I think there was even a version made for the Commodore 64. At least I remember loading something like it up every day. It was great, but I always had some trouble lining up the little rails and bars.
A large community of homebrew game developers has sprung up around various programs from companies like ASCII and Clickteam, and there are dozens if not hundreds of freeware game construction sets that people use to make their own arcade games and RPG's.
I remember all I had was a ColecoVision. Good games on that, but I was jealous of all the other kids who had Ataris. I was so thrilled when they finally came out with a cheap plug-in module to play Atari games on the Coleco console. I begged and begged until my parents finally gave in and bought it!
I agree completely. But by creating new hardware and software for people to buy, not only does Microsoft stand to gain, but also the chipmakers (AMD, Intel). Add DRM to it and Disney, the RIAA and MPAA, etc. will all clamor "Yay!!" and demand it.
With all those deep pocketbooks, it will be VERY difficult to get your congressperson^H^H^H^H^H^Hcritter's attention.
Sounds like their Passport service didn't quite take off as expected. Now instead of "voluntary" sign-up, they want to embed it all into the hardware and make it mandatory for everyone to store their details with/get permission from MS.
I like the thought that this would help eliminate viruses or whatever, but the reality is good coders can likely slip around this.
Just my thoughts.
I wrote my first Perl print statement a few companies back. Does that mean I'm not ever allowed to use it again?
Of course that depends on your NDA and contract, but if you wrote it for the company, then I'd guess not: most lawyers will probably tell you that you should not be re-using the code as it is the property of your former employer. The concepts, maybe, the exact algorithm... questionable, but not the exact code.
After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1 terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100-gigabyte computer hard drive -- on a postage stamp-size piece of plastic.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought 1 Tera.... no wait. I get it: teraBIT. Nice one. It's so much more impressive to use the "tera" prefix than to simply say "125 gigabytes".
Hmm.... gives new meaning to the phrase "pins and needles" I guess.
Irony, yes. But don't you think it sounds all too similar to the complaint made by Jamie Kellner about the "lost revenue" from me getting up from my babysitter^H^H^H^H TV during the commercial breaks?
I'm amazed at how low business will stoop. But I guess as long as people put up with it, they'll keep going lower.
If at all possible, get rid of that tiny scroll box. It's important, it's long, so it should be larger and easier to read the words.
I would suggest a brief summary, with a note that the complete "lawyer" version is appended. Something like "you can use this, copy it, share it, change it, whatever you want as long as you release your source and keep everything free".
Apart from the legalese and complicated language, which I agree is difficult for most people to understand, I think it's really annoying that they put such a large amount of text into that tiny little window.... like they expect most users to simply give up scrolling and just click the "Agree/Yes/Ok/Screw Me" button.
Right now it takes quite a lot of investment and land for solar/wind power to be of any use. They're also variable (cloudy days, no wind). Additionally, each windmill/solar cell produces less output for the cost/area it takes up than a traditional coal/petrol plant.
I'd love to see alternative energies, but I don't know if the economy (read: people with money) can make the change.
Media Glyph idea sounds cool, but challenging. You'd have to think of a way to arrange them so that different cultures can use them identically. Take adjectives, for example. In English, we usually stick them before the noun. Spanish puts them after. There are other languages where the verb is stuck at the end or beginning of a sentence too.
It would be interesting, I think, to be that young and share in the world culture. It's a powerful idea that things like laughter are so universal, despite cultural and linguistic barriers.
I'm not sure that the general public necessarily cares what product their government's IT is using. I'd say be general in your campaign to reduce city expeditures until prompted for details. You may want to hilight that Open Source/Linux is cheaper to install, cheaper to keep up-to-date, and has been proven to be much more secure than certain other proprietary OS-es. Especially in light of recent virii and hacker (terrorists according to GWB) scares, Linux's track record of security might be very appealing to your voters.
I think that that's a stupid road for them to go down. If they are playing the game of "Windows" is now a term synonymous with "Microsoft Windows" products then that would be a case of a trademark becoming generic. In which case they can't hold the trademark since it has now become a generic term.
You've hit the nail on the head there. The term "window" has become a generic term for a GUI component. Think "document window", "browser window", "X Windowing System", "Windows Manager", etc. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Microsoft's lawyers know this too, which may be part of the motivation for their heavy-handed reaction. They know that they have to preserve their trademark at all costs or risk losing it (a la aspirin, etc).
There's a period once a suit is filed called 'discovery' when you are supposed to turn over anything your opponent asks for. It's within reason of course but at most they'll take it to a judge who'll make a call about whether it's necessary. Michael gave the reason Microsoft gave for demanding the information and it's reasonable to think a judge would accept this, whatever Microsoft's dastardly schemes may be once Lindows has claimed they have nothing to do with Washington Microsoft has a right to any information which may show otherwise without Lindows putting up an impediment.
From what I remember from my college Business Law class, that's right. The reason MS wants the list is so that they can prove that Lindows was conducting business in Washington. If they can prove this, then MS can file a motion to have the trial there under Washington State laws and regulations. This would be an extreme benefit to Microsoft and likely make things difficult for Lindows in the courtroom.
Companies try this kind of thing often. Have you ever read any fine print that says that in the event of a dispute you agree that the case will be arbitrated in such-and-such a state or district? If not, try re-reading your credit card TOS or even some software EULAs.
While I agree that it seems redundant, if you interpret "LCD" as describing a kind of technology, then the acronym becomes an adjective modifying a noun. In this sense, it could be considered (somewhat) grammatically correct.
Either way, I think I would still opt to write "LCD monitor" or something just to be safe.
