writing an O/S isn't exactly a simple task. writing an O/s with backwards compatibility for 5 or 6 other versions that go back over many generations of hardware, and supporting plug and play and doing all this when your system is the #1 target for malicious code writers has to be pure hell. I'm amazed that windows is as stable as it is, i can't remember the last time I saw a BSOD or similar.
Its easy to criticise microsoft. unless you have developed a similar scale O/S with similar features, you are really in no position to judge. Its like me sitting in my chair at home moaning that NASA are idiots because their shuttles keep breaking. I haven't designed many reusable space vehicles, so I really have no perspective on the challenges involved.
If microsoft are a bunch of losers, I want to lose too, that way I can retire and buy my own island. You think their priority should be a new version of paint? I'm GLAD they aren't cluttering up the O/S with even more features. the idea of a stripped down low footprint O/S which lets you pick your own apps for stuff such as image processing is way better than a huge monolithic mess. They already have too much in the way of such crap as it is.
The article is obsessed with the playstation. 2D games are aplenty on the PC. And people are still happily and deliberately making more of them. 3D is not automatically more fun.
(again) so the fact that I'm bob.smith@software.corp goes where? or does the poor bastard webmaster have to guess what email is for who? and the customer has to guess what email format we use?
and what goes on the business card, the press release and other similar locations? or you think you can run a business that has no email address and ignores emails sent blindly to sales@ info@ and webmaster@ not to mention support@ ?
Re:I've seen the trickle down effects of piracy
on
RIAA Sues Usenet.com
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· Score: 1
excellent post, its great to know there are some slashdot readers who appreciate that piracy really does hurt a lot of legitimate businesses. far too many people think they can hide behind some "teh riaa are teh mafiaaa" bullshit to justify taking everything they can get their hands on, guilt-free.
your theoretical right to download a copyrighted britney spears album is equivalent to Auschwitz how exactly? its bullshit analogies like yours that make a complete laughing stock out of anyone who would suggest there is credibility to a debate over copyright reform.
You should stand as a witness for the defense in every single RIAA court case. you would be more effective than 100 RIAA lawyers at making their case for them.
have you seen a DMCA takedown? you provide you name, address, phone number, and have to sign it, mail or fax it, no anon email notices here, plus you have to state on penalty of perjury that the information provided is accurate, including the means to contact you. basically, only a real dumb fuck would file a DMCA takedown that wasn't legit. if the takedown is opposed, its trivial to phone the person who issued it, and ultimately, an open and shut case to sue their ass for big bucks. Good luck pretending superman 3 is yours, I think the fine is around $200k for being wrong.
She doesn't have to use the services the church provides. she could download non-RIAA free music, or make her own. Naturally, she couldn't be fucked to do that, she'd rather take the church's stuff. Your analogy is laughable. nobody forced her to do anything, except obey the law. Music is not food or shelter, nobody is born with a right to take other peoples work for free. especially for luxury goods like movies and music.
She was guilty, clearly, obviously and transparently. she got caught. WTF is going through her head? if she had common sense she would have taken the very low settlement fine that was originally requested. she made it worse by trying to insult a judge and jury by claiming she didn't do it, now she is trying to push it yet again. I am no friend of the RIAA, but this woman is mental and I have no sympathy for her tying up court time whining about getting caught taking stuff that she had not paid for. Anyone who wants a good test case against the RIAA will have to accept this is not it, she is guilty as hell.
because I have first hand experience working for companies where one or two users blow up the tiniest problem into a huge mega scandal and disaster, posting numerous times on different forums, even setting up multiple accounts under the same IP so they can make it seem that a problem is much bigger than it is. I'm surprised the number is actually that high. Like i said securrom is on my PC and works just fine, as it does for the overwhelming majority.
I've still yet to find a single game I own with any vista issues whatsoever. Performance of games also seems fine to me. if you don't like UAC, turn it off, its optional. leaving it turned on, yet complaining bout it seems mad. Vista is way way better than XP. Its main problem is that so many people have decided not to like it without trying it, mainly due to a lot of anti-DRM FUD thrown around on certain websites.
