Stopping piracy in the theater is like stopping a murder by taking the bullet out of the person who was shot. You have to stop it earlier than that, i.e. protect the master copies of the movie better when they're sent overseas for editing or something. How else would Chinese 7-11 type stores sell identical copies of movies before they even come out?
" geographies with high instances of software piracy suffer from high instances of malware."
Isn't this because the places you have to go in order to get free software aren't policed for malware? This really has nothing to do with the pirated software itself, but instead it has to do with the law preventing people from trading software for free in the first place. Software trading is outlawed == only outlaws will post software for trade (i.e. people already engaged in nefarious activities like malware).
As stated countless times, they sold him a copy of the software, not just a license. Their own argument falls down when one considers that they didn't have to physically sell him a cd with the license, they could have done what movie theaters do and sold him a key that lets him access the software somewhere else. Still, they gave him the physical media. With posession 9/10ths of the law, I find it highly unlikely that he would somehow not be "allowed" legally to resell items in his posession. The new licensee might not be able to activate their product, but that's not his problem. He can sell the physical media all day long and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
I disagree that casual players are the reason that a game change was posted without notifying anyone. That sounds a lot more like unmanaged development processes. How hard could it be to have some area where you say things that all the players can read, let's call it an "official website", where you post messages like "FYI, we changed the shoe items"? Do they really think people will buy the "our customer base doesn't care" argument? I'm more inclined to think that even if none of the customers would care, certainly the development team cares that they made the change, and they'd want to tell people about it. Presumably it either fixes a bug, adds a feature, or something. If the change really was purposeless, then why make the change at all? What's worse, can you imagine a development environment where the process driving these changes was so ad-hoc that you didn't have a way to communicate the changes to the users? From some older coding positions I held, sadly I *can* imagine that.
I am more dismayed with the general unpopularity of any knowledge whatsoever, and the insistence by the population to actively deny any ability of a rational person to do any of the following:
1. demonstrate knowledge through application of knowledge to life;
2. demonstrate an understanding of the difference between fact and fiction;
3. demonstrate an ability to distinguish between proof and evidence vs. rumor and false testimonial claims
I guess as long as benched pro athletes make multiple times as much money and fame as research scientists or other knowledge workers, things will be this way.
The amount of latency is not really an issue as much as the consistency of latency. There's nothing more frustrating than getting fragged because YOUR input was processed late because of too much going on, or for any other reason. I recall missing tons of jumps in Megaman 2 because of this, so it's hardly a new problem.
Not only has the rate not slowed, but the rate has never been higher. I can present two different arguments to how wrong it is to assert that the rate is slowing, etc.
1. 10 years ago, we all would have been thoroughly shocked to walk into a store and get a 1TB drive for our PC's for under $100. To say that in 1969 there wouldn't have been widespread shock at the current state of the Internet, PC's, automotive technology, etc. in general is nothing short of utter rubbish. Let's take another example: cars. Do you think that drag cars in 1969 could do a quarter mile in under 4 seconds? That would have crushed the low 7 second times at the time, and it would have blown everyone's mind that you could even get to a speed like 330 mph in just a few seconds without a rocket engine.
2. This is just a more specific form of an argument that has been made every few decades since the beginning of written history, the argument that "we have done everything". This argument was made by famous physicists in the early 1900's, before Einstein and quantum physics. This argument was made about locomotive trains, or any vechiles for that matter, ever reaching over 50 mph without sucking people's lungs out from the high rate of speed. This argument was made about achieving mach 1 in an airplane. This argument is made about the progress of fine art.
Here's why the argument fails. Human history as written is fixed. The future of humanity is not fixed and has not been written yet, and extends infinitely far into the future compared to any of our lifetimes (end of the world theories aside). Thus, the sum total of human knowledge approaches zero compared with the sum total of what may exist into the future, depending on how far out you want to look. Not only have we not invented everything, we kinda "haven't invented anything yet" compared to what the future will bring.
Based on my 12+ years in the field and from reading the description of Scrum at wikipedia just now, I conclude that the top people should be the scrum masters, because if you bring in someone inexperienced to be a scrum master (i.e. a project manager), all your projects will go to pot.
However, I wonder if you know that scrum basically looks like a pretty framework on top of the lowest level of Capability Maturity. I would recommend seriously reconsidering whether getting a better pipeline of events and allowing work to stretch past 'daily scrums' would be better.
