I hadn't thought of that. Of course, that only applies to countries where such laws exists, but that's getting to be more and more of them thanks to "harmonization".
Well, it's one thing to acquire a company in order to deny your customers and potential customers access to a competitive product. It's quite another to hire away a bunch of developers and keep them. That's difficult, especially if they happen to be the cream of the crop for a particular industry. As soon as you don't give them what they want (and money is only part of the picture) they'll drop you like a hot potato and look for greener pastures. I'm not slamming Oracle in particular since I don't know what the place is like for the development staff: it might be a great place to work. But job satisfaction is an important aspect to any position for a good programmer, and if you're good (and that is presumably why Ellison is hiring these guys) you have a lot of options. My bet is that a few years down the road you see some of those missing coders back on the radar.
Sure. I do the same thing. But like you said, most people (numbering, I might add, in the hundreds of millions worldwide) don't have a clue how to do that. And even if they did, odds are they'll still get hit. After all, no defense is perfect and people still make mistakes, and Windows doesn't do much to cover for them when they do. In any event, I'm not willing to let Microsoft off the hook because their customer base is ignorant of security procedures. That company quite deliberately and with malice aforethought mass-marketed a dangerously insecure product that should never have been connected the Internet to those millions, and then leveraged an illegal monopoly to make sure those same people had few usable alternatives. Microsoft needs to get hit for a billion dollars or so in restitution due Windows users that had their savings accounts raped by some Bulgarian keylogger installed because Microsoft couldn't be bothered with good design. Can't say they didn't have the resources. And if they did get whacked with some truly punitive fines, I bet we'd all be surprised at how fast Windows surpasses the BSDs in terms of security.
No, but having protection under the law does not imply that you cannot be sued, or that you will have to incur the expense fighting the lawsuit in court, or settling out of court. That is a reality of the American legal system that any organization in public view must face. Even if a court rules that yes, your activities are in fact protected and the suit against you is dismissed, you still have to pay legal expenses. The mere threat of a lawsuit can have a significant effect, just look at the RIAA's antics in that regard.
On the other hand, I recently looked up some network cabling info on Wikipedia and found it right on the money. Point is, I didn't have to wade through a hundred Geocities personal pages on networking to find what I wanted.
I think what this comes down to is that if you want a quality information source you need to be selective. So far as the grandparent poster's comment goes, the Internet itself is a grand collection of information on every topic known to Mankind (and probably a few that aren't.) Wikipedia, or indeed any encyclopaedic effort must necessarily be a subset of that vastness in order to be useful. So, I'd say that if you want to access to the whole enchilada use a search engine, but if you want a filtered subset of all hunan knowledge that has been shown to have relevance to a great many people, use an encyclopedia.
Actually, if the advertising is an accurate representation of the internals of the game, I'd say the ad is doing you a favor. If you don't like the ad, you won't like the game, and shouldn't be a customer anyway because you'll probably feel deceived, return the game, and never buy another product from that company.
But I agree... that ad doesn't do anything for me either.
It's not legitimate and Wallace may very well find himself in hot water, but given the size of the judgment (I don't know what his share was and I'm too tired to bother Googling it) he probably figured it was worth the risk. If nothing else, he should have plenty of money to hire a good defense attorney if he ever does get hauled into court over this.
Maybe... but judges take a very dim view of such things: those boys hate like hell to have anything hidden from them. Wallace may very well have a comeuppance in his future.
Anyone with an Internet-connected Windows machine that feels any sense of security whatsoever is fooling himself, regardless of how Microsoft subverts the hosts file. Sooner or later, you'll get hit... either a browser drive-by, a remote exploit, email payload or something you installed on purpose. Just a matter of time. Now, of course Microsoft tells us that Vista will be different. How much so remains to be seen, and only time will tell.
No argument from me on that score. Windows is an ongoing thorn in my side, unfortunately it's how I make a living. I like Macs... I just think some of the people that buy them need to grow up a little.
