That's actually pretty good, because depending on how strongly he preaches OSS he may face a certain amount of ridicule or even open hostility. On the other hand, he might just be able to turn a few heads and - while unlikely to inspire a complete conversion - he might pass along some ideas and concept that MS can learn from the OSS world, and possibly vise-versa.
I did wonder about the commercials myself. But I suppose the differentiation from other copyrighted works might be:
a) Nobody (as in consumers, that I know of anyhow) pays to watch/buy commercials
b) The advertiser pays the networks
So I'm guessing that if a bunch of geeks like me like their commercials so much, they're quite enjoying the free advertising. My hopes would be that as such things become more popular (heck, there are award festivals for 'best commercials' now in some places) advertisers will learn what makes a commercial interesting/funny/watchable and produce more ads that don't suck
The last thing this world needs is more 40-year-old men dressed up as sailor moon or female elves. I think we've managed to restrict them to anime cons so far...
Google also isn't posting the stuff, private citizens are. Yes, the illegal stuff gets a lot of publicity, but I do wonder what portion it is of youtube's content.
Of the last dozen or more video clips I've viewed on youtube, none of them were (to my knowledge) pirated material. Some of them were amateur videos, some of them were funny commercial clips (yes, some commercials are worth collecting).
Heck, some videos/groups have made their fame on services such as youtube. For example Yellow Fever (although how funny you find that one might depend on if you have Chinese friends/relationships), or how about a couple of jackasses trying to pull their car out of the snow, or just some of the aforementioned funny commercials
Basically this could be something like a "package management" system like many linux distros use. Steam doesn't quite do this, but I think it's actually due to lack of adoption (I believe they did offer some non-value products or products of affiliated companies at one point, I could be wrong).
It sounds like a great idea, but it would have to involve a very trustworthy middleman.
I'm not sure if I have the exact meaning of "triple play" pitches, but I'm assuming it's when you get a value-discount for using multiple services from the same provider? In the US it may be different, but I seem to remember that the laws here state that a company providing multiple services cannot in fact hostage one due to an issue with another (so if you don't pay your DSL bill, the telco cannot cut your phone service if they are your provider for both).
Multiplayer (It's what made the game for me). Being able to gib my friends massively added to playability. Otherwise, wolfenstein was still around the same as similar-genre games such as "corridor 7" etc.
(as far as fun gibbing goes, I quite enjoyed ROTT, although I do believe it was after wolf3d/doom)
32-bit DOS is great and everyone knows the command-line: why should we launch from Windows 95
And you know what, for the first while, probably several years at least. DOS was the best way. It allowed much more of the PC to be dedicated to *gasp* the game.
Hardware was a bit behind too, so when you ran your game you tended to end up a little short (or just enough), when running
DOS->Win9x->Game
Not to mention all the funny issues with resources (soundcard) etc being tied up be the OS, needing to reboot into DOS mode, etc etc
From a developers perspective, I suppose the DirectX was quite a nice thing, but it took awhile to evolve (not without many bugs and quirks). In terms of performance, DirectX on DOS had more resources to work with, and was a more powerful solution.
With Vista I see this being moreso. Instead of having 900MB RAM and 80% of CPU free for the game (on top of XP), you're running 300-400MB or less RAM free for the game, and likely less CPU as well.
Valve could make extra cash by championing a download system, if they make it work out for more cash for a game maker than a box store. It could be the end of box stores.
Hmmm, that might just be an idea. Once they come up with such a thing, maybe they can choose a cool name for it, like "steam"
(granted steam is more than just a download system, it also handles their rather annoying copy-protection, advertisements, etc, but it's been around for awhile, and hasn't killed box stores yet).
I'm betting that Starbucks and friends are also making an early killing in the coffee market. I stopped by Tim Horton's (hey, I'm a Canuck, it's tradition) for my cuppa joe this morning and the lineup was hell. Starbucks usually has similar lineups but more locations in the area, so I'm guessing that with all the people needing that extra caffeinated "perk" in the morning that they're going to be making a tidy extra profit with the early-risers.
Yes, but the other issue is: How to tell when a bug is actually cause by the VM rather than the code itself. VM's do a pretty job, but they're not perfect.
Well, as most countries will not give you one if you have varying types of criminal records, as well as other criteria, I'd say it's more that just those three things that you need.
Further to that, how much do they need. It is important to Canada (as an example destination) that a British citizen deposited $x in his bank account every month, and regularly purchased toilet paper from Supermarket Y? Why do they need bank records
Are tax records important? I'd assume that the government has most of this already, but is it anyways necessary for anyone in Hawaii to know when you vacation there?
