"That's so completely untrue. It's not enough to show that you have the software. You must also be able to prove that you bought the software by keeping every receipt and invoice from every vendor. In many companies, this is the full-time responsibility of one or more employees. Use Windows? $50K a year just to have someone to prove you're allowed to. Fun, huh?"
Any company sufficiently large enough to need somebody to keep track of their software licencing should already be keeping every receipt and invoice from every vendor. If they aren't, they've got a fundamentally flawed internal structure. How in heavens name can you do accounting if you don't keep your receipts and invoices?
It's not a full time responsibility of somebody - it's one part of the job of a general asset coordinator. If it's done properly from the start, it takes very little time. Pretending it's unbelievably complex and time-consuming doesn't make it so. And if it is, the company has bigger problems.
"Hmmmm you just don't get it, do you?"
I do. Apparently you don't.
"but the next time someone asks me why I think they should just go with the F/OSS alternative to Windows, I'm going to hand them this list....."
Now if you had said, "Next time someone asks me why they shouldn't just use pirated commercial software, I'm going to hand them this list", then I would agree with you. The list is irrelevant for people who have paid for their software.
I'm not contesting your second post. It just has nothing to do with your first one.
"said sarcastically of course, but the next time someone asks me why I think they should just go with the F/OSS alternative to Windows, I'm going to hand them this list..... It basically offsets the cost of learning new programs UIs"
Using the list of pirates and their fines as justification for F/OSS is bad logic. If companies just buy the software they intend to use, they don't have to worry about huge fines.
"these isotopes are so important to preserving human life, why the hell don't we have more reactors in place to produce them?"
Because they are VERRRRRRRY expensive. And for the U.S.'s part, they haven't put a reactor online since 1996. Maybe they'll build some appropriate reactors after 2013 when Watts Bar 2 goes online (hopefully).
"What the fuck are you babbling about? issues? The hardware is rock solid with people playing games and folding at home for months at a time."
Never said a word about the hardware. I own a PS3 (no games, but lots of movies). Their issues are in every single other area, including sales, marketing, and third party support services. They're blowing it. If you don't think they have issues, think again.
"BluRay has won the next gen format war."
They have not. There's at least 18 months left in this silly war, and Sony never wins format wars. I'm buying the new Samsung dual-format player in January because the war is going to continue.
Sony has to outsell the 360 by over 200,000 units every month for until 2012 just to catch up.
"Why? Really why is it important to anyone but themselves that they succeed?"
It's important because a very large base of owners will allow companies to keep making games with high development costs. Right now they're doing it primarily on faith.
Sony should probably be unhappy with a wide variety of PS3-related issues.
It's great fun seeing an arrogant bully get kicked square in the nuts and fold like a cheap lawn chair, but the desire to see them fail is all out of my system now. It's important that they succeed.
"I don't get this response, which is primarily what you get when talking about the issue. I see something I don't agree with and say so. I present an argument against it, but you rebut by saying I have no place to argue while adding nothing of merit to the discussion."
I saw something I didn't agree with, and I said so. I presented an argument against it - that nobody has to buy it. Just because you don't accept my argument doesn't mean I didn't present one.
I really don't understand why you would disagree with my point anyway. If they present something that isn't of value, it'll fail in the marketplace. If it's really such a terrible idea, it's doomed to fail.
"From all accounts, it's a good game on its own that simply doesn't lend to an expansion. It's pretty pathetic when they feel like they have to muck it up with crap like this.
Why is this an issue for you? Amazingly enough, you're not forced to buy any downloadable content that comes to be. If you don't think it's worthwhile, the world will merrily spin along its way if you choose not to buy it. Your game will remain pristine, with none of the mucking up that you dislike.
"Looking for someway to get you to pay more but they aren't really sure what yet."
A video game company what wants your money, thinks downloadable content might be successful, but is still just in the "thinking about it" stage?
I played all of the Baldur's Gate games, and their expansion packs, but none of them held my attention as firmly as Planescape: Torment. That was the first time I played a game where the story was truly the point.
The first time the insane Ignus started muttering about killing the rest of the party I knew this game was different. The floating skull, Morte, was funny. The entire cast was well-acted, and believable to an extent I hadn't seen before.
It remains a high point in my gaming past. It's also the one and only such game that I ever played completely through more than once.
