origin... that was ultima wasn't it? I think they bought them out at about Ultima V? I played IV and V to death but I heard they werent any good after that?
may have been a simple "we see you have patented xyz, would you consider our doing abc a violation, and if so, what's licensing going to cost?"
answer may have been along the lines of "pretty much anything you do we may try to sue you for, so you'd be better off paying us a ton of money upfront now". "OK, no thanks, we'll take our chances in court."
Or it may have been something completely different. But that's just my guess.
I'm a throwback to when EA was making games for me on my Apple//c. Back in the day they ruled the roost for awesome games. I don't know if they were making most of them in-house or were just buying and slapping their logo on them, but almost every one of them was a winner.
More broadly, EA's plan for PopCap is: "don't break it."
Sounds like a good idea. Hopefully they intend to apply more PopCap to EA, than EA to PopCap. Usually the other way around spells disaster. IMHO EA is on the decline because they've lost touch with their customers. PopCap on the other hand, has a firm grip on that magic in today's market. That's where EA stands to benefit the most from with this move.
when the have to keep maintaining a product across the course of two new releases so customers can survive long enough for a release that's worth ponying up for.
How about all those "Windows Vista Ready" stickers plastered all over those computers with slow processors and 512mb ram that ran like absolute crap? Lowering the listed system requirements doesn't really make outdated hardware "run" the new software, not the way it was supposed to anyway.
Then we get into the magical auto disable of Aero. If you have to disable features in an OS to make the thing usable, it didn't meet system specs. Quit the BS.
Let's just start with "NO" and go from there. Unless you've got a high grade low micron filter on the intake, air circulation is going to lead to dust collection. And then you have filters to replace. Neither solution has any business calling itself "immune" to the problem.
The article reads like a used car salesman trying to sell you a car based on all the wonderful "win/win" features it has, trying to ply a "reality distortion field" as the popular saying goes.
And unless it's using a sealed fluid bearing, that is going to get fouled eventually by dust too. That's what tends to take down cpu fans. Considering the comparatively low torque of such a system, it should come to a stop a lot sooner too.
And I never did see any justification on this "boundary layer" theory, and as to why the lack of a fan magically makes it disappear.
USB is a peer-to-client native connection which limits its uses somewhat and requires a crossover bubble in the cable for P2P connections. (and the protocol was NOT designed for large data transfer, it's very inefficient, AND requires a lot of processor overhead) But even if we still consider it, that still leaves us with USB2, firewire800, and gigabit ethernet as the best commonly available options for moving lots of data around. USB3, fiber channel, and 10GBT ethernet aren't common enough to consider, and will require upgrading our computer to use. My laptop can't do any of those right now. A few laptops are shipping with USB3, but I have yet to see one ship with FC or 10GBT. (I'd also have to upgrade my USB hub, and I have yet to see a USB3 hub for sale)
Apple is trying to make thunderbolt the next common fast connection, like they did with firewire back when things seriously stunk with USB1. TB has the potential to go fiber also. These cables are currently only copper, but that won't last long. That's part of the reason for all the chips, so nothing in the computer has to be upgraded - just buy a faster cable when someone manages to make it. Even the first fiber cables won't last long, they'll get replaced with faster fiber cables, probably more than once. Right now, TB is the fastest commonly shipping interface available. Unfortunately the cables are more expensive, but at least you have the option, particularly where your built-in hardware is more static as it is with laptops. (face it, the age of home desktop computers is winding down)
Wouldn't it have been cool to upgrade your computer's lan connection from 100bt to gigabit by simply replacing the ethernet cable, instead of replacing the network card, or in your laptop, replacing the laptop or maybe getting a PCI card ethernet connector if you were lucky enough to have that option? That's where TB is headed.
normally I'm not a big fan of TPM for its DRM implementations, but that's actually a good-for-the-consumer application.
I was also thinking, store the key on a keyserver on the internet. booter gets the pw and hashes it up and accesses the keyserver and feeds it the hash and is given the key.
If they take your drive, just slip out your iphone/etc and remote into the keyserver and via some secure procotol/ssl, change the password to the key. or alter the ID of the key so the image will be asking for the key to the old ID and not get it. then just update the ID on your hdd when you get it back.
Isn't there a sort of legal suit you can file to have something confirmed to be legal, to settle the question of whether an action is legal or not, proactively? I forget the name of it, but it seems to be well-suited to depth charging the submarine patents?
