I have two hands up, so I'm typing with my prehensile...male...appendage.
OH, yeah, never mind, women have feet too.
Anyways. Erector sets. Lincoln Logs. Tinkertoys! Legos by the metric assload. 1950s vintage Lionel model train (engines, stock, tracks, trackside accessories, you name it). Electronics. Model rockets. Plastic models.
Anything by the Pythons. Most BBC SF and comedy. (Fawlty Towers still makes my ROFL, although it seems insanely dated.)
If you look closely at the bumps, I believe they have a tiny LEGO logo etched onto them.
What, even on the MegaBloks? I rather doubt it. Otherwise, simple trademark law would have won the day for Lego.
Lego has a technically superior product of far greater quality, consistency, and creativity. I mean, this is the company that gave us Space Police, Blacktron, and Mindstorms!
But attempting to stretch the bounds of trademark law over functional qualities--the domain of patents--is just completely evil and radically asshat. If the parties involved were, say, Microsoft and Suse, I have no doubt how discussion here would go. It'd have nothing to do with the relative technical merits of the product; it's only be about how Company "B" can only seem to win by litigation, not innovation.
Sheesh. I still like Lego, and I still disdain compatible knockoffs, but DAMMIT I wish good companies would stop indulging their legal departments whenever the legal eagles feel like double-fist-raping the bounds of intellectual-property law.
FWIW, my complaint is the reverse. I wanted to install QuickTime on my WinXP box. "Oh, lookie, it's bundled with iTunes. OK, that's fine, I'll just install the whole stinkin' batch and uninstall iTunes later."
Click. Click. Download. Agree (blindly) to EULA. Download some more.
How much are you paying for this service you're bitching about?
Nothing, as I'm sure you already full-well knew when you rhetori-pedantically pointed it out. And, as I'm sure you really realize, that's completely besides the point. Unless, of course, you mean that "If it's free, you don't have any right to complain about any part of it."
Which means, by your lights, date rape is actually consensual as long as you picked up the dinner and bar tab first.
I've noticed this phenomenon too. Because there's no involvement with any facial muscle groups other than the lips, people have trouble interpreting the expression.
In this case, I assume folks are using cultural expectations of the behaviors of spokespuppets in TV commercials to resolve the lack of direct evidence and essentially assuming the grey-haired chap in the Menards' commercials is smiling.
But I've figured out the truth. It's not a smile, it's a predatory tooth-baring snarl.
Which is why the Menards' guy scares the bejeebus out of me. That, and how he's always going on about my nards. You leave my nards out of it, dammit.
I can't cite any documentation, but I recall seeing studies which show that the number one critical attribute of persistently optimistic personalities is a chronic inability to clearly see reality. Is this the same phenomenon?
In the words of the old chestnut, "If you're calm and confident when everyone around you is running around in blind panic, you clearly don't understand the situation."
I suppose. But if the chilled water runs into a CRAC in the corner, and the water feed or return leaks, you have a puddle in the subfloor plenum meters away from the nearest system. If the chilled water runs into your rack, and you have a leak in a feed or return, you have pretty sparks and a loud popping sound and totally borked systems. Maybe. Not to say, if the subfloor water sensors are totally ass, you couldn't have the puddle meander over to energized cabling, resulting in sparks and popping noises and borkage, but it seems keeping water and electricity apart is one of those "more is better" thingies.
I don't play Sony's EQ2, but aren't there cheater progs for that? And doesn't EQ2 have memory- and registry-based cheater scans? Wouldn't the tasties irony in the situation be a Sony software product defeating cheat-detection in a Sony game?
Yes, the software industry is the best way of fulfill the Recommended Daily Allowance for irony.
Add onto that one-call support for a down machine, I don't have to worry about whether it is an OS issue or a hardware issue, I just call Sun.
Unless we're talking Solaris x86 on an IBM BladeCenter. Then, it's call IBM, who says it's an OS issue so call Sun, who says it's a hardware issue, so call IBM...ad nauseum...
