As incompetent as the US government can be, I am still surprised they haven't dealt with this. Telemarketers have greatly weakened part of our national infrastructure. How many of us ignore the phone or dread answering it because it will be some rude foreigner calling on behalf of some scumbag international Corp with holdings in the US that outsourced their customer-harrassment program? If an American company is paying foreigners to use illegal autodialers (illegal in my state anyway) to tie up the phone lines of American citizens I'd think of it more as teletreasoning than telemarketing. It's good for cell phone companies though. I know a lot of people that dropped their land line for a cell phone primarily because of this.
I think the point is not if it was allowed by Blizzard. The question would be should Blizzard be allowed to deny it.
Tied in Blizzard's multiplaying software to the game to prevent competition... Blocked users who had purchased a product from using the product as they wished. Not an issue of copying, but an issue of personal use of a product.
Definitely sounds like Blizzard is the bad guy here.
I imagine comments like these were passed around to insult colonial Americans who were standing up to unfair rule by dumping tea in the harbor. "Hey you, stand up for something that matters. Who cares if a bunch of crybabies have to pay more for some tea."
It might seem silly to you, but downloading music isn't the war; it's only a small battle front. But if someone is willing to stand and fight for that small piece of dirt/liberty/freedom/civil rights/etc I think we owe more to them than snide remarks.
Whether you sit in the front or back of a bus, whether your tea costs $2.50 or $2.25, whether you are gouged on your CD prices all sound pretty trivial when you put it like that. But I think most of us appreciate that a fire sometimes just needs a spark to get burning.
Personally, I don't think a fight against multi-national corporations that have a history of bribery or attacks on the free-market of the USA is trivial. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's as American as apple pie to try handing these treasonous douche-bags a rope and give them the choice of hanging or getting the hell out of dodge.
That's wrong for this reason... Part of (or most of) what makes MS worth $$ is all it's stock. MS doesn't set stock prices, the market does. MS has a lot of clout and ability to convince the market of just what you said, that it can fight a long time. But sooner or later, the market is going to see that MS is bleeding. Fewer people will be willing to put their money on the wounded dog, even if it is a 5000 pound wolf. MS stock price drops and the company starts losing money, regardless of sales.
When the market sees MS as weakening, they see their competion as being worth more. It will be like money pouring out of Microsoft into the competitors hands, not from sales but from stock, or perceived market value. Eventually it could become critical for MS. Imagine if someone just went and laid $100,000 on a horse called Google over at the track. I bet you reconsider that $2 bet you put on MS. As more and more people rush to the betting table it could become a stampede. This is what happened during the dotcom burst; many tech insiders are saying MS is on the verge of this right now.
In short, MS might be able to fight of the biggest enemy forever, it might be able to squash almost all of the little guys. But MS can't take on everything that *might* be an opponent because it will get weak and tired and that is the beginning of the end when everyone starts smelling blood.
#1. It is Federal Law that students be proficient with technology before high school (by 8th grade). Schools must comply. #2. The paradigm of computers has changed. Rather than WWII ideas of giant computational devices, we now see that computers are also a tool that allows us to collect, organize, understand, and make new observations on information. These technology literacy elements of information literacy are absolutely essential for students to learn. We are in an age where as a culture we know so much, but as individuals we still are in our infancy of being able to really absorb all this information. #3. Good teaching is goal based. Putting kids in front of the computer while the teacher checks homework is not teaching at all. It's a horrible practice and any teacher doing it should be reprimanded. If the teacher isn't really trying to teach anything, if the teacher isn't assessing student's ongoing work, if the teacher isn't actively helping students toward the goal of the lesson, then the teacher is not doing any good at all (and probably harm instead).
CNet is journalism while Google is a research tool. They have different objectives, standards, and ethics, and it is a good thing that they do.
Journalists (and really the rest of us) need access to amounts of data to tie in connections, make non-obvious connections of their own, report on an entire story. But a journalist doesn't throw that information out there. They are bound by ethical standards, which, I think, CNet clearly violated.