All you need is a clear plastic hamster ball, a spring, and a webcam with wifi attached. Throw that in there, the cam will see everything and theball will roll around for a minute before it gets destroyed or loses momentum. Cost: way less than whatever robot they were thinking of developing. Does no one use their brain anymore? geez!
I dunno, winged airplane flight via lift was a pretty damned good idea circa 1903, even though the initial execution was awful. Just because there are 6 billion people doesn't mean that every idea has been thought of already. To argue that, you'd have to prove when the last idea was formed, and of course that's impossible. In fact, the opposite is true -- there are infinitely more ideas yet to be thought up than have been thought up to this point in the history of mankind. Try one idea, or a bunch of ideas, just not with your own money. Do a poor man's copyright on the idea (mail it to yourself in a sealed envelope and don't open). If someone you share it with steals it, you have a smoking gun to prove you had it first. Or, you can always get a (*gasp*) patent (just not with your own money).
I didn't realize that P2P systems are known for making a piece of information unavailable once it is scattered across that P2P system, especially encryption keys and such. No one gets stuff like that on P2P networks, why would they do that?
I'm of Irish ancestry. I've been to Ireland. Stopping blasphemy would require shuttering the Guinness plant and every bar in Ireland, and believe me, that will cause a LOT more swearing!
Note: the map predates the *known* effective computation of longitude. The Vikings could probably do it. Of course, they didn't try to sail across the middle like some impulsive Italian trader apparently did without thinking in advance: "hmm. maybe hitting islands along the way that I know about would be easier."
Bugs don't have to be undetectable, they just have to be a pain in the ass to remove, very difficult to stop up-front, and quick/easy to deploy their mischief. If those criteria are met, then with a zero-day exploit (these are published all the time), the bug could potentially hit maybe 20% of computers on the Internet successfully (Assume 80/20 rule for got the patch in time, etc.). How many more millions of machines do you need to infect and run your program on than 20% of the Internet?
You can't "sell" just one digital copy of anything, since each digital copy can be reproduced AND distributed at essentially zero cost to anyone. The concept of buying and selling goods applies only to tangible goods with a fixed lifespan. How can you "sell" just one digital copy of something and have it retain a tangible quality? You can't. The idea that a used game can sell for anything says that the economy is strong. If piracy really applied to digital media, then there would be no used market whatsoever. Furthermore, the tangible item (a disc) is exactly why game makers shy away from digital distribution -- DD removes the only tangible good they are selling and destroys the ability to control any of the distro rights (i.e. the main income stream).
Software projects only fail for one reason
on
Why New Systems Fail
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Software projects only fail because people agree and/or commit to features or schedules that are not thought out ahead of time. Anytime such a committal is made, either that part of the project will fail, or some part that connects to that part will be forced to fail as a result of the developers being forced not to design the software properly. Software projects are supposed to be really expensive (just look at the early days for examples), but to cut costs, sales and non-technical people agree to nonsensical schedules and features. The clients won't sign onto a project unless it is cheap, so the managers/sales folks that agree to the MOST nonsensical stuff are initially seen as winners. Developers are then given the responsibility for delivering on a deal that they didn't design or agree with. Since every development outfit does this, none of the clients out there have any idea how complicated and expensive it would be to actually do things the right way.
Software versioning gets really confusing with game programming, specifically versions vs. sequels. Zelda II and Mario II are sequels of the original - very different games. However, Quake 3 is more like a version difference from Quake 2, even though technically it's a "sequel". Windows 7 is definitely a version difference even though it wants to be a sequel. The difference? Because they are different, people understand why they should pay for sequels, while they want the less-different version upgrades for less/free.
Plus, if companies didn't want to move to Vista, wouldn't many of the same arguments apply to staying on XP indefinitely, regardless of what new versions come out? If the version you have is working for what you need, why switch?
I think we've solved the financial crisis in America. What the hell are Morgan Stanley paying their regular analysts for if they can solicit a better paper for free from a 15-year old? And if stating the obvious is a breakthrough for Morgan Stanley, is there any value whatsoever to what they usually publish?
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So what was the frame rate on the mouse's brain? Could it run crysis/linux?
Stopping piracy in the theater is like stopping a murder by taking the bullet out of the person who was shot. You have to stop it earlier than that, i.e. protect the master copies of the movie better when they're sent overseas for editing or something. How else would Chinese 7-11 type stores sell identical copies of movies before they even come out?
