my full review- I'll try not to shoot down the lone gunman on this
/.ers. Meanwhile Congress does its thing and a major shift in power occurs. We don't learn who is responsible for the clone army but we can guess, and what the plan for it is ( Perhaps enforcement of the DMCA? )
I really don't feel the review was that bad. If you ignore every misspelling, and the occasional attempt at the 10 dollar word there's a really good review in there. I read this hoping to get an increased desire to see the movie this Friday, support that going wouldn't be a waste of time and he mostly has give me that.
Much of the same blah de blah is back. Unfortunately none of the 10 dollar words really seem to stand out.
Most notable this time is how notable he though the CGI characters were. With the occasional reference to Menance and a couple times where I wasn't sure if he was talking about Episode I or II I found some of the information curious and some that just didn't make sense but those are the exception, not the rule.
The review as a whole seems to work great. Many of the paragraphs bleed into one another where you can follow a coherent thought and altogether it wasn't too bad. I hope his reviews continue to improve
I'd like to note that I didn't get to see it on my nice 17" monitor at home. I plan on seeing it there after 5:00 but I wanted to make sure this review didn't suck before I thought of maybe using my Lunch break to drive home to read it there.
The rest of this review of the review would focus on the Grammatical and spelling insights, but was I found none I won't digress into that. A couple sentences were so awkward that they seemed like they would rather have been in different reviews. Their utter lack of chemistry is almost amusing.
As usual, with the posts CmdrTaco gets some smack, and so other posts go to rescue him, only to end up compounding the level of smack around for other
The last paragraph of this review is the Payoff. Several sentences that actually make sense together but I'm not going to go into it because that might spoil the shock of it, but let make the following points. First, we finally have enough correct spelling of words in one place. The massive amounts of coherent thoughts we all knew these reviews could offer us. I don't know if it was worth the wait but it's nice to see
The packed posts that I saw seemed to feel the same way as me. A few awkward FUNNY +3 even the occasion INSIGHTFUL +5 here and there.
That really sums it up. It took 11.75 paragraphs of text to get us to the payoff. For some it might not have been worth the wait... but for me, I'm just happy to finally to see most of what was promised delivered. And I'm reinvigorated towards CmdrTaco. If Episode III's review can pick up where II left off, it should finally be the Star Wars Prequel review that we've been waiting for.
That this information is useful to many people ... true ... true ... true
That this information has a dollar value to the PVR business
That this information can be given without breaking traditionaly privacy grounds
BUT, let's look at the facts
This information is useful, but does the court have a right to give that information based on the belief that something might have been done illegally. As the Amici discusses this is like saying "We're not sure if they broke the law, we believe they may have. You should have somebody monitor them at all times to see if they will". As much as SonicBLUE has the capabilities and possibly future plans for this technology doesn't matter. It is beyond the powers of the court to set a precedent like this
Also, once again it doesn't matter if there is a possible dollar value to this. The court shouldn't have the power to force SonicBLUE to give this info. even if it is of value to them. What if SonicBLUE did want to sell this. This would be like the court saying "Give it to them for free". The fact that this information has a value is not the point. The point is the scope of the case involved and the data requested is beyond the scope of what may or might be, it's what IS and what should be allowed.
Also, this information can be given without breaking privacy concerns. But that's not what the industry is asking for. First, they don't just want information about ad skipping ( which is obscure since most people don't sign contracts about watching them anyway... but I digress ) and sending files. They want EVERYTHING. That's beyond what they would need IF they were to have it. Also, the information wouldn't be aggregate it would be personally identifiable by a unique number ( why is this necessary? this is beyond the info they need )
"Should I sell my baseball cards and buy their stock now.." well, the sites down and thus they can't handle a simple little Slashdot flood.
Any company that can't handle the slashdot effect isn't worth buying stock in
BTW. here's Google's cache of their site's main page
A. It's set to off by default ( it shows the mic level just to show that it is receiving a signal, not that it's giving the movie access ) .
B. You can set the filesize to 0 ( Try doing that with IE? ) or to unlimited or just about anywhere between ( well, almost )
C. The secure settings are set to default.
I understand some people hate Macromedia Flash but you got to consider that back when Cookies were still a majorly unknown thing for the Average user e.g. Clue = 0 and browser had all kinds of nice little Frame issues that Flash had security for what a movie could send. E.g. it would only allow data to be posted/get to the domain the movie was from.
