...out of it's collective ass, then using DVD media for content delivery may die off eventually. As it stands they're more interested in shackling any sort of new technologies that may benefit consumers than taking advantage of them. That said, I see DVD living a long a fruitful life. Mostly because content providers aren't willing to let go of 'the content'.
If I was to complain about something, it would be about too much scandal.
I was thinking exactly the same thing when I read that post. In the nation's capital during the more temperate months you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a protestor of some sort. I think some of those people have actually made a career out of it...
Actually, I've found the MS AntiSpyware software has been quite good. I first tried it on a machine where Adaware and Spybot had already been run (with the newest defs available), the MS one still found 13 instances (some 67 files/keys) of known spyware AND was able to remove them. Adaware and Spybot just don't seem to cut it anymore.
And just for my 2 cents on topic, tough luck Canada.:) If you do business that crosses into our country, you need to be held accountable by our laws, whatever they may be. The same holds true in reverse - if we're doing business with your country, then once we, our product, or our communication crosses the border, it's susceptible to whatever laws you have up there.
I think you may be mistaken regarding who's tough luck it is here. If these U.S. companies cannot meet the needs of their Canadian clients (basically ensuring the privacy of information sent across the border), then it is the U.S. companies who lose out - not the Canadians. We're more than happy to do business at home or overseas. Just my 2 cents...
Bah.. AO blows in comparison with World of Warcraft, thats probably why they have to give away trial accounts. I honestly thought I was done with these MMORPG's after a friend convinced me to try City of Heroes and it ended up being one of the lamest games I have ever played. As it stands I have WoW running in the background right now.. and I can feel myself starting to twitch from being away for long enough to post this message.. I don't think I have even read/. in almost a week! AHHHHH!
Right.. because I'm sure those original pirates really were the romantic swashbucklers they've been made out to be in the last hundred years of pop entertainment too.
The truth of the matter is that the masses have, and probably always will have, an inherent distrust towards authority figures. It has a tendency to materialize in stories about the actions of those who buck the system. Jesse James, Dillinger, Billy the Kid, etc, they're all good examples of this happening. I don't think you are going to see it stop any time soon either.
And yes.. I too look back on those teen years of rampant piracy with fondness. Arrr. It could have been worse, I could have been out burning down people's houses like some of the freaks I grew up with. If that were the case I doubt I would have much interest in video games today, but alas matey - I am what I am, and today I support those who produce entertainment I like, because I want them to continue producing it, and because I can.
Which hurts Valve more though, the kid (a relative term) who pirates HL2 and raves about it to all his friends and family, or the one who doesn't buy/play it at all because they can't afford $60 for a video game? Would the PC entertainment industry even be what it is today without those who facilitated the popularity of so many PC games? Both interesting questions, to which I have no answers - only opinions.
"Shit, I knew it was wrong, I did it anyways..." - pseudo-quote from Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Unsigned code, signed code - either way you're placing trust in someone you don't likely know. So you have your choices:
1. Trust the company that broke half the internet with Sitefinder, and would probably start digitally signing viruses tomorrow if they thought they'd make a buck and get away with it.
2. Trust the company that didn't see a problem with executing any attachment arriving in your inbox, by default. Nothing could ever go wrong with THAT.
3. Trust the group of programmers that is seemingly not motivated by profit, gives their efforts away, and has their advertising paid for by.... users? WHAT? No Profit?!?
Sure we can. The levy still exists for blank media such as CD-R.
I personally don't consider it 'hiding' either. If I'm forced to pay this fee regardless of whether I use the media for music or not, I have zero guilt when it comes to downloading mp3's off of the internet or copying CDs/songs from friends. I still go to shows, and I still buy the CDs of the bands I like as well.
It's just as much common sense as it is restricting access to movies intended for adults.
Just because a video game may not be physically harmful (we'll even forget about nintendo-thumb for the time being) doesn't mean it's not psychologically harmful. Not to mention psychological addiction, which can be just as bad as the physically addictive substances you list.
It's also not the depiction of the situation which is adult in nature, but the situation itself. Just because it's 'the smurfs' gang banging smurfette does NOT make it any less of an adult situation than the entire NHL vs. Britney Spears. Fantasy or not. The same applies to taking someone's head off with a shotgun.