The problem with that is the big boys (such as Comcast) advertise always-on unlimited service. Sounds great until you try to use it in any manner approaching what they're promising. This is dangerously close to false advertising. The fact that the majority of users may operate as you described doesn't mean that you can point-blank lie to those who are using the services they were promised. More to the point, the majority is fast becoming a minority. The customer base has spoken: we want real broadband. They should either provide that, or admit that they can't and sit tight for the inevitable consumer backlash.
ISP propaganda says that "when people abuse (abuse?) their connection we all have to suffer." Baloney. You give me an "unlimited" fat pipe and then tell me I can't use it? That's ridiculous, and the reason this is becoming a problem is that more and more users are becoming so-called "bandwidth hogs". They have a choice: build out their networks and give their customers what they want, what was promised to them or accept that broadband penetration is going to falter. Look, until the advent of P2P services, most people really didn't have much use for broadband: other than the always-on aspect it wasn't worth the money. It simply wasn't. Along comes a set of killer apps from iTunes on down that actually made broadband worth the money, and not just for a few geeks! So what do they do? They complain that those users are abusive, and rather than trying to find ways to serve them they simply them jack them around.
Pretty much the behavior you'd expect from a bunch of one-time monopolists and monopolist wannabes.
Hardly arrogant, just observant. And you're right: it doesn't make them any better or worse than me... the difference is, unlike me, they think they are better.
Now, I thought I had made it clear: I'm not knocking Apple products, I happen to like them. I wasn't bitching about their pricing. I'm slamming attitudes, not hardware. Nor am I slamming all Apple users, just the irritating ones traditionally called "Mac bigots". That's actually a fairly significant subset of the Mac using population, large enough for non-Mac users to notice. Large enough for a popular term to have been coined. I look at computers as I do programming languages: pick the best one for the job, and always buy the best tools you can afford. But I know a number of Mac people that will always try to find a way to rationalize a Mac as the best tool for the job... even when it clearly is not.
But back to the original point. I'm talking about the Mac bigots who exude a sense of innate superiority because they use a Macintosh. You don't see people with any other brand of equipment exhibit those symptoms. Why? Because everybody else perceives their computers for what they are: boxes full of electronics, as you say, tools. You don't see owners of any other brand get so defensive about their choices either: clear signs of elitism at work. I swear, some of these Mac people must get down on their knees and pray to their machine god every night, thanking it for the respect they believe it has earned them.
Whether it be cars, homes, big-screen TVs, significant others or computer systems, there will always be those people who base their purchasing decisions upon the public perception of what is the coolest, the most impressive, the "best". And yes, in many respects the Macintosh is just that when it comes to personal computing, and if you bought a Mac because it truly is the best for your computing needs, that's great. Wise choice. But if you bought a Mac because you think we think you're someone special for having done so, well... you're wrong.
Well, it would be interesting to lock a bunch of senior Chinese executives and a similarly-sized group of Western senior attorneys in a room. Then tell them that whichever group has the least number of people alive in an hour's time gets shot on the spot.
No, it's because for me, as a software developer, it's what's on the screen that counts. And like I said, I think Apple has great products and I'm not being critical of them. I am criticizing a certain subset of the people that buy them.
Baloney. I'm not knocking Apple products... but from a marketing perspective Apple is the brand for people that are willing to pay a premium for their personal computers in order to suggest that they, themselves, have some degree of "artistic-ness", or at least style. Yes yes, many Mac users are artists or graphic designers or what-have-you, but people such as that purchased their equipment on its merits and have no need to impress anyone with "hey, look at me I have a Mac so I must be artistic!" For me, a computer is a box that sits on the floor and should remain as inconspicuous as possible, since I'm not trying to make any kind of statement with my choice of computer system. I make that statement with the quality of my work, regardless of the platform I happen to be working on at any given time.
