There's a really neat old Dr. Seuss (yes, that Dr. Seuss) book called "The Tough Coughs As He Ploughs The Dough" that illustrates this quite well.
And in San Francisco, we have Gough Street, which is not pronounced, as you might guess, to rhyme with "cough" or "rough" or "slough" or "through" or even "dough", but with the "off" in "coffin". Confused he bejezzus out of me the first time I was given directions to "Goff Street".
Waaaaay off topic: The Seuss book is a collection of his early work, for adults, way before he started doing kid's books. It's full of things like "The Cutting of the Wedding Cnouth" and essays on "The Facts of Life" and Rube Goldberg inventions. What's really interesting is all the creatures that look exactly like sneetches and Horton sitting on an egg.
Fun book. Way out of print, I'm sure, but worth poking through a used bookstore for.
You TOTALLY missed the point. If he could have recorded it himself, what does it matter where he gets a copy?
Actually, you missed the point. The article is about people downloading shows that won't be seen in their country for another month or two, so Timothy's comment has absolutely no relevance to the story.
'Pirated' seems a strong word, at least for watching those programs which have been beamed (unencrypted) through my body.
No, 'pirated' doesn't refer to recording them, it refers to posting them on the Internet for anybody to download. I would think the difference was obvious.
The standard meaning of the word is "distributing copyrighted material without permission" (for instance, here). Regardless of your position on this issue, you have to agree that the definition applies here.
And yes, it's a strong word. It's a newspaper headline. What do you expect?
So says you, and when it comes to the software you have written, you are entirely in your right. Others believe the opposite about their software. Personally I do not like it when another entity profits from their modifications to my code without giving me access to those modifications so that I can profit from them as well. After all, their modifications couldn't exist without me writing the code in the first place. But I can see the validity of your viewpoint as well even though I don't share it.
Yes, and I absolutely agree with you. The point I was making is that it's a personal decision, and nobody should expect any specific rights to something someone else does. It comes down to a personal freedom issue, which should resonate pretty strongly around here.
If you don't want someone else profiting exclusively from your code, that's exactly what the GPL is for. Sometimes that's what I'd want, sometimes it's not. An interesting point, though: If A writes a 200-line GPL'ed routine, and B takes that code and writes 5000 lines on top of it, is the value of A's contribution equal to B's? Is it fair to say that all 5000 lines of B's code are dependent on A's? (Yes, this is an theoretical and unrealistic argument, since the GPL says "yes it is", and if B didn't agree with that, it shouldn't have used A's code. I think it's an instructive argument, though.)
When it comes down to it, neither license is more free than the other; they define freedom differently on a fundamental level. And people don't change their fundamental beliefs easily. This is why we will always have the BSD and GPL camps. We might as well coexist respectfully instead of continuing the holy flamewars.
Again, I agree completely. It all comes down to where you want to place the freedom - in the concrete (you can use this code for whatever) or the abstract (you must keep all generations of this code available).
I wan't trying to fan any flamewars. Respectful coexistence is A Very Good Thing. I suppose my original comment was a little snotty, though.
You know, you'd think that a commercial organization with a supposedly-credible license would manage to the the 'its' usage right. But they manage to get it wrong every single time.
Aside from the glaring onerousness of this thing (and yeah, it looks pretty silly and unenforceable), the lack of any kind of adult proofreading takes away any credibility it might have had.
(Remember: Use the apostrophe to stand in for removed letter(s), not for the posessive. Compare with him -> his, her -> hers.)
The reason that RMS wrote the GPL the way he did is that your extra freedom to relicense your derivative work comes at the expense of my freedom to see, modify and share the derivative work.
I have to say, at the risk of being considered flamebait, that that's pretty much tough shit. The freedom for *me* to license and distribute *my* code, or any other property, far overrides *your* right to use it. License freedom is supposed to protect me and my hard work. The fact that it can give you additional right to use, modify and redistribute it is wonderful, but don't take it as a birthright.