NASA didn't loan it. President Nixon gave it to the state governor who had it placed in a museum.
Thanks for the additional information. So ownership transferred from NASA to the governor. Now, did he donate it to the museum, or loan it? Given the context, it sounds like he gave it. Therefor the museum acquired ownership of the rock. Then if they threw it away, it is finders-keepers now.
It's a chain-of-ownership issue here. If NASA loaned the rock to the museum for display, and they accidentally tossed it out, NASA still owns it, all the way to the dump and beyond. Just because you lose track of something doesn't mean you don't own it anymore. You have to give it away, sell it, transfer it, abandon it, or have it confiscated, to lose ownership over it. Valuable things are rarely donated to museums, they are more often put on exhibit on a temporary or permanent basis.
Right now that's looking like the case. But further details could emerge. Maybe NASA gave them 11 rocks along with other stuff, and asked for "all 10 rocks back and you can dispose of the rest of the exhibit", which would transfer ownership of rock #11 to the museum, which threw it out (abandoned it) and then in the trash pile it does become finders-keepers.
And for those that would rather skip the nerd porn, this sums it up nicely:
We found two Gennum GN2033 chips in the connector, one on each side. They were flanked by other, much smaller chips that surely added to the cableâ(TM)s cost: two chips labeled S6A 1JG on one side, and chips labeled 1102F SS8370 and 131 3S on the other. Of course, there were tons of little resistors (providing impedance as needed) all around the larger chips.
Any competent forensics examiner works on a copy of the data. The copy is often made using hardware that is read-locked on the source to prevent accidental alteration during the copying process. aka "forensics-grade ide/sata to usb adapter"
And a careful trace through the software would quickly reveal that the password you provided forked the process into the "erase it" code, confirming you provided the "erase it" passphrase.
The generally accepted definition of "patent troll" is a company that doesn't produce any products and whose revenue is entirely from licensing and litigation. You may not like what companies like Sony and Apple do with their patents, but they are not patent trolls.
We want you to have to buy a cable AND an adapter, (at the usual 800% markup from cost of materials) so we can collect license fees twice.
You sure this isn't Sony we're talking about? Reminds me of their "iLink" cables. Apple refused to license them to use the term "firewire" because they insisted on using a proprietary connector because they wanted to be the exclusive source of hyperpriced firewire cables for their camcorders. This whole game has become very tiring.
The only thing I've heard about this whole thunderbolt mania that I like is that the cables are actually more than just straight through wires with particular connectors on the ends priced like there's actual expensive parts in them - these cables actually have numerous active components at both ends. Still overpriced, but not nearly as much of a ripoff.
These people return and do not discover that their jobs are now in jeopardy because the boss discovered they weren't irreplaceable, instead the job goes on as normal.
Sometimes it's just hard to tell if they are trying to shovel the rhetoric, or if they actually are buying into it and are speaking from the heart. I get into very frank discussions with my coworkers and managers regularly, and so taboo topics can come up from time to time. I remember a manager telling me "NO ONE is irreplaceable". He was a seasoned manager, I'm fairly certain he was trying to shovel the BS. My current manager also says the same thing, but I'm pretty sure he believes it. There are, from time to time, people that are irreplaceable. But that puts them in a position of power, which is definitely NOT something the company wants. And so they try to bluff the employee into not realizing the truth until it can be corrected.
A manager that has such an employee and is buying the company rhetoric can lead to disasters: I've personally watched a single person cost a company at least hundreds of thousands of dollars when she quit, because she was irreplaceable, and basically been told she was never going to get another promotion/transfer because she was too valuable where she was. (big company, she'd transferred around quite a lot) Honestly, how stupid can you get? It took about 3 months for absolute chaos to start cooling down, and a good 9 months for things to return to somewhat normal there when she left, and someone overheard in a high level management meeting "this will NOT be allowed to happen again". At least they learned their lesson, albeit a painful one. And that wasn't a case of where an employee "engineers" their irreplaceability - she'd tried to get them to crosstrain someone but they simply refused. It was all that she could do to get several in her office trained on some basics, dig as far ahead as possible, take the week off, then come back to a mess and spend the next month catching back up. Every time she took time off. Apparently her (ex-)manager was told after the dust settled, that he was never going to leave his position, as a result of his handling of the situation. Delicious irony.
