On the topic of secure erasing (I doubt that the MPAA disassembled his drive for the ultimate in recovery efforts, but one can never be sure), what is the best, preferable free, product for erasing PC drives. MPAA is not my concern here, but I'm thinking from an overall security standpoint when donating computers to charity.
How are the telcos a monopoly? I have a cable modem, my friend across the country has one. A little free VoIP software and we've forgotten about the telco.
And when you cable company (don't think this traffic shaping is only for DSL carriers) starts degrading all VoIP services except for the one they're selling for twice the price you're paying otherwise and your calls even across town get all choppy well then...
...you won't be making posts like this last one to Slashdot anymore.
Write them a physical letter if you can bear to touch it - those go farther...even if you're talking 'bout the internet.
Actually physical letters don't carry the weight they did even a few years ago. After the anthrax scares many avoid them now like the Plague. While I can't say what is most effective now: faxes, e-mail, telephone calls, personal visits, visits to their local offices, I do know that the gold standard that each actual letter represents this many other people who never quite got their own letters written is not what it once was.
I just can't understand why Congress has any say in what companies do with their own property.
Allow me to elucidate.
It's because they are a Monopoly. It's because you, the customer, doesn't have any other reasonable choice if you don't want to go with them. It's because in return for being allowed to be a monopoly that they have to play by different rules than the open market. You take your choice of monopoly or open market, but once you make it quit yer complaining about the rules you initially agreed to follow!
This has to be stopped before it's allowed to ever get started. I hope everyone who is a customer of these firms immediately and loudly complains. If not, you'll find yourself owned by your monopoly carrier when it's you who are paying the bills to start with!
Your example is flawed. To have a EULA saying you can't commit a crime...So you would have to prosecute someone, then turn around and slap breaking the EULA on them... Don't think so buddy.
I think you're the one who has it wrong. This has nothing to do with proscution, but rather the liability. Microsoft can't actually stop you from disassembling you XBox down to its 1700 components, and then rebuilding it completely upside down if you wish. And if you mod your XBox in your home, they can't come in and take it away from you while slapping your hands in the process.
However if they can remotely detect the modification they can keep you out of XBox Live and you can't sue them for it. And they can go after you if you try to sell modded XBoxes on eBay (which they shouldn't be able to do either, but expect it to happen). And you can't claim illegal interfearence in your personal dealings because of their EULA.
It's the same way Apple couldn't prevent people from cracking open the first sealed Macs. But they would refuse to service them afterwards, and refuse to sell parts to others who might service them. Legal? You decide.
It may just be me, but once you Buy something you ought to be able to do with it as you wish. Restrictions on use after the first sale are often not legal (if they were, all the gun companies would all have EULA's stating you are not allowed to commit a crime with their product), and any attempts to enforce any such behavior should immediately be thrown out of court.
Birds of a feather, or in this case movie studios in this chummy chummy business, flock together. Since Sony is one of theirs, well you get the picture [pun alert].
In short, this is hardly surprising. Especially considering how many households will quickly enough have one player in the kid's must-have PS3. Might have been different if XBox 360 was shipping with HD-DVD, but that's clearly not the case.
Just who owns a text message anyway? It's my contention that once it arrives on my telephone that it's mine. I predict this will not prove to be a popular feature.
Movies are different than books. Always have been -- always will be.
First of all, good movies are Show, not tell. Easy to say. Often hard to realize onto the screen. This is why everybody isn't a screenwriter or director.
Secondly, movies are single-threaded, books often aren't. A movie finds the main story and presents it from beginning to end. It can't be telling five different tales in parallel that will eventually intertwine into a Gorgon's knot at the end. You'll lose the audience, and don't have enough time to fully present more than one tale well anyway.
Lastly, people who loved the book will always find at least one of their favorite scenes or characters left out of the movie. Count on it. There's just not enough time. The screenwriter may have written it in, and the director shot it, but the editor left it on the cutting room floor when the movie ran 15 minutes over budget and they had to make some hard choices.
Don't believe me? Go try making your own movie sometime from a book you loved.
Looks like you got bitten by the same Slashdot bug that got me a day ago. You thought you were posting to the new top article on Slashdot, and by the time you hit Submit you found out that you've posted to the even newer top article on Slashdot.
THERE'S A BUG HERE FOLKS IN SLASHDOT'S POSTING CODE!
