I'm aware of the semantic discussions going on about free software vs open source. I'm not sure the distinction is relevant, though -- I think OSI approved licenses (such as the Microsoft Public License) also GRANT additional rights IF the recipient redistributes a (derived) work, ie you don't have the be a licensee of the Ms-PL if you just want to use a work licensed under it.
Like I said, free software (of Free Software, whatever) doesn't tell you how to USE the software. You can get a GPL'd project, you can use it any way you see fit, you can even modify it, all without making available the (modified) source code; as long as you stay within the bounds of normal copyright you can do whatever the hell you want. It's only when you want to have ADDITIONAL rights beyond what the default copyright gives you, like giving your neighbour a copy of the software or your modified copy of the software (a derived work) that you have to accept and comply with the GPL.
Wikipedia put it's like this: "Those who do not agree to the GPL's terms and conditions do not have permission, under copyright law, to copy or distribute GPL licensed software or derivative works. However, if they do not redistribute the GPL'd program, they may still use the software within their organization however they like, and products constructed by the use of the program are not covered by this license."
Of course, if you re-define "using" a project to include modification and redistribution, then you need the GPL to be allowed to "use" the project, but that's a rather unorthodox way of defining "use".
The AGPL goes beyond the GPL, which is a license purely for redistribution, because it forces the user of an AGPL work (ie somebody hosting a website) to also make available the AGPL'd work (I think even if it isn't modified). This also makes compatibility between GPL and AGPL kind of awkward.
The license that accompanies free software is not a usage license (like an EULA), it covers redistribution. In other words, it doesn't say anything about how people can use the software, just on what terms they can give out the software or derived works to other people.
Using XML to transfer binary/image data is pretty odd (at least at first glance). But JSON doesn't have an efficient way to represent that data, either, does it?
FWIW it's kind of useful to know people wrote an email on their mobile device (though the manufacturer isn't really relevant). Explains why the mail might by more terse, contain errors, fewer line-breaks etc.
First you said recycling paper uses far less water and energy. It's true, as long as you're not making recycled papers up to the printer paper quality.
Printer paper quality as in pearly white? When I'm talking about recycling paper I'm usually thinking of paper with a grayish base color. I agree that making white paper from used paper is wasteful, though I doubt it's worse than new paper.
Producing recycling paper still uses lots of water, but producing new paper uses lots more. One calculator is available here (including reference): http://www.initiative-papier.de/index.php?page_id=296 I think arguing that those various studies are all flawed is a bit of a ridiculous claim.
That's not true. Recycling paper uses far less water, less energy, and produces far less pollutants than paper from wood, and (modern) recycling paper doesn't do any damage to the printer. You are spreading the paper industry's lies. For the former, plenty of studies are linked on Wikipedia. For the latter -- I had never even heard the claim that recycling paper was bad for printers -- but anyway, I found a reference to a study done by the German federal institute for materials research which apparently isn't available online as well as references to a couple of large corporations that tracked the printer wearout when using different papers.
If you don't want to pay for unmetered data don't bother with a smartphone (of any flavour).
Oh and thank you for not forwarding silly videos and pictures to all and sundry over the already overloaded cellphone networks. Social networking sites are there for a reason.
Huh? How can you possibly fit those two sentences in your brain at the same time? Smartphones are great for using data services, but please don't use them to directly send media. Instead use social networking sites -- one of those things Apple, Google and Nokia keep telling us are great on smartphones!
Even unencrypted it took weeks to emulate/"crack" the protection. So this was rather successful by the standards of DRM. They can step up this kind of protection in future titles. Allegedly the new Settlers game uses a variant of the same DRM which has a more complex integration with the server. Either way, the legit customer is stuck with a game that will only run when the server is up and reachable. If you see anybody playing AC2 on a plane or even on a train, they're almost certainly playing a pirated version, because legit customers simply can't run the game.
Wow, could you be any more huffed up because you were grounded for a week? Those damned European regulators, I shall have their heads, italics and all. Shipping industries were inconvenienced! Must be the rampant socialism around these parts.
The Eurostar is not booked to capacity. I could buy a ticket for a train leaving Paris for London this afternoon -- though I wouldn't be able catch it since it'd take me about 5 hours to get to Paris. I don't think Eurostar sells tickets over capacity, especially not tickets that are only valid for a specific train. And I heard from several people (though I had no reason to check myself) that the Eurostar wasn't booked during the no fly days, either. Maybe the first one or two days, after that you could always get a ticket. It leaves every 30 minutes so it has a LOT of capacity.