In fact, I think I'll try to find another copy of it. I gave mine to my cousin five years ago and his 3 year old daughter made swift work of the media.
"especially after they turned the game into a timesink/cashcow by introducing 10 new levels, endless reputation -> item -> item set grinds, by deciding to introduce an expansion each year. now people who bought tbc are going to go into a new zone without ever seeing endgame tbc instances and being able to complete half of a set with wotlk."
Why would they not see the endgame for a zone? It's not going anywhere.
Unless, of course, you're one of those of players who consider WoW a footrace to gear, so that you can stand around in the major cities flexing and showing off your digital attributes.
Those people are very much the minority. The casual gamers are far more numerous, and our choices in the game aren't driven by what gear we need, but by which areas we haven't explored.
I just got a level 60 character for the first time (I've had the game since launch). Eventually I'll see the new content, but I'm in no rush. The plaguelands, winterspring, and now the outlands have been new and fun for me, and I never had to resort to grinding for anything.
I swear sometimes I think the hardcore gamers consider themselves the elite that Blizzard should cater heavily to - but they provide the same revenue stream as a casual gamer, use more resources, and are far less numerous.
"And finally, I want to personally congratulate Racer_S from the Widescreen Gaming Forums, and his awesome user patch to expand the widescreen FOV in BioShock. I'm currently tracking him down via email, but hopefully, he'll accept my gratitude, and maybe an Nvidia 8800 to boot."
Now that is a terrific attitude. 2K Games went up 10 notches on my Classy Scale.
"But sysadmins have a number of duties which they are performing/continuously/, so how can you quantify that?"
Get a daytimer, and jot down one line items when you do things. There's no such thing as "continuous" actions. Everything is atomic. You don't tail a log and stare at it for eight hours, do you? No, you check it once. Then you look at it again later.
You might not like itemizing your day, but a log of responsibilities completed IS a productivity log.
Let's say you buy a Blu-Ray player and forty or fifty movies. Suddenly Blu-Ray goes belly up, and the several thousand titles already out go into clearance bins, so you pick up a bunch more. How have you been burned? A player is under $500 now, and it'll still play all the movies you bought. And by the time Sony packs it on on Blu-Ray you'll probably even be able to get a spare player for a couple hundred dollars.
Now if you buy a $1000 player and then only buy two titles, I'll grant you mught get burned in the long run. But then you'd be an idiot.
"So you bought every single Bluray movie available? My local electronics store has hundreds of different DVDs, and about 20 different Blurays, despite using a full shelf for them."
Your local electronic store sucks just a little bit. If I had to guess, I'd say the Future Shop near my home has 100 or more Blu-Ray titles.
Not that there are massive numbers of titles out there by DVD standards, but I believe there are a couple thousand available.
If, as a vendor of software, you made a mistake that brought you into conflict with a Microsoft licensing policy regarding distribution that was easily corrected, I'm sure that if you (a) distributed a patch, and (b) corrected your undistributed source files, you and Microsoft would have no further problems. And that's all that happened with ID/Valve in this case.
"Do you see Microsoft attacking stupid little lapses in following the license when no harm is done? Most of the time you don't."
The BSA doesn't care about "stupid little lapses". They aren't likely to investigate one-off piracy, either. Hell, Microsoft continued to allow security patches to known pirated Windows keys, and to my knowledge they didn't knock on any users doors over the matter.
Now commercial piracy or site license violations are a different animal. They aren't "stupid little lapses".
Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. In my opinion the one I posted looks substantially better than any of the five shots from the original. Frankly the linux one looks like the kind of typeface one would use to print "Hardy Boys" books. I'm out of junior high - I can handle fonts made for grownups. It looks amateurish.
Slashdot Mirror
"That's so completely untrue. It's not enough to show that you have the software. You must also be able to prove that you bought the software by keeping every receipt and invoice from every vendor. In many companies, this is the full-time responsibility of one or more employees. Use Windows? $50K a year just to have someone to prove you're allowed to. Fun, huh?"
Any company sufficiently large enough to need somebody to keep track of their software licencing should already be keeping every receipt and invoice from every vendor. If they aren't, they've got a fundamentally flawed internal structure. How in heavens name can you do accounting if you don't keep your receipts and invoices?