12 people calling tech support is trivial for a game like the sims 2 which shifts millions of copies. PC's are notoriously difficult to provide tech support for, and its highly likely that some of those 12 are people with dubious cracked copies trying to get tech support (happens a lot) and some others have b0rked their own PC in some way, or not updated any drivers for years (probably full of spyware too). I strongly suspect the poster earlier is right, and that a very very small number of people are posting 40+ times each about how 'teh evil EA are teh satan'. People who cant get a game to work complain vastly out of proportion to the numbers actually affected. I have securom on my machine, thanks to bioshock. I'm a software dev and install and uninstall tons of software on my machine. Works fine, as it will for 99.9% (at least) of PC users. I wouldn't think twice about buying a securom game, or one that phones home (like company of heroes).
I do business with people all over the world, but i discovered something called email, and telephones which enable me to do it without leaving my country of residence. hopefully this stuff will catch on.
"No, the IPCC is composed of politicians, and politicized scientists, a large portion of whom resigned in disgust over the work that was being done there."
You must be referring to Chris Landsea who did indeed resign, in january 2005. that's one guy out of how many?...
"People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over the previous 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 850 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors" (wikipedia)
so we are talking 1 in 850. In what space-time continuum does this represent a 'large portion'?
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Joint science academies' U.S. National Research Council, American Meteorological Society American Geophysical Union American Institute of Physics American Astronomical Society Federal Climate Change Science Program (commissioned by bush) etc etc. need I go on? Its farcical to suggest that only 13% of climate scientists support the IPCC conclusions. get real.
what would you have us do between now and having totally provable, final evidence? Lets assume that the kind of hard evidence you need is fifty years away. Lets say that if the majority of climate scientists are right, we will be in DEEP crap by then, and it will be too late to do anything about it. This is a case of risk management. Given we are 90% sure (at least) of the cause, and what we need to do, is it not worth taking action NOW, because then we are 90% sure that we are doing the right thing, rather than betting the whole horse (or in fact, the species) on the 10% being the best choice, and doing nothing. Cutting carbon emissions now will not wipe out billions of people. failing to do so *could* have that effect, with a high probability. Forget all the arguments about if its a theory, or a fact or consensus, or debate. There isn't time to go through that right now. When 9 doctors say you have cancer and 1 disagrees, do you sign up for chemotherapy or demand an eleventh opinion?
You may think my opinion is worthless, fine, I know fuck all about climate modelling. a LOT of people who know more than me OR you, say 'X'. Some people, including many with oil-company funding say "maybe not X". I tend to thus believe X.
about time. energy prices aren't going down any time soon, and if this means a spread to accurate energy consumption cost reporting for all computer equipment, that can only be good news.
"By now, anyone who claims that there is a scientific concensus on man-caused global warming is either a "kool-aid drinker" or being highly disingenuous."
or perhaps they are a member of the intergovernmental panel on climate change,. made up of scientific experts from every country on Earth who have agreed that man is the factor. Its true, the fact that we are causing climate change is such an 'inconvenient' truth, that people will get VERY annoyed and arrogant in attempts to deny what is really going on. Some will even rant on slashdot that the worlds climate experts have a 'poor understanding of the underlying science'. No offence, but who the fuck are you that your scientific understanding trumps every respected climate expert alive?
so you think that everyone who believes that there is man made climate change also believes we all need to live in mud huts? methinks you have been watching too much fox news. Its perfectly possible to live a modern lifestyle and not destroy the environment. It means you might not have air conditioning, but actually open a window, might not wear a t shirt in winter with the heat blasting full on, and means you might need to get used to the sight of the odd wind turbine and solar panel, but your assumption that green == mud huts is just farcical, and certainly not 'insightful'.
I love the way that, especially in the US, if people suggest even marginal regulatory improvements to the minimum fuel standards of vehicles (as happens every year in the US, and is hugely lobbied against), they get called "eco nazis who want to live in mud huts". Here in Europe, we have much more fuel efficient cars, yet amazingly do not live in mud huts.
So instead of just hurling that out there, maybe you would like to explain why they do not deserve it? feel free to show us how the scientists on the IPCC are all wrong, and you have better information, and more experience on these issues. What exactly is wrong with this decision? apart from the fact that you may not like al gore?
so what? I'm a huge purchaser of wine. doesn't mean I get let off the hook if I swipe a bottle from my local store. the amount of music she may or may not buy is TOTALLY irrelevant to the case.
Slashdot Mirror
or an employee at adobe. there are people other than fat cat execs who make money from developing software.
writing an O/S isn't exactly a simple task. writing an O/s with backwards compatibility for 5 or 6 other versions that go back over many generations of hardware, and supporting plug and play and doing all this when your system is the #1 target for malicious code writers has to be pure hell.