Yeah, I mean who wouldn't expect all the equipment in a hospital to default to its "indiscriminately kill" mode?
" geographies with high instances of software piracy suffer from high instances of malware."
Isn't this because the places you have to go in order to get free software aren't policed for malware? This really has nothing to do with the pirated software itself, but instead it has to do with the law preventing people from trading software for free in the first place. Software trading is outlawed == only outlaws will post software for trade (i.e. people already engaged in nefarious activities like malware).
As stated countless times, they sold him a copy of the software, not just a license. Their own argument falls down when one considers that they didn't have to physically sell him a cd with the license, they could have done what movie theaters do and sold him a key that lets him access the software somewhere else. Still, they gave him the physical media. With posession 9/10ths of the law, I find it highly unlikely that he would somehow not be "allowed" legally to resell items in his posession. The new licensee might not be able to activate their product, but that's not his problem. He can sell the physical media all day long and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
I disagree that casual players are the reason that a game change was posted without notifying anyone. That sounds a lot more like unmanaged development processes. How hard could it be to have some area where you say things that all the players can read, let's call it an "official website", where you post messages like "FYI, we changed the shoe items"? Do they really think people will buy the "our customer base doesn't care" argument? I'm more inclined to think that even if none of the customers would care, certainly the development team cares that they made the change, and they'd want to tell people about it. Presumably it either fixes a bug, adds a feature, or something. If the change really was purposeless, then why make the change at all? What's worse, can you imagine a development environment where the process driving these changes was so ad-hoc that you didn't have a way to communicate the changes to the users? From some older coding positions I held, sadly I *can* imagine that.
I am more dismayed with the general unpopularity of any knowledge whatsoever, and the insistence by the population to actively deny any ability of a rational person to do any of the following:
1. demonstrate knowledge through application of knowledge to life;
2. demonstrate an understanding of the difference between fact and fiction;
3. demonstrate an ability to distinguish between proof and evidence vs. rumor and false testimonial claims
I guess as long as benched pro athletes make multiple times as much money and fame as research scientists or other knowledge workers, things will be this way.
The amount of latency is not really an issue as much as the consistency of latency. There's nothing more frustrating than getting fragged because YOUR input was processed late because of too much going on, or for any other reason. I recall missing tons of jumps in Megaman 2 because of this, so it's hardly a new problem.
Not only has the rate not slowed, but the rate has never been higher. I can present two different arguments to how wrong it is to assert that the rate is slowing, etc.
1. 10 years ago, we all would have been thoroughly shocked to walk into a store and get a 1TB drive for our PC's for under $100. To say that in 1969 there wouldn't have been widespread shock at the current state of the Internet, PC's, automotive technology, etc. in general is nothing short of utter rubbish. Let's take another example: cars. Do you think that drag cars in 1969 could do a quarter mile in under 4 seconds? That would have crushed the low 7 second times at the time, and it would have blown everyone's mind that you could even get to a speed like 330 mph in just a few seconds without a rocket engine.
2. This is just a more specific form of an argument that has been made every few decades since the beginning of written history, the argument that "we have done everything". This argument was made by famous physicists in the early 1900's, before Einstein and quantum physics. This argument was made about locomotive trains, or any vechiles for that matter, ever reaching over 50 mph without sucking people's lungs out from the high rate of speed. This argument was made about achieving mach 1 in an airplane. This argument is made about the progress of fine art.
Here's why the argument fails. Human history as written is fixed. The future of humanity is not fixed and has not been written yet, and extends infinitely far into the future compared to any of our lifetimes (end of the world theories aside). Thus, the sum total of human knowledge approaches zero compared with the sum total of what may exist into the future, depending on how far out you want to look. Not only have we not invented everything, we kinda "haven't invented anything yet" compared to what the future will bring.
Based on my 12+ years in the field and from reading the description of Scrum at wikipedia just now, I conclude that the top people should be the scrum masters, because if you bring in someone inexperienced to be a scrum master (i.e. a project manager), all your projects will go to pot.
However, I wonder if you know that scrum basically looks like a pretty framework on top of the lowest level of Capability Maturity. I would recommend seriously reconsidering whether getting a better pipeline of events and allowing work to stretch past 'daily scrums' would be better.
Or, Avatar will completely whip ass and this and all other negative critiques will be laughed at and/or forgotten.
