I'm going to disagree here, as this relies on two conditions being met - firstly, that the product would be available to consumers in some form if DRM wasn't available, and secondly, that any non-DRM version would be more acceptable than a DRM version to some consumers (e.g. a supplier could decide to make a DRM version higher quality than they would a non-DRM version, so some consumers would prefer the DRM version in that case).
For an example, the BBC iPlayer. Many people here dislike the iPlayer's DRM, but the fact is that the BBC have to use DRM to satisfy certain legal requirements and regulations. I certainly would prefer it without DRM, but I accept it because I know a non-DRM version isn't currently possible.
No, because TFA specifically said that MS "conceded" to letting their users run office at home.
No, the article didn't say that at all (yet you're +5 Insightful?).
kdawson just said it in his editorial, but there's nothing at all in the actual article to suggest that Microsoft 'bent over backwards' because of open source.
It's interesting to see the use of language after the summary:
MS conceded to letting Office users run the software at home as well.
There's nothing in the article to indicate this was anything other than a normal business deal, but that sentence makes it sound as if Microsoft were making concessions to avoid a 'defeat'.
To add to that, there's often articles about Firefox vulnerabilities on Slashdot, and many posts saying 'everything works fine here' regularly modded up to +5.
In this case, the very first post saying 'mine is OK' is modded as Redundant.
It could also be that the Zune DRM was chosen because of Microsoft's enormous marketshare in the computer industry, not the portable audio market. Regardless of the individual product concerned, some people are going to be more motivated to crack something if it's made by Microsoft.
Maybe it will pave the way for some proper competition like Opera and others, which are bound to win more market share as the firefox using public start to hear about other alternatives.
I'm not sure that's the correct term to use, since Opera already is 'proper competition', and has been for a long time. It may have a low market share, but it still gets huge praise from it's users whenever it's mentioned on Slashdot, and I consider it to be a better browser than Firefix. It doesn't get the mainstream attention it deserves though, and I don't see a 'Spread Opera' campaign happening like the 'Spread Firefox' one.
The most important reason, which you haven't mentioned, is that the BBC are regulated in order so that they don't overly damage commercial rivals. The DRM originally was less restrictive in regards to the length of time you could keep shows for, but the BBC were told to tighten up the limits. Given the choice of no iPlayer, and a DRM iPlayer, I'd pick the latter I'm afraid.
On a similar note, some people would say that the BBC should also sell their DVDs at cost price, since the public pays for the programs, but this would have an incredibly huge impact upon commercial rivals, and so is never going to happen.
I'm disappointed at the lack of adventure games in there - although the original Monkey Island is at number 79, I do think that it should be significantly higher. A few other classic games should also be in there, such as Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, etc. They may be old, but they're still the best adventure games out there.
You give Google a little too much credit there. For example, the 'Google Pack', Google Groups and Picasa certainly weren't innovative, they're acquired products. As a regular user of the last two, I can't see that Google have done much at all with them.
In the case of Google Groups, they've recently made it worse, by trying to combine public newsgroups with their own 'groups' in the interface. There was nothing wrong with how it was, but I presume Google wanted more control over it than the public newsgroups alone allowed.
If this were true, we'd have no third-party reports on closed source software, but that's clearly not the case.
I acknowledge some people will look at the source, but finding a vulnerability and fixing it (and testing the fix) are two completely different things.
When you're talking about such things as people reverse-engineering your code, and you're part of a software company trying to talk about modifications to your game, you'd best get the terminology correct. In the same statement they also said the scenes were "created" by the mod, which is certainly a strange term to use about something turned on/off by a single bit value.
I have no idea why you referred to Jack Thompson though, I based my views on the statements of Rockstar and how the mod actually worked. I certainly didn't think GTA:SA should have been re-rated because of it either, I just feel Rockstar should have been more honest about it.
Exactly, as you say it wasn't hard, yet Rockstar claimed it involved extensive work but that was proved to be incorrect. I wouldn't trust them.
Re:Shell replacements?
on
Pimp Your XP
·
· Score: 1
I find the Vista 'Explorer' to be a nice refinement over that of 2000/XP.
It's similar enough to previous versions not to cause casual users too much trouble, but has some good enhancements, such as the Start menu search feature (press the 'Windows' key and just start typing), the 'breadcrumb' navigation style and also the customisable 'favourite links' section. About the only thing I don't like is the 'tasks' bar in explorer windows (and I could warm to that depending on how it could be customised in future).
it's no surprise if the ESRB were more cautious over a Rockstar product this time, considering what happened over the Hot Coffee issue and how Rockstar lied about it afterwards. Specifically, they said you needed to reverse-engineer the source code, yet you could access it via an Action Replay code on the PS2 version.
Rockstar's statement also claimed that the mod was the product of complex technical tampering. "Since the 'Hot Coffee' scenes cannot be created without intentional and significant technical modifications and reverse-engineering of the game's source code, we are currently investigating ways that we can increase the security protection of the source code and prevent the game from being altered by the 'Hot Coffee' modification," read the statement.
According to this article, Microsoft don't allow AO games on the Xbox/Xbox 360 either.
Though Manhunt 2 isn't slated for any of Microsoft's systems, the company has also confirmed that it does not allow AO-rated titles on the Xbox or Xbox 360.
It's not suprising, unfortunately. Whereas there's numerous stories on Slashdot about reviews of Firefox alphas, comparisons to IE, etc. and even lists of extensions, I remember being a bit surprised that there wasn't even a story on Slashdot when the last release (9.2) of Opera came out (granted, I've seen stories about the Wii versions, etc).
I understand that there's likely a lot more submissions about Firefox (and the stories probably get a lot more page views), but in many peoples view Opera is a better browser (and the quality of other browsers like Firefox can only benefit by having decent competition).