I got it! After reading all the comments above this one, I've got. Of course you can't understand it. If you could understand Web 2.0 it wouldn't be new enough, cutting edge enough, object oriented enough. Nothing that's really good can actually be understood by the common man, woman, or Slashdot reader. If we understood it we wouldn't need people like the author to explain it to us. Then he'd be out of a job. But because he is so much smarter than we are we need him. We need him to distill Web 2.0 down to 5 easy points. Of course we can't admit that we don't understand even the simplified explination because then we'd be admitting our own ignorance, and nobody can ever do that. No one can admit that this Emperor has no clothes because so much effort has already been into Web 2.0 that it simply, absolutely, positively must matter. We are at fault for not seeing this aeady. WE'RE NOT WORTHY! We must lionize the author because we do not understand him. This has shown his intellectual powress that is so far above our own weak feeble minds that we stand in awe of his shadow. Salute him on high now for understanding what we don't, and applaud him for trying his best to simplify it enough for us to grasp at the limp straws from this towering haystack of knowledge and wisdom.
And it was at this very moment of RTFA that I realized I cannot take this author seriously for even another instant. Anyone who has only five points to make his case, and proceeds to express them in such empty vacuous feel-warm-and-fuzzy terms such as this has lost me entirely. He has convinced me there's no beef in this burger, and that Web 2.0 is a bunch of intellectual ideas that will never leave the university campus for any serious home in the real world in its present form.
It seems to me that this is stating the obvious: the over-sexualized female avatars in games are there to attract male players, not women. If game makers want to draw in a female audience, they need to have characters that women want to play - and that means strong, complex, and capable... not falling out of her clothes.
So have both. Any smart company should be able to figure that out. A whole market waiting to be tapped -- unless it's already been tried and just isn't there.
I think the kind of over-sexualized images you see in games has a negative effect on society's attitudes towards women,
I call Cop-Out! I'm willing to bet that if every "inappropriate" image vanished out of every game tomorrow, you'd be hard put to find the change in society the day after.
Since it's not polite to not offer a solution of my own, I will. Society will change and women will be treated differently when they demand such treatment and accept nothing less! Blaming video games is a cop-out to avoid standing up for one's self. And here all along I've thought that women were so much more organized and cooperative together than men will ever be.
...most women gamers are "confident enough not to feel threatened" by sexist imagery, merely finding it annoying and disappointing.'"
I find that thought annoying and disappointing. "Sexist imagery" can be enjoyed simply for what it is, or ignored. It will be a very gray world if everything that offends somebody is removed -- regardless of how many other people enjoy it.
It's almost like thought control. How dare you like that. I'm offended. Nobody can have it because I will complain.
Of course, video games are like thought control too. Play this game now! Give us more of your money!
Step 1: podcast such high-quality content that any hijack attempt substituting lesser quality material will immediately be obvious and detected.
Step 2: podcast in a distinctive Howard Cosell voice that cannot be duplicated. This with authenticate your podcasts such that any hijacking will immediately be obvious and detected.
Slashdot Mirror
It's Beta vs. VHS all over again.
Or HD-DVD vs. BluRay for those of you with short memories.
On the topic of secure erasing (I doubt that the MPAA disassembled his drive for the ultimate in recovery efforts, but one can never be sure), what is the best, preferable free, product for erasing PC drives. MPAA is not my concern here, but I'm thinking from an overall security standpoint when donating computers to charity.
And when you cable company (don't think this traffic shaping is only for DSL carriers) starts degrading all VoIP services except for the one they're selling for twice the price you're paying otherwise and your calls even across town get all choppy well then...
Well:
1: They can charge more for the premium service.
2: They can continue to degrade the basic serivce to force you to upgrade to the premium service and pay more.
Is this how you want to be treated by your telephone company?
Actually physical letters don't carry the weight they did even a few years ago. After the anthrax scares many avoid them now like the Plague. While I can't say what is most effective now: faxes, e-mail, telephone calls, personal visits, visits to their local offices, I do know that the gold standard that each actual letter represents this many other people who never quite got their own letters written is not what it once was.
Allow me to elucidate.
It's because they are a Monopoly. It's because you, the customer, doesn't have any other reasonable choice if you don't want to go with them. It's because in return for being allowed to be a monopoly that they have to play by different rules than the open market. You take your choice of monopoly or open market, but once you make it quit yer complaining about the rules you initially agreed to follow!
Clear now?
This has to be stopped before it's allowed to ever get started. I hope everyone who is a customer of these firms immediately and loudly complains. If not, you'll find yourself owned by your monopoly carrier when it's you who are paying the bills to start with!
Okay, the people who screwed up my PC with their Rootkit, verses the people who made it so easy to screw up in the first place. Tough choice.
