...because I was reading Amateur Photographer last week, which was discussing DSLRs that could take multiple photographs at near-film/video frame rates. The implication was that users (or the camera) would take many close-together photographs, with the best one being chosen later. It was discussing the implications of this on still photography. (Of course, it could be argued that users of cameras with high-speed motorised film transport- which has been around for years- are already doing this to a large extent).
Of course, the viewpoint of the writer of the Slashdot article is coming at this from the opposite direction, that of videography. However, you can see that both fields might- or might *not*- end up in similar places, or at least using similar equipment. On the other hand, I can also understand that still photography and videography's handling needs may not be amenable to a compromise solution, so perhaps there will still be equipment designed with one primary use or the other in mind, even if the core hardware setup remains the same.
I was under the impression that CRTs required 50/60 (PAL/NTSC) non-interlaced frames per second to avoid unpleasant levels of flickering, but that there was only enough bandwidth for 25/30- which looked bad- so they sent fifty (or sixty) half-frames instead.
Everyone I talk to refers to Napster in the past tense... "back when Napster was around"... "I used to use Napster all the time", etc. Probably because most people associate the Napster name with the original service/company circa 1999/2000- and that *is* long dead.
As others have already mentioned, the current "Napster" is just another DRMed "legal downloads" service that bought the name and little else. Often this trick works, and a new company is able to flog crap on the back of a defunct company with a a good name (e.g. Polaroid).
However, it hasn't worked here. Although Joe Public probably doesn't know that the new Napster is a different company, it's irrelevant. People associate the name with the original service, and aren't stupid enough to sign up for the new Napster simply on the basis of branding.
FWIW, I always liked the Napster "cat" logo, and I think that the stupid "body" that the new owners plastered on it looks really stupid and contrived ("Hey... let's make the logo into a character". No- it's a stylised logo, it doesn't bloody work that way). Along with Infogrames dicking about with the classic Atari symbol, it's an example of pointless brand vandalism.
They should leave javascript as-is, and improvise XUL or whatever is the new buzzword. Well, to quote Wikipedia (euh...), XUL is "an XML user interface markup language developed by the Mozilla project for use in its cross-platform applications, such as Firefox. The only complete implementation of XUL is the Gecko [Mozilla] layout engine."
So I can't see MS having anything to do with it, unless there's some convoluted plotting going on.
Please, enlighten us to a game that isn't "basically on rails". Many games hide the rails very well, but all games are on them. "Frontier retains the same principal component of Elite--namely completely open-ended gameplay--and adds to this realistic physics and an accurately modelled galaxy. There is no plot within Frontier, nor are there pre-scripted missions. [..] As a consequence, Frontier cannot be completed or "won"--instead, players themselves decide what to aspire to and set out to achieve it."
And that game is 14 years old.
The Mercenary games, although they had objectives and some scripting, also allowed a large freedom of movement (and in the case of Mercenary III, at least six distinct ways to achieve your objective).
You can not keep blowing up a photograph even though it is an analog recording medium. Although grain positioning and variations in grain size are infinitely variable within a given range, any specific grain is an on/off recording medium (in a sense "digital") and of *noticably* finite size. So it's debatable as to whether this qualifies as "analogue".
Yes it would wind them up in red tape, but that would be the point. Make is WORK to manage a domain and managing 10,000 becomes impossible. No, if you are managing 10,000 you make sure that you have a professional organisational structure in place. As I already said, the red tape is going to tie up the legitimate domain buyers (with under 25 domains), not the professional squatters.
You're going to stop them exploiting this organisational stucture? Well, since there will have to be rules to ensure everyone is treated fairly, what should the rules be? If you think it will be anything other than incredibly difficult to write rules that *don't* make life impossible for legitimate users *and* don't have enough loopholes for squatters/grabbers to weasel their way through the net, then you haven't thought it through enough.
It would not be that difficult really, Really? Asserting that it would not be difficult does not make it so. IMHO it would quickly become *very* difficult if a half-competent domain-grabber had set in place a complex structure of names, companies and so on.
and it would be worthwhile. Why would you let someone open 100 fake accounts at $8 a pop Because it would be very difficult to (a) find out and (b) prove that dodgy activity was taking place.