I have a lot of respect for RMS, but I can't hold with the idea that all software should be free. Not in this day and age. That was a reasonable view 30 years ago when there was no commercial software industry to speak of, and most software was distributed for free anyway, but even if you truly believe it, it's hopelessly unrealistic today. License your own code however you want, but don't complain about how someone else licenses theirs. God love RMS, though - somebody needs to do it. The world needs true believers.
It's a zero-sum difference, and that's why I don't see the BSD (and other non-copyleft) licenses as being more free: they redistribute the freedom, but don't increase it. They're not more free, they're differently free.
Saying "you can do whatever you want with this code except take my name off it" is powerfully free.
You know, it's pretty impressive that we both got multiple "Funny" mods for an off-topic post referencing a now-obscure song that was popular long before most Slashdotters were born, and not a single "Huh?" comment (so far).
I guess there are more of us old farts, or closet folkies, around than I had thought. Or did you used to be with the Kingston Trio?
He's doomed. If he or his wife can't figure out that she should bring him the nickel instead of a sandwich as the train goes by, he deserves to be stuck down there.
Besides, the election's over anyway. I don't think Riley won.
The Interface Builder demo is pretty slick. I remember being really impressed with IB back when the NeXT first came out (Steve Jobs came to my school and did a demo, and gave us two full systems). I like the business of connecting up the source and target controls with a minimum of (user-entered) glue code.
Of course, the problem with UI generators is that the demo *always* uses something semi-trivial like a calculator or image viewer or something like that. Whoever's selling it says "See, you can create an app in 10 minutes", but once you need to actually make it do something a little more complex or low-level, you inevitably wind up having to do more work trying to get around the limitations. I've seen a lot of sophisticated apps written in ObjectiveC/IB, so I imagine this isn't too much of a problem here. It looks like you really need to change your mindset a lot to code and develop this way, though.
Second point:
I noticed that every time the sample app was run, there was a message to the effect that only a single screen was supported. I'm looking for a live CD to try out on an old 1 Ghz Dell box with a Matrox G450 dual-head video card. Does this message mean that dual monitors are not supported by this distro, or is it an IB thing, or something else altogether?
I kinda like the NeXT/Open/GnuStep environment, especially as compared to the Gnome/KDE weight and glitziness. I've been looking to try a Linux desktop for a while now, but I don't have time to dick around with X configuration and extensions to make it happen. Are there any live distros (based on Debian, perhaps) that do dual monitors out of the box?
(Yes, I know I should be googling, I'm just asking. People seem to like giving suggestions...)
"If you want an evironment where The Voice Of God comes down and tells everyone stop their C/C++ crap and go write Objective C programs, use OS X. It's never going to happen with Linux."
This comes off a lot like, "who cares if it's better, we're all used to something worse and we plan on sticking with it." Which is very much the same argument made by Windows advocates against Linux.
And this does not sum up the attitude of a lot of Linux users? What if it was stated like this:
"Who cares if it's better, we're all used to the same tools we had 30 years ago and we plan on sticking with them."
[[Non-troll disclaimer:]] Yes, this is a broad generalization. No, it doesn't describe every Linux/Unix user. Yes, there is still a lot of truth in it.
The OP has it right. It's impossible to enforce a development environment or methodology (or pretty much any standard) unless either you control the platform (like Apple does), or there's already a de facto standard in place (C programming, for instance).
I don't remember a specific iPod guy, just all the sig links - I guess I was lucky there. This is the first out-and-out spam I've seen, that looks like it could have been in my email. I fully expect to see Costa Rican land scams and Vioxx ads any day.
Just remember what Usenet used to be like. This could get a lot worse.
Check out this great site that is giving away totally FREE Mini Macs!
I've joined and I think you should as well.
It's a completely legitimate offer, and this company has already given away $4 million in FREE stuff!