And how the fuck is car movement information going to guarantee you're a good citizen?
None of this shit is going to very useful in catching terrorists. Out of millions of people, they might be able to accumulate data that said "Bob's bank records say he bought fertilizer from the hardware store, drove his car to a woodsy area, his wife is missing, and he's taking a holiday out-of-country." Of course, it might be that Bob's wife left to visit her aunt in Germany, he bought trees at a tree-lot near a woodsy area, and fertilizer from the store, now he's off to join his wife.
It's useless, and it's bullshit. There's no safe way to corroborate this information without shitloads of false positives. That's thousands of citizens who are going to suffer undue persecution. Ad that to the terrorists that are moving outside of the normal channels anywhere, and it's not doing a damn thing to safeguard or assure anything.
The government will happily be hunting down RaHindle D Arab while John K Smith is happily boarding a plane with an wad of nitro-glycerine in his stomach and an igniter up his ass.
Well, it's not necessarily a constitutional right, and actually because of this cases in regards to privacy have seen some rough days in courts. Of course, when the constitution was drafted, I doubt that your forefathers had much of an inkling that we would develop cellphones, webcams, and advanced monitoring/cataloging devices such as we have today.
That being said, while privacy cases definitely are an issues, particularly between private individuals and the government, there haven't actually been many cases where a privacy issue has resulted in a law that made somebody a criminal... but rather they center around the government (or private corps/citizens) spying where they should not. One could also argue until blue in the face whether privacy is accounted for under "liberty" in some cases
In the end, the constitution as on object is a piece of paper. However, the power of the constitution is not in the paper itself, but in the heart of the men who drafted it, and those who proceed them. When you have a president who states "it's just a damn piece of paper," one can see that the values held therein are not going to be respected. At this point it's up to the courts to uphold them, and if that fails as well, the citizens themselves (soapbox, jury box, ballot box, ammo box, etc).
The constitution is not an ultimate power over anything. It's a good set of guidelines that worked at the time it was made, and in many cases thereafter. However, the future of the country depends on the efforts of good men (who tend to have a hard time making it into the corrupt game of politics). As with the past, corruption has crept into the heart of government, and perhaps when the next "good men" make their way in there a new constitution, or one that amends and adds to the freedoms of the current one, may be born.
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
As making breathing illegal would deprive citizens of life, I would say that it would likely fall within those bounds. Of course the government may do so after "due process" (which is why they can have a death penalty).
The governments ability (or lack thereof) to encroach on those rights is therefore enshrined in the constitution. If the votes pass, then it is theoretically possible that it could be made illegal to breath, but that would be where a constitutional argument (if not one of common sense) would be applied within the court system (due process).
That the constitution also exist to prevent the government from making average citizens into criminals. One thing about making laws is that you can make a law to criminalize something that goes against your personal agenda (RIAA *cough* *cough*), but the constitution is to some extent a check against this (when constitutional rights are upheld by the courts).
I'm not a teacher, but as a tech in schools I'd have to differ here. With the grade 11's, I see about 2-3 students who are screwing around, and usually they're at least good enough to only waste their own time. Those who are really uninterested in school have already dropped out
Now with third-graders, your average attention span is much lower. You've still got kids with undiscovered learning disorders. You're trying to teach in an intellectual level that's far removed from your own (one assumes). The funding is elems is also generally quite a bit lower than high schools.
Throw that together with kids with all sorts of fun problems such as poor bladder control, generally unsanitary habits, and a lesser grasp of what is socially "acceptable"... yeah I'd take the grade 11s and calculus over the third grade any day.
From a perspective of the material the grade 11 class is harder, from a perspective of cohesion control and sanity the third graders are a lot more difficult
Bring in more teachers who are qualified, at a higher pay rate. In many cases, where union dues are based on a percentage of wage, this is going to mean:
a) A temporary drop in members paying lower union dues of X
b) A surge in members paying higher union dues of Y
So financially, it would actually benefit the union in that manner as well.
Microsoft releases an OS that's broken and tells you the only way they'll fix it is if you'll subject yourself to their privacy terms. Not freaking cool. My copy of Windows is paid for, but that doesn't mean I want them invading my privacy.
Ever installed XP without any service packs? Do you know how many minutes it takes before the machine is pwn3d? IMO that's not a functional OS any more.
Damn straight. What if Dell started telling people they had to sign a new contract before they could get a replacement on their defective batteries. What if Ford told you that you had to sign an EULA before you could get a fix to a factory-recall vehicle defect.
I can understand EULA for things like newer versions of components (upgrades for media player, etc), but not for bugfixes.