I personally think this is exactly what the industry needs right now. In it's current state, what with all the lawsuits flying around, you would have to be pretty crazy to publish a game title intended for an adult audience. Especially when there are no controls in place for who can get their hands on it. It's always bugged me that so many movies are created for an adult audience and so few video games are - and THIS is one of the major reasons why that is. The only way that is ever going to change is having those controls in place.
Perhaps as we 'matured' as a society we eventually determined 'Hey, maybe letting little Johnny interactively participate in gangland style murders ISN'T such a good idea?'. Just a guess though.
I think one of the most overlooked aspects in the article is configurations.
I'd have to agree with that. Until last week I had never seen any linux distro or live cd that would correctly set up my video drivers or display size on my laptop. Ubuntu was the first that actually got it right - not on the live cd mind you, but the hd install worked great. I have a laptop with a widescreen display so I don't really expect it to be auto-detected, but it was pretty impressive when it did. On my previous stock FC2 install running glxgears would end up with an average frame rate of 200, after several hours attempting to install the proprietary ATI drivers that dropped to 84ish. The ubuntu install ran at 600+ FPS right off the bat.
Actually it gets pretty warm in most parts of Canada during the summer months.
My office for instance, was obviously on to this scientific discovery before hand.. It climbed up to 36 degrees celcius (with 60-70% humidity on top of that), and I must say between bouts of vomiting, passing out, and trips to the hospital, I do recall being extremely productive!
Mind you... that may have just been part of the hallucinations. Well, whichever..
How is this different from downloading the latest album from Green Day?
Well duh, it's different because he doesn't know any of the Green Day programmers!
Seriously though.. His friend may not realize it, but it may be in his best interests to lose his job anyways. This may be his last chance to save his children before they grow up and go on their own shooting spree. So please, for the sake of the children, download GTA:SA NOW!!!.
/sarcasm off
I highly doubt anyone at Rockstar with be losing their job due to piracy of this game. Maybe due to the game being finished and the project being complete though. Rockstar will continue to make truckloads of cash, and continue to be sued for buttloads of cash, and at the end of the day they will still retain... a pantload of cash. I also have my doubts as to whether any of the actual developers themselves will see much of that money though.
It is unfortunate that game developers cannot reap the maximum profit possible from their works, but I don't think that equates to taking the 'shine' out of their work. Piracy and leaks have been happening for a long time. In fact - I recall pirated versions of Atari 2600 cartridges in my younger years. There was even one guy when I was just a lad who had built his own Pong box (but certainly didn't write the software on the ROM himself). This has been happening for years, and will continue to happen for years to come - regardless of ANY copy protection measures they can implement.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong either, but it certainly does appear to be a part of human nature. Most of us were, after all, taught at a very young age - to share.
I wouldn't say Linux itself prevents spyware, but the entire open source methodology of releasing software probably helps some. Most spyware comes either packaged with applications or installs itself via security holes in our favorite web browser. That particular web browser and it's myriad of security flaws aren't available for Linux, and most software comes from distros themselves or third party repositories. You can typically find MD5 sums for any of these packages if you want to verify that what you download is the same package the maintainer intended to have available for download.
The majority of apps you find that come replete with spyware are developed by companies of some sort who are inevitably looking to make a profit, hence the bundling of revenue generating software with software that is given away for free. Open source is somewhat different in that respect, as I am sure you know being a Linux user yourself.
With commercial software if you want to be able to steal music from the starving artists you will have to download app x from company y, with OS software you typically have the advantage of downloading app x from your favorite distro or repository, often tailored to work with your own distro - and a lot less likely to contain dirty little spywhore programs.
I personally don't buy all this market share shite. I'm sure it's part of the reason, but it's not the whole shebang.
What I would really like to see is a review of any of these PDA's after they have been in use by someone like myself for several months..
The X5 I have is a big piece of crap as far as I am concerned. Battery life sucks, and it needs not one but two proprietary batteries - however, even if you do have them both charged you can still lose all your data unless you purchase a CF card. The screen also sucks to read anything from in an outside setting - it's like they polished that mother up, and I am pretty sure you could seriously injure someone's eyesite if you happened to tilt it in the wrong direction on a sunny day.. It seems to me it's either a case of horrible design, or design done specifically to sell add on parts. Either way, I doubt I would buy a Dell PDA after experiencing this one - which I fortunately didn't pay for, it was a review model (which reminds me I should probably send it back to them now that I think of it).