I reckon we'll see Solaris on big multi-processor POWER iron soon. Watch this space.
With pSeries logical partitioning? I kinda doubt it. IBM just got 'round to adding it to the Linux kernels they support for Power4 and Power5, and other than that it's been AIX's ace in the hole.
I can't check the Polaris project blog, since the repressive net-monitoring regime at work blocks blogspot. Are they planning to try to fit LPAR into the Polaris kernel, or is a p6 or p5 series box just gonna be a really big SMP box? The former seems like a daunting task, and the latter seems like a waste of true POWER-series iron. (Not to mention totally incompatible with various frame-level features, like the capacity on demand systems.)
Nifty idea, but probably not worth the trouble on the true POWER houses. For a pSeries bitty box, cool, if it works.
Sheesh. I guess I was reading too fast, but for a while I was wondering "WTF's RIMPAA?"
Anyway, back on-topic. Yeah, it's sorta amazin' isn't it. They're archiving and cataloging usenet groups which are self-identified as "gigabytes of copyright violations", and they're trying to make teh big moneez at it. Yup, thanks for screwin' up another network motherlode by stripmining it, ya putzes.
Oh, I hope it's so. The delicious, tasty, non-fattening irony. Using an embedded copyright violation to enforce copyrights. I shudder in ecstacy at the thought.
Who'll follow up on this thread? I'm sure we can find enough free-as-in-freedom warriors to do a tech analysis on the software and confirm the report in parent comment? C'mon, hoisting retards on their own petards is just too much fun!
No seriously, I agree. Sony's inconceivably bad behavior has to be dragged, squealing and flailing, into the sunlight where it can be properly stomped to gory death with hobnailed boots. No mercy, no PR coverup, no plausible deniability. Corps have to understand, with visceral fear-of-agonizing-death understanding, that this kind of crap will not ever be tolerated. This is a trend which must be stopped cold dead. These shenanigans have to be punished with such finality that any observer centuries from now will intuitively know the immediate and unalterable consequences of this kind of crap.
Firstly, they're owned by the same corporate. "Barely anything" is a bit too strong.
Secondly, learn to spell "ridiculous".
Thirdly, GP post mentions absolutely nothing about Microsoft, or XBox360, or any other purported alternative to a PS3 purchase. There's always the time-honored alternative, "none of the above". But it was a lovely straw man while it lasted.
The problem with analogies is that you can structure your analogy to support any perspective you desire, and some weak-minded person in your audience will blindly support you rather than pointing out the fact that you're full of crap.
Another analogy, shaped along the lines you proposed, is that you received a phone call from a neighbor who discovered your house was unlocked and unoccupied. Not "wandering in, using the toilet, rummaging the underwear drawers, drinking the beers in the fridge, and leaving a post-it note on the TV."
Gratitude (or least proper forbearance) is due to someone who innocently discovers a vulnerability and does not exploit it. In the form of your analogy, it's comparable to turning the doorknob (perhaps because you mistook this house for yours), seeing the living room isn't furnished like yours, and closing the door.
Your analogy might be appropriate if you went ahead and mentioned the various specific behaviours constituting the "inappropriate house access exploitation" you must certainly be thinking of. But simply discovering the access control mechanism is inadequate doesn't constitute breaking and entering.
If they don't, ignore both of them and do whart you think needs to be done. If it doesn't meet their expectations, its their fault.
And when you're surplussed as a non-team-player, I'm sure the pink slip will have written somewhere, in a very apologetic-looking parenthetical postscript, "It's really management's fault. Sorry"
A diamond-bladed lawnmower could do new things.... That doesn't mean making one isn't a waste of time.
If the grass had to be cut, and the odds of successfully cutting the grass were already low, and cutting grass was an inherently hazardous mission, and the diamond blade substantially increased the likelihood of mission accomplishment...then making the diamond-bladed lawnmower is absolutely not a waste of time or resources.