I have to ask, what's so good about an office produce that makes it worth more than a grand... and what's special about "Ultimate"?
For all the MS Office products I've used, generally there's been a Standard (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook) and Pro (Add Access and I believe frontpage). So what does "ultimate" bring to the table? What does it offer that would make it worth the non-discounted price?
It really seems that MS has jumped on the tiered-product bandwagon (standard, pro, ultimate, superdooperfantabulous, etc) and I really have to wonder what the market is for these products. How many actually buy the product at the standard pricing anyhow?
I wonder how this could be reworded to avoid including activities that would be considered unethical (bum wars, illegal street fights, etc)?
How about: Filming violence acts for the purpose of profit or the encouragement of said violent act.
Still doesn't deal with "tame" violence such as BSDM videos etc.
The being said, whether you're behind the camera or not I think there are probably existing laws that deal with these situations. I know most countries have laws against aiding and abetting illegal acts (including illegal fights, etc)
generally defined as radio stations accepting cash or other consideration from record companies in exchange for airplay.
I thought that radio stations paid the record companies a license fee in order to broadcast their music? Can somebody in the industry (or with knowhow) clarify how this works?
Yes, I think that movies could get by just fine by doing this one realistically.
In "Terminator 2," remember the scene where the kid teachers Ahhhnold to check the sun visor for keys first?
The same could easily enough apply to computer hacking
Hacker: [checks under the keyboard, finds the sticky-note with the password, and uses that]
root@agency:~$
Alternately, they could switch the "This is Unix, I know this" (or whatever the line from Jurassic Park) for "Hmmmm, a linksys router with default ESSID... the default login for these suckers is 'admin' and 'admin'"
For those that are regular patrons of slashdot, you may remember an article that mentioned where various banks had forgotten to change some of the default admin passwords on their ATM's... stupid on the part of the banks, and stupid on the part of the ATM supplier (for not requiring a password-change for the machine to become usable). But if banks (which supposedly represent slightly higher-end information security) screw up like that, think about all the other cases of default passwords, hidden default backdoor passwords, sticky-notes and other things.
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually pretty good, because depending on how strongly he preaches OSS he may face a certain amount of ridicule or even open hostility. On the other hand, he might just be able to turn a few heads and - while unlikely to inspire a complete conversion - he might pass along some ideas and concept that MS can learn from the OSS world, and possibly vise-versa.
I did wonder about the commercials myself. But I suppose the differentiation from other copyrighted works might be:
a) Nobody (as in consumers, that I know of anyhow) pays to watch/buy commercials
b) The advertiser pays the networks
So I'm guessing that if a bunch of geeks like me like their commercials so much, they're quite enjoying the free advertising. My hopes would be that as such things become more popular (heck, there are award festivals for 'best commercials' now in some places) advertisers will learn what makes a commercial interesting/funny/watchable and produce more ads that don't suck
The last thing this world needs is more 40-year-old men dressed up as sailor moon or female elves. I think we've managed to restrict them to anime cons so far...
Darnit, I meant to say OpenGL...
Google also isn't posting the stuff, private citizens are. Yes, the illegal stuff gets a lot of publicity, but I do wonder what portion it is of youtube's content.
Of the last dozen or more video clips I've viewed on youtube, none of them were (to my knowledge) pirated material. Some of them were amateur videos, some of them were funny commercial clips (yes, some commercials are worth collecting).
Heck, some videos/groups have made their fame on services such as youtube. For example Yellow Fever (although how funny you find that one might depend on if you have Chinese friends/relationships), or how about a couple of jackasses trying to pull their car out of the snow, or just some of the aforementioned funny commercials
Basically this could be something like a "package management" system like many linux distros use. Steam doesn't quite do this, but I think it's actually due to lack of adoption (I believe they did offer some non-value products or products of affiliated companies at one point, I could be wrong).
It sounds like a great idea, but it would have to involve a very trustworthy middleman.
I'm not sure if I have the exact meaning of "triple play" pitches, but I'm assuming it's when you get a value-discount for using multiple services from the same provider? In the US it may be different, but I seem to remember that the laws here state that a company providing multiple services cannot in fact hostage one due to an issue with another (so if you don't pay your DSL bill, the telco cannot cut your phone service if they are your provider for both).
Multiplayer (It's what made the game for me). Being able to gib my friends massively added to playability. Otherwise, wolfenstein was still around the same as similar-genre games such as "corridor 7" etc.