I'm still rather new to the Linux world, but my Mandrake distro came with more games than I can count, including Tux Racer, Tetris (clones), Boulderdash, PySol (Freecell, Solitaire, Tuts Tomb, and many other card games), etc.
I'd never been on ICQ before until a couple of weeks ago when I decided I'd try it just for fun. The only thing that did for me was pop up a message window every couple of minutes from some Sandy or Jamie or Jennifer who say "Hi."
Well, I'd check their profile first. Found out that every single one of them want me to check out their slutty college babe website, blah blah super secret 18+ only whatever. So I decided to trash the whole thing. Oh well....
Slashdot Mirror
It's probably not legal, but maybe we can make a case for it using the same argument the RIAA used to hack P2P networks?
Check your browser's cache. I'm sure you've already got plenty.
I think there was even a version made for the Commodore 64. At least I remember loading something like it up every day. It was great, but I always had some trouble lining up the little rails and bars.
Yep. My brother and I are hooked on RPG Maker 2000!
I remember all I had was a ColecoVision. Good games on that, but I was jealous of all the other kids who had Ataris. I was so thrilled when they finally came out with a cheap plug-in module to play Atari games on the Coleco console. I begged and begged until my parents finally gave in and bought it!
I agree completely. But by creating new hardware and software for people to buy, not only does Microsoft stand to gain, but also the chipmakers (AMD, Intel). Add DRM to it and Disney, the RIAA and MPAA, etc. will all clamor "Yay!!" and demand it. With all those deep pocketbooks, it will be VERY difficult to get your congressperson^H^H^H^H^H^Hcritter's attention.
Sounds like their Passport service didn't quite take off as expected. Now instead of "voluntary" sign-up, they want to embed it all into the hardware and make it mandatory for everyone to store their details with/get permission from MS. I like the thought that this would help eliminate viruses or whatever, but the reality is good coders can likely slip around this. Just my thoughts.
Of course that depends on your NDA and contract, but if you wrote it for the company, then I'd guess not: most lawyers will probably tell you that you should not be re-using the code as it is the property of your former employer. The concepts, maybe, the exact algorithm... questionable, but not the exact code.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought 1 Tera.... no wait. I get it: teraBIT. Nice one. It's so much more impressive to use the "tera" prefix than to simply say "125 gigabytes".
Hmm.... gives new meaning to the phrase "pins and needles" I guess.
Moderators:
How is the above post offtopic? The URL in its parent really does not work -- you get IBM's error page.
I'm amazed at how low business will stoop. But I guess as long as people put up with it, they'll keep going lower.
If at all possible, get rid of that tiny scroll box. It's important, it's long, so it should be larger and easier to read the words.
I would suggest a brief summary, with a note that the complete "lawyer" version is appended. Something like "you can use this, copy it, share it, change it, whatever you want as long as you release your source and keep everything free".
...or whatever.
Apart from the legalese and complicated language, which I agree is difficult for most people to understand, I think it's really annoying that they put such a large amount of text into that tiny little window.... like they expect most users to simply give up scrolling and just click the "Agree/Yes/Ok/Screw Me" button.
Hmm.... looks like the RIAA and MPAA lawyers have started moonlighting.
I thought that's why God created plants.
I'd love to see alternative energies, but I don't know if the economy (read: people with money) can make the change.
It would be interesting, I think, to be that young and share in the world culture. It's a powerful idea that things like laughter are so universal, despite cultural and linguistic barriers.
This story has been convered in a recent Slashback article: here.
I'm not sure that the general public necessarily cares what product their government's IT is using. I'd say be general in your campaign to reduce city expeditures until prompted for details. You may want to hilight that Open Source/Linux is cheaper to install, cheaper to keep up-to-date, and has been proven to be much more secure than certain other proprietary OS-es. Especially in light of recent virii and hacker (terrorists according to GWB) scares, Linux's track record of security might be very appealing to your voters.
You've hit the nail on the head there. The term "window" has become a generic term for a GUI component. Think "document window", "browser window", "X Windowing System", "Windows Manager", etc. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Microsoft's lawyers know this too, which may be part of the motivation for their heavy-handed reaction. They know that they have to preserve their trademark at all costs or risk losing it (a la aspirin, etc).
From what I remember from my college Business Law class, that's right. The reason MS wants the list is so that they can prove that Lindows was conducting business in Washington. If they can prove this, then MS can file a motion to have the trial there under Washington State laws and regulations. This would be an extreme benefit to Microsoft and likely make things difficult for Lindows in the courtroom.
Companies try this kind of thing often. Have you ever read any fine print that says that in the event of a dispute you agree that the case will be arbitrated in such-and-such a state or district? If not, try re-reading your credit card TOS or even some software EULAs.
Yep! LASER, MODEM, FLOPS, MIPS, SNAFU, BIT (okay, that might be stretching it a little)....
While I agree that it seems redundant, if you interpret "LCD" as describing a kind of technology, then the acronym becomes an adjective modifying a noun. In this sense, it could be considered (somewhat) grammatically correct.
Either way, I think I would still opt to write "LCD monitor" or something just to be safe.
I'm still rather new to the Linux world, but my Mandrake distro came with more games than I can count, including Tux Racer, Tetris (clones), Boulderdash, PySol (Freecell, Solitaire, Tuts Tomb, and many other card games), etc.
I'd never been on ICQ before until a couple of weeks ago when I decided I'd try it just for fun. The only thing that did for me was pop up a message window every couple of minutes from some Sandy or Jamie or Jennifer who say "Hi."
Well, I'd check their profile first. Found out that every single one of them want me to check out their slutty college babe website, blah blah super secret 18+ only whatever. So I decided to trash the whole thing. Oh well....