"Title of his article? "End of Support for XP SP2 is End of an Era", give me a break."
It is the End of an Era. XP was the first Microsoft OS that didn't suck. If XP wasn't released and Apple became the dominate player they have become, there's a good chance 50% of PCs would be Macs and Linux would be fair more popular than it is today.
So anyone who felt the daily pains of working with 95/98/ME thank God everyday for XP and it really is the End of an Era. I will use XP until new programs don't work on it anymore.
How would taxpayers pay the jail more than $30,000/yr for keeping them out of jail? Pay 40k for every empty bed in a jail? Wouldn't that possibly lead to corruption, jails hiring better lawyers for criminals so they can run the streets? Maybe a better incentive would be to give the criminal $$$ to stay out of jail, an increasing incentive over the yrs. Perhaps $1000 after first yr, 2k second yr, and 3k third yr. 6k is nothing compared to the 90k if he was in jail those years, and 1, 2, and 3 grand is a lot to someone who has trouble finding jobs paying over minimum wage, but probably not so much that people would be committing crimes to get 3k three years after being released
"It seems to me that a requirement for maintaining a valid patent should be that you must be producing something that uses it or actively developing something that uses it."
I wouldn't go that far: what if you're some genius doing research and stumble across a new invention or way of doing something but don't have the millions it would cost to put it into action? Of course you should be rewarded for your effort, but not hundreds of millions of dollars.
I think there should be limits. I don't think you should just write down an idea and never use it and extort $600 million from the people that actually put it into use. That's like writing down the cure to cancer but sitting on it until someone spends the millions to actually develop it and then suing them.
I think our horrible patent system is one of the greatest threats to our country. They grant these overly broad patents that cover every possible method of doing anything, and then punish the company that spends the millions to create the product and bring it to the masses. Seems the entire patent system's motto is "be evil".
First they take multiplayer away after 6 yrs, next it will be DRM disabling of single player after 6 yrs... then 5... 4.... 3.... or whenever the sequal comes out. Slippery slope, and I'm sure some kid will say "Come on that game is 2 yrs old and they have a sequal they have to stop support someday!". No, they didn't, they designed the game so multiplayer support could be shut-off and use that as an excuse.
"A DS even lets you play local MP3 files.....You just blew my mind. I've had a Nintendo DS for several years without this ability... in fact, I don't even thing there's a way to store data of that size on my DS. What on earth are you talking about?"
"Seriously? People belly-up to pay top dollar for quality and components that come with an Apple Product and then you quibble when Google offers something at a similar price with possibly better quality and components?"
Apple google is not. Apple has a 30 yr history of charging top dollar for premium products. Google doesn't. Horrible comparison, might as well throw in some car analogies and ask why Daewoos don't sell for Ferrari prices (yes, I did just compare Google to Daewoo).
While I do agree JerkFace is making an awful lot of assumptions without any links or references to back up his quotes, some of his points are valid. However all he has to do is look at the usefulness of Android cellphones when they lack an internet connection to see it's still fully functional, and that's a cellphone that is meant to have some sort of internet reception 24/7.
JerkFace did get one thing wrong: "4. The $300-$400 price point... Chrome OS at least had a chance in hell before I read this... There are Windows 7 netbooks at $280 "
I have to agree, I don't get the price. I picked up a used core2 duo Dell desktop with 2gb and 160gb for $130 last week. Could turn it into a htpc and have videos and Internet radio for only a few dollars more that just Internet radio. The people this is marketed to, the tech savvy, can find cheaper devices to do only Internet radio (old p3 laptop? They're under $100) or will spend a few dollars more and get a multifunctional device. At that price this is just a few years too late, it'd have to be under $40 before I'd even consider it
"There are a lot of stupid copyright suits, but these type are the ones that absolutely astonish me the most."
While I agree they should have made every possible attempt to contact them first to work out a more peaceful resolution, I did find a few things in the lawsuit that made sense. "22. Defendants’ website at the URL warhammeralliance.com displays HTML links
featuring banner advertisements, and, upon information and belief, when Internet users click on
one or more of the displayed HTML advertisements at the warhammeralliance.com website,
Defendants receive payment from one or more advertisers, search engines, or affiliate programs."