(as far as fun gibbing goes, I quite enjoyed ROTT, although I do believe it was after wolf3d/doom)
32-bit DOS is great and everyone knows the command-line: why should we launch from Windows 95
And you know what, for the first while, probably several years at least. DOS was the best way. It allowed much more of the PC to be dedicated to *gasp* the game.
Hardware was a bit behind too, so when you ran your game you tended to end up a little short (or just enough), when running
DOS->Win9x->Game
Not to mention all the funny issues with resources (soundcard) etc being tied up be the OS, needing to reboot into DOS mode, etc etc
From a developers perspective, I suppose the DirectX was quite a nice thing, but it took awhile to evolve (not without many bugs and quirks). In terms of performance, DirectX on DOS had more resources to work with, and was a more powerful solution.
With Vista I see this being moreso. Instead of having 900MB RAM and 80% of CPU free for the game (on top of XP), you're running 300-400MB or less RAM free for the game, and likely less CPU as well.
Valve could make extra cash by championing a download system, if they make it work out for more cash for a game maker than a box store. It could be the end of box stores.
Hmmm, that might just be an idea. Once they come up with such a thing, maybe they can choose a cool name for it, like "steam"
(granted steam is more than just a download system, it also handles their rather annoying copy-protection, advertisements, etc, but it's been around for awhile, and hasn't killed box stores yet).
Well, the title does say "Patent Filed" rather that "is patented", or "patent approved"
So it's right in the header at least...
I'm betting that Starbucks and friends are also making an early killing in the coffee market. I stopped by Tim Horton's (hey, I'm a Canuck, it's tradition) for my cuppa joe this morning and the lineup was hell. Starbucks usually has similar lineups but more locations in the area, so I'm guessing that with all the people needing that extra caffeinated "perk" in the morning that they're going to be making a tidy extra profit with the early-risers.
Yes, but the other issue is: How to tell when a bug is actually cause by the VM rather than the code itself. VM's do a pretty job, but they're not perfect.
Well, as most countries will not give you one if you have varying types of criminal records, as well as other criteria, I'd say it's more that just those three things that you need.
Further to that, how much do they need. It is important to Canada (as an example destination) that a British citizen deposited $x in his bank account every month, and regularly purchased toilet paper from Supermarket Y? Why do they need bank records
Are tax records important? I'd assume that the government has most of this already, but is it anyways necessary for anyone in Hawaii to know when you vacation there?
And how the fuck is car movement information going to guarantee you're a good citizen?
None of this shit is going to very useful in catching terrorists. Out of millions of people, they might be able to accumulate data that said "Bob's bank records say he bought fertilizer from the hardware store, drove his car to a woodsy area, his wife is missing, and he's taking a holiday out-of-country." Of course, it might be that Bob's wife left to visit her aunt in Germany, he bought trees at a tree-lot near a woodsy area, and fertilizer from the store, now he's off to join his wife.
It's useless, and it's bullshit. There's no safe way to corroborate this information without shitloads of false positives. That's thousands of citizens who are going to suffer undue persecution. Ad that to the terrorists that are moving outside of the normal channels anywhere, and it's not doing a damn thing to safeguard or assure anything.
The government will happily be hunting down RaHindle D Arab while John K Smith is happily boarding a plane with an wad of nitro-glycerine in his stomach and an igniter up his ass.
Well, it's not necessarily a constitutional right, and actually because of this cases in regards to privacy have seen some rough days in courts. Of course, when the constitution was drafted, I doubt that your forefathers had much of an inkling that we would develop cellphones, webcams, and advanced monitoring/cataloging devices such as we have today.
That being said, while privacy cases definitely are an issues, particularly between private individuals and the government, there haven't actually been many cases where a privacy issue has resulted in a law that made somebody a criminal... but rather they center around the government (or private corps/citizens) spying where they should not. One could also argue until blue in the face whether privacy is accounted for under "liberty" in some cases
In the end, the constitution as on object is a piece of paper. However, the power of the constitution is not in the paper itself, but in the heart of the men who drafted it, and those who proceed them. When you have a president who states "it's just a damn piece of paper," one can see that the values held therein are not going to be respected. At this point it's up to the courts to uphold them, and if that fails as well, the citizens themselves (soapbox, jury box, ballot box, ammo box, etc).
The constitution is not an ultimate power over anything. It's a good set of guidelines that worked at the time it was made, and in many cases thereafter. However, the future of the country depends on the efforts of good men (who tend to have a hard time making it into the corrupt game of politics). As with the past, corruption has crept into the heart of government, and perhaps when the next "good men" make their way in there a new constitution, or one that amends and adds to the freedoms of the current one, may be born.
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
As making breathing illegal would deprive citizens of life, I would say that it would likely fall within those bounds. Of course the government may do so after "due process" (which is why they can have a death penalty).
