It's interesting to see people coming out against the little guy in this. After all, often the argument is bandied about that IP laws are overextended and misused, yet this IS the way IP legislation is supposed to be used (protecting the little fish from steamrollering by the big fish), and clearly even this use in exactly the manner it's intended is completely farcical.
So rather than this being a frivolous suit brought to bear (if it is ever brought to bear, see the point about how this suit might not even exist, above), it's actually a pretty legitimate suit with a good case to answer, at least in terms of the law as it stands today.
Whether those laws should indeed be in place or are in themselves absurd is a matter that I don't think should be heaped upon this one little firm.
Slashdot - Massive traffic, tons of content per page, but only a few ads Tom's Hardware Guide - Wait... there was some content on that page? Let me check again...
Tom's approach to adding advertising is like Domino's approach to adding more cheese.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease. It's not uncommon to leave exploits unfixed if they're largely unknown of outside the dev team.
From there it's a sliding scale on how urgently it has to be fixed (Read: how many resources have to be diverted from other activities) depending on how big the hole is, how many proof of concepts are actually around, and how much noise the clients are making.
Blame management for this, it's an inevitable consequence of always keeping your eyes on the bottom line.
All this time I've been playing Quake over LAN and I thought my ping was about 5ms. Silly me, it's clearly in the range of 100ms, even worse than when I take it online!
Keeping content, presentation and logic seperate is fairly simple until you move into more complex data presentation where the page presentation itself relies upon the data.
For example, depending on the status of an item in your database you might need to print a form on the users screen if it's in one state, but if it's in another state you just want to print out a simple string to say so.
In cases like that you either have to embed a chunk of presentation and content into the code directly, or create some messy template snippets which in my experience aren't much more legible than just embedding it straight into the code. Both methods remove any chance of passing the design to a non-technical person, also.
So in summary, templating is a good idea, but it has limitations and is not the panacea of web design abstraction.
That's a bit unfair. The GPL license is a ray of light in an otherwise very dark legal minefield,IMO.
I think what you see as a problem with the GPL license is actually a sign of the times which the GPL couldn't avoid even if it wanted to. Heck, I think it's the very reason why the GPL exists today.
It's the case now not that this particular license is unduly restrictive, but that the state of copyright/licensing across the world is so farcicaly ubiquitous and overbearing that if you don't have a solid knowledge of all the copyright over the code you're working with, you get burned.
At least in this case it's unlikely the various parties who might enforce the GPL will come out with fangs bared. In that respect, it's good that they've fallen foul of the GPL rather than any other licence which might be enforced that much more aggressively.
Whatever, tech support is the IT equivalent of working in McDonalds. The only difference is how much knowledge you're expected to bring to the table. I'm sure there's some attainable goal of a satisfying tech support role, but it must be prohibitively costly and difficult to implement, since even Apple evidently functions just like all the rest when it comes to support workers.
The pay, conditions, level of respect you receive, and especially the customers, all comparable. Flipping burgers and switching backup tapes don't feel all that different, they're both soul destroying once you get past any initial novelty.
So it's hardly surprising that many leave the job in a pretty bitter state. What is surprising is how many of them think their situation is novel, and that it's worthy of sharing with the world.
Indeed, although I think it's more an issue of effort versus interest. If streamed game videos were enabled within the game... for example in WoW while you were waiting to play, you recieved a live feed from a currently active game, or archived feeds of classic events.
I think gamers want to watch footage of the games they play, they just don't want to do it at a point where they could be easily playing themselves, or go to a lot of effort to get it up and running.
This is where sites like own-age.com reach a limit. There are only so many individuals so inclined to actually seek out these videos. For the rest of us, we'll gladly watch it if it's pushed in front of our eyes.
BT protocol already favours the faster seeds and peers in a swarm. Since those closest to you on the network are likely to give you the highest speeds, indirectly it already does what you ask of it.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it a good thing that a politician would listen to the view of the people (opinions, polls) and adjust their position accordingly.