OTOH, I'm not sure where GP is getting his numbers from. The fastest route from Frankfurt - London (via Brussels) takes about 5h30, most take about an hour longer, and I can't imagine getting the ticket for anywhere close to 50 EUR: the regular fare Frankfurt - Brussels is already 80+ EUR, and adding the Eurostar is not going to be free. So even if you get a very good deal I doubt it'll be as good as 50 EUR. It's also slower than taking a plane, though not by very much, and of course it's far less damaging to the environment and chances are it's more comfortable, too.
Shit like this annoys me to no end. You haven't demonstrated ANYTHING about truth/false, better/worse, you've just told us in MANY words what kind of game you like. Yet you keep using words as if your taste was some kind of objective truth. And as if you had done research in the area ("truism", "information content"). Chess and Go don't have a story, yet people have been enjoying it for a while. I played SimCity with my g/f, the stories wrote themselves. I played it on my own and I didn't need any story, anyway. Multiplayer shooters' stories serve only as a framework for the same thing repeated ad infinitum and they're almost the ultimate in (quick) reaction test -- yet they're among the most popular games.
That seems like a pretty cool ISP overall (no connection, don't even live in the UK). Usage based tariffs are annoying, but I'd rather deal with an ISP that's open about it and lets you pick your own volume than the alternative of being kicked from an "unlimited" plan or an ISP offering only a single (relatively) low-volume plan. What I'd consider a medium-to-high usage plan is quite a bit more expensive than what I pay in Germany (for a, so far, unlimited account) -- about 35 GPB -- but maybe broadband is just a tad more expensive in Britain, I don't know.
Listen, if you think that something is a scene release by virtue of being on TPB, it's unlikely that you'll understand what I'm saying. But about half of my post was about the non-scene releases that do mostly work -- I'll go on a limb here and guess that the problems that pirates have with incomplete server data are less than the problems legit customers still seem to have. Heh -- I don't even play games anymore, but it's fun to stand at the sidelines and watch.
Well, FWIW, the system has worked in so far as there is no scene release of AC2 yet. Didn't see that coming; I figured that whatever Ubisoft would do, it'd be trivially cracked in a few days at most. Nope.
From my limited understanding, the DRM really uses challenge/response data that is necessary for playing the game, ie. actual game content in a very abstract form. So simply bypassing the server check or trivially emulating it isn't enough, the game requires the data from Ubisoft to be playable. Consequently, there is a community project (for lack of a better word) where legit copies of the game are used to find the right responses and associate them with the requests the game sends. Allegedly (I haven't tried) the database is now -- weeks after the game's release -- big enough to complete the game, though I guess it might still hang in a few places.
So, hats off to Ubisoft. Of course, whether or not this whole BS will result in more copies of the game sold is an entirely and unrelated question. I'd assume that any additional copies sold due to the DRM are more than offset by the horrible PR the DRM caused. AC2 is probably a pretty good game, but whenever the game is mentioned all people talk about is the DRM. (Penny-Arcade on Splinter Cell: "And, since only the 360 version is available, we can talk about the actual game as opposed to the copy protection.")
Yep, it's ironic (as in irony of fate) that a giant ash cloud has resulted in the clearest sky I have ever seen. Even when I was in the middle of nowhere, I could still see contrails in the sky every once in a while. Now, nothing. And though I'm far away enough for it to be a non-issue, I know a few other people who are enjoying the lack of noise.
That's exactly right. The primary email contact is taken from WHOIS, but there are a few addresses that seem to be alternatives for most CAs (e.g. hostmaster). But for some CAs, the list of alternate addresses is rather long, ie:
This is the revised list which is in use by RapidSSL (a Verisign subsidiary) now, before the discussion was started. The original list was longer and contained generic addresses like is, it and mis (mis?!). It's not surprising that some mail providers didn't prevent people from registering a few of those.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm aware of the semantic discussions going on about free software vs open source. I'm not sure the distinction is relevant, though -- I think OSI approved licenses (such as the Microsoft Public License) also GRANT additional rights IF the recipient redistributes a (derived) work, ie you don't have the be a licensee of the Ms-PL if you just want to use a work licensed under it.
Like I said, free software (of Free Software, whatever) doesn't tell you how to USE the software. You can get a GPL'd project, you can use it any way you see fit, you can even modify it, all without making available the (modified) source code; as long as you stay within the bounds of normal copyright you can do whatever the hell you want. It's only when you want to have ADDITIONAL rights beyond what the default copyright gives you, like giving your neighbour a copy of the software or your modified copy of the software (a derived work) that you have to accept and comply with the GPL.