On the other hand, the **AA's utterly irrational focus on "digitally perfect copies" has been shown to be a red herring. They used that mantra in repeated attempts to kill off digital recording technology (successfully in the case of DAT) without realizing how far off base they were. People aren't interested in perfect copies: they're interested in reasonable-quality copies for a reasonable price. And "reasonable quality" is relative, and is usually a lot less than you might think, especially if the product is cheap or free. The overnight success of the original Napster, followed by the continued use of the decentralized Gnutella protocol and derivatives, is very telling. People just aren't interested in the absolute best sound quality: the ones that are will probably just go buy the CD. Most wouldn't know a raw 44.1 kHz track from a 128kbps MP3 anyway. What does matter is that the price was right (free) and that the variety was enormous, far more than any record store in existence. However, lest we fall into the RIAA trap of assuming that nobody wants to pay for something they can get for free, the success of iTunes indicates that people will pay for music of decent quality and a reasonable price. That pretty much knocked the props out of the RIAA's assertion that they cannot maintain their cash flow because they are competing with "free" (as in illegal downloading.) Even the fact that iTunes is apparently making them gobs and gobs of money isn't enough: they aren't in control anymore and they desperately want to be.
Matter of fact, if you look at the past ten years or so, it's pretty easy to see that most of the assumptions the RIAA and the studios have made about their digital-age customers have been, well... wrong. If indeed the studios are suffering financially from downloading as much as they say they are (and a wise person would take anything that issues from the lips of those people with a large grain of salt) it has more to do with their failure to accommodate their customers changing desires than anything else. Smart businesses recognize these things and alter their ways of doing business accordingly in order to keep their customers: monopolies and oligopolies figure they don't have to, but in this case they got caught flatfooted.
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't thought of that. Of course, that only applies to countries where such laws exists, but that's getting to be more and more of them thanks to "harmonization".
Well, it's one thing to acquire a company in order to deny your customers and potential customers access to a competitive product. It's quite another to hire away a bunch of developers and keep them. That's difficult, especially if they happen to be the cream of the crop for a particular industry. As soon as you don't give them what they want (and money is only part of the picture) they'll drop you like a hot potato and look for greener pastures. I'm not slamming Oracle in particular since I don't know what the place is like for the development staff: it might be a great place to work. But job satisfaction is an important aspect to any position for a good programmer, and if you're good (and that is presumably why Ellison is hiring these guys) you have a lot of options. My bet is that a few years down the road you see some of those missing coders back on the radar.
Sure. I do the same thing. But like you said, most people (numbering, I might add, in the hundreds of millions worldwide) don't have a clue how to do that. And even if they did, odds are they'll still get hit. After all, no defense is perfect and people still make mistakes, and Windows doesn't do much to cover for them when they do. In any event, I'm not willing to let Microsoft off the hook because their customer base is ignorant of security procedures. That company quite deliberately and with malice aforethought mass-marketed a dangerously insecure product that should never have been connected the Internet to those millions, and then leveraged an illegal monopoly to make sure those same people had few usable alternatives. Microsoft needs to get hit for a billion dollars or so in restitution due Windows users that had their savings accounts raped by some Bulgarian keylogger installed because Microsoft couldn't be bothered with good design. Can't say they didn't have the resources. And if they did get whacked with some truly punitive fines, I bet we'd all be surprised at how fast Windows surpasses the BSDs in terms of security.
Have you watched Penn and Teller's "Bullshit!" series? Dihydrogen oxide was the subject of one episode.
No, but having protection under the law does not imply that you cannot be sued, or that you will have to incur the expense fighting the lawsuit in court, or settling out of court. That is a reality of the American legal system that any organization in public view must face. Even if a court rules that yes, your activities are in fact protected and the suit against you is dismissed, you still have to pay legal expenses. The mere threat of a lawsuit can have a significant effect, just look at the RIAA's antics in that regard.
On the other hand, I recently looked up some network cabling info on Wikipedia and found it right on the money. Point is, I didn't have to wade through a hundred Geocities personal pages on networking to find what I wanted.