I'm amazed that windows is as stable as it is, i can't remember the last time I saw a BSOD or similar.
Its easy to criticise microsoft. unless you have developed a similar scale O/S with similar features, you are really in no position to judge. Its like me sitting in my chair at home moaning that NASA are idiots because their shuttles keep breaking. I haven't designed many reusable space vehicles, so I really have no perspective on the challenges involved.
If microsoft are a bunch of losers, I want to lose too, that way I can retire and buy my own island.
You think their priority should be a new version of paint?
I'm GLAD they aren't cluttering up the O/S with even more features. the idea of a stripped down low footprint O/S which lets you pick your own apps for stuff such as image processing is way better than a huge monolithic mess. They already have too much in the way of such crap as it is.
There are tons on the PC, I know this because I make lots of them. like these (all original)
www.rocklegendgame.com
www.democracygame.com
www.kudosgame.com
www.starshiptycoon.com
The article is obsessed with the playstation. 2D games are aplenty on the PC. And people are still happily and deliberately making more of them. 3D is not automatically more fun.
(again)
so the fact that I'm bob.smith@software.corp goes where? or does the poor bastard webmaster have to guess what email is for who? and the customer has to guess what email format we use?
"Life is dangerous"
it is when assholes like you have fuck all respect for safe driving speeds.
If you want to 'test your boundaries' fuck off to a race track, don't do it on a public road.
and what goes on the business card, the press release and other similar locations? or you think you can run a business that has no email address and ignores emails sent blindly to sales@ info@ and webmaster@ not to mention support@ ?
excellent post, its great to know there are some slashdot readers who appreciate that piracy really does hurt a lot of legitimate businesses. far too many people think they can hide behind some "teh riaa are teh mafiaaa" bullshit to justify taking everything they can get their hands on, guilt-free.
your theoretical right to download a copyrighted britney spears album is equivalent to Auschwitz how exactly?
its bullshit analogies like yours that make a complete laughing stock out of anyone who would suggest there is credibility to a debate over copyright reform.
You should stand as a witness for the defense in every single RIAA court case. you would be more effective than 100 RIAA lawyers at making their case for them.
have you seen a DMCA takedown? you provide you name, address, phone number, and have to sign it, mail or fax it, no anon email notices here, plus you have to state on penalty of perjury that the information provided is accurate, including the means to contact you. basically, only a real dumb fuck would file a DMCA takedown that wasn't legit. if the takedown is opposed, its trivial to phone the person who issued it, and ultimately, an open and shut case to sue their ass for big bucks.
Good luck pretending superman 3 is yours, I think the fine is around $200k for being wrong.
She doesn't have to use the services the church provides. she could download non-RIAA free music, or make her own. Naturally, she couldn't be fucked to do that, she'd rather take the church's stuff.
Your analogy is laughable. nobody forced her to do anything, except obey the law.
Music is not food or shelter, nobody is born with a right to take other peoples work for free. especially for luxury goods like movies and music.
She was guilty, clearly, obviously and transparently. she got caught. WTF is going through her head? if she had common sense she would have taken the very low settlement fine that was originally requested. she made it worse by trying to insult a judge and jury by claiming she didn't do it, now she is trying to push it yet again.
I am no friend of the RIAA, but this woman is mental and I have no sympathy for her tying up court time whining about getting caught taking stuff that she had not paid for. Anyone who wants a good test case against the RIAA will have to accept this is not it, she is guilty as hell.
because I have first hand experience working for companies where one or two users blow up the tiniest problem into a huge mega scandal and disaster, posting numerous times on different forums, even setting up multiple accounts under the same IP so they can make it seem that a problem is much bigger than it is.
I'm surprised the number is actually that high.
Like i said securrom is on my PC and works just fine, as it does for the overwhelming majority.
I've still yet to find a single game I own with any vista issues whatsoever. Performance of games also seems fine to me. if you don't like UAC, turn it off, its optional. leaving it turned on, yet complaining bout it seems mad.
Vista is way way better than XP. Its main problem is that so many people have decided not to like it without trying it, mainly due to a lot of anti-DRM FUD thrown around on certain websites.
12 people calling tech support is trivial for a game like the sims 2 which shifts millions of copies. PC's are notoriously difficult to provide tech support for, and its highly likely that some of those 12 are people with dubious cracked copies trying to get tech support (happens a lot) and some others have b0rked their own PC in some way, or not updated any drivers for years (probably full of spyware too).