Wikipedia put it's like this: "Those who do not agree to the GPL's terms and conditions do not have permission, under copyright law, to copy or distribute GPL licensed software or derivative works. However, if they do not redistribute the GPL'd program, they may still use the software within their organization however they like, and products constructed by the use of the program are not covered by this license."
Of course, if you re-define "using" a project to include modification and redistribution, then you need the GPL to be allowed to "use" the project, but that's a rather unorthodox way of defining "use".
The AGPL goes beyond the GPL, which is a license purely for redistribution, because it forces the user of an AGPL work (ie somebody hosting a website) to also make available the AGPL'd work (I think even if it isn't modified). This also makes compatibility between GPL and AGPL kind of awkward.
Otherwise, they sit in the same coffee mug on my desk at home.
That's one way to hide them, I guess, but doesn't the coffee taste a bit odd?
The license that accompanies free software is not a usage license (like an EULA), it covers redistribution. In other words, it doesn't say anything about how people can use the software, just on what terms they can give out the software or derived works to other people.
Using XML to transfer binary/image data is pretty odd (at least at first glance). But JSON doesn't have an efficient way to represent that data, either, does it?
Yeah, using HTML+JavaScript on the client and Java on the server side! Nobody does that! What a hack!
Huh. Maybe it's related to the seemingly superfluous &l=1 at the end of the link?
FWIW it's kind of useful to know people wrote an email on their mobile device (though the manufacturer isn't really relevant). Explains why the mail might by more terse, contain errors, fewer line-breaks etc.
True, but irrational numbers are those that cannot be written down exactly in *any* base
... except the irrational number's own base. ;)
First you said recycling paper uses far less water and energy. It's true, as long as you're not making recycled papers up to the printer paper quality.
Printer paper quality as in pearly white? When I'm talking about recycling paper I'm usually thinking of paper with a grayish base color. I agree that making white paper from used paper is wasteful, though I doubt it's worse than new paper.
Producing recycling paper still uses lots of water, but producing new paper uses lots more. One calculator is available here (including reference): http://www.initiative-papier.de/index.php?page_id=296 I think arguing that those various studies are all flawed is a bit of a ridiculous claim.
That's not true. Recycling paper uses far less water, less energy, and produces far less pollutants than paper from wood, and (modern) recycling paper doesn't do any damage to the printer. You are spreading the paper industry's lies. For the former, plenty of studies are linked on Wikipedia. For the latter -- I had never even heard the claim that recycling paper was bad for printers -- but anyway, I found a reference to a study done by the German federal institute for materials research which apparently isn't available online as well as references to a couple of large corporations that tracked the printer wearout when using different papers.
If you don't want to pay for unmetered data don't bother with a smartphone (of any flavour).
Oh and thank you for not forwarding silly videos and pictures to all and sundry over the already overloaded cellphone networks. Social networking sites are there for a reason.
Huh? How can you possibly fit those two sentences in your brain at the same time? Smartphones are great for using data services, but please don't use them to directly send media. Instead use social networking sites -- one of those things Apple, Google and Nokia keep telling us are great on smartphones!
Even unencrypted it took weeks to emulate/"crack" the protection. So this was rather successful by the standards of DRM. They can step up this kind of protection in future titles. Allegedly the new Settlers game uses a variant of the same DRM which has a more complex integration with the server. Either way, the legit customer is stuck with a game that will only run when the server is up and reachable. If you see anybody playing AC2 on a plane or even on a train, they're almost certainly playing a pirated version, because legit customers simply can't run the game.
It's the American way!
Wow, could you be any more huffed up because you were grounded for a week? Those damned European regulators, I shall have their heads, italics and all. Shipping industries were inconvenienced! Must be the rampant socialism around these parts.
The Eurostar is not booked to capacity. I could buy a ticket for a train leaving Paris for London this afternoon -- though I wouldn't be able catch it since it'd take me about 5 hours to get to Paris. I don't think Eurostar sells tickets over capacity, especially not tickets that are only valid for a specific train. And I heard from several people (though I had no reason to check myself) that the Eurostar wasn't booked during the no fly days, either. Maybe the first one or two days, after that you could always get a ticket. It leaves every 30 minutes so it has a LOT of capacity.