Depending on what the banner ads are I could easily see why they wouldn't want their copyright next to a certain ads. For example, you are CEO of BigNameCorp making BoardGameZ. Someone makes a fan site for BoardGameZ.... and runs adult ads on it. Not good.
Also what if they're trying to make a partnership with another brand, but every time someone searches for Warhammer they're brought to a page advertising a competitor?
Even if Games Workshop did contact them and work out an arrangement, they could sell warhammeralliance.com a week later and a new arrangement would need to be made. What a pain in the ass to have to constantly having to make arrangements to prevent their brand from being diluted.
(teenage daughter walks through scanner)
TSA man: (previously bored, now looks suddenly excited) Um, ma'am, I'm going to need you to go back through the scanner (reaching in pocket)
Daughter: (rolling eyes) Fine whatever (walks back in)
TSA man: (pulls cellphone out of pocket, taking pictures of screen) Yeah that's good, stop right there and slowly turn around. (daughter turning) (another TSA man walks over)
2nd TSA man: Wow! (reaches in pocket, pulls out cellphone, snaps photos) (daughter still turning, crowd of TSA employees gather, all taking photos and mumbles of approval)
Father: is everything ok?
TSA man: Um, yeah, but I'm going to need your daughter's cell phone number in case we find something later after reviewing the scan in more detail. (daughter exits scanner)
Father: is that necessary?
TSA man: (looking stern) Oh? Do we have a problem here? (motions towards two armed airport security guards)
Father: (looking suprised) NO No, no problem at all! Here's her number, call anytime
TSA man: (looking satisfied) Thank you for complying. Who's next? (people in line look worryingly at each other as if no one wants to go, one person lowers head and begrudgingly steps forward toward the scanner)
Yep, and judging by how willing the supervisor was to make fun of his own co-worker, can you imagine what they'll say or do with your scans? Or your wife's scans? Or your children's scans?
If they can't keep their own people from cracking jokes and heads, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Alright May 7th 2010, who had May 7th as the date a TSA worker would get arrested for something related to the new body scanners?.... Anyone?..... come on people, I have 454 comments of people saying this is a Very Bad Idea, someone had to have May 7th....
Yep, gotta read that fine print: "While we had a super fast 15Mbps internet connection in the studio, any live internet connection introduces quite a bit of variability. To run speed tests on page rendering times, saving locally and loading from the local disk can help reduce this variability."
So all the examples are loading from the hard drive. While the commercial is cool, I still think they cheated.
We're not talking murder or rape. The parent found some porn on a administrator's laptop, his boss's boss. While I'm sure that's against the rules, unless I was told that day to "scan these laptops for porn and report which ones have porn", I would not have said anything. IT was probably removing spyware or something and stumbled across some adult content and decided to snitch. That's never a good way to keep your job.
I see your reasoning and agree. By the same token why should someone that watches TV 4 hours a day pay the same as someone that watches 4 hours a week, right? They are using it more, they should pay more. Roads should be like this too, charge taxes by the mile using gps. Charge everyone for what they're using and everyone will be happy I'm sure.
What if grandma watches TV all day, does she pay more than me since I never watch tv? Since most tv connections are digital now then this is only fair, she is using more bandwidth than I am.
Isn't it somewhat interesting that they choose to do this now? Bandwidth is cheaper now than it was ten years ago, yet they waited till we all got use to YouTube and Netflix and Steam and bandwidth-sucking flash ads to start charging by the gigabyte? A 5-megabit connection can download almost 50 gigabytes a day, so even that 300 gigabyte monthly limit could easily be exceeded without trying. I think this is a way for them to encourage users to watch TV rather than download media.
Really that's not hard. If your work doesn't have a lock (or uses a card access proximity reader), your car uses keyless entry and push button start (almost all hybrids and luxury cars are push button), and you have a garage door opener, then it would be easy to get rid of all your keys.
