Indeed... it would be interesting if one could draft up how many people bought a system for a specific game, or type of game.
I for one looked at PS2 because it had FFX, and I'm a huge fan of the series. Too bad that the FF series stopped at the SNES, because for me it's been a huge part of my gaming experience.
If my PS2 didn't also work as a DVD player, I'd daresay that I perhaps wasted a bit of money buying it just for FFX - though I've recently found a few "bargain" RPG's that seem promising (PS2 lent out to somebody who wanted to play FFX, right now though hehe)
I've heard this arguement (DVD's don't work well) from several people, but mostly those with older PS2's. I believe that the early PS2's didn't handle DVD's nearly as well as the newer line did. My friend's of several years ago sucked for DVD's, but mine (1 year old) plays 'em just fine.
I think this is where we'll see the X-box shine through. Games previously designed for PC, or already out on PC should make the transition quite easily due to similar architecture.
Not that I like it though, as I hate to see some of the better games move away from PC. I'm just hoping somebody will find it easy enough to port decent X-box games back to PC as well...
If you really think about it, the military - or at least war - has been the source of many technological or medical advances.
The Internet spawned from a military network, and to my recollection the jet engine was based on military research. In addition, I believe that penicillin was discovered/adopted in a war situation as well, though I could be wrong about that one?
Nothing drives human inginuity like trying to win a war. I think in many cases, it's the looming threat that causes humans to "work against the crunch" to come up with new and ingenious theories and technologies in such sitatuations. Nothing quite like the risk of being blown to hell to spark somebody to invent something to help out the home side, after all.
It isn't. But it might get expensive on the hardware side. You'd need to filter everything based on the HTTP request instead of the IP.
Just do this for those listed within the offending IPs. For example, if pedo.com (random URL) was hosted on IP block 127.0.0.1...
Keep a list of offending IP, in which 127.0.0.1 is pedo.com (they already keep the IPs)... scan attempts to 127.0.0.1 for pedo.com, ignore others. No need to scan every request, and they already have to process blocked IP's anyhow.
Oh, and by the way, if you find illegal porn hosted at 127.0.0.1 you may have more problems than just ISP blocks...
If a few funky colours can qualify as visual art, why not a mismash of audible crapulence? You wouldn't catch me listening to this stuff, but then you wouldn't catch me buying an "abstract" or "period" painting that looks like it was drawn by my 8-yr-old cousin...
I wonder if you could build up a hitlist of artist popularity based on the amount of visible kazaa users with their material? Of course, the only problem with that is that those that get nailed for stupid things like sharing out 1000 songs are the same ones that listen to this crap... I don't think Aerosmith or Pink Floyde fall within the same audience...
'Cept in this case Goliath said, "shit you know, this isn't working quite as I planned and now I've got a huge fricking headache... cut it out with the rocks and I'll settle for a small cut of your land and then go invade your neighbours instead."
And David just goes home, chugs a beer, and thinks about how he's sure lucky he got off on this one.
I would like to see these bastards go up against something religious... it's one of the few things that might give people backbone. Confidence in our legal/government systems backing 'em certainly won't.
You can't set a precedent without a court proceeding , but you can set a dangerous trend and swap public opinion (not to the point where people won't hate the RIAA, just that they'll fear the fines).
Really, I see the similarities between this and SCO. Neither wants to go to court, they both just want people to pay up, sell out, or stop using a competing product. And yes, online audio is a competing product in that it is in opposition to the fist-around-balls (TM) methods used by the RIAA and other corps in the past...
In fact, this is not all about consumer choice. If I got a small bar on the bottom that said "do you want to see competetive pricing for bob.com from frank.com" that would be competetive. Overriding my visit to bob.com with a bunch of frank.com bullshit is not choice any more than having the advertisement epoxied to my nose would be...
The idea of fragmented files gave me a brainstorm:
After somebody seeds the original work out, it spreads in the network as parts of the original (file), ensuring that nobody shares out a complete work. Perhaps it is a crypto-generated file, wherein two parts must be added together epoxy-like in order to be usable.
After X-many people have downloaded your seed-file (the complete), you are automagically fragmented so that you yourself no longer have the complete file but only share part (or both if it can still work) of the seed file.
Now the two parts of the seed. Let's say resin and hardener, are neither in any way a copyrighted work. They're not a split portion of a file, but perhaps two keys that could be combined via mathematical formula once downloaded to make a whole (perhaps incorporating compression as well).
Since people are already used to downloading file-portions on kazaa, this isn't really a new trend. But you never are sharing out an individual piece of copyrighted work, or even a playable/usable portion. You just have a piece of data, useless unless merged with one or more pieces of data and manipulated mathematically.