OTOH, I'm not sure where GP is getting his numbers from. The fastest route from Frankfurt - London (via Brussels) takes about 5h30, most take about an hour longer, and I can't imagine getting the ticket for anywhere close to 50 EUR: the regular fare Frankfurt - Brussels is already 80+ EUR, and adding the Eurostar is not going to be free. So even if you get a very good deal I doubt it'll be as good as 50 EUR. It's also slower than taking a plane, though not by very much, and of course it's far less damaging to the environment and chances are it's more comfortable, too.
Shit like this annoys me to no end. You haven't demonstrated ANYTHING about truth/false, better/worse, you've just told us in MANY words what kind of game you like. Yet you keep using words as if your taste was some kind of objective truth. And as if you had done research in the area ("truism", "information content"). Chess and Go don't have a story, yet people have been enjoying it for a while. I played SimCity with my g/f, the stories wrote themselves. I played it on my own and I didn't need any story, anyway. Multiplayer shooters' stories serve only as a framework for the same thing repeated ad infinitum and they're almost the ultimate in (quick) reaction test -- yet they're among the most popular games.
That seems like a pretty cool ISP overall (no connection, don't even live in the UK). Usage based tariffs are annoying, but I'd rather deal with an ISP that's open about it and lets you pick your own volume than the alternative of being kicked from an "unlimited" plan or an ISP offering only a single (relatively) low-volume plan. What I'd consider a medium-to-high usage plan is quite a bit more expensive than what I pay in Germany (for a, so far, unlimited account) -- about 35 GPB -- but maybe broadband is just a tad more expensive in Britain, I don't know.
Well, um, there is a scene release now. "Thank you Ubisoft, this was quiete[sic] a challenge for us" is what they write about it.
Well to be fair they have been selling games that are unplayable out of the box for a while now -- and that's without DRM being involved.
Listen, if you think that something is a scene release by virtue of being on TPB, it's unlikely that you'll understand what I'm saying. But about half of my post was about the non-scene releases that do mostly work -- I'll go on a limb here and guess that the problems that pirates have with incomplete server data are less than the problems legit customers still seem to have. Heh -- I don't even play games anymore, but it's fun to stand at the sidelines and watch.
Like I said, there apparently is a fairly complete "values.db" available now, after a couple of weeks. There is no scene release.
Well, FWIW, the system has worked in so far as there is no scene release of AC2 yet. Didn't see that coming; I figured that whatever Ubisoft would do, it'd be trivially cracked in a few days at most. Nope.
From my limited understanding, the DRM really uses challenge/response data that is necessary for playing the game, ie. actual game content in a very abstract form. So simply bypassing the server check or trivially emulating it isn't enough, the game requires the data from Ubisoft to be playable. Consequently, there is a community project (for lack of a better word) where legit copies of the game are used to find the right responses and associate them with the requests the game sends. Allegedly (I haven't tried) the database is now -- weeks after the game's release -- big enough to complete the game, though I guess it might still hang in a few places.
So, hats off to Ubisoft. Of course, whether or not this whole BS will result in more copies of the game sold is an entirely and unrelated question. I'd assume that any additional copies sold due to the DRM are more than offset by the horrible PR the DRM caused. AC2 is probably a pretty good game, but whenever the game is mentioned all people talk about is the DRM. (Penny-Arcade on Splinter Cell: "And, since only the 360 version is available, we can talk about the actual game as opposed to the copy protection.")
Yep, it's ironic (as in irony of fate) that a giant ash cloud has resulted in the clearest sky I have ever seen. Even when I was in the middle of nowhere, I could still see contrails in the sky every once in a while. Now, nothing. And though I'm far away enough for it to be a non-issue, I know a few other people who are enjoying the lack of noise.
That's exactly right. The primary email contact is taken from WHOIS, but there are a few addresses that seem to be alternatives for most CAs (e.g. hostmaster). But for some CAs, the list of alternate addresses is rather long, ie:
administrator@seifried.org
admin@seifried.org
info@seifried.org
hostmaster@seifried.org
root@seifried.org
ssladmin@seifried.org
sysadmin@seifried.org
webmaster@seifried.org
info@seifried.org
postmaster@seifried.org
This is the revised list which is in use by RapidSSL (a Verisign subsidiary) now, before the discussion was started. The original list was longer and contained generic addresses like is, it and mis (mis?!). It's not surprising that some mail providers didn't prevent people from registering a few of those.
The whole thing is documented on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=556468 and in the Kurt Seifried's original article on the issue http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2010/114/BREACH-OF-TRUST (which are really the two links the Slashdot summary should have had).