Much better than someone who pushes through an agenda irrespective of public opinion.
""Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
What sense does it make to confiscate hardware in relation to a crime reported using the hardware? Were the drives taken out and used to smash some windows? Perhaps they are looking for glass fragments or greasy hippy fingerprints on the case.
If he's to be beleived and ad-blocking is hurting web revenue so much, the following will happen: 1. Companies who require financial returns for their web content will cease or reduce distribution of web content 2. Those who do not require revenue from their online publishing (read: avg. joe geek) will attract more attention with their material.
So, a partial return to the time when the Internet was primarily filled with private web pages written by people in their spare time, as opposed to advert laden corporate publishments.
Obviously, the issue isn't really about whether we want the console early and broken or late and working, it's about what the difference is between the eastern/NA markets and the European one that justifies a different release date in Europe.
A more mature platform with more games? Sure, but that still leaves the question of why you didn't extend this courtesy to the Eastern/NA markets, Sony?
But there must be some logic behind this move, it's just that noone seems to have any idea what it is. What do Sony have to gain by releasing the console later?
I played PlanetSide for about 6 months solid before giving up my subscription.
Great idea, and MMO FPS games are definitely an exciting direction to be going in. However notable flaws:
1. Pricing - full price for the game and then a full-price subscription fee? I paid it, but I didn't like it. On top of that, paying another full-price for the expansion to the game? No thanks. That's about the time I quit playing, when the Core Combat expansion was released.
2. There's no victory - You take bases, while losing bases elsewhere. Perpetually. Eventually, highly frustrating. Especially after putting a few months of effort into the game to discover this.
3. System requirements are ridiculous - you actually do need 1Gb of ram to get the game to run acceptably, and even then, you're still going to choke in big firefights
But put all that aside. Sony are playing the Social blackmail game because they hold the keys to some of the best online social dynamics available. Gaming alongside friends and making new ones as you go along is a tight experience. I'll probably subscribe again in future.
What if the Chinese Gov had requested that for every blog posted on MSN Spaces, Bill Gates had to kill a dog?
He should do it, right? After all, that's respecting the laws of a country you're operating in and that's what Microsoft believes should be done.
I don't see how it's any different. Both are proactive moves and both stand against most people's moral standards. I think Microsoft's management would see things far differently if the results were right there in front of them.
They're actively aiding in suppressing human rights, as defined by their own country. For this reason, and because Microsoft is not a military or political power (give it a few years), the only morally acceptable action would be to stay out of the markey.
A benefit of Open-Source development is the manner in which it's developed. There seems to be more openness surrounding an open-source project, more open support channels (and indeed more 'average joe' users who can field technical questions).
This can be another reason to prefer open-source, which you've not mentioned.
Also, someone may be asking for open-source software from an idealistic perspective. In that convincing their establishment to adopt and open-source solution may lead to greater exposure for 'the cause' and perhaps develop a more positive view of such software.
Any binary file can be encoded as ascii text and transmitted across said system. What's more, the process is trivial.
So you can't make an anonymous system, then place restrictions on the kind of data it can transmit.
This is made even more apparent because Freenet is open-source, and so for any text-only implementation, a few hacks here and there and the code can transfer binaries again.
However, you could still argue that Freenet shouldn't put any features in place that make trading binaries easier (which it does). But images are binaries, and surely images in the modern world are a very powerful form of free speech. Being able to transmit images of atrocities and suchlike which would otherwise be censored.
Then, if you concede that images could be protected, what's to distinguish an important image from an undesirable one? We're always back to the fundamental problem.
Slashdot Mirror
"HD DVD has a dual-layer capacity of 30 GB and a single-layer capacity of 15 GB and double density rate layers."
"Blu-ray has more information capacity per layer (25 gigabytes instead of 15) but may initially be more expensive to produce."
Both from wikipedia. At least check your facts before trying to skew them. More realistic is, "who cares if a format has 60Gb rather than 50Gb?"