The governments ability (or lack thereof) to encroach on those rights is therefore enshrined in the constitution. If the votes pass, then it is theoretically possible that it could be made illegal to breath, but that would be where a constitutional argument (if not one of common sense) would be applied within the court system (due process).
That the constitution also exist to prevent the government from making average citizens into criminals. One thing about making laws is that you can make a law to criminalize something that goes against your personal agenda (RIAA *cough* *cough*), but the constitution is to some extent a check against this (when constitutional rights are upheld by the courts).
I'm not a teacher, but as a tech in schools I'd have to differ here. With the grade 11's, I see about 2-3 students who are screwing around, and usually they're at least good enough to only waste their own time. Those who are really uninterested in school have already dropped out
... yeah I'd take the grade 11s and calculus over the third grade any day.
Now with third-graders, your average attention span is much lower. You've still got kids with undiscovered learning disorders. You're trying to teach in an intellectual level that's far removed from your own (one assumes). The funding is elems is also generally quite a bit lower than high schools.
Throw that together with kids with all sorts of fun problems such as poor bladder control, generally unsanitary habits, and a lesser grasp of what is socially "acceptable"
From a perspective of the material the grade 11 class is harder, from a perspective of cohesion control and sanity the third graders are a lot more difficult
Bring in more teachers who are qualified, at a higher pay rate. In many cases, where union dues are based on a percentage of wage, this is going to mean:
a) A temporary drop in members paying lower union dues of X
b) A surge in members paying higher union dues of Y
So financially, it would actually benefit the union in that manner as well.
Any system wherein the best solution is to "buy more copies of what you already have/paid-for" seems rather broken to me.
Microsoft releases an OS that's broken and tells you the only way they'll fix it is if you'll subject yourself to their privacy terms. Not freaking cool. My copy of Windows is paid for, but that doesn't mean I want them invading my privacy.
Ever installed XP without any service packs? Do you know how many minutes it takes before the machine is pwn3d? IMO that's not a functional OS any more.
Damn straight. What if Dell started telling people they had to sign a new contract before they could get a replacement on their defective batteries. What if Ford told you that you had to sign an EULA before you could get a fix to a factory-recall vehicle defect.
I can understand EULA for things like newer versions of components (upgrades for media player, etc), but not for bugfixes.
I have to ask, what's so good about an office produce that makes it worth more than a grand... and what's special about "Ultimate"?
For all the MS Office products I've used, generally there's been a Standard (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook) and Pro (Add Access and I believe frontpage). So what does "ultimate" bring to the table? What does it offer that would make it worth the non-discounted price?
It really seems that MS has jumped on the tiered-product bandwagon (standard, pro, ultimate, superdooperfantabulous, etc) and I really have to wonder what the market is for these products. How many actually buy the product at the standard pricing anyhow?
I wonder how this could be reworded to avoid including activities that would be considered unethical (bum wars, illegal street fights, etc)?
How about: Filming violence acts for the purpose of profit or the encouragement of said violent act.
Still doesn't deal with "tame" violence such as BSDM videos etc.
The being said, whether you're behind the camera or not I think there are probably existing laws that deal with these situations. I know most countries have laws against aiding and abetting illegal acts (including illegal fights, etc)
generally defined as radio stations accepting cash or other consideration from record companies in exchange for airplay.
I thought that radio stations paid the record companies a license fee in order to broadcast their music? Can somebody in the industry (or with knowhow) clarify how this works?
Yes, I think that movies could get by just fine by doing this one realistically.
In "Terminator 2," remember the scene where the kid teachers Ahhhnold to check the sun visor for keys first?
The same could easily enough apply to computer hacking
Hacker: [enters password]
**INVALID PASSWORD - 2 Retries Remaining**
Hacker: [tries another]
**INVALID PASSWORD - 1 Retries Remaining**
Hacker: [checks under the keyboard, finds the sticky-note with the password, and uses that]
root@agency:~$
Alternately, they could switch the "This is Unix, I know this" (or whatever the line from Jurassic Park) for "Hmmmm, a linksys router with default ESSID... the default login for these suckers is 'admin' and 'admin'"
For those that are regular patrons of slashdot, you may remember an article that mentioned where various banks had forgotten to change some of the default admin passwords on their ATM's... stupid on the part of the banks, and stupid on the part of the ATM supplier (for not requiring a password-change for the machine to become usable). But if banks (which supposedly represent slightly higher-end information security) screw up like that, think about all the other cases of default passwords, hidden default backdoor passwords, sticky-notes and other things.