Everyone should support and increase the compatibility of OpenBIOS!
OpenFirmware is the best BIOS standard ever, the joy of being able to code from the command line and have non-interrupt-hijacking calls to the firmware, a rudimentary HAL etc. is absolutely 100% cool.
It won't improve your Windows experience but who the hell cares about that?:)
It already has the support of Apple, Sun, SGI and IBM, comes in 32 and 64bit versions in the standard, has a framebuffer, text console that redirects to serial, video etc. automatically, blah blah blah.. Intel won't support it because they like EFI.
But forget Intel too:)
Everyone should move to PowerPC, but then call me biased..
Someone sees you can get child porn through their connection. If they are ordinary, wholesome human beings, they will report it to their ISP.
ISP blocks such content and informs police of location on net.
The police cannot arrest ISP executives for simply not blocking content they never knew about.
(Google and Google Images don't show Child Porn do they? Or Nazi images in France, either. Or Scientology-debunk sites. It seems it's really easy to block content on request..)
The way they do it at Valve/Sierra/Steam is you send in a photograph (email as JPG or so..) of the box, serial code sticker, media and a copy of the receipt from the store you bought it from (or the relevant part of your credit card statement I guess).
This way they can determine that you purchased a legitimate copy on a particular date, and correlate that particular copy's key with the one already in use online.
This stops pirates and keygeneration, and also "key stealing" from games stores and warehouses. It sucks for if you want to buy a second-hand game, but ALL legitimate buyers are protected by this (and simple need to borrow a digital camera maybe:)
The problem with MMOGs these days is they are so huge (a lot of game data) that you really need the game media. Downloads are impractical compared to buying a DVD.
Also publishers are greedy; the $44.99 game is too tempting to release and put on stores to keep status quo with similarly expensive games. Sometimes they bundle a "free month" of play.
The optimal solution is to sell your game DVD for $10 (EVE-Online.com does this) and let you pay for the first month manually or via something like mobile phone topup cards. Instead of putting the key inside the box, they should simply go for credit card authorisation or the serial number of your first topup card, and generate you a key/account based on THAT and some personal details - since you have to buy a month to play, it forces you to get a key and makes the DVD a commodity rather than a requirement.
Of course this kind of distribution is so far removed from games publishing as implemented in the industry, it just doesn't happen that way. All the games publishing companies have engineered this "$44.99, key in box, cd required in drive" out of habit and lack of will to change established (cheap, trained to all employees) procedures and aren't changing fast enough when they realise that it really is the future.
Blizzard have slipped up in not having a nicer way to distribute the game without locking yourself to a plastic box and a plastic disc; but really the real slip-up on this thread is some guy being SO impatient he had to buy the game second-hand and DIDN'T SEE THIS DAMN PROBLEM A MILE OFF.
To compete with commercial software, Open Source software generally has to REPLACE commercial software, the same way that OTHER commercial software does.
Case in point here, what I was trying to say was that Mozilla as it was designed to be, from the very start defined by Netscape, AOL and the Mozilla organisation, was some elaborate application suite with many little widgets and doobries and goobers.
When all we really wanted was to supercede Internet Explorer.
Mozilla should have been structured as Firefox and Thunderbird style single packets (part of a larger framework) from the start.
If replacing IE was what Netscape wanted to do, Netscape should have figured on replacing IE, and not had the Mozilla organisation spend 5 years reworking the Netscape suite (browser,mail,chat,editor,miscellaneous) before people figured on the idea that all people really ache for is the browser component.
It doesn't need to be as nefarious or sneaky as "seducing users" - open source software would be picked because it's a decent alternative.
Now that Microsoft have "Reduced Media XP", where is the open-source replacement for Media Player? Do you think Helix (RealPlayer 10 etc.) could be it? Do we have to wait another 7 years before people engineer something to REPLACE the things people hate about Windows, rather than going off on ludicrous projects to acheive some coding nirvana?
I guess I'm wishing for the days when a product was a product, and not bragging rights for clean code or superior "design". What user cares about architecture?
Don't get me wrong, I use Firefox every day. But let's remember Firefox was not the primary goal of the Mozilla Project, but a fluke messaround of a couple of engineers to strip the browser down from an unweildy "suite" to what people want: an IE replacement.
If Mozilla weren't being so contrary in the very beginning and decided to go the route diametrically opposite to competing with IE, we'd have been there years ago.
What's the difference, on Blizzard's end, between..
"Hello Blizzard. I bought a second-hand copy of the game. Please give me a new key."
and..
"Hello Blizzard. [I downloaded the game from eMule]. Please give me a new key."
To be slack on the reissue of keys is to encourage piracy. The moment some precedent comes into play that enforces reissuing authentication keys on demand, piracy based on keys and CDs-in-drives and PKIs becomes defunct.