I know anytime I go on vacation, it causes major headaches for those that try to prevent me from being completely buried by the time I get back
But I'm always buried when I return. Then I have at least a week of torture trying to catch back up. People say someone else is going to get trained and certified to serve as a backup for me, but it never materializes.
I think most companies just have to experience the lesson the hard way, by a bus or a plane ticket. And even then, half of them don't learn anything from the lesson.
They're just too short-sighted. All they see is the cost of investment today, not the return of tomorrow. I find it amazing that business majors, managers, and CEOs don't have that skill. They are blind to the benefits to all involved, and are comforted in the peace they find in keeping their heads in the sand.
Democracy requires capitalism. Capitalism encourages greed. Greed encourages corruption. That's why corruption becomes the #1 problem in any democracy. But here we can just stop to look at greed since corruption is off the topic of monopoly.
*sigh* Monopolies aren't illegal. Please try to remember that.
Abusing your monopoly position, that is illegal. Google doesn't abuse their monopoly.
The reason for this distinction is that you can get yourself into (and remain in) a monopoly position without harming the public. But the majority of companies can't resist abusing that power if they obtain it, and need a smack-down or break-up. (usually because it's a slow process and they just creep into a behavior of abuse as they creep into the monopoly) Technically speaking, when you have a monopoly, you become a lot more efficient - advertising costs go down, you avoid "race to the bottom" games, the best employees in a field are concentrated and working together. In the end, customers can benefit from a company having a monopoly, it just requires the company's directors to take a strong high-road stance in the face of the temptation of greed you get operating in a democracy. ("do whatever it takes, be it illegal or immoral, to maximize profit")
Just don't try to sell it on ebay. That usually doesn't end well, particularly if it was installed by an officer. Best to "lose" it on a bumpy road. Maybe under the tires once or twice for good measure.
Tho I still don't get it why something left on/in your property is not considered abandoned and become your property?
though i do find it to be a serious PITA to have to unencrypt every time i want to get something
Store an encrypted disk image in a cloud somewhere or on a flash drive like what I do. The key to the dmg is in the keychain on my computer so if I double click it, it opens immediately like a small flash drive and I can do as I need to, the encryption is instant, transparent, and automatic. On another computer, I have to enter the password once for that same access. It's only a very minor inconvenience for me. And I never have to worry about what happens if a cloud account is hacked or I lose my flash drive.
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origin... that was ultima wasn't it? I think they bought them out at about Ultima V? I played IV and V to death but I heard they werent any good after that?
All hail Lord British ;)
may have been a simple "we see you have patented xyz, would you consider our doing abc a violation, and if so, what's licensing going to cost?"
answer may have been along the lines of "pretty much anything you do we may try to sue you for, so you'd be better off paying us a ton of money upfront now". "OK, no thanks, we'll take our chances in court."
Or it may have been something completely different. But that's just my guess.
I'm a throwback to when EA was making games for me on my Apple //c. Back in the day they ruled the roost for awesome games. I don't know if they were making most of them in-house or were just buying and slapping their logo on them, but almost every one of them was a winner.
Sounds like a good idea. Hopefully they intend to apply more PopCap to EA, than EA to PopCap. Usually the other way around spells disaster. IMHO EA is on the decline because they've lost touch with their customers. PopCap on the other hand, has a firm grip on that magic in today's market. That's where EA stands to benefit the most from with this move.
Refueling satellites isn't a bad start but I thought this was going to be more like refueling fresh from liftoff to a jump to mars or something.
I wonder if they'll support pay-at-the-pump?
when the have to keep maintaining a product across the course of two new releases so customers can survive long enough for a release that's worth ponying up for.
Tho I suppose 7 wasn't too bad. Vista, however...
I'd much rather just give them the bird.
it's more of a cookie though isn't it? nothing to do with a setting on gmail's servers.
How about all those "Windows Vista Ready" stickers plastered all over those computers with slow processors and 512mb ram that ran like absolute crap? Lowering the listed system requirements doesn't really make outdated hardware "run" the new software, not the way it was supposed to anyway.
Then we get into the magical auto disable of Aero. If you have to disable features in an OS to make the thing usable, it didn't meet system specs. Quit the BS.
immune to dust
Let's just start with "NO" and go from there. Unless you've got a high grade low micron filter on the intake, air circulation is going to lead to dust collection. And then you have filters to replace. Neither solution has any business calling itself "immune" to the problem.