"Have you got ill off your keyboard?" only if I type [I][L][L]. Does that count?
" I'll bet Peter Parker's adventure surpasses the upcoming opening weekend of Attack of the Clones and teaches George Lucas something about the power and nature of myth. "
Can you moderate a post as Flamebait?
Tell me that throwing this into a nerd discussion isn't like throwing raw steak into a den of hungry lions
quote "Also, they should sell beer. :) "
Nothing like an obnoxious 40 year old drunk playing Jedi Knight with a janitors mop and throwing popcorn saying "Use the Force Luke"
I can see that already
so this is the same saying that the right to assemble peacefully is still enforced even in a situation where the person is tied up, gagged and held in jail for 2 weeks until the protest date has passed. Basically, the right exists, but it's harder to do.
The inability to use a right is the same as not having the right itself.
Also the fair use is not harder because of the DMCA. It's Illegal
AND YES. I know that Fair use is not a guaranteed right. But even the Supreme Court has sayed that it is infered
Your dragon lose to L33tZ3nM@ster
.. Hey, Not fair. nobody told me I'd be playing againts a Zen master Tibetan monk
Are they going to Ban the Bible?
Let's have a recap of all but one of these ( I don't think carjacking applies )
decapitation - Deborah one of the 12 tribes of israel put a stake through a man's head. AND David, when he had defeated Goliath decapitated him with his sword. Not to mention John the baptists head being brought on a silver platter.
amputation - Jesus talked about casting your hand from you ( Figuratively ) lest it causes you to go to Hell
killing of humans with lethal weapons or through hand-to-hand combat - Israelite occupation of Canaan. King Saul, King David... etc. etc.
rape - Amnon raped Tamar in 2nd Samuel
aggravated assault and other violent felonies - Various parts of deuteronomy talk about the punishments for a man who hurts a pregnant woman while fighting another man so on and so forth
So. Again I ask. Since all these things are in the Bible are they going to Ban younger people from reading it?
Here you go. Close enough
.Animation = msoAnimationGetAttentionMajor
.Visible = True
.NewBalloon
.Heading = "Hello..."
.Text = "...What's an Aibo dog like you doing in a bar like this?"
.Labels(1).Text = """" & "Getting Reprogrammed... Get lost creep!" & """"
.Labels(2).Text = """" & "Looking for a Warez copy of OfficeXP so I don't have to " & _
.Mode = msoModeModal
.Button = msoButtonSetNone
.Show
'''
'Excel instance
Dim xCel As Excel.Application
'Our Assistant
Dim Assist As Office.Assistant
'Create a background instance of Excel
Set xCel = New Excel.Application
'Make certain it's not visible
xCel.Visible = False
'Load our assistant
Set Assist = xCel.Assistant
'Now show the assistant
With Assist
With
"deal with office scoundrel like you!" & """"
call
End With
end with
'Cleanup
set assist = nothing
set xlcel = nothing
I don't know what's scarier. This article or that a related article at the bottom of this one talks about our "friend" Fritz who wants to "protect" spyware by defining what's sensitive.
Quote
The second is "nonsensitive" information, and among that will include your name, address, and records of anything you buy or surf on the Internet. Under the act, business can't collect or divulge the sensitive bits without your express consent, but anything classified as nonsensitive can be freely collected and sold at will.
End Quote
The article can be found here
I personally believe the judge was fair and informed. This can be seen by his
A. Wrong use of 2 of the titles
"Mortal Combat" and "Resident of Evil Creek"
B. Only looked at 4 titles.
The judge didn't play the games. He was shown video clips ( More likely to be the gory ones such as a MK Fatality ) and of the games he did see all 4 were basically the Gory ones in the industry. He didn't see Final Fantasy. He didn't see Metal of Honor. He didn't see any of the other more robust and story/plot/idealistic driven games.
This is similar to judging all movies value as Free Speech based on
Nightmare on Elm St.
Halloween
Friday the 13th
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Anybody can see how ridiculous a judgement based on such a small set of evidence is. However, I do believe that the Gaming industry should have done a better job. Why didn't he see anything else?!? Why did he only see the "plots" of specific games and not a showing of those games themselves including cut-scenes. gameplay and the likes?