It's not a full time responsibility of somebody - it's one part of the job of a general asset coordinator. If it's done properly from the start, it takes very little time. Pretending it's unbelievably complex and time-consuming doesn't make it so. And if it is, the company has bigger problems.
"Hmmmm you just don't get it, do you?" I do. Apparently you don't.
"but the next time someone asks me why I think they should just go with the F/OSS alternative to Windows, I'm going to hand them this list....."
Now if you had said, "Next time someone asks me why they shouldn't just use pirated commercial software, I'm going to hand them this list", then I would agree with you. The list is irrelevant for people who have paid for their software.
I'm not contesting your second post. It just has nothing to do with your first one.
"said sarcastically of course, but the next time someone asks me why I think they should just go with the F/OSS alternative to Windows, I'm going to hand them this list..... It basically offsets the cost of learning new programs UIs"
Using the list of pirates and their fines as justification for F/OSS is bad logic. If companies just buy the software they intend to use, they don't have to worry about huge fines.
"these isotopes are so important to preserving human life, why the hell don't we have more reactors in place to produce them?"
Because they are VERRRRRRRY expensive. And for the U.S.'s part, they haven't put a reactor online since 1996. Maybe they'll build some appropriate reactors after 2013 when Watts Bar 2 goes online (hopefully).
"At least it's not... Bling Jiggy Fresh Bad Gnarly Dude..."
Come on, now... "dude" has stood the test of time, and has remained in constant usage for decades. Don't harsh my mellow.
Why should I believe this guy? Do I have one other bit of evidence available to me?
"What the fuck are you babbling about? issues? The hardware is rock solid with people playing games and folding at home for months at a time."
Never said a word about the hardware. I own a PS3 (no games, but lots of movies). Their issues are in every single other area, including sales, marketing, and third party support services. They're blowing it. If you don't think they have issues, think again.
"BluRay has won the next gen format war."
They have not. There's at least 18 months left in this silly war, and Sony never wins format wars. I'm buying the new Samsung dual-format player in January because the war is going to continue.
Sony has to outsell the 360 by over 200,000 units every month for until 2012 just to catch up.
"Why? Really why is it important to anyone but themselves that they succeed?"
It's important because a very large base of owners will allow companies to keep making games with high development costs. Right now they're doing it primarily on faith.
Sony should probably be unhappy with a wide variety of PS3-related issues.
It's great fun seeing an arrogant bully get kicked square in the nuts and fold like a cheap lawn chair, but the desire to see them fail is all out of my system now. It's important that they succeed.
"I don't get this response, which is primarily what you get when talking about the issue. I see something I don't agree with and say so. I present an argument against it, but you rebut by saying I have no place to argue while adding nothing of merit to the discussion."
I saw something I didn't agree with, and I said so. I presented an argument against it - that nobody has to buy it. Just because you don't accept my argument doesn't mean I didn't present one.
I really don't understand why you would disagree with my point anyway. If they present something that isn't of value, it'll fail in the marketplace. If it's really such a terrible idea, it's doomed to fail.
"From all accounts, it's a good game on its own that simply doesn't lend to an expansion. It's pretty pathetic when they feel like they have to muck it up with crap like this.
Why is this an issue for you? Amazingly enough, you're not forced to buy any downloadable content that comes to be. If you don't think it's worthwhile, the world will merrily spin along its way if you choose not to buy it. Your game will remain pristine, with none of the mucking up that you dislike.
"Looking for someway to get you to pay more but they aren't really sure what yet."
A video game company what wants your money, thinks downloadable content might be successful, but is still just in the "thinking about it" stage?
Say it isn't so.
I played all of the Baldur's Gate games, and their expansion packs, but none of them held my attention as firmly as Planescape: Torment. That was the first time I played a game where the story was truly the point.
The first time the insane Ignus started muttering about killing the rest of the party I knew this game was different. The floating skull, Morte, was funny. The entire cast was well-acted, and believable to an extent I hadn't seen before.
It remains a high point in my gaming past. It's also the one and only such game that I ever played completely through more than once.
In fact, I think I'll try to find another copy of it. I gave mine to my cousin five years ago and his 3 year old daughter made swift work of the media.
"Nethack 3.4.3 is less than 20 years old, released on December 8th of 2003. Nethack is under continuous development you know."