All you have to do is join, complete an online offer, and refer friends to do the same. That's it!
Here is my referral link. To help me get my Mini Mac, click this exact link to join, or copy and paste it into a browser: http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=********
My god. It's the first Slashdot spam. Note that the original comment is all in bold with a live link.
I think this referral-Amway thing has gotten out of hand. Are we going to start seeing these things in every story now?
Yes, I know many people here on Slashdot use it, but in the larger world, it's pretty much nonexistent. It's certainly not popular or interesting enough for a major manufacturer like Sony to spend a lot of time and money supporting it. The number of sales Ogg support would generate would be trivial.
Basically, it's a format that has no reason to exist. The mere fact that MP3 is, or was, "encumbered" by patents hasn't had any effect on anything. Who has been sued, shut down, or threatened for writing or selling MP3 players? There is no noticeable quality improvement or filesize decrease to Ogg that would make it worth the trouble, or else the industry would have already moved to it.
MP3 is "good enough". Therefore, it's going to remain the dominant standard for non-DRM audio for the forseeable future. Ogg is a great format, and for all I know may be technically superior, but so was Betamax. QED.
KDE and GNOME are not single packages. They are combinations of smaller packages. Waving the KDE and GNOE flags dont make your point, OpenOffice.Org might, but thats really just a statment against code bloat office suites
My mistake, I didn't read it clearly enough. Anyway, it's still the same principle - an update to one thing causing updates of lots of other things. Consider it a statement against code bloat in general.
Apparently, most distributions have you download the entire package for each update, although there are efforts underway to break up sections a bit more (if I'm wrong, I apologize - I use BSD).
It sounds like what's really needed is to build packages of just the updated files. The install manifest would just specify the files in the archive, so there shouldn't be any complaints about missing files. Or does that show my ignorance?
Actually, if you wanted a more general scheme, the update server would build packages on the fly. The updater would send a list of files in a package to the server, which would return a set of files that need updating. You could use this to upgrade any system, regardless of distribution. You would just have to update the database for whatever to show that it was at the latest version.
Yes, this would take up a lot more CPU time, and be pretty slow on response time, but the savings in bandwidth should be worth it. All the time the servers were waiting for the network card could be used compressing files.
[KDE] is not the best for developers since they cannot create commercial application for it without paying TrollTech. I wonder how tyrannical Microsoft would be if they would ask you to pay them for using Window Forms, Win32 API, WTL, MFC, or any other API they have. Not everyone wants to create GPL applications, nor do they want to pay the TrollTech tax.
Two things:
* You don't pay to use the various Windows APIs, you pay to use Windows. That's the product they sell. The APIs are the incentive to use it. Trolltech's product is QT. That's how they actually make that pesky money that lets them have the GPL version.
* If you're doing commercial software development, you expect to pay to do it. It's just like any other business. The cost of buying computers, dev tools, office chairs, etc. are trivial in comparison to big costs like salaries, office space and bandwidth, not to mention the income you expect to make from selling the product.
Ahhh, Battlefield Earth. I just recently saw this (my video store has a rent-2, get-2-free policy so, no, I didn't have to pay money for it) and realized that this had to be the worst, most ludicrous movie ever made.
There were actually some pretty cool special effects, but my god, the dialogue. The plot! Consider:
* The evil planetary overlord, trying to crack down on the earthling slave workers in the mines (paraphrased): "We'll cut their pay if they don't cooperate!" Read this line again. Consider that the suggestion is made at least twice.
* The heroes escape, with a gun. After a chase, they come face to face with Terl. Terl tells them, essentially, "You can't win, you know. You should give up." They say "You're right" and *hand him the gun*.
* At some point, Terl gives the escaping heroes a gun. They do not use it on him.
* Terl decides the best way to keep the humans in line is via the time-honored method of taking the smartest, most independent one and teaching him your entire language and technology.