Look again at the original site. It's the US Air Force. In principle, at least, that means that the first criteria is "How does this technology further mission accomplishment?" It's a military technology, so the criteria involve platform survivability under hostile opposition. Yes, dollars and cents figure in, but less so if the difference between transparent armor and glass-plastic composite is the difference between a successful airstrike and a failed one.
Slashdot Mirror
Not if you're soldering, welding, or operating high-rotational-speed power tools.
Believe me on this one.
OH, yeah, never mind, women have feet too.
Anyways. Erector sets. Lincoln Logs. Tinkertoys! Legos by the metric assload. 1950s vintage Lionel model train (engines, stock, tracks, trackside accessories, you name it). Electronics. Model rockets. Plastic models.
Anything by the Pythons. Most BBC SF and comedy. (Fawlty Towers still makes my ROFL, although it seems insanely dated.)
I guess I'm a stereotypical IT geek.
What, even on the MegaBloks? I rather doubt it. Otherwise, simple trademark law would have won the day for Lego.
Lego has a technically superior product of far greater quality, consistency, and creativity. I mean, this is the company that gave us Space Police, Blacktron, and Mindstorms!
But attempting to stretch the bounds of trademark law over functional qualities--the domain of patents--is just completely evil and radically asshat. If the parties involved were, say, Microsoft and Suse, I have no doubt how discussion here would go. It'd have nothing to do with the relative technical merits of the product; it's only be about how Company "B" can only seem to win by litigation, not innovation.
Sheesh. I still like Lego, and I still disdain compatible knockoffs, but DAMMIT I wish good companies would stop indulging their legal departments whenever the legal eagles feel like double-fist-raping the bounds of intellectual-property law.
"Whaddya talkin' about, there are TONS of neglected unhappy customers on the forum!"
Apparently Jedi mind tricks don't work reliably on SlashHutts.
Click. Click. Download. Agree (blindly) to EULA. Download some more.
Windows MSI installer gronks grinds.
Oh. Great. iTunes installed, QuickTime didn't. WTF?
What's up with that?
Nothing, as I'm sure you already full-well knew when you rhetori-pedantically pointed it out. And, as I'm sure you really realize, that's completely besides the point. Unless, of course, you mean that "If it's free, you don't have any right to complain about any part of it."
Which means, by your lights, date rape is actually consensual as long as you picked up the dinner and bar tab first.
I've noticed this phenomenon too. Because there's no involvement with any facial muscle groups other than the lips, people have trouble interpreting the expression.
In this case, I assume folks are using cultural expectations of the behaviors of spokespuppets in TV commercials to resolve the lack of direct evidence and essentially assuming the grey-haired chap in the Menards' commercials is smiling.
But I've figured out the truth. It's not a smile, it's a predatory tooth-baring snarl.
Which is why the Menards' guy scares the bejeebus out of me. That, and how he's always going on about my nards. You leave my nards out of it, dammit.
I'm on j00r ship and I'm killin j00r d00ds! PWNT!
In the words of the old chestnut, "If you're calm and confident when everyone around you is running around in blind panic, you clearly don't understand the situation."
I suppose. But if the chilled water runs into a CRAC in the corner, and the water feed or return leaks, you have a puddle in the subfloor plenum meters away from the nearest system. If the chilled water runs into your rack, and you have a leak in a feed or return, you have pretty sparks and a loud popping sound and totally borked systems. Maybe. Not to say, if the subfloor water sensors are totally ass, you couldn't have the puddle meander over to energized cabling, resulting in sparks and popping noises and borkage, but it seems keeping water and electricity apart is one of those "more is better" thingies.
Yes, the software industry is the best way of fulfill the Recommended Daily Allowance for irony.
Unless we're talking Solaris x86 on an IBM BladeCenter. Then, it's call IBM, who says it's an OS issue so call Sun, who says it's a hardware issue, so call IBM...ad nauseum...
With pSeries logical partitioning? I kinda doubt it. IBM just got 'round to adding it to the Linux kernels they support for Power4 and Power5, and other than that it's been AIX's ace in the hole.