I strongly suspect the poster earlier is right, and that a very very small number of people are posting 40+ times each about how 'teh evil EA are teh satan'. People who cant get a game to work complain vastly out of proportion to the numbers actually affected. I have securom on my machine, thanks to bioshock. I'm a software dev and install and uninstall tons of software on my machine. Works fine, as it will for 99.9% (at least) of PC users. I wouldn't think twice about buying a securom game, or one that phones home (like company of heroes).
I do business with people all over the world, but i discovered something called email, and telephones which enable me to do it without leaving my country of residence. hopefully this stuff will catch on.
"No, the IPCC is composed of politicians, and politicized scientists, a large portion of whom resigned in disgust over the work that was being done there."
...
You must be referring to Chris Landsea who did indeed resign, in january 2005.
that's one guy out of how many?
"People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over the previous 6 years. These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 850 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors" (wikipedia)
so we are talking 1 in 850. In what space-time continuum does this represent a 'large portion'?
errrr what???????
source for this please. you are up against:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Joint science academies'
U.S. National Research Council,
American Meteorological Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Astronomical Society
Federal Climate Change Science Program (commissioned by bush)
etc etc. need I go on? Its farcical to suggest that only 13% of climate scientists support the IPCC conclusions. get real.
what would you have us do between now and having totally provable, final evidence?
Lets assume that the kind of hard evidence you need is fifty years away.
Lets say that if the majority of climate scientists are right, we will be in DEEP crap by then, and it will be too late to do anything about it. This is a case of risk management. Given we are 90% sure (at least) of the cause, and what we need to do, is it not worth taking action NOW, because then we are 90% sure that we are doing the right thing, rather than betting the whole horse (or in fact, the species) on the 10% being the best choice, and doing nothing.
Cutting carbon emissions now will not wipe out billions of people. failing to do so *could* have that effect, with a high probability. Forget all the arguments about if its a theory, or a fact or consensus, or debate. There isn't time to go through that right now. When 9 doctors say you have cancer and 1 disagrees, do you sign up for chemotherapy or demand an eleventh opinion?
You may think my opinion is worthless, fine, I know fuck all about climate modelling. a LOT of people who know more than me OR you, say 'X'. Some people, including many with oil-company funding say "maybe not X". I tend to thus believe X.
about time. energy prices aren't going down any time soon, and if this means a spread to accurate energy consumption cost reporting for all computer equipment, that can only be good news.
in what way? you mean by having more of the American people vote for him than the other guy?
didn't he do that?
"By now, anyone who claims that there is a scientific concensus on man-caused global warming is either a "kool-aid drinker" or being highly disingenuous."
or perhaps they are a member of the intergovernmental panel on climate change,. made up of scientific experts from every country on Earth who have agreed that man is the factor.
Its true, the fact that we are causing climate change is such an 'inconvenient' truth, that people will get VERY annoyed and arrogant in attempts to deny what is really going on. Some will even rant on slashdot that the worlds climate experts have a 'poor understanding of the underlying science'.
No offence, but who the fuck are you that your scientific understanding trumps every respected climate expert alive?
so you think that everyone who believes that there is man made climate change also believes we all need to live in mud huts?
methinks you have been watching too much fox news. Its perfectly possible to live a modern lifestyle and not destroy the environment. It means you might not have air conditioning, but actually open a window, might not wear a t shirt in winter with the heat blasting full on, and means you might need to get used to the sight of the odd wind turbine and solar panel, but your assumption that green == mud huts is just farcical, and certainly not 'insightful'.
I love the way that, especially in the US, if people suggest even marginal regulatory improvements to the minimum fuel standards of vehicles (as happens every year in the US, and is hugely lobbied against), they get called "eco nazis who want to live in mud huts". Here in Europe, we have much more fuel efficient cars, yet amazingly do not live in mud huts.
So instead of just hurling that out there, maybe you would like to explain why they do not deserve it? feel free to show us how the scientists on the IPCC are all wrong, and you have better information, and more experience on these issues.
What exactly is wrong with this decision? apart from the fact that you may not like al gore?
so what? I'm a huge purchaser of wine. doesn't mean I get let off the hook if I swipe a bottle from my local store. the amount of music she may or may not buy is TOTALLY irrelevant to the case.