* To pull off a plot to mine gold for his own nefarious purposes, Terl takes these same educated, rebellious humans, gives them a badass fighting ship, and sends them off on their own, saying "come back with some gold, now".
* Apparently, the aliens can believe that humans are capable of building a modern technological society, but the idea of a human learning how to mine gold is so inconceivable as to cause fits of laughter every time it's mentioned.
* Every character, at some point, is required to wear a set of two foot long string-tie-like apparatus clipped to their nose - humans when they breate the alien atmosphere, aliens when breathing Earth atmosphere. These are never explained. They also never get tangled or wrapped around anything, regardless of the amount of running through and fighting in the underbrush.
I actually suspect that this movie was meant to be a spoof. Otherwise there is absolutely no way to believe that someone could put every single bad movie cliche into one movie.
Well, if you had represented a school, you probably would have mentioned that up front. I agree completely, though, that they played it all wrong. Not very professional at all.
Well, I think the heart of the problem is that you were trying to cadge an educational discount so your kid could run a teaching program. Since educational discounts are generally given to schools and the like, I imagine the folks at Win4Lin put your request into the "Yeah, right" pile.
Sure, it's unprofessional of them to just ignore you, and I agree that they should have gotten back to you with at least a simple "No", but you can't really have expected them to take you too seriously, can you?
No, the analogy here is if I say I'll mow your lawn for $5.00, then show up and say "actually, the price has gone up. Now I'll mow your lawn for $20.00, but you have to give the money to these other guys over here who are helping to keep lawnmowing legal." Then, if you pay them the $20.00, I mow your lawn.
There, wasn't that easy? All you have to do is look at the actual situation and then just think for a second.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a really neat old Dr. Seuss (yes, that Dr. Seuss) book called "The Tough Coughs As He Ploughs The Dough" that illustrates this quite well.
And in San Francisco, we have Gough Street, which is not pronounced, as you might guess, to rhyme with "cough" or "rough" or "slough" or "through" or even "dough", but with the "off" in "coffin". Confused he bejezzus out of me the first time I was given directions to "Goff Street".
Waaaaay off topic: The Seuss book is a collection of his early work, for adults, way before he started doing kid's books. It's full of things like "The Cutting of the Wedding Cnouth" and essays on "The Facts of Life" and Rube Goldberg inventions. What's really interesting is all the creatures that look exactly like sneetches and Horton sitting on an egg.
Fun book. Way out of print, I'm sure, but worth poking through a used bookstore for.
You TOTALLY missed the point. If he could have recorded it himself, what does it matter where he gets a copy?
Actually, you missed the point. The article is about people downloading shows that won't be seen in their country for another month or two, so Timothy's comment has absolutely no relevance to the story.
'Pirated' seems a strong word, at least for watching those programs which have been beamed (unencrypted) through my body.
No, 'pirated' doesn't refer to recording them, it refers to posting them on the Internet for anybody to download. I would think the difference was obvious.
The standard meaning of the word is "distributing copyrighted material without permission" (for instance, here). Regardless of your position on this issue, you have to agree that the definition applies here.
And yes, it's a strong word. It's a newspaper headline. What do you expect?
So says you, and when it comes to the software you have written, you are entirely in your right. Others believe the opposite about their software. Personally I do not like it when another entity profits from their modifications to my code without giving me access to those modifications so that I can profit from them as well. After all, their modifications couldn't exist without me writing the code in the first place. But I can see the validity of your viewpoint as well even though I don't share it.
Yes, and I absolutely agree with you. The point I was making is that it's a personal decision, and nobody should expect any specific rights to something someone else does. It comes down to a personal freedom issue, which should resonate pretty strongly around here.
If you don't want someone else profiting exclusively from your code, that's exactly what the GPL is for. Sometimes that's what I'd want, sometimes it's not. An interesting point, though: If A writes a 200-line GPL'ed routine, and B takes that code and writes 5000 lines on top of it, is the value of A's contribution equal to B's? Is it fair to say that all 5000 lines of B's code are dependent on A's? (Yes, this is an theoretical and unrealistic argument, since the GPL says "yes it is", and if B didn't agree with that, it shouldn't have used A's code. I think it's an instructive argument, though.)