I myself carry two keys, one for house and one for car, and the house key really isn't necessary since I go through the garage.
"A couple of workers at my company reported pornography found on a higher up's computer, and ended up fired for it. At some places, you do your job and keep your mouth shut, or find somewhere else to work."
At all places you do your job and keep your mouth shut. I'm pretty sure there job wasn't to search through admin laptops looking for porn, they probably stumbled across it quite by accident and decided to report it. Very stupid, so they were fired for their stupidity and rightly so. You do your job first, and if you see or hear something while doing your job that is not related to your job, pretend you didn't.
Ratting on co-workers is a good way to be hated or fired or shanked, and not necessarily in that order.
Think GameFly was just using Netflix as a example of someone that mails discs in the mail, but this whole thing started because GameFly started feeling competition from Blockbuster last February when they started offering game rentals through mail.
But I agree, Netflix and GameFly teaming up against Blockbuster probably wouldn't be a bad idea.
Slashdot Mirror
"Title of his article? "End of Support for XP SP2 is End of an Era", give me a break."
It is the End of an Era. XP was the first Microsoft OS that didn't suck. If XP wasn't released and Apple became the dominate player they have become, there's a good chance 50% of PCs would be Macs and Linux would be fair more popular than it is today.
I remember the daily struggle with 95/95b. OS was such crap I did nightly backups to a $250 1.6/3.2gb TR3 tape drive and could restore 95 and all data in a few hours. It was like a old car that's always breaking down when you need to be somewhere. 98 wasn't much better, and we all know the jokes about ME. 2000 was amazing, but couldn't run games. In 2001 XP finally brought everything together, 2000's stability and 98's gaming, and we could finally stop buying a new OS every 2-3 yrs because XP worked! Then, 6 yrs after XP was released, M$ gives us the flaming hunk of poop called Vista. It was such poo that M$ returned to it's old development schedule and replaced Vista in 2 years with 7.
So anyone who felt the daily pains of working with 95/98/ME thank God everyday for XP and it really is the End of an Era. I will use XP until new programs don't work on it anymore.
How would taxpayers pay the jail more than $30,000/yr for keeping them out of jail? Pay 40k for every empty bed in a jail? Wouldn't that possibly lead to corruption, jails hiring better lawyers for criminals so they can run the streets? Maybe a better incentive would be to give the criminal $$$ to stay out of jail, an increasing incentive over the yrs. Perhaps $1000 after first yr, 2k second yr, and 3k third yr. 6k is nothing compared to the 90k if he was in jail those years, and 1, 2, and 3 grand is a lot to someone who has trouble finding jobs paying over minimum wage, but probably not so much that people would be committing crimes to get 3k three years after being released
"It seems to me that a requirement for maintaining a valid patent should be that you must be producing something that uses it or actively developing something that uses it."
I wouldn't go that far: what if you're some genius doing research and stumble across a new invention or way of doing something but don't have the millions it would cost to put it into action? Of course you should be rewarded for your effort, but not hundreds of millions of dollars.
I think there should be limits. I don't think you should just write down an idea and never use it and extort $600 million from the people that actually put it into use. That's like writing down the cure to cancer but sitting on it until someone spends the millions to actually develop it and then suing them.
I think our horrible patent system is one of the greatest threats to our country. They grant these overly broad patents that cover every possible method of doing anything, and then punish the company that spends the millions to create the product and bring it to the masses. Seems the entire patent system's motto is "be evil".
I like the way your mind thinks
Good point. If we donate our 10 or 30 or 50 grand, what's to stop facebook from coming in and saying "here's 10 million for your site".
First they take multiplayer away after 6 yrs, next it will be DRM disabling of single player after 6 yrs... then 5... 4.... 3.... or whenever the sequal comes out. Slippery slope, and I'm sure some kid will say "Come on that game is 2 yrs old and they have a sequal they have to stop support someday!". No, they didn't, they designed the game so multiplayer support could be shut-off and use that as an excuse.
Wow, I dare say that's the coolest thing I've seen on /. in a long time.