Yeah, technically. Technology is a tool we use to get a job done and a bicycle definitely counts.
OTOH, using the time honored, "was it created before I was born" rule of thumb, a bicycle was only technology to my great grandparents (or older as I am too lazy to look up when bicycles were invented).
They'll be technology to me when you mount lasers on 'em.
That would be pretty cool actually because then when some car doesn't respect your rights on the road you could blow out their tire (or vaporize them depending on if you upgrade to the "EVIL GENIUS" laser).
People have commented about Open Source games, or the lack thereof, and what this would do to innovation in the gaming industry.
To that, I think the answer is commercial games that are developed with the concept of mods from the very beginning. We've all scene some funny mods show up to add a little this or a little that to game play.
But many of us are aware of some excellent mods that have kept an otherwise dead game alive-and-kicking for years.
A sequel is fine, especially to release enhanced interfaces and AI along with new content. But developers would do well to set themselves up for modding so that FOSS can develop some real creative innovation in their otherwise derivative games.
I believe this never really caught on because kids don't have a couple grand. Their parents are going to buy what sits on their desk at work, not what their kid uses to IM their friends with at school.
Timmy: Daddy, I want an Mac. Daddy: Single button mice? When I was a kid we didn't even have mice. We didn't even have lower case. You're getting a C-64 and you'll LOAD "*",8,1 and you'll like it.
If I understand what they are saying they are not necessarily making the point of gaining admin access; they are referring to ability to access files that are encrypted by the Windows file system. When they mention the encrypted disk, they are only referring to files locked by the Windows OS or file system, which are not locked at all if you boot with Knoppix.
The easy way to do this is to download Knoppix, Burn the iso, Insert the CD, Reboot. If Windows doesn't load as the operating system, there will be nothing preventing Knoppix's file system from viewing the entire contents of the hard drive, including the My Documents folder which may have been (marginally) protected with Windows file encryption.
"When will everyone admit this is a police state? When you are not allowed to quit your job? When you are told you must work and have no overtime. When you have no health insurance. When the courts take away your rights, that your grandparents had? WHEN? WHEN!!!"
Teachers are often stuck working unpaid overtime. In Michigan it is illegal for them to strike over it.
I disagree with you for exactly the argument you supplied, which was that people will use what is familiar to them. When Apple and IBM/MS-DOS fought it out Apple put the computers in schools and IBM put their machines in businesses. The kid went home and said I want an Apple and the dad went home and told the kid they were going to get the computer he used at work. The dad had the checkbook. Redhat and other linux enterprise offerings really do have a situation to take over some decent market share. Sooner or later, those OS's that are sitting on the servers are going to get put on workstations. Wait until we have linux on company workstations for 5 or 10 years. Then you will have a significant number of people once again saying that they want the computer at home to be just like the one at work. To get home users to adopt all that needs to happen is for company workstations to adopt. Of course, all that is assuming that in 10 years that people will still want personal computers versus network appliances.
It always cracks me up when I see this "first MMOG". I remember using Q-Link (AOL predecessor) when I was so young on my C-64. At one point they developed a game where you could walk around this island and collect stuff and chat using avatars. You could see other peoples avatars and they would walk around. It would be something of a conquest to run around and see who could find the most junk. They ended up ruining by having a bunch of mods that abused people for fun.
But that's just my own experience. Look at all the MUDs and such. I think the massive in MMOG is somewhat relative. There have been MMOG's for a long time in my opinion.
Eh? The answer is to attack people that have been hacked? Let's make sure we understand what is going on. A Russian Mob is paying to have American computer's hacked and infected. We've dropped some bombs in the middle east over less than this. I think a flock of bombers ought to make these guys reconsider.
You need to reply with how many people thought you were serious and actually emailed you their info.