It's interesting to see people coming out against the little guy in this. After all, often the argument is bandied about that IP laws are overextended and misused, yet this IS the way IP legislation is supposed to be used (protecting the little fish from steamrollering by the big fish), and clearly even this use in exactly the manner it's intended is completely farcical.
So rather than this being a frivolous suit brought to bear (if it is ever brought to bear, see the point about how this suit might not even exist, above), it's actually a pretty legitimate suit with a good case to answer, at least in terms of the law as it stands today.
Whether those laws should indeed be in place or are in themselves absurd is a matter that I don't think should be heaped upon this one little firm.
Slashdot - Massive traffic, tons of content per page, but only a few ads
Tom's Hardware Guide - Wait... there was some content on that page? Let me check again...
Tom's approach to adding advertising is like Domino's approach to adding more cheese.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease. It's not uncommon to leave exploits unfixed if they're largely unknown of outside the dev team.
From there it's a sliding scale on how urgently it has to be fixed (Read: how many resources have to be diverted from other activities) depending on how big the hole is, how many proof of concepts are actually around, and how much noise the clients are making.
Blame management for this, it's an inevitable consequence of always keeping your eyes on the bottom line.
All this time I've been playing Quake over LAN and I thought my ping was about 5ms. Silly me, it's clearly in the range of 100ms, even worse than when I take it online!
Whoops...
Keeping content, presentation and logic seperate is fairly simple until you move into more complex data presentation where the page presentation itself relies upon the data.
For example, depending on the status of an item in your database you might need to print a form on the users screen if it's in one state, but if it's in another state you just want to print out a simple string to say so.
In cases like that you either have to embed a chunk of presentation and content into the code directly, or create some messy template snippets which in my experience aren't much more legible than just embedding it straight into the code. Both methods remove any chance of passing the design to a non-technical person, also.
So in summary, templating is a good idea, but it has limitations and is not the panacea of web design abstraction.
That's a bit unfair. The GPL license is a ray of light in an otherwise very dark legal minefield,IMO.
I think what you see as a problem with the GPL license is actually a sign of the times which the GPL couldn't avoid even if it wanted to. Heck, I think it's the very reason why the GPL exists today.
It's the case now not that this particular license is unduly restrictive, but that the state of copyright/licensing across the world is so farcicaly ubiquitous and overbearing that if you don't have a solid knowledge of all the copyright over the code you're working with, you get burned.
At least in this case it's unlikely the various parties who might enforce the GPL will come out with fangs bared. In that respect, it's good that they've fallen foul of the GPL rather than any other licence which might be enforced that much more aggressively.
Whatever, tech support is the IT equivalent of working in McDonalds. The only difference is how much knowledge you're expected to bring to the table. I'm sure there's some attainable goal of a satisfying tech support role, but it must be prohibitively costly and difficult to implement, since even Apple evidently functions just like all the rest when it comes to support workers.
The pay, conditions, level of respect you receive, and especially the customers, all comparable. Flipping burgers and switching backup tapes don't feel all that different, they're both soul destroying once you get past any initial novelty.
So it's hardly surprising that many leave the job in a pretty bitter state. What is surprising is how many of them think their situation is novel, and that it's worthy of sharing with the world.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2119rank.html
1% of USA population ~= 2,984,442
Regarding them lying - I think it's more likely that they're counting hits which don't equate 1:1 to a person.
Indeed, although I think it's more an issue of effort versus interest. If streamed game videos were enabled within the game... for example in WoW while you were waiting to play, you recieved a live feed from a currently active game, or archived feeds of classic events.
I think gamers want to watch footage of the games they play, they just don't want to do it at a point where they could be easily playing themselves, or go to a lot of effort to get it up and running.
This is where sites like own-age.com reach a limit. There are only so many individuals so inclined to actually seek out these videos. For the rest of us, we'll gladly watch it if it's pushed in front of our eyes.
