After working as a programmer in a corporate environment for a year+ I can pretty much say that the odds of the programmers even getting the opportunity to fix this would be slim. Thanks to the wonders of corporate micromanagement, almost the entire programming staff where I worked was threatened at one point or another not to deviate form management approved development tracks. Taking the time to research and fix the bug (even though the research seems to be done by external forces at this point) is taking time away from the company, and in big systems like Adobe, that's a big no-no.
That being said, I'm about 90% confident that somewhere in the last year, one or two Adobe programmers have coded a bug fix and have it sitting around, but management won't let them put it in because they see it as caving into "illegal" hackers like the DEFCON speakers.
I read through most of the comments and I've come up with some observations that have always bounced around my brain without ever coming otgether until now.
1. The majority of the comments here tend to solidify around the logic that this story and the source of it are idiotic and baseless. Now this isn't commentary coming from random sources. This is commentary coming from somewhat intelligent, well-articulated people with some degree of expertise or interest in games and technology. These kind of opinions would seem to be the most logical ones to comment on this aspect of the story.
2. These opinions will never be treated seriously by the mainstream press. These are the voices that get ignored or mocked by the Bill O'Reliey's and Fox News Channels of the world. The media always seems willing to go to the Jack Thompsons of the world for quotes and perspectives, but always seem hesitant to find the kind of views you would see of/.
So it leaves me to wonder why this happens. Time and time again, the media is willing to go for the off-the-wall source to make a story stand out, rather than seeking out the opinions of/. style populations. If you want in depth, thought out discussions and opinions on things like DMCA, P2P, SCO vs IBM, etc, it would seem that reporters would be inclined to solicit these types of opinions rather than find crackpots like Jack Thompson, Hillary Rosen, etc. Is it the general 'geek' stigma that surrounds such topics. Are we too 'geeky' to have valid opinions. It seems like we're 'geek' enough to do all the critical engineering and researching in the modern world, but not have an insight into the issues afterwards.
I choose to base my logic on the movie Armageddon where people can cheerily pull 18 G's on the backside of the moon.... before landing on an asteroid... and blowing it up...
"it (Freenet) is no more of a threat than any of the popular P2P services."
The tone of that statement seems to imply that P2P is not a threat to the RIAA... which seems contrary to their entire defense.
I have to say, the Freenet guy came across very well in that debate since he was able to flow between humor and fact. The RIAA really needs to hire some PR people that don't seem so angry all the time. As long as they keep up this approach to PR, the more the public is going to go against them.
In some recess of my mind, I recognize that a Quidditch game could be cool. Think about it. Online play. 14 players (plus there could be substitutes on the sidelines). Player customization and skill stats. Essentially a 3d flight sim and sports game in one. High speeds, lots of action, a little bit of violence. Fun for everybody.
Then the part of my brain trained over the years to interject with reality steps up. It's going to be a crappy movie liscence game. From EA. Geared towards childen. With crappy AI cause everybody wants to be the seeker. Let's toss in crappy controls too.
If it wasn't for the fact that it would be Fox-ed rather quickly, the task of making a good Quidditch game would fall to mod devlopers for UT2k3/4, q3, d3, or hl2. Thank god trademarks will prevent a good movie game from ever being made.
When did we start calling programming hacking? Am I missing something. You took an XML feed and made an aplet to manipulate it. OOOOOOH. It's ccalled programming. Hacking implies that it is forbidden, agressive, or both. Stupid mainstream press with their coopting of our phrases.
My ex-girlfriend had a book of proverbs and crap that she gave me (makes for very smug e-mail sigs). I was reminded of this man.
An old man and a young man go out fishing together in seperate boats. After a while, a storm comes along. A large wave appears and grows larger as it approaches the two boats. The young man throws everything he can at the wave, hoping to break it. The old man calmly rows his boat into the wave. The wave capsizes the young man's boat but not the old man's. The old man pulls the young man from the sea. The young man asks why his boat did not capsize.
"If I didn't fight it like an enemy, it wouldn't treat me like one either."
I'm shocked. Not that this legislation is being put forth (which is a good idea btw), but rather I'm surprised that a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering exists to begin with. The fact that a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorists have meetings and offices baffles me.