The article reads like a used car salesman trying to sell you a car based on all the wonderful "win/win" features it has, trying to ply a "reality distortion field" as the popular saying goes.
And unless it's using a sealed fluid bearing, that is going to get fouled eventually by dust too. That's what tends to take down cpu fans. Considering the comparatively low torque of such a system, it should come to a stop a lot sooner too.
And I never did see any justification on this "boundary layer" theory, and as to why the lack of a fan magically makes it disappear.
USB is a peer-to-client native connection which limits its uses somewhat and requires a crossover bubble in the cable for P2P connections. (and the protocol was NOT designed for large data transfer, it's very inefficient, AND requires a lot of processor overhead) But even if we still consider it, that still leaves us with USB2, firewire800, and gigabit ethernet as the best commonly available options for moving lots of data around. USB3, fiber channel, and 10GBT ethernet aren't common enough to consider, and will require upgrading our computer to use. My laptop can't do any of those right now. A few laptops are shipping with USB3, but I have yet to see one ship with FC or 10GBT. (I'd also have to upgrade my USB hub, and I have yet to see a USB3 hub for sale)
Apple is trying to make thunderbolt the next common fast connection, like they did with firewire back when things seriously stunk with USB1. TB has the potential to go fiber also. These cables are currently only copper, but that won't last long. That's part of the reason for all the chips, so nothing in the computer has to be upgraded - just buy a faster cable when someone manages to make it. Even the first fiber cables won't last long, they'll get replaced with faster fiber cables, probably more than once. Right now, TB is the fastest commonly shipping interface available. Unfortunately the cables are more expensive, but at least you have the option, particularly where your built-in hardware is more static as it is with laptops. (face it, the age of home desktop computers is winding down)
Wouldn't it have been cool to upgrade your computer's lan connection from 100bt to gigabit by simply replacing the ethernet cable, instead of replacing the network card, or in your laptop, replacing the laptop or maybe getting a PCI card ethernet connector if you were lucky enough to have that option? That's where TB is headed.
normally I'm not a big fan of TPM for its DRM implementations, but that's actually a good-for-the-consumer application.
I was also thinking, store the key on a keyserver on the internet. booter gets the pw and hashes it up and accesses the keyserver and feeds it the hash and is given the key.
If they take your drive, just slip out your iphone/etc and remote into the keyserver and via some secure procotol/ssl, change the password to the key. or alter the ID of the key so the image will be asking for the key to the old ID and not get it. then just update the ID on your hdd when you get it back.
Isn't there a sort of legal suit you can file to have something confirmed to be legal, to settle the question of whether an action is legal or not, proactively? I forget the name of it, but it seems to be well-suited to depth charging the submarine patents?
Thanks for the additional information. So ownership transferred from NASA to the governor. Now, did he donate it to the museum, or loan it? Given the context, it sounds like he gave it. Therefor the museum acquired ownership of the rock. Then if they threw it away, it is finders-keepers now.
It's a chain-of-ownership issue here. If NASA loaned the rock to the museum for display, and they accidentally tossed it out, NASA still owns it, all the way to the dump and beyond. Just because you lose track of something doesn't mean you don't own it anymore. You have to give it away, sell it, transfer it, abandon it, or have it confiscated, to lose ownership over it. Valuable things are rarely donated to museums, they are more often put on exhibit on a temporary or permanent basis.
Right now that's looking like the case. But further details could emerge. Maybe NASA gave them 11 rocks along with other stuff, and asked for "all 10 rocks back and you can dispose of the rest of the exhibit", which would transfer ownership of rock #11 to the museum, which threw it out (abandoned it) and then in the trash pile it does become finders-keepers.
Here, have a dose of reality, it's on me.
And for those that would rather skip the nerd porn, this sums it up nicely:
Any competent forensics examiner works on a copy of the data. The copy is often made using hardware that is read-locked on the source to prevent accidental alteration during the copying process. aka "forensics-grade ide/sata to usb adapter"
And a careful trace through the software would quickly reveal that the password you provided forked the process into the "erase it" code, confirming you provided the "erase it" passphrase.
The generally accepted definition of "patent troll" is a company that doesn't produce any products and whose revenue is entirely from licensing and litigation. You may not like what companies like Sony and Apple do with their patents, but they are not patent trolls.
We want you to have to buy a cable AND an adapter, (at the usual 800% markup from cost of materials) so we can collect license fees twice.