If rape charges are going up, that's actually an indication that the Swedish police *are* taking action against serious crime, not the opposite as you seem to be suggesting.
Great for corporate deployment of Vista with software pre-installed, but also a huge benefit for malware writers, who can distribute Vista images with deeply-rooted malware.
Given that the former is much, much more likely, how about an article entitled 'Vista Designed to Make Corporate Deployment Easy' ?
Slashdot Mirror
Windows MCE - Features the media center features that people were turning to Apple for, with improved (not great) security.
Windows Visa - Meh, a new gui. They really should have made this 64-bit all around.
So Windows MCE isn't Windows XP? And Windows NT 3.5 and NT4 should be considered the same OS? Where's Windows Server 2003?
Nice arbitary list you've made there to support your 'skip every other Microsoft OS' theory though.
For an example, the BBC iPlayer. Many people here dislike the iPlayer's DRM, but the fact is that the BBC have to use DRM to satisfy certain legal requirements and regulations. I certainly would prefer it without DRM, but I accept it because I know a non-DRM version isn't currently possible.
No, the article didn't say that at all (yet you're +5 Insightful?).
kdawson just said it in his editorial, but there's nothing at all in the actual article to suggest that Microsoft 'bent over backwards' because of open source.
As you say, this article has basically nothing to do with Linux - bizarrely though, the first tag that this story currently shows is 'linux'.
To add to that, there's often articles about Firefox vulnerabilities on Slashdot, and many posts saying 'everything works fine here' regularly modded up to +5.
In this case, the very first post saying 'mine is OK' is modded as Redundant.
It could also be that the Zune DRM was chosen because of Microsoft's enormous marketshare in the computer industry, not the portable audio market. Regardless of the individual product concerned, some people are going to be more motivated to crack something if it's made by Microsoft.
The most important reason, which you haven't mentioned, is that the BBC are regulated in order so that they don't overly damage commercial rivals. The DRM originally was less restrictive in regards to the length of time you could keep shows for, but the BBC were told to tighten up the limits. Given the choice of no iPlayer, and a DRM iPlayer, I'd pick the latter I'm afraid.
On a similar note, some people would say that the BBC should also sell their DVDs at cost price, since the public pays for the programs, but this would have an incredibly huge impact upon commercial rivals, and so is never going to happen.
Do you think Porche would make many cars which needed a Porche-dealer to change the tires?
I'm disappointed at the lack of adventure games in there - although the original Monkey Island is at number 79, I do think that it should be significantly higher. A few other classic games should also be in there, such as Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, etc. They may be old, but they're still the best adventure games out there.
You give Google a little too much credit there. For example, the 'Google Pack', Google Groups and Picasa certainly weren't innovative, they're acquired products. As a regular user of the last two, I can't see that Google have done much at all with them.
In the case of Google Groups, they've recently made it worse, by trying to combine public newsgroups with their own 'groups' in the interface. There was nothing wrong with how it was, but I presume Google wanted more control over it than the public newsgroups alone allowed.
If this were true, we'd have no third-party reports on closed source software, but that's clearly not the case.
I acknowledge some people will look at the source, but finding a vulnerability and fixing it (and testing the fix) are two completely different things.
When you're talking about such things as people reverse-engineering your code, and you're part of a software company trying to talk about modifications to your game, you'd best get the terminology correct. In the same statement they also said the scenes were "created" by the mod, which is certainly a strange term to use about something turned on/off by a single bit value. I have no idea why you referred to Jack Thompson though, I based my views on the statements of Rockstar and how the mod actually worked. I certainly didn't think GTA:SA should have been re-rated because of it either, I just feel Rockstar should have been more honest about it.
Exactly, as you say it wasn't hard, yet Rockstar claimed it involved extensive work but that was proved to be incorrect. I wouldn't trust them.
I find the Vista 'Explorer' to be a nice refinement over that of 2000/XP.
It's similar enough to previous versions not to cause casual users too much trouble, but has some good enhancements, such as the Start menu search feature (press the 'Windows' key and just start typing), the 'breadcrumb' navigation style and also the customisable 'favourite links' section. About the only thing I don't like is the 'tasks' bar in explorer windows (and I could warm to that depending on how it could be customised in future).
Rockstar's statement also claimed that the mod was the product of complex technical tampering. "Since the 'Hot Coffee' scenes cannot be created without intentional and significant technical modifications and reverse-engineering of the game's source code, we are currently investigating ways that we can increase the security protection of the source code and prevent the game from being altered by the 'Hot Coffee' modification," read the statement.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/newsarticle?eid=375012 &page=0
Though Manhunt 2 isn't slated for any of Microsoft's systems, the company has also confirmed that it does not allow AO-rated titles on the Xbox or Xbox 360.
It's not suprising, unfortunately. Whereas there's numerous stories on Slashdot about reviews of Firefox alphas, comparisons to IE, etc. and even lists of extensions, I remember being a bit surprised that there wasn't even a story on Slashdot when the last release (9.2) of Opera came out (granted, I've seen stories about the Wii versions, etc).
I understand that there's likely a lot more submissions about Firefox (and the stories probably get a lot more page views), but in many peoples view Opera is a better browser (and the quality of other browsers like Firefox can only benefit by having decent competition).
Moderated offtopic? One of Guybrush Threepwood's skills was being able to hold his breath for ten minutes.
If rape charges are going up, that's actually an indication that the Swedish police *are* taking action against serious crime, not the opposite as you seem to be suggesting.
http://www.opera.com/download/
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if some users validated successfully multiple times, inflating the success rate.
Is it too much of a stretch to think that Microsoft employs both programmers *and* a few sound artists?