On-Demand non-commerical TV would ruin networks
on
Television Reloaded
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think most of us reading Slashdot have the opinion that we'd rather pay $$ for good TV rather than watch crappy TV for the cost 20 minutes of every hour spent with lame commercials. With that point of view we wonder why networks don't start carrying quality TV and asking the viewers to pay for it. The problem with this is that most people are stupid. I didn't realize this until I was about 25 even though I knew most people around me were stupid. I thought the world was full of reasonable people and I didn't understand why I kept getting surrounded by morons. The networks make money from the people who will veg out in front of the TV for 4 hours a night watching horrible programming because they think they are getting it for free. The advertisers specifically want those people. They might not be right, but they are certainly gullible and easier to win over with a 30 second commercial. That being said, I still wish that we had more cable networks bringing up good television series that were worth paying for. I don't think it's necessarily the future, but I do believe it's the right thing.
If the issue is EU law that dictates that a monopoly cannot use it's advantage to gain another monopoly, don't you think that MS Office is going to be a factor?
MS uses its monopoly position to exact other monopolies. For example, Java, office apps, web browser, media player, DRM. Several of these new monopolies are then used to exact other monopolies (i.e. WMP on DRM).
I don't think it's innappropriate to say that MS has intentially tied programs that are not, or were not, considered part of an OS to the Windows OS in order to gain a monopoly in the different application markets. It would also then be appropriate for someone to tell them that it is not good enough that they filtered out the application and left their OS broken.
They intentially exploited a monopoly situation to gain other monopolies. Part of this was intentially leaving their operating system breakable by removing the applications so that they can insist the apps are tied. The apps are only tied because they chose to do so in order to exploit their monopoly position. It is reasonable, then, to demand that MS fix whatever they did to break their operating system on removing one of these tied, monopoly-exploiting, apps.
The average MMORPG gamer (addicted or not) spends 20-25 hours per week just playing MMORPGs, and an additional 10-15 hours per week in other Internet use. In other words, MMORPG players are spending 4x as much time online as non-gamers."
Wow! People wwith a hobby of online computer games spend more time online than people who have other hobbies. Now if only someone would do a study to find out if people with gardens spend more time outside than those with high definition TV's.
And remember, whether or not you fundamentally *agree* with the law is irrelevant. It's either illegal, or not. So what rights we, as citizens, believe we should have in order to maintain a free country is irrelevant? Thanks for clearing that up ya Corporate Commie. Personally, I'm pretty sure I don't want a court to force journalists to give up sources names just because a source may have gotten information illegally. I don't really care how this may affect a corps bottom line. I am more worried about setting a precedent where sources that have been able to uncover damaging information regarding our elected representatives or corporations endangering our welfare would be afraid to reveal information because it was obtained illegally. I'm also terribly concerned that our free press would be afraid to publish those details out of fear of law suits seeking to stem free speech. As others have said here, if it can be brought to bear for something as frivolous as the cost of a computer, you can be certain that companies hiding information vital to consumers would unjustly use this to the detriment of US citizens.
"Vontage is making a lot of bucks off bandwidth they are not paying for - and neither are you!" Ummmm, I absolutely am paying for my bandwidth. And when ISP's advertise 300kb/s they better be ready to back it up. I don't care if they say "up to...", if they don't say "but as low as..." or "as long as you are only surfing the web..." then they should be responsible for the speed they use to sell their product. I think ISPs have teh reasonable expectation that if they advertise "up to 300Kbps" that most consumers will be led to believe they will acheive that speed and not 20Kbps per user, 15 times slower than their marketed speed. I could beat that with a 33.6K dialup.
But, if he has a +1 reading ability with a 3d4 chance to solve a paragraph, and he has to roll against a Dr Seuss book with a 2d6 chance to solve, if he has to put a 10 handicap on his die roll, you can see that he is extremely unlikely to hit...I mean read..... the book. Even with a +3 Dwarven Belt of Phonics or a +4 Helm of Comprehension (usable by orcs only) he is still in bad shape. I think he had better be in a big high level group. Does he have any other skills, like bashing or archery?
Slashdot Mirror
As incompetent as the US government can be, I am still surprised they haven't dealt with this. Telemarketers have greatly weakened part of our national infrastructure. How many of us ignore the phone or dread answering it because it will be some rude foreigner calling on behalf of some scumbag international Corp with holdings in the US that outsourced their customer-harrassment program?