I can't check the Polaris project blog, since the repressive net-monitoring regime at work blocks blogspot. Are they planning to try to fit LPAR into the Polaris kernel, or is a p6 or p5 series box just gonna be a really big SMP box? The former seems like a daunting task, and the latter seems like a waste of true POWER-series iron. (Not to mention totally incompatible with various frame-level features, like the capacity on demand systems.)
Nifty idea, but probably not worth the trouble on the true POWER houses. For a pSeries bitty box, cool, if it works.
Sheesh. I guess I was reading too fast, but for a while I was wondering "WTF's RIMPAA?"
Anyway, back on-topic. Yeah, it's sorta amazin' isn't it. They're archiving and cataloging usenet groups which are self-identified as "gigabytes of copyright violations", and they're trying to make teh big moneez at it. Yup, thanks for screwin' up another network motherlode by stripmining it, ya putzes.
Who'll follow up on this thread? I'm sure we can find enough free-as-in-freedom warriors to do a tech analysis on the software and confirm the report in parent comment? C'mon, hoisting retards on their own petards is just too much fun!
No seriously, I agree. Sony's inconceivably bad behavior has to be dragged, squealing and flailing, into the sunlight where it can be properly stomped to gory death with hobnailed boots. No mercy, no PR coverup, no plausible deniability. Corps have to understand, with visceral fear-of-agonizing-death understanding, that this kind of crap will not ever be tolerated. This is a trend which must be stopped cold dead. These shenanigans have to be punished with such finality that any observer centuries from now will intuitively know the immediate and unalterable consequences of this kind of crap.
I don't really care if the original poster was going for funny. There's a little TLA for this situation, usually reserved for fr1st psot lusers: YFI.
Besides the whole thing reeks of "haha only serious." A real case of Napoleon Chihuahua going on here.
-1 flamebait, or maybe -1 troll, or -1 stupid advertising.
I know, I know, "it's a joke". Yeah. Right.
I use Openstep some. It's nice. But a really tricked out Accord won't be obsoleting BMW any time soon, either.
Secondly, learn to spell "ridiculous".
Thirdly, GP post mentions absolutely nothing about Microsoft, or XBox360, or any other purported alternative to a PS3 purchase. There's always the time-honored alternative, "none of the above". But it was a lovely straw man while it lasted.
Looks more like there are some people in the Mexican government who can't stay bought.
Too bad I'm without modpoints just now, or you'd certainly get a "+1, Illegal" from me!
Another analogy, shaped along the lines you proposed, is that you received a phone call from a neighbor who discovered your house was unlocked and unoccupied. Not "wandering in, using the toilet, rummaging the underwear drawers, drinking the beers in the fridge, and leaving a post-it note on the TV."
Gratitude (or least proper forbearance) is due to someone who innocently discovers a vulnerability and does not exploit it. In the form of your analogy, it's comparable to turning the doorknob (perhaps because you mistook this house for yours), seeing the living room isn't furnished like yours, and closing the door.
Your analogy might be appropriate if you went ahead and mentioned the various specific behaviours constituting the "inappropriate house access exploitation" you must certainly be thinking of. But simply discovering the access control mechanism is inadequate doesn't constitute breaking and entering.
And when you're surplussed as a non-team-player, I'm sure the pink slip will have written somewhere, in a very apologetic-looking parenthetical postscript, "It's really management's fault. Sorry"
That's evil. That's horrible. You should be pun-ished for that.
And I already commented upthread a bit, so I can't give you the mod pointing you deserve.
If the grass had to be cut, and the odds of successfully cutting the grass were already low, and cutting grass was an inherently hazardous mission, and the diamond blade substantially increased the likelihood of mission accomplishment...then making the diamond-bladed lawnmower is absolutely not a waste of time or resources.
Look again at the original site. It's the US Air Force. In principle, at least, that means that the first criteria is "How does this technology further mission accomplishment?" It's a military technology, so the criteria involve platform survivability under hostile opposition. Yes, dollars and cents figure in, but less so if the difference between transparent armor and glass-plastic composite is the difference between a successful airstrike and a failed one.