All you need is a clear plastic hamster ball, a spring, and a webcam with wifi attached. Throw that in there, the cam will see everything and theball will roll around for a minute before it gets destroyed or loses momentum. Cost: way less than whatever robot they were thinking of developing. Does no one use their brain anymore? geez!
Security breach aside, it's a SOX issue to store or transmit CC numbers that way.
SOX may be annoying, but it is meant to avoid scenarios such as this, where a breach would yield that information in the first place.
I dunno, winged airplane flight via lift was a pretty damned good idea circa 1903, even though the initial execution was awful. Just because there are 6 billion people doesn't mean that every idea has been thought of already. To argue that, you'd have to prove when the last idea was formed, and of course that's impossible. In fact, the opposite is true -- there are infinitely more ideas yet to be thought up than have been thought up to this point in the history of mankind. Try one idea, or a bunch of ideas, just not with your own money. Do a poor man's copyright on the idea (mail it to yourself in a sealed envelope and don't open). If someone you share it with steals it, you have a smoking gun to prove you had it first. Or, you can always get a (*gasp*) patent (just not with your own money).
I didn't realize that P2P systems are known for making a piece of information unavailable once it is scattered across that P2P system, especially encryption keys and such. No one gets stuff like that on P2P networks, why would they do that?
I'm of Irish ancestry. I've been to Ireland. Stopping blasphemy would require shuttering the Guinness plant and every bar in Ireland, and believe me, that will cause a LOT more swearing!
Note: the map predates the *known* effective computation of longitude. The Vikings could probably do it. Of course, they didn't try to sail across the middle like some impulsive Italian trader apparently did without thinking in advance: "hmm. maybe hitting islands along the way that I know about would be easier."
Bugs don't have to be undetectable, they just have to be a pain in the ass to remove, very difficult to stop up-front, and quick/easy to deploy their mischief. If those criteria are met, then with a zero-day exploit (these are published all the time), the bug could potentially hit maybe 20% of computers on the Internet successfully (Assume 80/20 rule for got the patch in time, etc.). How many more millions of machines do you need to infect and run your program on than 20% of the Internet?
I am sure that plenty of groups that may "need an existing password exposed" are interested in anonymously donating hosting for this project.
You can't "sell" just one digital copy of anything, since each digital copy can be reproduced AND distributed at essentially zero cost to anyone. The concept of buying and selling goods applies only to tangible goods with a fixed lifespan. How can you "sell" just one digital copy of something and have it retain a tangible quality? You can't. The idea that a used game can sell for anything says that the economy is strong. If piracy really applied to digital media, then there would be no used market whatsoever. Furthermore, the tangible item (a disc) is exactly why game makers shy away from digital distribution -- DD removes the only tangible good they are selling and destroys the ability to control any of the distro rights (i.e. the main income stream).
Software projects only fail because people agree and/or commit to features or schedules that are not thought out ahead of time. Anytime such a committal is made, either that part of the project will fail, or some part that connects to that part will be forced to fail as a result of the developers being forced not to design the software properly. Software projects are supposed to be really expensive (just look at the early days for examples), but to cut costs, sales and non-technical people agree to nonsensical schedules and features. The clients won't sign onto a project unless it is cheap, so the managers/sales folks that agree to the MOST nonsensical stuff are initially seen as winners. Developers are then given the responsibility for delivering on a deal that they didn't design or agree with. Since every development outfit does this, none of the clients out there have any idea how complicated and expensive it would be to actually do things the right way.
Software versioning gets really confusing with game programming, specifically versions vs. sequels. Zelda II and Mario II are sequels of the original - very different games. However, Quake 3 is more like a version difference from Quake 2, even though technically it's a "sequel". Windows 7 is definitely a version difference even though it wants to be a sequel. The difference? Because they are different, people understand why they should pay for sequels, while they want the less-different version upgrades for less/free.
Q: How do you learn every German swear word in about 20 seconds?
A: Tell the German admin that you lost the root key.
Plus, if companies didn't want to move to Vista, wouldn't many of the same arguments apply to staying on XP indefinitely, regardless of what new versions come out? If the version you have is working for what you need, why switch?
I think we've solved the financial crisis in America. What the hell are Morgan Stanley paying their regular analysts for if they can solicit a better paper for free from a 15-year old? And if stating the obvious is a breakthrough for Morgan Stanley, is there any value whatsoever to what they usually publish?