If an American company is paying foreigners to use illegal autodialers (illegal in my state anyway) to tie up the phone lines of American citizens I'd think of it more as teletreasoning than telemarketing.
It's good for cell phone companies though. I know a lot of people that dropped their land line for a cell phone primarily because of this.
I think the point is not if it was allowed by Blizzard. The question would be should Blizzard be allowed to deny it.
Tied in Blizzard's multiplaying software to the game to prevent competition...
Blocked users who had purchased a product from using the product as they wished. Not an issue of copying, but an issue of personal use of a product.
Definitely sounds like Blizzard is the bad guy here.
I imagine comments like these were passed around to insult colonial Americans who were standing up to unfair rule by dumping tea in the harbor. "Hey you, stand up for something that matters. Who cares if a bunch of crybabies have to pay more for some tea."
It might seem silly to you, but downloading music isn't the war; it's only a small battle front. But if someone is willing to stand and fight for that small piece of dirt/liberty/freedom/civil rights/etc I think we owe more to them than snide remarks.
Whether you sit in the front or back of a bus, whether your tea costs $2.50 or $2.25, whether you are gouged on your CD prices all sound pretty trivial when you put it like that. But I think most of us appreciate that a fire sometimes just needs a spark to get burning.
Personally, I don't think a fight against multi-national corporations that have a history of bribery or attacks on the free-market of the USA is trivial. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's as American as apple pie to try handing these treasonous douche-bags a rope and give them the choice of hanging or getting the hell out of dodge.
That's wrong for this reason...
Part of (or most of) what makes MS worth $$ is all it's stock. MS doesn't set stock prices, the market does. MS has a lot of clout and ability to convince the market of just what you said, that it can fight a long time. But sooner or later, the market is going to see that MS is bleeding. Fewer people will be willing to put their money on the wounded dog, even if it is a 5000 pound wolf. MS stock price drops and the company starts losing money, regardless of sales.
When the market sees MS as weakening, they see their competion as being worth more. It will be like money pouring out of Microsoft into the competitors hands, not from sales but from stock, or perceived market value. Eventually it could become critical for MS. Imagine if someone just went and laid $100,000 on a horse called Google over at the track. I bet you reconsider that $2 bet you put on MS. As more and more people rush to the betting table it could become a stampede. This is what happened during the dotcom burst; many tech insiders are saying MS is on the verge of this right now.
In short, MS might be able to fight of the biggest enemy forever, it might be able to squash almost all of the little guys. But MS can't take on everything that *might* be an opponent because it will get weak and tired and that is the beginning of the end when everyone starts smelling blood.
Beta...
BETA!
#1. It is Federal Law that students be proficient with technology before high school (by 8th grade). Schools must comply.
#2. The paradigm of computers has changed. Rather than WWII ideas of giant computational devices, we now see that computers are also a tool that allows us to collect, organize, understand, and make new observations on information. These technology literacy elements of information literacy are absolutely essential for students to learn. We are in an age where as a culture we know so much, but as individuals we still are in our infancy of being able to really absorb all this information.
#3. Good teaching is goal based. Putting kids in front of the computer while the teacher checks homework is not teaching at all. It's a horrible practice and any teacher doing it should be reprimanded. If the teacher isn't really trying to teach anything, if the teacher isn't assessing student's ongoing work, if the teacher isn't actively helping students toward the goal of the lesson, then the teacher is not doing any good at all (and probably harm instead).
But when was the first laser armed bicycle invented?
I'm gonna be so upset if someone already came up with that and I missed it.
Research is different than "reporting".
CNet is journalism while Google is a research tool. They have different objectives, standards, and ethics, and it is a good thing that they do.
Journalists (and really the rest of us) need access to amounts of data to tie in connections, make non-obvious connections of their own, report on an entire story. But a journalist doesn't throw that information out there. They are bound by ethical standards, which, I think, CNet clearly violated.