I think what this comes down to is that if you want a quality information source you need to be selective. So far as the grandparent poster's comment goes, the Internet itself is a grand collection of information on every topic known to Mankind (and probably a few that aren't.) Wikipedia, or indeed any encyclopaedic effort must necessarily be a subset of that vastness in order to be useful. So, I'd say that if you want to access to the whole enchilada use a search engine, but if you want a filtered subset of all hunan knowledge that has been shown to have relevance to a great many people, use an encyclopedia.
Truth and facts
Those two are usually mutually exclusive, especially when used in the same sentence.
dead God?
Actually, if the advertising is an accurate representation of the internals of the game, I'd say the ad is doing you a favor. If you don't like the ad, you won't like the game, and shouldn't be a customer anyway because you'll probably feel deceived, return the game, and never buy another product from that company.
... that ad doesn't do anything for me either.
But I agree
The phrase is "to have one's cake and eat it too."
It's not legitimate and Wallace may very well find himself in hot water, but given the size of the judgment (I don't know what his share was and I'm too tired to bother Googling it) he probably figured it was worth the risk. If nothing else, he should have plenty of money to hire a good defense attorney if he ever does get hauled into court over this.
Maybe ... but judges take a very dim view of such things: those boys hate like hell to have anything hidden from them. Wallace may very well have a comeuppance in his future.
Because a decision does not guarantee enforcement.
True ... but how many people go out of their way without a second's thought?
Anyone with an Internet-connected Windows machine that feels any sense of security whatsoever is fooling himself, regardless of how Microsoft subverts the hosts file. Sooner or later, you'll get hit ... either a browser drive-by, a remote exploit, email payload or something you installed on purpose. Just a matter of time. Now, of course Microsoft tells us that Vista will be different. How much so remains to be seen, and only time will tell.
No argument from me on that score. Windows is an ongoing thorn in my side, unfortunately it's how I make a living. I like Macs ... I just think some of the people that buy them need to grow up a little.
The problem with that is the big boys (such as Comcast) advertise always-on unlimited service. Sounds great until you try to use it in any manner approaching what they're promising. This is dangerously close to false advertising. The fact that the majority of users may operate as you described doesn't mean that you can point-blank lie to those who are using the services they were promised. More to the point, the majority is fast becoming a minority. The customer base has spoken: we want real broadband. They should either provide that, or admit that they can't and sit tight for the inevitable consumer backlash.
ISP propaganda says that "when people abuse (abuse?) their connection we all have to suffer." Baloney. You give me an "unlimited" fat pipe and then tell me I can't use it? That's ridiculous, and the reason this is becoming a problem is that more and more users are becoming so-called "bandwidth hogs". They have a choice: build out their networks and give their customers what they want, what was promised to them or accept that broadband penetration is going to falter. Look, until the advent of P2P services, most people really didn't have much use for broadband: other than the always-on aspect it wasn't worth the money. It simply wasn't. Along comes a set of killer apps from iTunes on down that actually made broadband worth the money, and not just for a few geeks! So what do they do? They complain that those users are abusive, and rather than trying to find ways to serve them they simply them jack them around.
Pretty much the behavior you'd expect from a bunch of one-time monopolists and monopolist wannabes.
Hardly arrogant, just observant. And you're right: it doesn't make them any better or worse than me ... the difference is, unlike me, they think they are better.
... even when it clearly is not.
... you're wrong.
Now, I thought I had made it clear: I'm not knocking Apple products, I happen to like them. I wasn't bitching about their pricing. I'm slamming attitudes, not hardware. Nor am I slamming all Apple users, just the irritating ones traditionally called "Mac bigots". That's actually a fairly significant subset of the Mac using population, large enough for non-Mac users to notice. Large enough for a popular term to have been coined. I look at computers as I do programming languages: pick the best one for the job, and always buy the best tools you can afford. But I know a number of Mac people that will always try to find a way to rationalize a Mac as the best tool for the job
But back to the original point. I'm talking about the Mac bigots who exude a sense of innate superiority because they use a Macintosh. You don't see people with any other brand of equipment exhibit those symptoms. Why? Because everybody else perceives their computers for what they are: boxes full of electronics, as you say, tools. You don't see owners of any other brand get so defensive about their choices either: clear signs of elitism at work. I swear, some of these Mac people must get down on their knees and pray to their machine god every night, thanking it for the respect they believe it has earned them.