People have already mentioned that in some ways patching a file to achieve a result is different legally than distributing a full file. And since both formats are just data, not even the original stream, they can't themselves be copyrighted.
Anyone think this would work? We've got resin, we've got epoxy... but hey as long as your clear off your downloads you're never giving out an actual copyrighted work....
would require file sharers to admit in writing that they illegally traded music online
It was my understanding that one had the right to not implicate oneself in a possible crime (unless you take the stand in your own trial, then you have to answer the responding questions), so just how do they plan on getting away with this?
We've tracked 458 songs to your home IP address:
Responses: Hacked, local network, wireless stealers, virus, whatever. If one can escape a illegal porn conviction with a virus plea one would think that you could escape kazaa with a hacker plea (and yes, hackers do plant this shit... somebody left anon FTP open at work and we were flooded with porn/warez/music in hidden folders).
And sign a paper stating you'll never do it again? Or what, next time it's notorized that they get to beat you with bamboo canes or take your firstborn? Do signatures under threat or duress count??
Sorry, mommy, I'll be a good boy??? Sounds like the RIAA wants us to go buy a few hundred useless CD's and back to playschool with us. Judging by their math (high-speed=2 CDRs) and/or mentality... I think that perhaps it's they that need to hit gr5 math again.
Actually, I believe it was a laptop or two and perhaps some desktops. We had a lot of issues with laptops walking, all sorts of interesting security protocols got initiated.
You'd think that on a building where you need a keycard to use the elevator, front-desk security is present, etc these things wouldn't happen... but nothing beats social engineering.
Not everyone has to deal with it. A lot of us had to, but maybe less people would in the future if more people did about it. Little Billy's parents might look the other way when he harrasses the sh*t outta another kid at school and gets a short detention... but if they hear that little Tommy's parents just got sued for $50,000 because of severe harrassment and mental anguish mayhap it would sink in a bit more?
Unfortunately today you can beat people with a bat about rights and wrongs, but it doesn't come home 'till it comes out of their wallet.
"As a college student with money... or with parents who have money"
I can't complain, as I wasn't bad off thanks to family help too, but a lot of my friends in college are just making it by with a job, student loans, and an often-bar refrigerator.
Prisoners lose a lot of their luxeries... but remember for f*ck sakes that they're in there for a reason, and part of that is punishment (also protection of society, etc). They lose a lot in freedom, but at least they're ensured a decent meal.
Well actually, they acknowledge that there will probably be flames over this:
from the flamebait dept.
However, I think that really in many cases it's not so much a matter of the language as a matter of the project. Just like the C++ VS Vbasic flames, I'd take C++ over VB for most important projects, but a simple quick GUI app I'd prefer VB.
In the case of.NET and Java, I don't mind using.NET for a quickly designed app which I believe will be restricted to windows users. Moreover, VStudio.NET is very nice if you have old VStudio 6 code which you can import (although in many cases C syntax is similar in Java as well).
I'm still waiting for the day when I can use a Perl-type language, with the true power of hashes, hashrefs, and regexps, on a full-blown compiled GUI app...
1) To retreive confidential Taiwanese info
2) To alter/manipulate confidential Taiwanese info
Since Taiwan is aware of the issue, why not get a couple of the local white-hats to put up honeypots to fool (2), and start feeding back false info to screw up (1)?
Where I used to work, we had a case where somebody walked in with a delivery person uniform... struggling with a heavy box for "Joe XXX".
He got the security personnel to card the elevator so that he could get up to the floor wher "Joe XXX" worked. In a short while, he came back down... Joe wasn't there to sign so he said he'd left a note, and was bringing the supplies back to the office.
He got one of the security people to help him move the heavy box outside.
What's wrong with this story? Well, it turns out that the box was fairly light when it came in... think about it for a second.
1) Implement good disaster-recovery plan
2) ??? (aka mad-scramble to initiate plan)
3) Profit (or at least don't go under)
This must have been a pretty in depth recovery plan though. I mean, even with backups and a redundant connection elsewhere... I think that for myself processing the fact that my office had just been bowled over by wind-on-steroids would faze me for a little while (office...tornado...holy...shit...must...recover...data)
Now they're up and running, but what of their old office? It must be very interesting to have to deal with the stage of "step over rubble, salvage what we can" and the general amazement at nature's fury.
I'm in the process of configuring several of my servers to offload to a remote master. If the town gets levelled we're toast, but if an individual location bites it, then at least critical data (accounting records, home dirs, etc) is saved. This will still be a big bite out of the business.