I would think that prior art for this patent would be relatively easy to find, so I'm wondering what the hell Sun is up to.
This will probably lend credence to the patent claim, so not only does Sun get Kodak off their backs, they probably also get a few lawsuits nicely directed at some of their competitors.. MS with.NET, Novell with Mono.
'Heres 92 mil, by the way - you may wanna check out THESE particular companies as well.'
Just because you can't think of a good use for it doesn't necessarily make it a bad idea..
It's not only used in conjunction with Wi-Fi either, I have seen this implemented in many hotels for in room high-speed net access. Most large companies that offer net access don't have the luxury of being able to just toss an access point out there and saying 'go nuts', they do have to have some level of accountability.
Funny thing, all this automatic downloading and updating is something that people used to like to bitch about with IE.
Funnier thing is that there is a pretty huge difference between IE auto-installing ActiveX controls and such without informing the user and Firefox checking for updates for itself and related plugins from its own website, asking the user if they would like to download and install them, then proceeding based on that. Nice trolling though.
The point is not that MS should be responsible for all third party usage of their DLL files. The point is that there is a trivial difference between having your scanner look in a few pre-determined directories for the DLL files and having it scan and list any known vulnerable DLL files. Instead it just gives a false sense of security. The post was about the MS released 'security tool' being useless, which it is.
Besides, MS doesn't follow their own guidelines half the time, how can you expect any else to? For instance, having a downloadable file right on their website for something that is so obviously marked "not to be redistributed" on your computer. I rest my case..
Slashdot Mirror
...out of it's collective ass, then using DVD media for content delivery may die off eventually. As it stands they're more interested in shackling any sort of new technologies that may benefit consumers than taking advantage of them. That said, I see DVD living a long a fruitful life. Mostly because content providers aren't willing to let go of 'the content'.
If I was to complain about something, it would be about too much scandal.
I was thinking exactly the same thing when I read that post. In the nation's capital during the more temperate months you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a protestor of some sort. I think some of those people have actually made a career out of it...
Actually, I've found the MS AntiSpyware software has been quite good. I first tried it on a machine where Adaware and Spybot had already been run (with the newest defs available), the MS one still found 13 instances (some 67 files/keys) of known spyware AND was able to remove them. Adaware and Spybot just don't seem to cut it anymore.
And just for my 2 cents on topic, tough luck Canada. :) If you do business that crosses into our country, you need to be held accountable by our laws, whatever they may be. The same holds true in reverse - if we're doing business with your country, then once we, our product, or our communication crosses the border, it's susceptible to whatever laws you have up there.
I think you may be mistaken regarding who's tough luck it is here. If these U.S. companies cannot meet the needs of their Canadian clients (basically ensuring the privacy of information sent across the border), then it is the U.S. companies who lose out - not the Canadians. We're more than happy to do business at home or overseas. Just my 2 cents...
Bah.. AO blows in comparison with World of Warcraft, thats probably why they have to give away trial accounts. I honestly thought I was done with these MMORPG's after a friend convinced me to try City of Heroes and it ended up being one of the lamest games I have ever played. As it stands I have WoW running in the background right now.. and I can feel myself starting to twitch from being away for long enough to post this message.. I don't think I have even read /. in almost a week! AHHHHH!
Right.. because I'm sure those original pirates really were the romantic swashbucklers they've been made out to be in the last hundred years of pop entertainment too.
The truth of the matter is that the masses have, and probably always will have, an inherent distrust towards authority figures. It has a tendency to materialize in stories about the actions of those who buck the system. Jesse James, Dillinger, Billy the Kid, etc, they're all good examples of this happening. I don't think you are going to see it stop any time soon either.
And yes.. I too look back on those teen years of rampant piracy with fondness. Arrr. It could have been worse, I could have been out burning down people's houses like some of the freaks I grew up with. If that were the case I doubt I would have much interest in video games today, but alas matey - I am what I am, and today I support those who produce entertainment I like, because I want them to continue producing it, and because I can.
Which hurts Valve more though, the kid (a relative term) who pirates HL2 and raves about it to all his friends and family, or the one who doesn't buy/play it at all because they can't afford $60 for a video game? Would the PC entertainment industry even be what it is today without those who facilitated the popularity of so many PC games? Both interesting questions, to which I have no answers - only opinions.