The Investigating could be done by companies like Verisign, That simple sentence glosses over a lot of convoluted and complex investigations that Verisign would have to get into and employ people for, all to enforce your simple system that supposedly makes things fairer but in fact just ties the legitimate users up in red tape.
and if too many domains controlled by them are squatters, Are we talking about domain grabbing or squatting? The former is a subset of the latter.
have ICANN give control of the domain to someone else and start the validation process. Your idea would work perfectly in a perfectly organised world. It would be a disaster in the real world because it makes life harder for ordinary users than for the (large scale, bulk) domain grabbers and it would quickly become more complex than you imagine to enforce it fairly.
All of those programs have a natural fall-back mechanism, that is their own source. Every competent Linux/BSD admin is expected to be fluent in several computer languages, starting with the C language. I'm going to play devil's advocate here; I thought your original point was excellent, but suggesting that someone should have to read the source (even if they are capable of it) as a substitute for poor documentation is horrid. You're doing open source no favours with that line (I can just see the Windows types using it to paint Linux apps and documentation as poor-quality and elitist- when, as you originally pointed out, this could arguably apply more to Windows).
Yes, there are extremely good reasons for having the source available, but it being a substitute for good end-user documentation is not one of them. (Code should be well-documented and clearly written, but for the benefit of maintainers, not end users!).
In an absolutely desparate situation if you're prepared to put the time in, reading the source *might* save your bacon, but I'd already be severely pissed off if I had to resort to that. Particularly if the code was opaquely or just downright messily written.
The "domain management services" can't exist - if I phone or mail them and ask what domain they have without telling them anything else about the account, how are they going to know what domain to say between the 1,000 domains they are managing? Not really. What if the company subcontracts someone else to look after their (legitimately acquired) domains and/or website on their behalf? If they pass on the details, the company looking after their domain will still have to be informed which domain it is they're interested in. If they're not allowed to pass on the details to someone outwith the company, you're coming very close to dictating how *legitimate* companies run their business, and tying them up in red tape.
The one down side I can think of would be companies that could register a different # or address for each domain (assuming they get huge discounts to getting lots of numbers or registering lots of addresses) - however it should not be difficult to track if multiple numbers are owned by the same person/company or if 1,000 addresses are all within one city block and other shenanigans. Again, that could be part of the verification process when verification is requested on a domain. Exactly what I was thinking. But this task which "should not be difficult" is probably less trivial than you imagine. What if they've been registered in bogus names? The squatters certainly will try that, and it'll probably work. ICANN will have to spend time investigating records and prove otherwise- and this'll end up in a very convoluted situation.
Of course, ICANN could say "sounds dubious, let's axe this guy's domain" if they don't want to spend time investigating, which will probably lead to innocent people who didn't comply with all that red tape fast enough or lost track of their details being caught in the trap.
And the large-scale squatters will be able to employ someone part or full-time to deal with this nonsense, whether they "work for" the company or not. You're proposing something that sounds nice on paper and in practice will just be a major PITA for legitimate users and worked round by the people it's meant to stop.
And failed. If all goes well, the system apparently works. That's naive; the system was still stacked in favour of the Commission's findings/wishes in that it effectively required an overwhelming rejection of them by the parliament itself for them not to go through. The fact that the Commission could re-present these after their initial rejection and (second time around) could effectively have won by default does not reflect well on this aspect of the EU, even though things worked out in this case.
In short, the right decision was made in spite of (and not because of) the European Commission.
1) Call the phone number - ask what domains they have registered. If they can't tell you (because the list is way too longer) then F-em. This won't happen. It assumes that there is (or should be) someone at the end of that phone line who will automatically know which domains are registered. What if it's a small company? What if a clueless secretary answers the phone?
The solution is to force everyone who registers a domain to have someone who knows what's going on always answer that phone number. But if an individual registered the domain, what if (e.g.) their girl/boyfriend answers the mobile phone and doesn't have a clue? If it's a moderate sized company, are you seriously suggesting that they should be forced to have someone who knows what's going on to always answer that phone number? Seriously? If not, what if computer-illiterate secretary answers the phone? What if the phone isn't answered at all?
But I'm sure that large companies and/or professionals whose "jobs" revolve around cybersquatting and so on will ensure that such calls are automatically forwarded to people whose responsibility it is (see below on "domain management services").