I think you're the one who has it wrong. This has nothing to do with proscution, but rather the liability. Microsoft can't actually stop you from disassembling you XBox down to its 1700 components, and then rebuilding it completely upside down if you wish. And if you mod your XBox in your home, they can't come in and take it away from you while slapping your hands in the process.
However if they can remotely detect the modification they can keep you out of XBox Live and you can't sue them for it. And they can go after you if you try to sell modded XBoxes on eBay (which they shouldn't be able to do either, but expect it to happen). And you can't claim illegal interfearence in your personal dealings because of their EULA.
It's the same way Apple couldn't prevent people from cracking open the first sealed Macs. But they would refuse to service them afterwards, and refuse to sell parts to others who might service them. Legal? You decide.
It may just be me, but once you Buy something you ought to be able to do with it as you wish. Restrictions on use after the first sale are often not legal (if they were, all the gun companies would all have EULA's stating you are not allowed to commit a crime with their product), and any attempts to enforce any such behavior should immediately be thrown out of court.
Birds of a feather, or in this case movie studios in this chummy chummy business, flock together. Since Sony is one of theirs, well you get the picture [pun alert].
In short, this is hardly surprising. Especially considering how many households will quickly enough have one player in the kid's must-have PS3. Might have been different if XBox 360 was shipping with HD-DVD, but that's clearly not the case.
A year ago this article would have been fascinating. Now it hardly seems to contribute anything new -- unless you've been sleeping for a year.
Just who owns a text message anyway? It's my contention that once it arrives on my telephone that it's mine. I predict this will not prove to be a popular feature.
First of all, good movies are Show, not tell. Easy to say. Often hard to realize onto the screen. This is why everybody isn't a screenwriter or director.
Secondly, movies are single-threaded, books often aren't. A movie finds the main story and presents it from beginning to end. It can't be telling five different tales in parallel that will eventually intertwine into a Gorgon's knot at the end. You'll lose the audience, and don't have enough time to fully present more than one tale well anyway.
Lastly, people who loved the book will always find at least one of their favorite scenes or characters left out of the movie. Count on it. There's just not enough time. The screenwriter may have written it in, and the director shot it, but the editor left it on the cutting room floor when the movie ran 15 minutes over budget and they had to make some hard choices.
Don't believe me? Go try making your own movie sometime from a book you loved.
So if you're designing a CD DRM system based on active protection, you face two main technical problems:
1. You have to get your software installed, even though the user doesn't want it.
2. Once your software is installed, you have to keep it from being uninstalled, even though the user wants it gone.
These are the same two technical problems that spyware designers face.
You can read the rest of his fascinating article here.
Yes, and in other news Bill Gates regrets his billions of dollars. More at eleven.
(P.S. The same thing applies with printers.)
Looks like you got bitten by the same Slashdot bug that got me a day ago. You thought you were posting to the new top article on Slashdot, and by the time you hit Submit you found out that you've posted to the even newer top article on Slashdot.
THERE'S A BUG HERE FOLKS IN SLASHDOT'S POSTING CODE!
I must go now. I can take no more.
Doesn't SCO preceed SEO? It seems part of any BS (opps, another buzzword) list.
Have you tried Babelfish?
And it was at this very moment of RTFA that I realized I cannot take this author seriously for even another instant. Anyone who has only five points to make his case, and proceeds to express them in such empty vacuous feel-warm-and-fuzzy terms such as this has lost me entirely. He has convinced me there's no beef in this burger, and that Web 2.0 is a bunch of intellectual ideas that will never leave the university campus for any serious home in the real world in its present form.
So have both. Any smart company should be able to figure that out. A whole market waiting to be tapped -- unless it's already been tried and just isn't there.
I think the kind of over-sexualized images you see in games has a negative effect on society's attitudes towards women,
I call Cop-Out! I'm willing to bet that if every "inappropriate" image vanished out of every game tomorrow, you'd be hard put to find the change in society the day after.
Since it's not polite to not offer a solution of my own, I will. Society will change and women will be treated differently when they demand such treatment and accept nothing less! Blaming video games is a cop-out to avoid standing up for one's self. And here all along I've thought that women were so much more organized and cooperative together than men will ever be.
I find that thought annoying and disappointing. "Sexist imagery" can be enjoyed simply for what it is, or ignored. It will be a very gray world if everything that offends somebody is removed -- regardless of how many other people enjoy it.
It's almost like thought control. How dare you like that. I'm offended. Nobody can have it because I will complain.
Of course, video games are like thought control too. Play this game now! Give us more of your money!
Step 2: podcast in a distinctive Howard Cosell voice that cannot be duplicated. This with authenticate your podcasts such that any hijacking will immediately be obvious and detected.
Step 3: there is no Step 3.