What this guy should do is get over it, get his money back from the idiot who sold him a useless game, and buy a retail copy. As and when he finds one, the servers may be up long enough for him to play it. He's not missing much at the minute.
Suggest a better solution for validating that a user actually has legitimately purchased a copy.
If people are pirating lists of keys en-masse and yours is unlucky to get on there, they will get HUNDREDS of people who are naive enough to whine and complain that their "key" doesn't work on their "Walmart" copy of HL2.
The photographs and/or scans of the receipt are the clincher, and therefore only legitimate buyers get a replacement key.
When you have to pick between 1000 turds and a slab of gold, do you want to do a blindfold test and just shove your hand in?
It sounds to me like you HAVE a pirate key and are using some lame socio-political excuse for Valve and Sierra to hand out free keys.
The usual way to prove to them that you bought the game is to send them photographs in JPEG format of the box, manual and CD key sticker.
Valve/Sierra already institute this procedure for original Half-life and Counter-strike multiplayer games and have done since the products were released what.. 5 or 6 years ago?
If your CD key gets used by someone else, you send them a photo of your LEGITIMATE box and key, and they give you a new one that isn't going to get stolen etc.
They aren't forgetting the contribution search engines offer to their site through hits; it's just not relevant in their minds at this time.
If someone you think is infringing your copyright, do you just say "ah well the guy bought me a beer last week, so I'll let him off"? Nope, this is what the Porn people are doing, they're ignoring the beer and just going for the payout.
Remember porn is an industry where suing your own mother is normal business, of course "normal" is debating her contract where it says she has to be spitroasted by two huskies, while a horse watches and waits for the leftovers.
There's a difference between being top of PageRank statistics, and caching images, and this porn site may have a point. In the end the effect may be that Google stops caching porn images.. which will only damage clickthroughs to the sites in question.
We have Number 8 (roadside electronic billboards not only give directions to nearby lots and garages, they crucially reveal how many empty spaces are left) in the UK.
Also most banks open on Saturdays. Sundays well.. people need days off:)
Isn't this a "American sucks and is clinging to 1930's technology" more than "China rules"?
Forget "multiple graphics cards". Just use one, and get a video splitter. You can buy $80 hardware that will portion a video signal (VGA) up into 2x2, 4x4 or 8x8 blocks ("video wall").
"The Customer Is Always Right: The biggest and most successful marketing campaign in history. Put that sticker or sign in your store and it does two things; reminds your staff to smile and be tolerant for as long as possible, and gives the customer an instant boost of confidence which usually manifests itself in them buying something.
Of course it backfires when you get a "demon customer" but they would be in the minority. It's cheaper than specially chosen psychoanalysed store music
The truth is that the customer was never right. The customer is to be TOLD that they are right, even if they are wrong, because telling them they are wrong loses them as a customer - even if they buy during sales and make rampant use of rebates you still make money from them. The truth is that most customers are f**king idiots. The sign merely makes the customer feel less like a prick (== purchases) and the staff less likely to call them a prick (== purchases).
If Akamai's 2% of affected customers only comprised, for example, 5% of their total traffic, it would still be not-a-big-deal, wouldn't it? Since you have no accurate statistics on Akamai's total traffic, number of customers or anything like that either, why bother to err on the side of negativity?
Is it Slashdot policy to see conspiracy in every situation?
Having your sysadmins LEARNING how to use new architectures, procedures and so on costs money - because their time is on salary, you pay for that learning process, their lack of knowledge in the beginning adding time to solving problems, and bringing in help costs more because you'd prefer they'd have that broad experience already.
Remember.. [insert product here] is free if your time is worthless.
"but they have been hearing questions about how people can get the copy-blocked songs from the CD onto an iPod".. uhh.. iTunes Music Store? CDs are dead, dude:)
.. making Linux PVR's mainstream already happened. Whacking a PVR package on a bog standard PC doesn't make it somehow more accessible to the general public.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone should support and increase the compatibility of OpenBIOS!
OpenFirmware is the best BIOS standard ever, the joy of being able to code
from the command line and have non-interrupt-hijacking calls to the firmware,
a rudimentary HAL etc. is absolutely 100% cool.
It won't improve your Windows experience but who the hell cares about that?
It already has the support of Apple, Sun, SGI and IBM, comes in 32 and 64bit
versions in the standard, has a framebuffer, text console that redirects to
serial, video etc. automatically, blah blah blah.. Intel won't support it
because they like EFI.
But forget Intel too
Everyone should move to PowerPC, but then call me biased..
Well, we all built our own boxes, and have retail copies and not OEM preinstalls
on our systems, don't we?
Neko
Easy.
ISP runs as normal.