"Shit, I knew it was wrong, I did it anyways..." - pseudo-quote from Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Unsigned code, signed code - either way you're placing trust in someone you don't likely know. So you have your choices:
1. Trust the company that broke half the internet with Sitefinder, and would probably start digitally signing viruses tomorrow if they thought they'd make a buck and get away with it.
2. Trust the company that didn't see a problem with executing any attachment arriving in your inbox, by default. Nothing could ever go wrong with THAT.
3. Trust the group of programmers that is seemingly not motivated by profit, gives their efforts away, and has their advertising paid for by.... users? WHAT? No Profit?!?
Hmmm, I hate these tough choices.
Sure we can. The levy still exists for blank media such as CD-R.
I personally don't consider it 'hiding' either. If I'm forced to pay this fee regardless of whether I use the media for music or not, I have zero guilt when it comes to downloading mp3's off of the internet or copying CDs/songs from friends. I still go to shows, and I still buy the CDs of the bands I like as well.
Conservative bullshit, give me a break.
It's just as much common sense as it is restricting access to movies intended for adults.
Just because a video game may not be physically harmful (we'll even forget about nintendo-thumb for the time being) doesn't mean it's not psychologically harmful. Not to mention psychological addiction, which can be just as bad as the physically addictive substances you list.
It's also not the depiction of the situation which is adult in nature, but the situation itself. Just because it's 'the smurfs' gang banging smurfette does NOT make it any less of an adult situation than the entire NHL vs. Britney Spears. Fantasy or not. The same applies to taking someone's head off with a shotgun.
I personally think this is exactly what the industry needs right now. In it's current state, what with all the lawsuits flying around, you would have to be pretty crazy to publish a game title intended for an adult audience. Especially when there are no controls in place for who can get their hands on it. It's always bugged me that so many movies are created for an adult audience and so few video games are - and THIS is one of the major reasons why that is. The only way that is ever going to change is having those controls in place.
Perhaps as we 'matured' as a society we eventually determined 'Hey, maybe letting little Johnny interactively participate in gangland style murders ISN'T such a good idea?'. Just a guess though.
From the link provided by parent - 'Method and apparatus for spherical PANNING'. Not PLANNING.
I think one of the most overlooked aspects in the article is configurations.
I'd have to agree with that. Until last week I had never seen any linux distro or live cd that would correctly set up my video drivers or display size on my laptop. Ubuntu was the first that actually got it right - not on the live cd mind you, but the hd install worked great. I have a laptop with a widescreen display so I don't really expect it to be auto-detected, but it was pretty impressive when it did. On my previous stock FC2 install running glxgears would end up with an average frame rate of 200, after several hours attempting to install the proprietary ATI drivers that dropped to 84ish. The ubuntu install ran at 600+ FPS right off the bat.
When did wikipedia become an authoritive source regarding what constitutes a word in the english language?
...And does this mean I can throw a page up on wikipedia and start referring to unsolicited physical junk mail as Spasm?!? (think snail mail)
In an effort to increase the level of suspense the entire picture will be shot with a single hand held flashlight for lighting?
Actually it gets pretty warm in most parts of Canada during the summer months.
My office for instance, was obviously on to this scientific discovery before hand.. It climbed up to 36 degrees celcius (with 60-70% humidity on top of that), and I must say between bouts of vomiting, passing out, and trips to the hospital, I do recall being extremely productive!
Mind you... that may have just been part of the hallucinations. Well, whichever..
How is this different from downloading the latest album from Green Day?
Well duh, it's different because he doesn't know any of the Green Day programmers!
Seriously though.. His friend may not realize it, but it may be in his best interests to lose his job anyways. This may be his last chance to save his children before they grow up and go on their own shooting spree. So please, for the sake of the children, download GTA:SA NOW!!!.
/sarcasm off
I highly doubt anyone at Rockstar with be losing their job due to piracy of this game. Maybe due to the game being finished and the project being complete though. Rockstar will continue to make truckloads of cash, and continue to be sued for buttloads of cash, and at the end of the day they will still retain... a pantload of cash. I also have my doubts as to whether any of the actual developers themselves will see much of that money though.