When it comes down to it, neither license is more free than the other; they define freedom differently on a fundamental level. And people don't change their fundamental beliefs easily. This is why we will always have the BSD and GPL camps. We might as well coexist respectfully instead of continuing the holy flamewars.
Again, I agree completely. It all comes down to where you want to place the freedom - in the concrete (you can use this code for whatever) or the abstract (you must keep all generations of this code available).
I wan't trying to fan any flamewars. Respectful coexistence is A Very Good Thing. I suppose my original comment was a little snotty, though.
You know, you'd think that a commercial organization with a supposedly-credible license would manage to the the 'its' usage right. But they manage to get it wrong every single time.
Aside from the glaring onerousness of this thing (and yeah, it looks pretty silly and unenforceable), the lack of any kind of adult proofreading takes away any credibility it might have had.
(Remember: Use the apostrophe to stand in for removed letter(s), not for the posessive. Compare with him -> his, her -> hers.)
The reason that RMS wrote the GPL the way he did is that your extra freedom to relicense your derivative work comes at the expense of my freedom to see, modify and share the derivative work.
I have to say, at the risk of being considered flamebait, that that's pretty much tough shit. The freedom for *me* to license and distribute *my* code, or any other property, far overrides *your* right to use it. License freedom is supposed to protect me and my hard work. The fact that it can give you additional right to use, modify and redistribute it is wonderful, but don't take it as a birthright.
I have a lot of respect for RMS, but I can't hold with the idea that all software should be free. Not in this day and age. That was a reasonable view 30 years ago when there was no commercial software industry to speak of, and most software was distributed for free anyway, but even if you truly believe it, it's hopelessly unrealistic today. License your own code however you want, but don't complain about how someone else licenses theirs. God love RMS, though - somebody needs to do it. The world needs true believers.
It's a zero-sum difference, and that's why I don't see the BSD (and other non-copyleft) licenses as being more free: they redistribute the freedom, but don't increase it. They're not more free, they're differently free.
Saying "you can do whatever you want with this code except take my name off it" is powerfully free.
You know, it's pretty impressive that we both got multiple "Funny" mods for an off-topic post referencing a now-obscure song that was popular long before most Slashdotters were born, and not a single "Huh?" comment (so far).
I guess there are more of us old farts, or closet folkies, around than I had thought. Or did you used to be with the Kingston Trio?
He's doomed. If he or his wife can't figure out that she should bring him the nickel instead of a sandwich as the train goes by, he deserves to be stuck down there.
Besides, the election's over anyway. I don't think Riley won.
First point:
The Interface Builder demo is pretty slick. I remember being really impressed with IB back when the NeXT first came out (Steve Jobs came to my school and did a demo, and gave us two full systems). I like the business of connecting up the source and target controls with a minimum of (user-entered) glue code.
Of course, the problem with UI generators is that the demo *always* uses something semi-trivial like a calculator or image viewer or something like that. Whoever's selling it says "See, you can create an app in 10 minutes", but once you need to actually make it do something a little more complex or low-level, you inevitably wind up having to do more work trying to get around the limitations. I've seen a lot of sophisticated apps written in ObjectiveC/IB, so I imagine this isn't too much of a problem here. It looks like you really need to change your mindset a lot to code and develop this way, though.
Second point:
I noticed that every time the sample app was run, there was a message to the effect that only a single screen was supported. I'm looking for a live CD to try out on an old 1 Ghz Dell box with a Matrox G450 dual-head video card. Does this message mean that dual monitors are not supported by this distro, or is it an IB thing, or something else altogether?