Someone sees you can get child porn through their connection. If they are ordinary, wholesome human beings, they will report it to their ISP.
ISP blocks such content and informs police of location on net.
The police cannot arrest ISP executives for simply not blocking content they never
knew about.
(Google and Google Images don't show Child Porn do they? Or Nazi images in France, either. Or Scientology-debunk sites. It seems it's really easy to block content on request..)
Neko
Sellafield is in Cumbria. That's practically Scotland.
The way they do it at Valve/Sierra/Steam is you send in a photograph (email as JPG or so..) of the box, serial code sticker, media and a copy of the receipt from the store you bought it from (or the relevant part of your credit card statement I guess).
This way they can determine that you purchased a legitimate copy on a particular date, and correlate that particular copy's key with the one already in use online.
This stops pirates and keygeneration, and also "key stealing" from games stores and warehouses. It sucks for if you want to buy a second-hand game, but ALL legitimate buyers are protected by this (and simple need to borrow a digital camera maybe
The problem with MMOGs these days is they are so huge (a lot of game data) that you really need the game media. Downloads are impractical compared to buying a DVD.
Also publishers are greedy; the $44.99 game is too tempting to release and put on stores to keep status quo with similarly expensive games. Sometimes they bundle a "free month" of play.
The optimal solution is to sell your game DVD for $10 (EVE-Online.com does this) and let you pay for the first month manually or via something like mobile phone topup cards. Instead of putting the key inside the box, they should simply go for credit card authorisation or the serial number of your first topup card, and generate you a key/account based on THAT and some personal details - since you have to buy a month to play, it forces you to get a key and makes the DVD a commodity rather than a requirement.
Of course this kind of distribution is so far removed from games publishing as implemented in the industry, it just doesn't happen that way. All the games publishing companies have engineered this "$44.99, key in box, cd required in drive" out of habit and lack of will to change established (cheap, trained to all employees) procedures and aren't changing fast enough when they realise that it really is the future.
Blizzard have slipped up in not having a nicer way to distribute the game without locking yourself to a plastic box and a plastic disc; but really the real slip-up on this thread is some guy being SO impatient he had to buy the game second-hand and DIDN'T SEE THIS DAMN PROBLEM A MILE OFF.
To compete with commercial software, Open Source software generally has to REPLACE commercial software, the same way that OTHER commercial software does.
Case in point here, what I was trying to say was that Mozilla as it was designed to be, from the very start defined by Netscape, AOL and the Mozilla organisation, was some elaborate application suite with many little widgets and doobries and goobers.
When all we really wanted was to supercede Internet Explorer.
Mozilla should have been structured as Firefox and Thunderbird style single packets (part of a larger framework) from the start.
If replacing IE was what Netscape wanted to do, Netscape should have figured on replacing IE, and not had the Mozilla organisation spend 5 years reworking the Netscape suite (browser,mail,chat,editor,miscellaneous) before people figured on the idea that all people really ache for is the browser component.
It doesn't need to be as nefarious or sneaky as "seducing users" - open source software would be picked because it's a decent alternative.
Now that Microsoft have "Reduced Media XP", where is the open-source replacement for Media Player? Do you think Helix (RealPlayer 10 etc.) could be it? Do we have to wait another 7 years before people engineer something to REPLACE the things people hate about Windows, rather than going off on ludicrous projects to acheive some coding nirvana?
I guess I'm wishing for the days when a product was a product, and not bragging rights for clean code or superior "design". What user cares about architecture?
Phenomenal?
It took them 7 years to get this far.
Don't get me wrong, I use Firefox every day. But let's remember Firefox was not
the primary goal of the Mozilla Project, but a fluke messaround of a couple of
engineers to strip the browser down from an unweildy "suite" to what people want:
an IE replacement.
If Mozilla weren't being so contrary in the very beginning and decided to go the
route diametrically opposite to competing with IE, we'd have been there years ago.
Neko
Define "truly defunct".
What's the difference, on Blizzard's end, between..
"Hello Blizzard. I bought a second-hand copy of the game. Please give me a new key."
and..
"Hello Blizzard. [I downloaded the game from eMule]. Please give me a new key."
To be slack on the reissue of keys is to encourage piracy. The moment some
precedent comes into play that enforces reissuing authentication keys on demand,
piracy based on keys and CDs-in-drives and PKIs becomes defunct.
What this guy should do is get over it, get his money back from the idiot who
sold him a useless game, and buy a retail copy. As and when he finds one, the servers may be up long enough for him to play it. He's not missing much at the minute.
Neko
.. in the palm of my hand!
:)
Who's been watching too much Spider-Man, me or the Christian Science Monitor?
This is what you get when you run businesses and governments on the contracts
of the lowest bidder.