BT protocol already favours the faster seeds and peers in a swarm. Since those closest to you on the network are likely to give you the highest speeds, indirectly it already does what you ask of it.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it a good thing that a politician would listen to the view of the people (opinions, polls) and adjust their position accordingly.
Much better than someone who pushes through an agenda irrespective of public opinion.
""Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
" Ta-Da! The finished project in action. It works prefectly."
Creator confirms there are minor typing problems with the unit.
No, I take your point.
What sense does it make to confiscate hardware in relation to a crime reported using the hardware? Were the drives taken out and used to smash some windows? Perhaps they are looking for glass fragments or greasy hippy fingerprints on the case.
If he's to be beleived and ad-blocking is hurting web revenue so much, the following will happen:
1. Companies who require financial returns for their web content will cease or reduce distribution of web content
2. Those who do not require revenue from their online publishing (read: avg. joe geek) will attract more attention with their material.
So, a partial return to the time when the Internet was primarily filled with private web pages written by people in their spare time, as opposed to advert laden corporate publishments.
I'm mortified!
Obviously, the issue isn't really about whether we want the console early and broken or late and working, it's about what the difference is between the eastern/NA markets and the European one that justifies a different release date in Europe.
A more mature platform with more games? Sure, but that still leaves the question of why you didn't extend this courtesy to the Eastern/NA markets, Sony?
But there must be some logic behind this move, it's just that noone seems to have any idea what it is. What do Sony have to gain by releasing the console later?
I played PlanetSide for about 6 months solid before giving up my subscription.
Great idea, and MMO FPS games are definitely an exciting direction to be going in. However notable flaws:
1. Pricing - full price for the game and then a full-price subscription fee? I paid it, but I didn't like it. On top of that, paying another full-price for the expansion to the game? No thanks. That's about the time I quit playing, when the Core Combat expansion was released.
2. There's no victory - You take bases, while losing bases elsewhere. Perpetually. Eventually, highly frustrating. Especially after putting a few months of effort into the game to discover this.
3. System requirements are ridiculous - you actually do need 1Gb of ram to get the game to run acceptably, and even then, you're still going to choke in big firefights
But put all that aside. Sony are playing the Social blackmail game because they hold the keys to some of the best online social dynamics available. Gaming alongside friends and making new ones as you go along is a tight experience. I'll probably subscribe again in future.
What if the Chinese Gov had requested that for every blog posted on MSN Spaces, Bill Gates had to kill a dog?
He should do it, right? After all, that's respecting the laws of a country you're operating in and that's what Microsoft believes should be done.
I don't see how it's any different. Both are proactive moves and both stand against most people's moral standards. I think Microsoft's management would see things far differently if the results were right there in front of them. They're actively aiding in suppressing human rights, as defined by their own country. For this reason, and because Microsoft is not a military or political power (give it a few years), the only morally acceptable action would be to stay out of the markey.
A benefit of Open-Source development is the manner in which it's developed. There seems to be more openness surrounding an open-source project, more open support channels (and indeed more 'average joe' users who can field technical questions). This can be another reason to prefer open-source, which you've not mentioned. Also, someone may be asking for open-source software from an idealistic perspective. In that convincing their establishment to adopt and open-source solution may lead to greater exposure for 'the cause' and perhaps develop a more positive view of such software.
Any binary file can be encoded as ascii text and transmitted across said system. What's more, the process is trivial.
So you can't make an anonymous system, then place restrictions on the kind of data it can transmit.
This is made even more apparent because Freenet is open-source, and so for any text-only implementation, a few hacks here and there and the code can transfer binaries again.
However, you could still argue that Freenet shouldn't put any features in place that make trading binaries easier (which it does). But images are binaries, and surely images in the modern world are a very powerful form of free speech. Being able to transmit images of atrocities and suchlike which would otherwise be censored.
Then, if you concede that images could be protected, what's to distinguish an important image from an undesirable one? We're always back to the fundamental problem.