This is not a good idea for Adobe since you have to consider who their market is
Flash does something that most other products are NOT able to do. Make interactive sites easy enough for even GRAPHIC developers to create. Most of the people I find that LOVE Flash love it for it's ease of use. All of those people are graphic designers the same people who buy Adobe Photoshop. Adobe has a bad PR hurricane just ready to brew over this if they decide to push for Macromedia to pull Flash
Also, what I find absolutely hilarious is Adobe's Front Page which, of all things, uses Flash
.... People who will do anything for money and power if paid enough by a Rat?
... never mind
Oh, wait. Hollings
You insensitive PIG
Are you my wife? Sounds like my wife's online
How dare you assume that we're all in your time zone!
There are others?
You're so timezone-centric
hey, no 50 dollar words here. I can barely spell kat
People on Slashdot have got to start being more global
How's this?
Global SlashDotPeople as long
I'm sick of everyone posting things only about YOUR timezone
Other people are posting about MY timezone? Then I guess I can assume you're all in MY timezone
Bastard!
So THAT'S why my momma won't tell me about my daddy
I've looked at the code and it does do what it says. Here's the deal with it.
r [ anychar] [anything]is
It runs through the subfolders of the system temp folder
For each file it finds. it opens it to check to see if it's ascii. If it is then it does define te POSSIBILITY of it being an EULA. If that's the case it then checks to see if the file contains the following terms
license(s)
agreement
eula
term(s) and(s) conditions
limited(s) license
limited(s) warranty
it also does a second check for the following
reverse-[anychar]?(s)[anything]enginee
dis-[anychar]assemble
de-[anychar]compile
as-
If either of those shows a match in the file that was found. It asks if you want to overwrite the EULA with a predefined one and if the user selects YES then and ONLY then does it overwrite the specified file
It doesn't modify any other files, it doesn't overwrite files without a specific click on a message box by the user running the script
This code as of 11:53 AM on May 1st is clean and safe to use barring somebody modifies it later
On other news Rico the local drug dealer is planning on making Cocaine more accessible to a younger demographic. When asked what spurred the decision to break into a new business model he said "If Sony can find a way to bring EverCrack to the kids I think I oughta get a share of that too"
I know this might be slightly off-topic but what the company I work for did was cut costs. In 1 year they have cut their costs by over 50%. You find all the little things here and there that are wasting money; things that normally don't bother a company during boon times but now that every dime counts they are cleaning up those little corners. 3K here, 400 bucks there all in all it ended up cutting costs by over 50%. However, even after all of that there still was a need to cut down on employee costs but instead of cutting peoples pay they layed people off ( including severance packages and such )
All in all, considering the economy I think they handled things very well. I know a couple of the people that were layed off and they hold no grudges about it since they understood why it was done and that it wasn't anything personal
For those pirating software what could be cheaper than Free?
This sounds like the RIAA. If you'd stop getting our music for free then we'd be able to be more competitive and only chart 11 dollars for a CD. What a bargain eh?
I agree with you on this but you have to consider that with the internet the bounds have changed. Previously, if you wanted to screw with your employer you had to
A. get physical evidence
B. get that evidence to somebody
Now it's even simpler. Copy a file, send an email and you're done. The barrier of corporate 'privileged' property from the outside world is as thin as an onion skin and I can understand the fears that companies have. 1 email and your competitor now knows your business plan and direction in a new market. 10 seconds of an employees time ( disgruntled or accidently ) can ruin a business. On top of that peoples usage of the Company Internet has legal ramifications on the company itself. Spam, porn, e-stalking, pings of death, warez all leave a gaping legal hole that scares ( and understandably so ) companies and their executives
In the hearing. Rosen says
"I know that it's not the subject of this hearing, Mr. Chairman, but I
hope that you will allow me the opportunity to thank you personally for your
long record and commitment on the issue of human rights. Your leadership on
behalf of basic human rights for so many people around the world--religious
minorities and refugees in particular--is important to so many of us, and I
didn't want to let this opportunity pass without publicly thanking you for your
commitment to these issues."
So it's not just money that makes things go round. But rather the latitude of your ability to KISS UP
It's called Congress