You sure this isn't Sony we're talking about? Reminds me of their "iLink" cables. Apple refused to license them to use the term "firewire" because they insisted on using a proprietary connector because they wanted to be the exclusive source of hyperpriced firewire cables for their camcorders. This whole game has become very tiring.
The only thing I've heard about this whole thunderbolt mania that I like is that the cables are actually more than just straight through wires with particular connectors on the ends priced like there's actual expensive parts in them - these cables actually have numerous active components at both ends. Still overpriced, but not nearly as much of a ripoff.
Sometimes it's just hard to tell if they are trying to shovel the rhetoric, or if they actually are buying into it and are speaking from the heart. I get into very frank discussions with my coworkers and managers regularly, and so taboo topics can come up from time to time. I remember a manager telling me "NO ONE is irreplaceable". He was a seasoned manager, I'm fairly certain he was trying to shovel the BS. My current manager also says the same thing, but I'm pretty sure he believes it. There are, from time to time, people that are irreplaceable. But that puts them in a position of power, which is definitely NOT something the company wants. And so they try to bluff the employee into not realizing the truth until it can be corrected.
A manager that has such an employee and is buying the company rhetoric can lead to disasters: I've personally watched a single person cost a company at least hundreds of thousands of dollars when she quit, because she was irreplaceable, and basically been told she was never going to get another promotion/transfer because she was too valuable where she was. (big company, she'd transferred around quite a lot) Honestly, how stupid can you get? It took about 3 months for absolute chaos to start cooling down, and a good 9 months for things to return to somewhat normal there when she left, and someone overheard in a high level management meeting "this will NOT be allowed to happen again". At least they learned their lesson, albeit a painful one. And that wasn't a case of where an employee "engineers" their irreplaceability - she'd tried to get them to crosstrain someone but they simply refused. It was all that she could do to get several in her office trained on some basics, dig as far ahead as possible, take the week off, then come back to a mess and spend the next month catching back up. Every time she took time off. Apparently her (ex-)manager was told after the dust settled, that he was never going to leave his position, as a result of his handling of the situation. Delicious irony.
I know anytime I go on vacation, it causes major headaches for those that try to prevent me from being completely buried by the time I get back
But I'm always buried when I return. Then I have at least a week of torture trying to catch back up. People say someone else is going to get trained and certified to serve as a backup for me, but it never materializes.
I think most companies just have to experience the lesson the hard way, by a bus or a plane ticket. And even then, half of them don't learn anything from the lesson.
They're just too short-sighted. All they see is the cost of investment today, not the return of tomorrow. I find it amazing that business majors, managers, and CEOs don't have that skill. They are blind to the benefits to all involved, and are comforted in the peace they find in keeping their heads in the sand.
Democracy requires capitalism. Capitalism encourages greed. Greed encourages corruption. That's why corruption becomes the #1 problem in any democracy. But here we can just stop to look at greed since corruption is off the topic of monopoly.
*sigh* Monopolies aren't illegal. Please try to remember that.
Abusing your monopoly position, that is illegal. Google doesn't abuse their monopoly.
The reason for this distinction is that you can get yourself into (and remain in) a monopoly position without harming the public. But the majority of companies can't resist abusing that power if they obtain it, and need a smack-down or break-up. (usually because it's a slow process and they just creep into a behavior of abuse as they creep into the monopoly) Technically speaking, when you have a monopoly, you become a lot more efficient - advertising costs go down, you avoid "race to the bottom" games, the best employees in a field are concentrated and working together. In the end, customers can benefit from a company having a monopoly, it just requires the company's directors to take a strong high-road stance in the face of the temptation of greed you get operating in a democracy. ("do whatever it takes, be it illegal or immoral, to maximize profit")
Just don't try to sell it on ebay. That usually doesn't end well, particularly if it was installed by an officer. Best to "lose" it on a bumpy road. Maybe under the tires once or twice for good measure.
Tho I still don't get it why something left on/in your property is not considered abandoned and become your property?
Store an encrypted disk image in a cloud somewhere or on a flash drive like what I do. The key to the dmg is in the keychain on my computer so if I double click it, it opens immediately like a small flash drive and I can do as I need to, the encryption is instant, transparent, and automatic. On another computer, I have to enter the password once for that same access. It's only a very minor inconvenience for me. And I never have to worry about what happens if a cloud account is hacked or I lose my flash drive.
or at least a role model I suppose...?