Whoa, a direct link from Slashdot to a page describing how to break the law in Europe. Cue the scary music. Can we expect links to 0-day warez anytime soon?
They must have gotten a pretty penny for SoundJam. C&G had to realize that, with OS X making Conflict Catcher obsolete, SoundJam was their future. Or did they really expect Glider Pro carbon to sell like hotcakes?
I've been scratching my head about C&G's business strategy and expecting this day ever since OS X was announced.
While I agree that NASA needs more money, it doesn't help that the agency is so financially irresponsible with the money it does get. Cost overruns (and having to explain them to Congress) are bad news, and gross cost overruns have become the norm for NASA's biggest projects. The article itself chastises NASA for its poor budget forecasting ("It's the Accounting, Stupid"). Until they get on the right track financially, getting more money out of Congress is an uphill battle.
More accurately, NASA itself decided to give up on the project. In September 2000, the NASA Advisory Council recommended that X-33 be mothballed, with good reason. Upon its cancellation, the Space Access Society rejoiced, saying "the project was mis-specified, mis-selected, misdesigned, misdeveloped, and mismanaged, and its demise is long overdue." NASA decided to push the decision back to March 2001 on the remote hope that a new administration would give the project some new funding, because NASA itself didn't want to use any of the billions from the Space Launch Initiative (which was precisely designed to pay for such projects) on the doomed, bloated project.
Ah, but not having to return DVDs offers a competitive advantage to stores that do decide to adopt this technology, and this could be a major selling point. Just because companies would lose late fee revenue doesn't mean no one would decide to adopt the technology.
Are you aware of the law of supply and demand? Why are prices for products lower at some stores, intentionally lowering their revenue per purchase? Because the stores feel they can make up for the lost revenue by increasing their number of sales. The same would go for disposable DVDs. This is how markets work.
What, do you think they want to sell these instead of regular DVDs? The industry is making a killing off of the DVD format; they don't want to dick with the sell-through power of DVD.
The press release itself says "EZ-D's goal is to expand the overall home entertainment market by appealing to consumers whose rental consumption has diminished due to the perceived inconvenience of the current rental process."
It's still 800 miles away. The story title is definitely sensationalized.
Re:Possible legal problems?
on
Gentoo Games
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Spiral-type logos are pretty common, and I bet there are other logos out there that look even closer to that of Gentoo Games.
I don't know if Nintendo would have a case here; the whole "cube" aspect of the logo is gone, the spiral goes the other way, and the font is quite different. Although that font does look familiar.
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Gamecube idea was the starting point for the Gentoo games logo. It does give off the impression of being similar.
Re:Recruiting Tool
on
Gentoo Games
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't know about "cunning ploy." They are pretty open about the purpose of the game, especially as they have to justify the cost of its creation to the taypaying public. Recruiting is needed to run a volunteer army the size of America's; this is not any markedly different from TV or mailing campaigns.
I suspect the government (and parents who buy their kids the game) see it this way: if kids are going to play violent games anyway, why not get the kid a game where violence is at least being carried out for a "positive" goal, as opposed to games like Postal or Grand Theft Auto which depict criminal acts, or games like Quake and Unreal where the violence is mindless and the only point. There are other objectives in America's Army, and, while there may be some discrepencies, it is not a totally inaccurate and unrealistic idea of military service [i.e. you can't take 40 hits before dying]. Most Americans respect members of the armed forces, whether you agree with it or not, and see it as having a positive influence. Any good parent would have a serious talk with their child about the armed forces before their kid decides to march into the local recruiting office based on a video game.
I suspect most of those who play are quite immune from the propagandizing effect anyway, and simply enjoy the game.
It's tough to argue that judges are all beholden to corporate interests, as judges in the US district courts are appointed for life and don't have to worry about pleasing anybody. And I really don't see why they would be more friendly to the RIAA than to Verizon, another big company. Verizon certainly holds more sway in the mid-Atlantic states John Bates has called home over the years. This isn't Hollywood court.