In short, this idea is just creating horrible red tape for the ordinary legitimate domain buyers that professional sleazes will be able to weasel their way around.
Of course, if you don't require a legitimate answer immediately, it's no different to asking them by mail:-
2) Mail a letter to the address with a URL where they have to go to and it asks them what domains are registered - If they don't reply or can't input it, then F-em. Result; companies are set up to provide "domain management services" who (as a matter of policy) have such queries passed on to them to be dealt with. Services to the cybersquatting industry.
only eu bureaucrats could pull such 2 stunts in just one gig. when a bureaucracy works, it really shines. Well, perhaps. But also remember that it was the faceless, unelected, bureaucratic EU Commission that tried to use its power to force software patents (in their original form) through the European Parliament a couple of years back.
If you do a whois on a domain name, then somebody, somewhere gets to see that you might be interested in buying it. It was really only a matter of time before someone started doing this. I had this happen to me almost two years ago; it's hardly new.
Domain names need to be priced geometrically - so every one you buy costs more and more. Then there'll just be some contrived workaround, involving registering under different peoples' names, different company names and/or downright bogus names or companies.
And even if they consider that and somehow stop it (it's fairly obvious), commonsense tells us that some enterprising cretin will have figured out another sneaky way around it in no time.
There's a Queen song that comes to mind... You mean that Microsoft is thinking "I Want It All" or singing "You're My Best Friend" (when they're really just after TurboLinux's sweets?).
"Under Pressure"? "Fight from the Inside"? This could go on forever.
It sure as hell can't have been "Good Company" though.
While I agree with your thought in theory - i.e. don't buy from stores that have return policies like that, I disagree with it in practice. Then you missed the point I was making.
Where I live (Michigan), neither Meijer, Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Kmart, EB, or any of the other stores available to us will accept software returns once they have been "open" - except for store credit. We were discussing an incident that took place 20 years ago- and my criticism wasn't that he bought it from a shop with a "no returns" policy. It was that he took it to another unrelated shop which had a much more lenient returns policy and exploited their goodwill to get "back" his money that they had never received in the first place.
Multiply by thousands, and you know why shops don't have such lenient policies any more.
If you can come up with a chain store that accepts returns, I'm all ears. There aren't really any mom-and-pop stores around here anymore - they're all out of business or don't take returns of ANY sort on software. So before you condemn him - give him some options. He *had* his options back then, he chose to screw the "good" company over, so frankly he doesn't deserve shit now.
Electronics Boutique and Babbages are the same company. Not at the time the incident took place they weren't.
Doesn't take a genius to figure out that the situation *might* have been different almost 20 years ago, or that they were probably once different companies. And it'd take another 30 seconds to "do some research" as you suggest:-
next time do some research before impugning someone without cause. Yeah, that's a nice irony. For one thing, this issue has already been raised, so you clearly weren't paying much attention yourself.
And neither was the original poster- he linked to an article, but obviously hadn't read it, as it made clear that the merger took place years after the incident in question.
Didn't take me long to spot that, but at least I made the effort and "did some research". Which is more than I can say for either of you.
The speed on parts of the route has been increased significantly in recent years by signalling upgrades and the use of 'Pendolino' Italian tilting trains. The last time I made that train journey was five years ago, so it might have improved since then.
The overnight service is scheduled to take 7.5 hours, and the journey time is deliberately extended so you can get a proper sleep and arrive in London at a 'reasonable' hour Ah, that explains it, thanks.
Your logic is completely off. He returned the product elsewhere because the point of sale had already denied him. They were ALREADY treating him like an asshole, Uh.... *yes*. That was the first half of my argument!
Let me restate it for you. He bought the game from the company with the asshole return policy who wouldn't give him his money back. (They get to keep the money). He then exploited the goodwill of another company with a more lenient returns policy (costing them time and/or money even though they never sold him the game nor made any money off it in the first place).
The "asshole" company learns that their policy pays and prospers, the "good" company loses out. Repeat often enough and over time Darwinian forces ensure that the asshole companies are more likely to survive, and that either the good companies go under- or they change their returns policy to something less favourable.
therefore, due to the unidirectional movement of time, his elsewhere-return can't be the cause. In fact, if you REVERSE your cause and effect, you have a much more accurate relationship. Stop trying so hard to appear clever. Even if your assertion about my logic had been correct, you could just have said I was confusing cause and effect..... no need to waffle about the movement of time, elsewhere-returns and so on.