Yeah, technically. Technology is a tool we use to get a job done and a bicycle definitely counts.
OTOH, using the time honored, "was it created before I was born" rule of thumb, a bicycle was only technology to my great grandparents (or older as I am too lazy to look up when bicycles were invented).
They'll be technology to me when you mount lasers on 'em.
That would be pretty cool actually because then when some car doesn't respect your rights on the road you could blow out their tire (or vaporize them depending on if you upgrade to the "EVIL GENIUS" laser).
People have commented about Open Source games, or the lack thereof, and what this would do to innovation in the gaming industry.
To that, I think the answer is commercial games that are developed with the concept of mods from the very beginning. We've all scene some funny mods show up to add a little this or a little that to game play.
But many of us are aware of some excellent mods that have kept an otherwise dead game alive-and-kicking for years.
A sequel is fine, especially to release enhanced interfaces and AI along with new content. But developers would do well to set themselves up for modding so that FOSS can develop some real creative innovation in their otherwise derivative games.
I believe this never really caught on because kids don't have a couple grand. Their parents are going to buy what sits on their desk at work, not what their kid uses to IM their friends with at school.
,8,1 and you'll like it.
Timmy: Daddy, I want an Mac.
Daddy: Single button mice? When I was a kid we didn't even have mice. We didn't even have lower case. You're getting a C-64 and you'll LOAD "*"
My mistake. That's what I get for drinking and posting. Friends don't let friends post drunk.
Or the ever popular, especially in Mexico, Windows NoVa!
I think that's what they should have titled Windows Millenium.
If I understand what they are saying they are not necessarily making the point of gaining admin access; they are referring to ability to access files that are encrypted by the Windows file system. When they mention the encrypted disk, they are only referring to files locked by the Windows OS or file system, which are not locked at all if you boot with Knoppix.
The easy way to do this is to download Knoppix, Burn the iso, Insert the CD, Reboot. If Windows doesn't load as the operating system, there will be nothing preventing Knoppix's file system from viewing the entire contents of the hard drive, including the My Documents folder which may have been (marginally) protected with Windows file encryption.
"When will everyone admit this is a police state? When you are not allowed to quit your job? When you are told you must work and have no overtime. When you have no health insurance. When the courts take away your rights, that your grandparents had? WHEN? WHEN!!!"
Teachers are often stuck working unpaid overtime. In Michigan it is illegal for them to strike over it.
I disagree with you for exactly the argument you supplied, which was that people will use what is familiar to them. When Apple and IBM/MS-DOS fought it out Apple put the computers in schools and IBM put their machines in businesses. The kid went home and said I want an Apple and the dad went home and told the kid they were going to get the computer he used at work. The dad had the checkbook.
Redhat and other linux enterprise offerings really do have a situation to take over some decent market share. Sooner or later, those OS's that are sitting on the servers are going to get put on workstations. Wait until we have linux on company workstations for 5 or 10 years. Then you will have a significant number of people once again saying that they want the computer at home to be just like the one at work. To get home users to adopt all that needs to happen is for company workstations to adopt.
Of course, all that is assuming that in 10 years that people will still want personal computers versus network appliances.
It always cracks me up when I see this "first MMOG". I remember using Q-Link (AOL predecessor) when I was so young on my C-64. At one point they developed a game where you could walk around this island and collect stuff and chat using avatars. You could see other peoples avatars and they would walk around. It would be something of a conquest to run around and see who could find the most junk. They ended up ruining by having a bunch of mods that abused people for fun.
But that's just my own experience. Look at all the MUDs and such. I think the massive in MMOG is somewhat relative. There have been MMOG's for a long time in my opinion.
Eh? The answer is to attack people that have been hacked? Let's make sure we understand what is going on. A Russian Mob is paying to have American computer's hacked and infected. We've dropped some bombs in the middle east over less than this. I think a flock of bombers ought to make these guys reconsider.
You need to reply with how many people thought you were serious and actually emailed you their info.