There is, however, the problem that the RIAA quite possibly simply made a better case, due to better lawyers used to dealing with these issues. John Thorne, though certainly an excellent lawyer, deals with lots of different Verizon issues, whereas the RIAA group has quite a few file-sharing victories under its belt.
I don't think it's too wise to assume that anyone who doesn't believe in the Slashdot status quo must be corrupt. There are people out there (quite a few, actually) who just don't agree with us, you know. There's a quite lengthy decision that has legitimate reasoning, even if I don't agree with the brunt of that reasoning.
Like it or not, the DMCA is law now, and people breaking that law can expect to be prosecuted. The problem in this case, according to Verizon, is that the RIAA's subpoena does not comply with the DMCA, because the files are not hosted by Verizon, but rather reside on the subscriber's computer.
Without a serious lobbying group in DC, privacy will continue to be eroded.
Well, I can think of a number of serious privacy-related lobbying groups, though perhaps none with the power of the RIAA, MPAA, etc. Also, Verizon itself is not bereft of political power. Many universities and other ISPs were hoping that Verizon was big enough to win this.
That being said, I'm not as cynical as the majority here on Slashdot, who believe that the value of dollar is the only way to get things done in government. I would say a bigger problem is ignorance of technological issues among those who pass the laws in the first place.
I don't agree with this link 100%, but I like to play devil's advocate. It's not totally accurate to call the Mac a ripoff of Xerox, just as it's not totally accurate to call Windows a ripoff of the Mac.
The problem with this setup is actually how the profits would be calculated. A company would be able to shift things around pretty easily so that it looks like a product is making no profit. Simply hide other, marginally related costs under the umbrella of the product's expenses.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoa, a direct link from Slashdot to a page describing how to break the law in Europe. Cue the scary music. Can we expect links to 0-day warez anytime soon?
Well, MacWorld ain't what it used to be. Long live WWDC!
Peep DVD2OneX.
I'm nitpicking, but Transmit (formerly Transit) is older than OS X.
That being said, the OS X development renaissance is already in full bloom, in my opinion. It's a great and fun platform to develop for.
They must have gotten a pretty penny for SoundJam. C&G had to realize that, with OS X making Conflict Catcher obsolete, SoundJam was their future. Or did they really expect Glider Pro carbon to sell like hotcakes?
I've been scratching my head about C&G's business strategy and expecting this day ever since OS X was announced.
Hell, New Zealand doesn't need to go to North America for that. Ever hear of the Maori? Maybe they should clean up their own islands first.
While I agree that NASA needs more money, it doesn't help that the agency is so financially irresponsible with the money it does get. Cost overruns (and having to explain them to Congress) are bad news, and gross cost overruns have become the norm for NASA's biggest projects. The article itself chastises NASA for its poor budget forecasting ("It's the Accounting, Stupid"). Until they get on the right track financially, getting more money out of Congress is an uphill battle.
More accurately, NASA itself decided to give up on the project. In September 2000, the NASA Advisory Council recommended that X-33 be mothballed, with good reason. Upon its cancellation, the Space Access Society rejoiced, saying "the project was mis-specified, mis-selected, misdesigned, misdeveloped, and mismanaged, and its demise is long overdue." NASA decided to push the decision back to March 2001 on the remote hope that a new administration would give the project some new funding, because NASA itself didn't want to use any of the billions from the Space Launch Initiative (which was precisely designed to pay for such projects) on the doomed, bloated project.
Did you read the article? They are recyclable.
Ah, but not having to return DVDs offers a competitive advantage to stores that do decide to adopt this technology, and this could be a major selling point. Just because companies would lose late fee revenue doesn't mean no one would decide to adopt the technology.
Are you aware of the law of supply and demand? Why are prices for products lower at some stores, intentionally lowering their revenue per purchase? Because the stores feel they can make up for the lost revenue by increasing their number of sales. The same would go for disposable DVDs. This is how markets work.
What, do you think they want to sell these instead of regular DVDs? The industry is making a killing off of the DVD format; they don't want to dick with the sell-through power of DVD.