If you'd read the article you linked to, you'd have noticed that EB and GameStop didn't merge until 2005. And the principle applies regardless; if a company learns that a goodwill policy leads to them being exploited, they're less likely to apply it in future.
...but it also makes it far more traceable (along- sadly- with more legitimate activities). The potential intrusiveness of technology into our lives and the trail of electronic fingerprints we leave is far greater than most people are aware of, and it's going to get worse before- if- it gets better.
For one simple example, what about the trail that your mobile phone leaves with the network when you leave it switched on and are travelling somewhere?
This isn't even counting the fact that with future improvements in technology, it's quite feasible that activities that you can "get away" with today could leave a trail that is inciminating with tomorrow's forensics and analysis technology. I'll bet that people who committed murders 30 or 40 years ago didn't even consider the possibility of their getting nabbed by DNA tests in the future.
And in all honesty, even if the data we have available to us today isn't able to tell us much, this might change with improved data mining/analysis tools. Something that someone does today might not be enough to get them prosecuted immediately, but what happens when improved tools come along in the future and spot things that had been missed previously?
Ads in games are nothing new, though. You drove past Atari billboards in Pole Position back in the 1980s. That's hardly the same thing; although not its creator, Atari was the distributor of Pole Position in the US.
I once even bought a game at Electronic's Boutique then when they wouldn't take it back, I took it back to Babbages and they were cool with it. So you're saying you bought a game from a company whose returns policy sucked, and rather than let them deal with it you let them keep the money and instead exploited the goodwill of a company with a more reasonable returns policy? (*)
As far as I'm concerned, this nullifies any right you have to bitch about draconian returns policies or lousy customer service.
It's this sort of behaviour that probably led to the killing off of more reasonable store return policies (if not the stores themselves) and encouraged- and justified- the proliferation of those that treat their customers like assholes.
People like you are the reason that we're not living in that "dream world" any more. (**)
God spoke to me. If I was God, I'd have called you an asshole.
(*) Yeah, I'm waiting for a self-justifying whine along the lines of "they could re-sell it". Like it should be their problem to re-sell your secondhand crap in exchange for "returning" your money that they never received in the first place.
(**) Pre-empt #2; Yes, everyone else was doing it too, and it wouldn't have made any difference what you did as an individual. Whatever.
True, but I was flying from Glasgow (on the west coast). I've taken the train from Glasgow to London before, and IIRC it was more like 8 or 9 hours overnight, even though it's not much further as the crow flies. I think that's because there's a direct line from Edinburgh to London (Glasgow is on the west coast, not the east). And I still waited a long time for the train to leave after I got on- it's also more expensive if you don't book long in advance.
Don't get me wrong; it might have been faster if I'd taken a train during the day, and it'd have been cheaper if I'd booked sooner. I'd also much rather take the train because it's more environmentally friendly- but it's certainly not a perfect choice.
Slashdot Mirror
...because I was reading Amateur Photographer last week, which was discussing DSLRs that could take multiple photographs at near-film/video frame rates. The implication was that users (or the camera) would take many close-together photographs, with the best one being chosen later. It was discussing the implications of this on still photography. (Of course, it could be argued that users of cameras with high-speed motorised film transport- which has been around for years- are already doing this to a large extent).
Of course, the viewpoint of the writer of the Slashdot article is coming at this from the opposite direction, that of videography. However, you can see that both fields might- or might *not*- end up in similar places, or at least using similar equipment. On the other hand, I can also understand that still photography and videography's handling needs may not be amenable to a compromise solution, so perhaps there will still be equipment designed with one primary use or the other in mind, even if the core hardware setup remains the same.
Are you sure that's 100% correct?
I was under the impression that CRTs required 50/60 (PAL/NTSC) non-interlaced frames per second to avoid unpleasant levels of flickering, but that there was only enough bandwidth for 25/30- which looked bad- so they sent fifty (or sixty) half-frames instead.
As others have already mentioned, the current "Napster" is just another DRMed "legal downloads" service that bought the name and little else. Often this trick works, and a new company is able to flog crap on the back of a defunct company with a a good name (e.g. Polaroid).