It is unfortunate that game developers cannot reap the maximum profit possible from their works, but I don't think that equates to taking the 'shine' out of their work. Piracy and leaks have been happening for a long time. In fact - I recall pirated versions of Atari 2600 cartridges in my younger years. There was even one guy when I was just a lad who had built his own Pong box (but certainly didn't write the software on the ROM himself). This has been happening for years, and will continue to happen for years to come - regardless of ANY copy protection measures they can implement.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong either, but it certainly does appear to be a part of human nature. Most of us were, after all, taught at a very young age - to share.
I wouldn't say Linux itself prevents spyware, but the entire open source methodology of releasing software probably helps some. Most spyware comes either packaged with applications or installs itself via security holes in our favorite web browser. That particular web browser and it's myriad of security flaws aren't available for Linux, and most software comes from distros themselves or third party repositories. You can typically find MD5 sums for any of these packages if you want to verify that what you download is the same package the maintainer intended to have available for download.
The majority of apps you find that come replete with spyware are developed by companies of some sort who are inevitably looking to make a profit, hence the bundling of revenue generating software with software that is given away for free. Open source is somewhat different in that respect, as I am sure you know being a Linux user yourself.
With commercial software if you want to be able to steal music from the starving artists you will have to download app x from company y, with OS software you typically have the advantage of downloading app x from your favorite distro or repository, often tailored to work with your own distro - and a lot less likely to contain dirty little spywhore programs.
I personally don't buy all this market share shite. I'm sure it's part of the reason, but it's not the whole shebang.
What I would really like to see is a review of any of these PDA's after they have been in use by someone like myself for several months..
The X5 I have is a big piece of crap as far as I am concerned. Battery life sucks, and it needs not one but two proprietary batteries - however, even if you do have them both charged you can still lose all your data unless you purchase a CF card. The screen also sucks to read anything from in an outside setting - it's like they polished that mother up, and I am pretty sure you could seriously injure someone's eyesite if you happened to tilt it in the wrong direction on a sunny day.. It seems to me it's either a case of horrible design, or design done specifically to sell add on parts. Either way, I doubt I would buy a Dell PDA after experiencing this one - which I fortunately didn't pay for, it was a review model (which reminds me I should probably send it back to them now that I think of it).
It states pretty clearly in the news story that the FTC was proceding with this case based on existing consumer protection laws.
/. needs a -1 RTFA mod.
I would think that prior art for this patent would be relatively easy to find, so I'm wondering what the hell Sun is up to.
.NET, Novell with Mono.
This will probably lend credence to the patent claim, so not only does Sun get Kodak off their backs, they probably also get a few lawsuits nicely directed at some of their competitors.. MS with
'Heres 92 mil, by the way - you may wanna check out THESE particular companies as well.'
Just because you can't think of a good use for it doesn't necessarily make it a bad idea..
It's not only used in conjunction with Wi-Fi either, I have seen this implemented in many hotels for in room high-speed net access. Most large companies that offer net access don't have the luxury of being able to just toss an access point out there and saying 'go nuts', they do have to have some level of accountability.
Funny thing, all this automatic downloading and updating is something that people used to like to bitch about with IE.
Funnier thing is that there is a pretty huge difference between IE auto-installing ActiveX controls and such without informing the user and Firefox checking for updates for itself and related plugins from its own website, asking the user if they would like to download and install them, then proceeding based on that. Nice trolling though.
Why write a version of their toolbar for Moz/Firefox when the functionality it provides is already there by default?
All these toolbars and crap exist for IE mainly because MS seems to have stopped actively developing it.
The point is not that MS should be responsible for all third party usage of their DLL files. The point is that there is a trivial difference between having your scanner look in a few pre-determined directories for the DLL files and having it scan and list any known vulnerable DLL files. Instead it just gives a false sense of security. The post was about the MS released 'security tool' being useless, which it is.
Besides, MS doesn't follow their own guidelines half the time, how can you expect any else to? For instance, having a downloadable file right on their website for something that is so obviously marked "not to be redistributed" on your computer. I rest my case..
p.s. ridiculous
I purchase the CD's of the artists I appreciate.. The tactics of the RIAA make me think twice about making any of those purchases though.
Can't call yourself a fan of some music if you're not willing to pay for it,
Thats not at all true, and rather akin to saying I can't be a fan of Picasso if I'm not willing to buy his paintings.