Does insurance cover natural disasters such as tornado, would be a big question? A lot of insurance companies don't cover "act of god", etc
In the great pattern of things, the end-user doesn't have responsibility to SCO but to the vendor. Now, I can go out and buy a playstation or whatever in a good-faith purchase. If company X suddenly discovered that the playstation core used their technology/code, they can't invoice me for the cost of the code - that goes to the vendor.
Even in the best of cases for SCO, charging the end-user hardly sounds like a legitimate practice. In any software case I've heard of, it's the parent company/companies that end of paying out
Is if they sell out. SCO stock dips as it strangles... then IBM steps in and buys out SCO for a low price, SCO is cleansed of evil and stock soars to new heights. By then, the execs won't have any more SCO stock so they don't benefit.
What I wonder is... who are the brain-cases that are actually buying this stock, and why (unless perhaps they're expecting a scenario as above with long-term growth)
What would be their closing statement using these emails as evidence:
"Your honor, as you can see the defendent is of questionable moral integrity and dubious legal practice. Of their 300 emails we *ahem* appropriated, 289 of the messages received were in relation to conduct of dubious sexual nature. Obviously, your honor, they are nothing but a bunch of no-good perverts!"
Is it my imagination, or have there been a lot of recent MS initiatives that could be construed an attempts to segregated open-source. First, we have the messenger block/licensing-scheme, which pretty much prevents GAIM from accessing the MSN network in the future. Now, we have office lock-in, which will prevent OpenOffice users from opening MS documents in linux.
Coincidence? I think not. Here we have a case of monopolistic anti-competetive practices at their worst.
TV sponsorship for tournaments, etc. There's a slight hitch to that when you're envisioning it with online games...
Anyone can have a TV. I could have my TV on whilst playing in a Half-Life tourney and track my opponents.
Now, with a stadium and perhaps a closed arena (i.e. you can watch the game, and maybe the players by webcam, but they can't see the big screen) it would work... but that involves having a dedicated locale, among other things.
A nice few points to blizzard on the concept of their "skill-based autoassignment." As you get bumped up in skill levels (based on wins vs losses, etc), it autoassigns you against similar skill levels. I've found that while it's not 100% effective, after playing for awhile I've managed to get to a level where I avoid being teams with a lot of newbs (but meanwhile newbs end up teamed with other newbs).
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Indeed... it would be interesting if one could draft up how many people bought a system for a specific game, or type of game.
I for one looked at PS2 because it had FFX, and I'm a huge fan of the series. Too bad that the FF series stopped at the SNES, because for me it's been a huge part of my gaming experience.
If my PS2 didn't also work as a DVD player, I'd daresay that I perhaps wasted a bit of money buying it just for FFX - though I've recently found a few "bargain" RPG's that seem promising (PS2 lent out to somebody who wanted to play FFX, right now though hehe)
I've heard this arguement (DVD's don't work well) from several people, but mostly those with older PS2's. I believe that the early PS2's didn't handle DVD's nearly as well as the newer line did. My friend's of several years ago sucked for DVD's, but mine (1 year old) plays 'em just fine.
I think this is where we'll see the X-box shine through. Games previously designed for PC, or already out on PC should make the transition quite easily due to similar architecture.
Not that I like it though, as I hate to see some of the better games move away from PC. I'm just hoping somebody will find it easy enough to port decent X-box games back to PC as well...
If you really think about it, the military - or at least war - has been the source of many technological or medical advances.
The Internet spawned from a military network, and to my recollection the jet engine was based on military research. In addition, I believe that penicillin was discovered/adopted in a war situation as well, though I could be wrong about that one?
Nothing drives human inginuity like trying to win a war. I think in many cases, it's the looming threat that causes humans to "work against the crunch" to come up with new and ingenious theories and technologies in such sitatuations. Nothing quite like the risk of being blown to hell to spark somebody to invent something to help out the home side, after all.
It isn't. But it might get expensive on the hardware side. You'd need to filter everything based on the HTTP request instead of the IP.
Just do this for those listed within the offending IPs. For example, if pedo.com (random URL) was hosted on IP block 127.0.0.1...
Keep a list of offending IP, in which 127.0.0.1 is pedo.com (they already keep the IPs)... scan attempts to 127.0.0.1 for pedo.com, ignore others. No need to scan every request, and they already have to process blocked IP's anyhow.
Oh, and by the way, if you find illegal porn hosted at 127.0.0.1 you may have more problems than just ISP blocks...
If a few funky colours can qualify as visual art, why not a mismash of audible crapulence? You wouldn't catch me listening to this stuff, but then you wouldn't catch me buying an "abstract" or "period" painting that looks like it was drawn by my 8-yr-old cousin...