I think most of us reading Slashdot have the opinion that we'd rather pay $$ for good TV rather than watch crappy TV for the cost 20 minutes of every hour spent with lame commercials.
With that point of view we wonder why networks don't start carrying quality TV and asking the viewers to pay for it.
The problem with this is that most people are stupid. I didn't realize this until I was about 25 even though I knew most people around me were stupid. I thought the world was full of reasonable people and I didn't understand why I kept getting surrounded by morons. The networks make money from the people who will veg out in front of the TV for 4 hours a night watching horrible programming because they think they are getting it for free. The advertisers specifically want those people. They might not be right, but they are certainly gullible and easier to win over with a 30 second commercial.
That being said, I still wish that we had more cable networks bringing up good television series that were worth paying for. I don't think it's necessarily the future, but I do believe it's the right thing.
If the issue is EU law that dictates that a monopoly cannot use it's advantage to gain another monopoly, don't you think that MS Office is going to be a factor?
MS uses its monopoly position to exact other monopolies. For example, Java, office apps, web browser, media player, DRM. Several of these new monopolies are then used to exact other monopolies (i.e. WMP on DRM).
I don't think it's innappropriate to say that MS has intentially tied programs that are not, or were not, considered part of an OS to the Windows OS in order to gain a monopoly in the different application markets. It would also then be appropriate for someone to tell them that it is not good enough that they filtered out the application and left their OS broken.
They intentially exploited a monopoly situation to gain other monopolies. Part of this was intentially leaving their operating system breakable by removing the applications so that they can insist the apps are tied. The apps are only tied because they chose to do so in order to exploit their monopoly position. It is reasonable, then, to demand that MS fix whatever they did to break their operating system on removing one of these tied, monopoly-exploiting, apps.
The average MMORPG gamer (addicted or not) spends 20-25 hours per week just playing MMORPGs, and an additional 10-15 hours per week in other Internet use. In other words, MMORPG players are spending 4x as much time online as non-gamers."
Wow! People wwith a hobby of online computer games spend more time online than people who have other hobbies. Now if only someone would do a study to find out if people with gardens spend more time outside than those with high definition TV's.
And remember, whether or not you fundamentally *agree* with the law is irrelevant. It's either illegal, or not.
So what rights we, as citizens, believe we should have in order to maintain a free country is irrelevant? Thanks for clearing that up ya Corporate Commie.
Personally, I'm pretty sure I don't want a court to force journalists to give up sources names just because a source may have gotten information illegally. I don't really care how this may affect a corps bottom line. I am more worried about setting a precedent where sources that have been able to uncover damaging information regarding our elected representatives or corporations endangering our welfare would be afraid to reveal information because it was obtained illegally. I'm also terribly concerned that our free press would be afraid to publish those details out of fear of law suits seeking to stem free speech.
As others have said here, if it can be brought to bear for something as frivolous as the cost of a computer, you can be certain that companies hiding information vital to consumers would unjustly use this to the detriment of US citizens.
"Vontage is making a lot of bucks off bandwidth they are not paying for - and neither are you!"
Ummmm, I absolutely am paying for my bandwidth. And when ISP's advertise 300kb/s they better be ready to back it up. I don't care if they say "up to...", if they don't say "but as low as..." or "as long as you are only surfing the web..." then they should be responsible for the speed they use to sell their product. I think ISPs have teh reasonable expectation that if they advertise "up to 300Kbps" that most consumers will be led to believe they will acheive that speed and not 20Kbps per user, 15 times slower than their marketed speed. I could beat that with a 33.6K dialup.
But, if he has a +1 reading ability with a 3d4 chance to solve a paragraph, and he has to roll against a Dr Seuss book with a 2d6 chance to solve, if he has to put a 10 handicap on his die roll, you can see that he is extremely unlikely to hit...I mean read..... the book.
Even with a +3 Dwarven Belt of Phonics or a +4 Helm of Comprehension (usable by orcs only) he is still in bad shape.
I think he had better be in a big high level group. Does he have any other skills, like bashing or archery?