Here's a better video, demonstrating the awesome size of the crater
It's like something right out of a movie, I'm shocked I've never heard of this and it hasn't been in any movies because that's really fantastic.
"A DS even lets you play local MP3 files.....You just blew my mind. I've had a Nintendo DS for several years without this ability ... in fact, I don't even thing there's a way to store data of that size on my DS. What on earth are you talking about?"
I was so going to moderate you up until I read that. The Nintendo MP3 Player has been out for 4 years. Games 'n' Music is (or was) available at Walmart and still available online.
"Seriously? People belly-up to pay top dollar for quality and components that come with an Apple Product and then you quibble when Google offers something at a similar price with possibly better quality and components?"
Apple google is not. Apple has a 30 yr history of charging top dollar for premium products. Google doesn't. Horrible comparison, might as well throw in some car analogies and ask why Daewoos don't sell for Ferrari prices (yes, I did just compare Google to Daewoo).
While I do agree JerkFace is making an awful lot of assumptions without any links or references to back up his quotes, some of his points are valid. However all he has to do is look at the usefulness of Android cellphones when they lack an internet connection to see it's still fully functional, and that's a cellphone that is meant to have some sort of internet reception 24/7.
JerkFace did get one thing wrong: "4. The $300-$400 price point... Chrome OS at least had a chance in hell before I read this... There are Windows 7 netbooks at $280 "
You failed to do your homework JerkFace. While you correctly quoted the Google CEO of saying "$300-$400", you conveniently left off the rest "..that all the cost will be associated with the hardware, since the OS itself is free." With a free OS there is no Windows device that can compete on price.
I have to agree, I don't get the price. I picked up a used core2 duo Dell desktop with 2gb and 160gb for $130 last week. Could turn it into a htpc and have videos and Internet radio for only a few dollars more that just Internet radio. The people this is marketed to, the tech savvy, can find cheaper devices to do only Internet radio (old p3 laptop? They're under $100) or will spend a few dollars more and get a multifunctional device. At that price this is just a few years too late, it'd have to be under $40 before I'd even consider it
"There are a lot of stupid copyright suits, but these type are the ones that absolutely astonish me the most."
While I agree they should have made every possible attempt to contact them first to work out a more peaceful resolution, I did find a few things in the lawsuit that made sense.
"22. Defendants’ website at the URL warhammeralliance.com displays HTML links featuring banner advertisements, and, upon information and belief, when Internet users click on one or more of the displayed HTML advertisements at the warhammeralliance.com website, Defendants receive payment from one or more advertisers, search engines, or affiliate programs."
Depending on what the banner ads are I could easily see why they wouldn't want their copyright next to a certain ads. For example, you are CEO of BigNameCorp making BoardGameZ. Someone makes a fan site for BoardGameZ.... and runs adult ads on it. Not good.
Also what if they're trying to make a partnership with another brand, but every time someone searches for Warhammer they're brought to a page advertising a competitor?
Even if Games Workshop did contact them and work out an arrangement, they could sell warhammeralliance.com a week later and a new arrangement would need to be made. What a pain in the ass to have to constantly having to make arrangements to prevent their brand from being diluted.
National Lampoon's Vacation 2010
(teenage daughter walks through scanner)
TSA man: (previously bored, now looks suddenly excited) Um, ma'am, I'm going to need you to go back through the scanner (reaching in pocket)
Daughter: (rolling eyes) Fine whatever (walks back in)
TSA man: (pulls cellphone out of pocket, taking pictures of screen) Yeah that's good, stop right there and slowly turn around.
(daughter turning)
(another TSA man walks over)
2nd TSA man: Wow! (reaches in pocket, pulls out cellphone, snaps photos)
(daughter still turning, crowd of TSA employees gather, all taking photos and mumbles of approval)
Father: is everything ok?
TSA man: Um, yeah, but I'm going to need your daughter's cell phone number in case we find something later after reviewing the scan in more detail.
(daughter exits scanner)
Father: is that necessary?