I wonder if you could build up a hitlist of artist popularity based on the amount of visible kazaa users with their material? Of course, the only problem with that is that those that get nailed for stupid things like sharing out 1000 songs are the same ones that listen to this crap... I don't think Aerosmith or Pink Floyde fall within the same audience...
'Cept in this case Goliath said, "shit you know, this isn't working quite as I planned and now I've got a huge fricking headache... cut it out with the rocks and I'll settle for a small cut of your land and then go invade your neighbours instead."
And David just goes home, chugs a beer, and thinks about how he's sure lucky he got off on this one.
I would like to see these bastards go up against something religious... it's one of the few things that might give people backbone. Confidence in our legal/government systems backing 'em certainly won't.
You can't set a precedent without a court proceeding , but you can set a dangerous trend and swap public opinion (not to the point where people won't hate the RIAA, just that they'll fear the fines).
Really, I see the similarities between this and SCO. Neither wants to go to court, they both just want people to pay up, sell out, or stop using a competing product. And yes, online audio is a competing product in that it is in opposition to the fist-around-balls (TM) methods used by the RIAA and other corps in the past...
In fact, this is not all about consumer choice. If I got a small bar on the bottom that said "do you want to see competetive pricing for bob.com from frank.com" that would be competetive. Overriding my visit to bob.com with a bunch of frank.com bullshit is not choice any more than having the advertisement epoxied to my nose would be...
The idea of fragmented files gave me a brainstorm:
After somebody seeds the original work out, it spreads in the network as parts of the original (file), ensuring that nobody shares out a complete work. Perhaps it is a crypto-generated file, wherein two parts must be added together epoxy-like in order to be usable.
After X-many people have downloaded your seed-file (the complete), you are automagically fragmented so that you yourself no longer have the complete file but only share part (or both if it can still work) of the seed file.
Now the two parts of the seed. Let's say resin and hardener, are neither in any way a copyrighted work. They're not a split portion of a file, but perhaps two keys that could be combined via mathematical formula once downloaded to make a whole (perhaps incorporating compression as well).
Since people are already used to downloading file-portions on kazaa, this isn't really a new trend. But you never are sharing out an individual piece of copyrighted work, or even a playable/usable portion. You just have a piece of data, useless unless merged with one or more pieces of data and manipulated mathematically.
People have already mentioned that in some ways patching a file to achieve a result is different legally than distributing a full file. And since both formats are just data, not even the original stream, they can't themselves be copyrighted.
Anyone think this would work? We've got resin, we've got epoxy... but hey as long as your clear off your downloads you're never giving out an actual copyrighted work....
would require file sharers to admit in writing that they illegally traded music online
It was my understanding that one had the right to not implicate oneself in a possible crime (unless you take the stand in your own trial, then you have to answer the responding questions), so just how do they plan on getting away with this?
We've tracked 458 songs to your home IP address:
Responses: Hacked, local network, wireless stealers, virus, whatever. If one can escape a illegal porn conviction with a virus plea one would think that you could escape kazaa with a hacker plea (and yes, hackers do plant this shit... somebody left anon FTP open at work and we were flooded with porn/warez/music in hidden folders).
And sign a paper stating you'll never do it again? Or what, next time it's notorized that they get to beat you with bamboo canes or take your firstborn? Do signatures under threat or duress count??
Sorry, mommy, I'll be a good boy??? Sounds like the RIAA wants us to go buy a few hundred useless CD's and back to playschool with us. Judging by their math (high-speed=2 CDRs) and/or mentality... I think that perhaps it's they that need to hit gr5 math again.
Actually, I believe it was a laptop or two and perhaps some desktops. We had a lot of issues with laptops walking, all sorts of interesting security protocols got initiated.
You'd think that on a building where you need a keycard to use the elevator, front-desk security is present, etc these things wouldn't happen... but nothing beats social engineering.
Not everyone has to deal with it. A lot of us had to, but maybe less people would in the future if more people did about it. Little Billy's parents might look the other way when he harrasses the sh*t outta another kid at school and gets a short detention... but if they hear that little Tommy's parents just got sued for $50,000 because of severe harrassment and mental anguish mayhap it would sink in a bit more?
Unfortunately today you can beat people with a bat about rights and wrongs, but it doesn't come home 'till it comes out of their wallet.
Can you provide a little more info on these iButtons? Perhaps a link or website of a decent supplier (one who'll ship to Canada)?
"As a college student with money... or with parents who have money"
I can't complain, as I wasn't bad off thanks to family help too, but a lot of my friends in college are just making it by with a job, student loans, and an often-bar refrigerator.