No... it's under sporadic and infrequent development. Actually, that's being charitable. Seems like the only update since 2004 is a file name change.
"especially after they turned the game into a timesink/cashcow by introducing 10 new levels, endless reputation -> item -> item set grinds, by deciding to introduce an expansion each year. now people who bought tbc are going to go into a new zone without ever seeing endgame tbc instances and being able to complete half of a set with wotlk."
Why would they not see the endgame for a zone? It's not going anywhere.
Unless, of course, you're one of those of players who consider WoW a footrace to gear, so that you can stand around in the major cities flexing and showing off your digital attributes.
Those people are very much the minority. The casual gamers are far more numerous, and our choices in the game aren't driven by what gear we need, but by which areas we haven't explored.
I just got a level 60 character for the first time (I've had the game since launch). Eventually I'll see the new content, but I'm in no rush. The plaguelands, winterspring, and now the outlands have been new and fun for me, and I never had to resort to grinding for anything.
I swear sometimes I think the hardcore gamers consider themselves the elite that Blizzard should cater heavily to - but they provide the same revenue stream as a casual gamer, use more resources, and are far less numerous.
"And finally, I want to personally congratulate Racer_S from the Widescreen Gaming Forums, and his awesome user patch to expand the widescreen FOV in BioShock. I'm currently tracking him down via email, but hopefully, he'll accept my gratitude, and maybe an Nvidia 8800 to boot."
Now that is a terrific attitude. 2K Games went up 10 notches on my Classy Scale.
"But sysadmins have a number of duties which they are performing /continuously/, so how can you quantify that?"
Get a daytimer, and jot down one line items when you do things. There's no such thing as "continuous" actions. Everything is atomic. You don't tail a log and stare at it for eight hours, do you? No, you check it once. Then you look at it again later.
You might not like itemizing your day, but a log of responsibilities completed IS a productivity log.
Let's say you buy a Blu-Ray player and forty or fifty movies. Suddenly Blu-Ray goes belly up, and the several thousand titles already out go into clearance bins, so you pick up a bunch more. How have you been burned? A player is under $500 now, and it'll still play all the movies you bought. And by the time Sony packs it on on Blu-Ray you'll probably even be able to get a spare player for a couple hundred dollars.
Now if you buy a $1000 player and then only buy two titles, I'll grant you mught get burned in the long run. But then you'd be an idiot.
"So you bought every single Bluray movie available? My local electronics store has hundreds of different DVDs, and about 20 different Blurays, despite using a full shelf for them."
Your local electronic store sucks just a little bit. If I had to guess, I'd say the Future Shop near my home has 100 or more Blu-Ray titles.
Not that there are massive numbers of titles out there by DVD standards, but I believe there are a couple thousand available.
"A handful of early adopters is not a sizable market."
Well, perhaps not huge, but it's out of the box now. Didn't 300 sell an estimated 250,000 hi-def copies?
"There's nary a Blu-Ray market out there at this point"
How in tarnation did those 30 Blu-Ray movies get on my bookshelf?
If, as a vendor of software, you made a mistake that brought you into conflict with a Microsoft licensing policy regarding distribution that was easily corrected, I'm sure that if you (a) distributed a patch, and (b) corrected your undistributed source files, you and Microsoft would have no further problems. And that's all that happened with ID/Valve in this case.
"Do you see Microsoft attacking stupid little lapses in following the license when no harm is done? Most of the time you don't."
The BSA doesn't care about "stupid little lapses". They aren't likely to investigate one-off piracy, either. Hell, Microsoft continued to allow security patches to known pirated Windows keys, and to my knowledge they didn't knock on any users doors over the matter.
Now commercial piracy or site license violations are a different animal. They aren't "stupid little lapses".
"No, it's thin and ugly."
Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. In my opinion the one I posted looks substantially better than any of the five shots from the original. Frankly the linux one looks like the kind of typeface one would use to print "Hardy Boys" books. I'm out of junior high - I can handle fonts made for grownups. It looks amateurish.
A picture of the same information rendered on Windows Vista with default setting is here
I think you'll find it perfectly fine.
"And dismissing a binary simply because it's a binary, without even considering where the best option lies, seems like a fool to me."
My english done gone busted itself all up inside.