Neko
Well the river chase is a pretty darn good level in itself :)
:)
There should be some great mods upcoming if the original Half-Life
is anything to go by. I can't wait for something like Todesangst:Source
Suggest a better solution for validating that a user actually has
legitimately purchased a copy.
If people are pirating lists of keys en-masse and yours is unlucky
to get on there, they will get HUNDREDS of people who are naive
enough to whine and complain that their "key" doesn't work on their
"Walmart" copy of HL2.
The photographs and/or scans of the receipt are the clincher, and
therefore only legitimate buyers get a replacement key.
When you have to pick between 1000 turds and a slab of gold, do you
want to do a blindfold test and just shove your hand in?
It sounds to me like you HAVE a pirate key and are using some
lame socio-political excuse for Valve and Sierra to hand out free
keys.
The usual way to prove to them that you bought the game is to send them
photographs in JPEG format of the box, manual and CD key sticker.
Valve/Sierra already institute this procedure for original Half-life and
Counter-strike multiplayer games and have done since the products were
released what.. 5 or 6 years ago?
If your CD key gets used by someone else, you send them a photo of your
LEGITIMATE box and key, and they give you a new one that isn't going to
get stolen etc.
Quite simple I think, to prove your innocence.
Neko
They aren't forgetting the contribution search engines offer to their site through hits; it's just not relevant in their minds at this time.
If someone you think is infringing your copyright, do you just say "ah well
the guy bought me a beer last week, so I'll let him off"? Nope, this is what
the Porn people are doing, they're ignoring the beer and just going for the
payout.
Remember porn is an industry where suing your own mother is normal business,
of course "normal" is debating her contract where it says she has to be spitroasted by two huskies, while a horse watches and waits for the leftovers.
There's a difference between being top of PageRank statistics, and caching
images, and this porn site may have a point. In the end the effect may be that
Google stops caching porn images.. which will only damage clickthroughs to the
sites in question.
In the end, Google 1, Porn Site 0.
public relations and marketing departments everywhere.
What better reinforcement for consumer confidence?
Of course it's not true. Customers don't know SHIT most of the time
We have Number 8 (roadside electronic billboards not only give directions to nearby lots and garages, they crucially reveal how many empty spaces are left) in the UK.
Also most banks open on Saturdays. Sundays well.. people need days off
Isn't this a "American sucks and is clinging to 1930's technology" more than "China rules"?
I *do* work in this business.
http://v3.vapor.com/ contains a good few lines of code I wrote. It's not
for Windows, or Linux, one of the most little used platforms on the planet.
If we raised $250,000 for an advert in a newspaper, it would NOT be momentum.
It's called CHARITY.
http://www.genesi.lu -- this is where I work now. Does this look like I am an
IE developer?
People contributing to a fund is not momentum, it's charity.
"Just goes to show how much charity Firefox can endear" would be
more accurate statement.
Forget "multiple graphics cards". Just use one, and get a video splitter. You
can buy $80 hardware that will portion a video signal (VGA) up into 2x2, 4x4
or 8x8 blocks ("video wall").
Then you don't need Linux whatsoever.
Neko
"The Customer Is Always Right: The biggest and most successful marketing campaign in history. Put that sticker or sign in your store and it does two things; reminds your staff to smile and be tolerant for as long as possible, and gives the customer an instant boost of confidence which usually manifests itself in them buying something.
Of course it backfires when you get a "demon customer" but they would be in the minority. It's cheaper than specially chosen psychoanalysed store music
The truth is that the customer was never right. The customer is to be TOLD that they are right, even if they are wrong, because telling them they are wrong loses them as a customer - even if they buy during sales and make rampant use of rebates you still make money from them. The truth is that most customers are f**king idiots. The sign merely makes the customer feel less like a prick (== purchases) and the staff less likely to call them a prick (== purchases).
Neko
Only if your made-up statistic is correct.
If Akamai's 2% of affected customers only comprised, for example, 5% of their total traffic, it would still be not-a-big-deal, wouldn't it? Since you have no accurate statistics on Akamai's total traffic, number of customers or anything like that either, why bother to err on the side of negativity?
Is it Slashdot policy to see conspiracy in every situation?
Having your sysadmins LEARNING how to use new architectures, procedures and so on costs money - because their time is on salary, you pay for that learning process, their lack of knowledge in the beginning adding time to solving problems, and bringing in help costs more because you'd prefer they'd have that broad experience already.
Remember.. [insert product here] is free if your time is worthless.
Neko
"but they have been hearing questions about how people can get the copy-blocked songs from the CD onto an iPod"
bog standard PC doesn't make it somehow more accessible to the general public.
Well if you found real prior art, then well done.
But it wouldn't have been bad at all if Borland had patented this feature,
would it?