I very much doubt there will be any sort of court challenge here. Patents on this subject are notorious for having a limited scope of enforcement. As long as Walmart's rental plan varies in the slightest degree from what is explicitly stated on the patent, it is fair game. It's similar to how there is a patent for one click purchasing of good over the internet. So now we have 2 clicks. Brand new idea!
But I'm forced to agree with the overall sentiment that these apatents do little to help the world and are designed only for triggy happy lawers.
How will I ever get my Turok fix?! Any game that manages to have that many sequels getting exponentially worse over time had to have some pact with Satan. Them and Home Alone.
It's called Lexan. Measure your monitor, go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy a piece. The store will cut it for free. It's very thin and you can keep it in your laptop bag or somehow affix it to your screen casing.
I'm not lazy and my LCD is still experiencing burn-ins. The problem is that in a given day of work I use maybe 3 programs, of which I use one of them about 6 hours a day with little interruption. When I leave my desk to go to anywhere for more than a few minuts, I turn off my monitor. I do the same thing at home. I was raised to conserve power, too. The problem is that when the monitor is on all day with the same static framing (menu bars, close/minimize buttonn) on all my programs, eventually there is burn in, regardless of me being good and turning it off when I'm gone. It's not an issue of me being lazy and leaving crap on all night, its a prodcut defect that annoys the piss out of me because the industry acts like its no problem, when the same "stress" on my CRT monitor at home over years of work hasn't produced any burn-in. My thought is that somewhere along the line, manufacturers figured just the number of corners they could cut to make cheap LCDs and cut one too many resulting in this new wave of defects. Hopefully, somebody will have to guts to admit they goofed and quality will come out again.
Yeah, we'll just go on Microsoft's long standing reputation of fair business practices, looking out for consumers, and sense of right and wrong. Oh... wait...
I'd rather him grow up with better hand-eye coordination, logic skills, an reflexes. Oh but wait, too much Tetis is going to turn little Timmy into a homicidal maniac.
In other news, Kraft foods has issues a Cease and Desist order to Blizzard claiming games like StarCraft and WarCraft might be confused with their yummy, delicious cheese products. Film at 11.
Seriously folks, the DHD has huge assets and the ability to get away with shit left and right. Let them spend a few billion on finding the actual spammers, arresting their asses with the PATRIOT Act and holding them for a few months without charges and let them get sodomized by some nice gentelmen at Guantanamo Bay. That should decrease the urge to spam or program spamming tools.
The last software job I had was a fairly fun working environment (the owner got us two Segways and a Rascal to have office races) and there was zero dress code. We had some guys come in with cammo pants and tank tops, some guys wore suits, and one guy had a mohawk that he kept up with a vat of glue he kept in his desk. Tattoos were faily common, especially since after completing a project a few years before I got there, a bunch of the guys had OS symbols tattooed on them depending on their preferences (I'm not claiming that will be as cool when they're 40 or 50). But I guess the point of my whole rant is that it really depends on what kind of jobs you're looking at and who hires you. I wouldn't want to work for anybody that judged or penalized people based on tatoos or how thye looked, but you are in a much better position to make that call than any of us. But still, think about your tatoo you're getting and where you're getting it (mine is on my lower back, which sucked when I had to sit in a car for 10 hours the next day, that thing was fuggin sore).
It's going to be hard for EA/Dice to compete with this.
No it's not. The team of highly paid professional game designers will most likely win out against modders of their own game. Unless the team of modders suddenly aquires a professional PR department and publisher that is..
It's like my childhood is coming back, only swankier. I was so pissed off when my sister finalyl returned my NES to me after 5 years only to find out that she lost/sold/damaged most of my games. SMB3 had a huge crack running through it because it was eventually used to steady her dinner table. I think this is finally going to drive me to get an SP when the Black version comes out. Man, I've waited years to play SMB3 again. Now I jsut need to grab a copy of The Wizard somewhere.
Yeah, except for the fact that the more negative media file swapping gets, the bigger it becomes. I remember scouring websites and ftps trying to download mp3s not 5 years ago. Then people figured out network sharing at colleges was a good idea and the press got wind of it. The next thing you know, other college students set up networks because they heard about it through "bad" press. Then Napster came along and a whole new group jumped on the bandwagon. The Napster got shut down (which was supposed to be the ultimate in "bad" news for mp3 sharing) and the whole situation blew up with hundreds of Napster-spawns hitting the internet. Even through bad publicity that happens today, mp3 file sharing is getting larger, not smaller. So I more than welcome Rosen talking about it everyday on TV, it might get the last stragglers onto it.