However, it hasn't worked here. Although Joe Public probably doesn't know that the new Napster is a different company, it's irrelevant. People associate the name with the original service, and aren't stupid enough to sign up for the new Napster simply on the basis of branding.
FWIW, I always liked the Napster "cat" logo, and I think that the stupid "body" that the new owners plastered on it looks really stupid and contrived ("Hey... let's make the logo into a character". No- it's a stylised logo, it doesn't bloody work that way). Along with Infogrames dicking about with the classic Atari symbol, it's an example of pointless brand vandalism.
So I can't see MS having anything to do with it, unless there's some convoluted plotting going on.
(Credit to.... uh, someone else!)
And that game is 14 years old.
The Mercenary games, although they had objectives and some scripting, also allowed a large freedom of movement (and in the case of Mercenary III, at least six distinct ways to achieve your objective).
You're going to stop them exploiting this organisational stucture? Well, since there will have to be rules to ensure everyone is treated fairly, what should the rules be? If you think it will be anything other than incredibly difficult to write rules that *don't* make life impossible for legitimate users *and* don't have enough loopholes for squatters/grabbers to weasel their way through the net, then you haven't thought it through enough. It would not be that difficult really, Really? Asserting that it would not be difficult does not make it so. IMHO it would quickly become *very* difficult if a half-competent domain-grabber had set in place a complex structure of names, companies and so on. and it would be worthwhile. Why would you let someone open 100 fake accounts at $8 a pop Because it would be very difficult to (a) find out and (b) prove that dodgy activity was taking place. The Investigating could be done by companies like Verisign, That simple sentence glosses over a lot of convoluted and complex investigations that Verisign would have to get into and employ people for, all to enforce your simple system that supposedly makes things fairer but in fact just ties the legitimate users up in red tape. and if too many domains controlled by them are squatters, Are we talking about domain grabbing or squatting? The former is a subset of the latter. have ICANN give control of the domain to someone else and start the validation process. Your idea would work perfectly in a perfectly organised world. It would be a disaster in the real world because it makes life harder for ordinary users than for the (large scale, bulk) domain grabbers and it would quickly become more complex than you imagine to enforce it fairly.
Yes, there are extremely good reasons for having the source available, but it being a substitute for good end-user documentation is not one of them. (Code should be well-documented and clearly written, but for the benefit of maintainers, not end users!).
In an absolutely desparate situation if you're prepared to put the time in, reading the source *might* save your bacon, but I'd already be severely pissed off if I had to resort to that. Particularly if the code was opaquely or just downright messily written.
Of course, ICANN could say "sounds dubious, let's axe this guy's domain" if they don't want to spend time investigating, which will probably lead to innocent people who didn't comply with all that red tape fast enough or lost track of their details being caught in the trap.
And the large-scale squatters will be able to employ someone part or full-time to deal with this nonsense, whether they "work for" the company or not. You're proposing something that sounds nice on paper and in practice will just be a major PITA for legitimate users and worked round by the people it's meant to stop.
In short, the right decision was made in spite of (and not because of) the European Commission.
The solution is to force everyone who registers a domain to have someone who knows what's going on always answer that phone number. But if an individual registered the domain, what if (e.g.) their girl/boyfriend answers the mobile phone and doesn't have a clue? If it's a moderate sized company, are you seriously suggesting that they should be forced to have someone who knows what's going on to always answer that phone number? Seriously? If not, what if computer-illiterate secretary answers the phone? What if the phone isn't answered at all?
But I'm sure that large companies and/or professionals whose "jobs" revolve around cybersquatting and so on will ensure that such calls are automatically forwarded to people whose responsibility it is (see below on "domain management services").
In short, this idea is just creating horrible red tape for the ordinary legitimate domain buyers that professional sleazes will be able to weasel their way around.
Of course, if you don't require a legitimate answer immediately, it's no different to asking them by mail:- 2) Mail a letter to the address with a URL where they have to go to and it asks them what domains are registered - If they don't reply or can't input it, then F-em. Result; companies are set up to provide "domain management services" who (as a matter of policy) have such queries passed on to them to be dealt with. Services to the cybersquatting industry.