Whether it be cars, homes, big-screen TVs, significant others or computer systems, there will always be those people who base their purchasing decisions upon the public perception of what is the coolest, the most impressive, the "best". And yes, in many respects the Macintosh is just that when it comes to personal computing, and if you bought a Mac because it truly is the best for your computing needs, that's great. Wise choice. But if you bought a Mac because you think we think you're someone special for having done so, well
Well, it would be interesting to lock a bunch of senior Chinese executives and a similarly-sized group of Western senior attorneys in a room. Then tell them that whichever group has the least number of people alive in an hour's time gets shot on the spot.
Ah, yes ... another Mac owner. So nice to see you. How's the wife and kids?
No, it's because for me, as a software developer, it's what's on the screen that counts. And like I said, I think Apple has great products and I'm not being critical of them. I am criticizing a certain subset of the people that buy them.
Apple is the brand of people who are creative.
... but from a marketing perspective Apple is the brand for people that are willing to pay a premium for their personal computers in order to suggest that they, themselves, have some degree of "artistic-ness", or at least style. Yes yes, many Mac users are artists or graphic designers or what-have-you, but people such as that purchased their equipment on its merits and have no need to impress anyone with "hey, look at me I have a Mac so I must be artistic!" For me, a computer is a box that sits on the floor and should remain as inconspicuous as possible, since I'm not trying to make any kind of statement with my choice of computer system. I make that statement with the quality of my work, regardless of the platform I happen to be working on at any given time.
Baloney. I'm not knocking Apple products
I'll be damned if I'm going to replace my office ceiling every few months.
On the other hand, the **AA's utterly irrational focus on "digitally perfect copies" has been shown to be a red herring. They used that mantra in repeated attempts to kill off digital recording technology (successfully in the case of DAT) without realizing how far off base they were. People aren't interested in perfect copies: they're interested in reasonable-quality copies for a reasonable price. And "reasonable quality" is relative, and is usually a lot less than you might think, especially if the product is cheap or free. The overnight success of the original Napster, followed by the continued use of the decentralized Gnutella protocol and derivatives, is very telling. People just aren't interested in the absolute best sound quality: the ones that are will probably just go buy the CD. Most wouldn't know a raw 44.1 kHz track from a 128kbps MP3 anyway. What does matter is that the price was right (free) and that the variety was enormous, far more than any record store in existence. However, lest we fall into the RIAA trap of assuming that nobody wants to pay for something they can get for free, the success of iTunes indicates that people will pay for music of decent quality and a reasonable price. That pretty much knocked the props out of the RIAA's assertion that they cannot maintain their cash flow because they are competing with "free" (as in illegal downloading.) Even the fact that iTunes is apparently making them gobs and gobs of money isn't enough: they aren't in control anymore and they desperately want to be.
... wrong. If indeed the studios are suffering financially from downloading as much as they say they are (and a wise person would take anything that issues from the lips of those people with a large grain of salt) it has more to do with their failure to accommodate their customers changing desires than anything else. Smart businesses recognize these things and alter their ways of doing business accordingly in order to keep their customers: monopolies and oligopolies figure they don't have to, but in this case they got caught flatfooted.
Matter of fact, if you look at the past ten years or so, it's pretty easy to see that most of the assumptions the RIAA and the studios have made about their digital-age customers have been, well
I doubt I would get a 60% for my 2 year old.
Man, I'd think twice about selling your two year old. I think it's probably illegal.