The press release itself says "EZ-D's goal is to expand the overall home entertainment market by appealing to consumers whose rental consumption has diminished due to the perceived inconvenience of the current rental process."
It's still 800 miles away. The story title is definitely sensationalized.
Spiral-type logos are pretty common, and I bet there are other logos out there that look even closer to that of Gentoo Games.
I don't know if Nintendo would have a case here; the whole "cube" aspect of the logo is gone, the spiral goes the other way, and the font is quite different. Although that font does look familiar.
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Gamecube idea was the starting point for the Gentoo games logo. It does give off the impression of being similar.
I don't know about "cunning ploy." They are pretty open about the purpose of the game, especially as they have to justify the cost of its creation to the taypaying public. Recruiting is needed to run a volunteer army the size of America's; this is not any markedly different from TV or mailing campaigns.
I suspect the government (and parents who buy their kids the game) see it this way: if kids are going to play violent games anyway, why not get the kid a game where violence is at least being carried out for a "positive" goal, as opposed to games like Postal or Grand Theft Auto which depict criminal acts, or games like Quake and Unreal where the violence is mindless and the only point. There are other objectives in America's Army, and, while there may be some discrepencies, it is not a totally inaccurate and unrealistic idea of military service [i.e. you can't take 40 hits before dying]. Most Americans respect members of the armed forces, whether you agree with it or not, and see it as having a positive influence. Any good parent would have a serious talk with their child about the armed forces before their kid decides to march into the local recruiting office based on a video game.
I suspect most of those who play are quite immune from the propagandizing effect anyway, and simply enjoy the game.
Uh, seeing how Apple's deal is only with the 5 major labels, I wouldn't count on there being much electronica.
It's tough to argue that judges are all beholden to corporate interests, as judges in the US district courts are appointed for life and don't have to worry about pleasing anybody. And I really don't see why they would be more friendly to the RIAA than to Verizon, another big company. Verizon certainly holds more sway in the mid-Atlantic states John Bates has called home over the years. This isn't Hollywood court.
There is, however, the problem that the RIAA quite possibly simply made a better case, due to better lawyers used to dealing with these issues. John Thorne, though certainly an excellent lawyer, deals with lots of different Verizon issues, whereas the RIAA group has quite a few file-sharing victories under its belt.
I don't think it's too wise to assume that anyone who doesn't believe in the Slashdot status quo must be corrupt. There are people out there (quite a few, actually) who just don't agree with us, you know. There's a quite lengthy decision that has legitimate reasoning, even if I don't agree with the brunt of that reasoning.
The ACLU is actually what I had in mind. The EFF, in comparison, has no power whatsoever.
Like it or not, the DMCA is law now, and people breaking that law can expect to be prosecuted. The problem in this case, according to Verizon, is that the RIAA's subpoena does not comply with the DMCA, because the files are not hosted by Verizon, but rather reside on the subscriber's computer.
Without a serious lobbying group in DC, privacy will continue to be eroded.
Well, I can think of a number of serious privacy-related lobbying groups, though perhaps none with the power of the RIAA, MPAA, etc. Also, Verizon itself is not bereft of political power. Many universities and other ISPs were hoping that Verizon was big enough to win this.
That being said, I'm not as cynical as the majority here on Slashdot, who believe that the value of dollar is the only way to get things done in government. I would say a bigger problem is ignorance of technological issues among those who pass the laws in the first place.
I don't agree with this link 100%, but I like to play devil's advocate. It's not totally accurate to call the Mac a ripoff of Xerox, just as it's not totally accurate to call Windows a ripoff of the Mac.
100% true. But it just goes to show you that the same useless platitudes Ballmer spews forth can be easily used against his own product.
You mean kinda like how Windows is a clone of the 20 year-old Mac? Sure, a lot has changed since then, but a lot has changed in Linux too.
The problem with this setup is actually how the profits would be calculated. A company would be able to shift things around pretty easily so that it looks like a product is making no profit. Simply hide other, marginally related costs under the umbrella of the product's expenses.