And even if they consider that and somehow stop it (it's fairly obvious), commonsense tells us that some enterprising cretin will have figured out another sneaky way around it in no time.
It sure as hell can't have been "Good Company" though.
Multiply by thousands, and you know why shops don't have such lenient policies any more. If you can come up with a chain store that accepts returns, I'm all ears. There aren't really any mom-and-pop stores around here anymore - they're all out of business or don't take returns of ANY sort on software. So before you condemn him - give him some options. He *had* his options back then, he chose to screw the "good" company over, so frankly he doesn't deserve shit now.
Doesn't take a genius to figure out that the situation *might* have been different almost 20 years ago, or that they were probably once different companies. And it'd take another 30 seconds to "do some research" as you suggest:- next time do some research before impugning someone without cause. Yeah, that's a nice irony. For one thing, this issue has already been raised, so you clearly weren't paying much attention yourself.
And neither was the original poster- he linked to an article, but obviously hadn't read it, as it made clear that the merger took place years after the incident in question.
Didn't take me long to spot that, but at least I made the effort and "did some research". Which is more than I can say for either of you.
Let me restate it for you. He bought the game from the company with the asshole return policy who wouldn't give him his money back. (They get to keep the money). He then exploited the goodwill of another company with a more lenient returns policy (costing them time and/or money even though they never sold him the game nor made any money off it in the first place).
The "asshole" company learns that their policy pays and prospers, the "good" company loses out. Repeat often enough and over time Darwinian forces ensure that the asshole companies are more likely to survive, and that either the good companies go under- or they change their returns policy to something less favourable. therefore, due to the unidirectional movement of time, his elsewhere-return can't be the cause. In fact, if you REVERSE your cause and effect, you have a much more accurate relationship. Stop trying so hard to appear clever. Even if your assertion about my logic had been correct, you could just have said I was confusing cause and effect..... no need to waffle about the movement of time, elsewhere-returns and so on.
If you'd read the article you linked to, you'd have noticed that EB and GameStop didn't merge until 2005. And the principle applies regardless; if a company learns that a goodwill policy leads to them being exploited, they're less likely to apply it in future.
...but it also makes it far more traceable (along- sadly- with more legitimate activities). The potential intrusiveness of technology into our lives and the trail of electronic fingerprints we leave is far greater than most people are aware of, and it's going to get worse before- if- it gets better.
For one simple example, what about the trail that your mobile phone leaves with the network when you leave it switched on and are travelling somewhere?
This isn't even counting the fact that with future improvements in technology, it's quite feasible that activities that you can "get away" with today could leave a trail that is inciminating with tomorrow's forensics and analysis technology. I'll bet that people who committed murders 30 or 40 years ago didn't even consider the possibility of their getting nabbed by DNA tests in the future.
And in all honesty, even if the data we have available to us today isn't able to tell us much, this might change with improved data mining/analysis tools. Something that someone does today might not be enough to get them prosecuted immediately, but what happens when improved tools come along in the future and spot things that had been missed previously?
As far as I'm concerned, this nullifies any right you have to bitch about draconian returns policies or lousy customer service. It's this sort of behaviour that probably led to the killing off of more reasonable store return policies (if not the stores themselves) and encouraged- and justified- the proliferation of those that treat their customers like assholes.
People like you are the reason that we're not living in that "dream world" any more. (**) God spoke to me. If I was God, I'd have called you an asshole.
(*) Yeah, I'm waiting for a self-justifying whine along the lines of "they could re-sell it". Like it should be their problem to re-sell your secondhand crap in exchange for "returning" your money that they never received in the first place.
(**) Pre-empt #2; Yes, everyone else was doing it too, and it wouldn't have made any difference what you did as an individual. Whatever.
True, but I was flying from Glasgow (on the west coast). I've taken the train from Glasgow to London before, and IIRC it was more like 8 or 9 hours overnight, even though it's not much further as the crow flies. I think that's because there's a direct line from Edinburgh to London (Glasgow is on the west coast, not the east). And I still waited a long time for the train to leave after I got on- it's also more expensive if you don't book long in advance.
Don't get me wrong; it might have been faster if I'd taken a train during the day, and it'd have been cheaper if I'd booked sooner. I'd also much rather take the train because it's more environmentally friendly- but it's certainly not a perfect choice.