Prisoners lose a lot of their luxeries... but remember for f*ck sakes that they're in there for a reason, and part of that is punishment (also protection of society, etc). They lose a lot in freedom, but at least they're ensured a decent meal.
Well actually, they acknowledge that there will probably be flames over this:
.NET and Java, I don't mind using .NET for a quickly designed app which I believe will be restricted to windows users. Moreover, VStudio.NET is very nice if you have old VStudio 6 code which you can import (although in many cases C syntax is similar in Java as well).
from the flamebait dept.
However, I think that really in many cases it's not so much a matter of the language as a matter of the project. Just like the C++ VS Vbasic flames, I'd take C++ over VB for most important projects, but a simple quick GUI app I'd prefer VB.
In the case of
I'm still waiting for the day when I can use a Perl-type language, with the true power of hashes, hashrefs, and regexps, on a full-blown compiled GUI app...
I assume that China is after one of two things:
1) To retreive confidential Taiwanese info
2) To alter/manipulate confidential Taiwanese info
Since Taiwan is aware of the issue, why not get a couple of the local white-hats to put up honeypots to fool (2), and start feeding back false info to screw up (1)?
Where I used to work, we had a case where somebody walked in with a delivery person uniform... struggling with a heavy box for "Joe XXX".
He got the security personnel to card the elevator so that he could get up to the floor wher "Joe XXX" worked. In a short while, he came back down... Joe wasn't there to sign so he said he'd left a note, and was bringing the supplies back to the office.
He got one of the security people to help him move the heavy box outside.
What's wrong with this story? Well, it turns out that the box was fairly light when it came in... think about it for a second.
1) Implement good disaster-recovery plan
. .data)
2) ??? (aka mad-scramble to initiate plan)
3) Profit (or at least don't go under)
This must have been a pretty in depth recovery plan though. I mean, even with backups and a redundant connection elsewhere... I think that for myself processing the fact that my office had just been bowled over by wind-on-steroids would faze me for a little while (office...tornado...holy...shit...must...recover.
Now they're up and running, but what of their old office? It must be very interesting to have to deal with the stage of "step over rubble, salvage what we can" and the general amazement at nature's fury.
I'm in the process of configuring several of my servers to offload to a remote master. If the town gets levelled we're toast, but if an individual location bites it, then at least critical data (accounting records, home dirs, etc) is saved. This will still be a big bite out of the business.
Does insurance cover natural disasters such as tornado, would be a big question? A lot of insurance companies don't cover "act of god", etc
In the great pattern of things, the end-user doesn't have responsibility to SCO but to the vendor. Now, I can go out and buy a playstation or whatever in a good-faith purchase. If company X suddenly discovered that the playstation core used their technology/code, they can't invoice me for the cost of the code - that goes to the vendor.
Even in the best of cases for SCO, charging the end-user hardly sounds like a legitimate practice. In any software case I've heard of, it's the parent company/companies that end of paying out
Is if they sell out. SCO stock dips as it strangles... then IBM steps in and buys out SCO for a low price, SCO is cleansed of evil and stock soars to new heights. By then, the execs won't have any more SCO stock so they don't benefit.
What I wonder is... who are the brain-cases that are actually buying this stock, and why (unless perhaps they're expecting a scenario as above with long-term growth)
What would be their closing statement using these emails as evidence:
"Your honor, as you can see the defendent is of questionable moral integrity and dubious legal practice. Of their 300 emails we *ahem* appropriated, 289 of the messages received were in relation to conduct of dubious sexual nature. Obviously, your honor, they are nothing but a bunch of no-good perverts!"
Is it my imagination, or have there been a lot of recent MS initiatives that could be construed an attempts to segregated open-source. First, we have the messenger block/licensing-scheme, which pretty much prevents GAIM from accessing the MSN network in the future. Now, we have office lock-in, which will prevent OpenOffice users from opening MS documents in linux.
Coincidence? I think not. Here we have a case of monopolistic anti-competetive practices at their worst.
TV sponsorship for tournaments, etc. There's a slight hitch to that when you're envisioning it with online games...
Anyone can have a TV. I could have my TV on whilst playing in a Half-Life tourney and track my opponents.
Now, with a stadium and perhaps a closed arena (i.e. you can watch the game, and maybe the players by webcam, but they can't see the big screen) it would work... but that involves having a dedicated locale, among other things.
A nice few points to blizzard on the concept of their "skill-based autoassignment." As you get bumped up in skill levels (based on wins vs losses, etc), it autoassigns you against similar skill levels. I've found that while it's not 100% effective, after playing for awhile I've managed to get to a level where I avoid being teams with a lot of newbs (but meanwhile newbs end up teamed with other newbs).