I kinda like the NeXT/Open/GnuStep environment, especially as compared to the Gnome/KDE weight and glitziness. I've been looking to try a Linux desktop for a while now, but I don't have time to dick around with X configuration and extensions to make it happen. Are there any live distros (based on Debian, perhaps) that do dual monitors out of the box?
(Yes, I know I should be googling, I'm just asking. People seem to like giving suggestions...)
"If you want an evironment where The Voice Of God comes down and tells everyone stop their C/C++ crap and go write Objective C programs, use OS X. It's never going to happen with Linux."
This comes off a lot like, "who cares if it's better, we're all used to something worse and we plan on sticking with it." Which is very much the same argument made by Windows advocates against Linux.
And this does not sum up the attitude of a lot of Linux users? What if it was stated like this:
"Who cares if it's better, we're all used to the same tools we had 30 years ago and we plan on sticking with them."
[[Non-troll disclaimer:]]
Yes, this is a broad generalization. No, it doesn't describe every Linux/Unix user. Yes, there is still a lot of truth in it.
The OP has it right. It's impossible to enforce a development environment or methodology (or pretty much any standard) unless either you control the platform (like Apple does), or there's already a de facto standard in place (C programming, for instance).
I don't remember a specific iPod guy, just all the sig links - I guess I was lucky there. This is the first out-and-out spam I've seen, that looks like it could have been in my email. I fully expect to see Costa Rican land scams and Vioxx ads any day.
Just remember what Usenet used to be like. This could get a lot worse.
Hmm. I played that one backwards, and I wound up going down to Hell and challenging the devil to a fiddle contest. Didn't win.
Hey-
Check out this great site that is giving away totally FREE Mini Macs!
I've joined and I think you should as well.
It's a completely legitimate offer, and this company has already given away $4 million in FREE stuff!
All you have to do is join, complete an online offer, and refer friends to do the same. That's it!
Here is my referral link. To help me get my Mini Mac, click this exact link to join, or copy and paste it into a browser:
http://www.FreeMiniMacs.com/?r=********
My god. It's the first Slashdot spam. Note that the original comment is all in bold with a live link.
I think this referral-Amway thing has gotten out of hand. Are we going to start seeing these things in every story now?
And I have just the woman for him. She's working tonight, so she's already stripped down and covered with oil.
Yes, but the technology was, supposedly.
Speaking of silly file formats nobody uses...
Yes, I know many people here on Slashdot use it, but in the larger world, it's pretty much nonexistent. It's certainly not popular or interesting enough for a major manufacturer like Sony to spend a lot of time and money supporting it. The number of sales Ogg support would generate would be trivial.
Basically, it's a format that has no reason to exist. The mere fact that MP3 is, or was, "encumbered" by patents hasn't had any effect on anything. Who has been sued, shut down, or threatened for writing or selling MP3 players? There is no noticeable quality improvement or filesize decrease to Ogg that would make it worth the trouble, or else the industry would have already moved to it.
MP3 is "good enough". Therefore, it's going to remain the dominant standard for non-DRM audio for the forseeable future. Ogg is a great format, and for all I know may be technically superior, but so was Betamax. QED.
Oh yeah, I need one of these. But can you enable HEM on it?
"HEM? What the hell is HEM?"
Fit that bad boy out with a pair of cannon and articulate the legs so it can walk around and my perimeter security is up to date, man.
KDE and GNOME are not single packages. They are combinations of smaller packages. Waving the KDE and GNOE flags dont make your point, OpenOffice.Org might, but thats really just a statment against code bloat office suites
My mistake, I didn't read it clearly enough. Anyway, it's still the same principle - an update to one thing causing updates of lots of other things. Consider it a statement against code bloat in general.
Binary diffs only really make sense when you have huge packages that require a whole new package for upgrade.
Sort of like KDE and Gnome, then?
Apparently, most distributions have you download the entire package for each update, although there are efforts underway to break up sections a bit more (if I'm wrong, I apologize - I use BSD).