TSA man: (looking stern) Oh? Do we have a problem here? (motions towards two armed airport security guards)
Father: (looking suprised) NO No, no problem at all! Here's her number, call anytime
TSA man: (looking satisfied) Thank you for complying. Who's next?
(people in line look worryingly at each other as if no one wants to go, one person lowers head and begrudgingly steps forward toward the scanner)
"Now the whole world knows."
Yep, and judging by how willing the supervisor was to make fun of his own co-worker, can you imagine what they'll say or do with your scans? Or your wife's scans? Or your children's scans?
If they can't keep their own people from cracking jokes and heads, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Alright May 7th 2010, who had May 7th as the date a TSA worker would get arrested for something related to the new body scanners? .... Anyone? ..... come on people, I have 454 comments of people saying this is a Very Bad Idea, someone had to have May 7th....
Yep, gotta read that fine print:
"While we had a super fast 15Mbps internet connection in the studio, any live internet connection introduces quite a bit of variability. To run speed tests on page rendering times, saving locally and loading from the local disk can help reduce this variability."
So all the examples are loading from the hard drive. While the commercial is cool, I still think they cheated.
"murdered or raped"
We're not talking murder or rape. The parent found some porn on a administrator's laptop, his boss's boss. While I'm sure that's against the rules, unless I was told that day to "scan these laptops for porn and report which ones have porn", I would not have said anything. IT was probably removing spyware or something and stumbled across some adult content and decided to snitch. That's never a good way to keep your job.
"Yes but you can't succeed over the long-term alone."
You're referring to a gaming console, right? Something that is replaced every 5-7 years? What is "long term" for a console?
I see your reasoning and agree. By the same token why should someone that watches TV 4 hours a day pay the same as someone that watches 4 hours a week, right? They are using it more, they should pay more. Roads should be like this too, charge taxes by the mile using gps. Charge everyone for what they're using and everyone will be happy I'm sure.
But there is already a built in limit. 1mbit can download up to 270 gigabytes a month. There's your limit, charge accordingly.
What if grandma watches TV all day, does she pay more than me since I never watch tv? Since most tv connections are digital now then this is only fair, she is using more bandwidth than I am.
Isn't it somewhat interesting that they choose to do this now? Bandwidth is cheaper now than it was ten years ago, yet they waited till we all got use to YouTube and Netflix and Steam and bandwidth-sucking flash ads to start charging by the gigabyte? A 5-megabit connection can download almost 50 gigabytes a day, so even that 300 gigabyte monthly limit could easily be exceeded without trying. I think this is a way for them to encourage users to watch TV rather than download media.
Troll? For telling people to do their job and stay out of other people's business? That's not good advice?
Were only nosy people given mod points today?
"Haven't owned a traditional key since 2005"
Really that's not hard. If your work doesn't have a lock (or uses a card access proximity reader), your car uses keyless entry and push button start (almost all hybrids and luxury cars are push button), and you have a garage door opener, then it would be easy to get rid of all your keys.
I myself carry two keys, one for house and one for car, and the house key really isn't necessary since I go through the garage.
"A couple of workers at my company reported pornography found on a higher up's computer, and ended up fired for it. At some places, you do your job and keep your mouth shut, or find somewhere else to work."
At all places you do your job and keep your mouth shut. I'm pretty sure there job wasn't to search through admin laptops looking for porn, they probably stumbled across it quite by accident and decided to report it. Very stupid, so they were fired for their stupidity and rightly so. You do your job first, and if you see or hear something while doing your job that is not related to your job, pretend you didn't.
Ratting on co-workers is a good way to be hated or fired or shanked, and not necessarily in that order.
Think GameFly was just using Netflix as a example of someone that mails discs in the mail, but this whole thing started because GameFly started feeling competition from Blockbuster last February when they started offering game rentals through mail.
But I agree, Netflix and GameFly teaming up against Blockbuster probably wouldn't be a bad idea.
LOL he's joking, obviously. Average Joe does not have a digital camera, smartphone, camcorder, game console... all they own is a laptop for email