It sounds like what's really needed is to build packages of just the updated files. The install manifest would just specify the files in the archive, so there shouldn't be any complaints about missing files. Or does that show my ignorance?
Actually, if you wanted a more general scheme, the update server would build packages on the fly. The updater would send a list of files in a package to the server, which would return a set of files that need updating. You could use this to upgrade any system, regardless of distribution. You would just have to update the database for whatever to show that it was at the latest version.
Yes, this would take up a lot more CPU time, and be pretty slow on response time, but the savings in bandwidth should be worth it. All the time the servers were waiting for the network card could be used compressing files.
[KDE] is not the best for developers since they cannot create commercial application for it without paying TrollTech. I wonder how tyrannical Microsoft would be if they would ask you to pay them for using Window Forms, Win32 API, WTL, MFC, or any other API they have. Not everyone wants to create GPL applications, nor do they want to pay the TrollTech tax.
Two things:
* You don't pay to use the various Windows APIs, you pay to use Windows. That's the product they sell. The APIs are the incentive to use it. Trolltech's product is QT. That's how they actually make that pesky money that lets them have the GPL version.
* If you're doing commercial software development, you expect to pay to do it. It's just like any other business. The cost of buying computers, dev tools, office chairs, etc. are trivial in comparison to big costs like salaries, office space and bandwidth, not to mention the income you expect to make from selling the product.
Ahhh, Battlefield Earth. I just recently saw this (my video store has a rent-2, get-2-free policy so, no, I didn't have to pay money for it) and realized that this had to be the worst, most ludicrous movie ever made.
There were actually some pretty cool special effects, but my god, the dialogue. The plot! Consider:
* The evil planetary overlord, trying to crack down on the earthling slave workers in the mines (paraphrased): "We'll cut their pay if they don't cooperate!" Read this line again. Consider that the suggestion is made at least twice.
* The heroes escape, with a gun. After a chase, they come face to face with Terl. Terl tells them, essentially, "You can't win, you know. You should give up." They say "You're right" and *hand him the gun*.
* At some point, Terl gives the escaping heroes a gun. They do not use it on him.
* Terl decides the best way to keep the humans in line is via the time-honored method of taking the smartest, most independent one and teaching him your entire language and technology.
* To pull off a plot to mine gold for his own nefarious purposes, Terl takes these same educated, rebellious humans, gives them a badass fighting ship, and sends them off on their own, saying "come back with some gold, now".
* Apparently, the aliens can believe that humans are capable of building a modern technological society, but the idea of a human learning how to mine gold is so inconceivable as to cause fits of laughter every time it's mentioned.
* Every character, at some point, is required to wear a set of two foot long string-tie-like apparatus clipped to their nose - humans when they breate the alien atmosphere, aliens when breathing Earth atmosphere. These are never explained. They also never get tangled or wrapped around anything, regardless of the amount of running through and fighting in the underbrush.
I actually suspect that this movie was meant to be a spoof. Otherwise there is absolutely no way to believe that someone could put every single bad movie cliche into one movie.
Well, if you had represented a school, you probably would have mentioned that up front. I agree completely, though, that they played it all wrong. Not very professional at all.
Well, I think the heart of the problem is that you were trying to cadge an educational discount so your kid could run a teaching program. Since educational discounts are generally given to schools and the like, I imagine the folks at Win4Lin put your request into the "Yeah, right" pile.
Sure, it's unprofessional of them to just ignore you, and I agree that they should have gotten back to you with at least a simple "No", but you can't really have expected them to take you too seriously, can you?
No, the analogy here is if I say I'll mow your lawn for $5.00, then show up and say "actually, the price has gone up. Now I'll mow your lawn for $20.00, but you have to give the money to these other guys over here who are helping to keep lawnmowing legal." Then, if you pay them the $20.00, I mow your lawn.
There, wasn't that easy? All you have to do is look at the actual situation and then just think for a second.