Sure enough, with a little bit of digging, I found my carmageddon 2 cd. I tried to install it, but sadly it doesn't seem to play nicely with win2k. oh well. Those were some good old days of using the pedestrian magnet powerup and then the omni-directional pedestrian launching springs to send hundreds of peds skywards.
Only the DVD-Audio was listed to be rip-proof. I'm not so bothered by that as I am by th notion that there is a hoard of Steely Dan fans waiting outside of Best Buy trying to get their coveted copy on DVD-Audio. What's next, rip-proof Mariah Carey on MiniDisc?
Slashdot Mirror
After working as a programmer in a corporate environment for a year+ I can pretty much say that the odds of the programmers even getting the opportunity to fix this would be slim. Thanks to the wonders of corporate micromanagement, almost the entire programming staff where I worked was threatened at one point or another not to deviate form management approved development tracks. Taking the time to research and fix the bug (even though the research seems to be done by external forces at this point) is taking time away from the company, and in big systems like Adobe, that's a big no-no.
That being said, I'm about 90% confident that somewhere in the last year, one or two Adobe programmers have coded a bug fix and have it sitting around, but management won't let them put it in because they see it as caving into "illegal" hackers like the DEFCON speakers.
I read through most of the comments and I've come up with some observations that have always bounced around my brain without ever coming otgether until now.
/.
/. style populations. If you want in depth, thought out discussions and opinions on things like DMCA, P2P, SCO vs IBM, etc, it would seem that reporters would be inclined to solicit these types of opinions rather than find crackpots like Jack Thompson, Hillary Rosen, etc. Is it the general 'geek' stigma that surrounds such topics. Are we too 'geeky' to have valid opinions. It seems like we're 'geek' enough to do all the critical engineering and researching in the modern world, but not have an insight into the issues afterwards.
1. The majority of the comments here tend to solidify around the logic that this story and the source of it are idiotic and baseless. Now this isn't commentary coming from random sources. This is commentary coming from somewhat intelligent, well-articulated people with some degree of expertise or interest in games and technology. These kind of opinions would seem to be the most logical ones to comment on this aspect of the story.
2. These opinions will never be treated seriously by the mainstream press. These are the voices that get ignored or mocked by the Bill O'Reliey's and Fox News Channels of the world. The media always seems willing to go to the Jack Thompsons of the world for quotes and perspectives, but always seem hesitant to find the kind of views you would see of
So it leaves me to wonder why this happens. Time and time again, the media is willing to go for the off-the-wall source to make a story stand out, rather than seeking out the opinions of
But I also enjoy playing non-violent games, such as SimCity 4
We better not see you in the news being arrested for renegade city planning.
I choose to base my logic on the movie Armageddon where people can cheerily pull 18 G's on the backside of the moon.... before landing on an asteroid... and blowing it up...
perhaps i need to find a new base for my logic...
"I found myself lusting after an in-game avatar" I sadly miss the days of game journalism written by adults.
"it (Freenet) is no more of a threat than any of the popular P2P services."
The tone of that statement seems to imply that P2P is not a threat to the RIAA... which seems contrary to their entire defense.
I have to say, the Freenet guy came across very well in that debate since he was able to flow between humor and fact. The RIAA really needs to hire some PR people that don't seem so angry all the time. As long as they keep up this approach to PR, the more the public is going to go against them.
In some recess of my mind, I recognize that a Quidditch game could be cool. Think about it. Online play. 14 players (plus there could be substitutes on the sidelines). Player customization and skill stats. Essentially a 3d flight sim and sports game in one. High speeds, lots of action, a little bit of violence. Fun for everybody.
Then the part of my brain trained over the years to interject with reality steps up. It's going to be a crappy movie liscence game. From EA. Geared towards childen. With crappy AI cause everybody wants to be the seeker. Let's toss in crappy controls too.
If it wasn't for the fact that it would be Fox-ed rather quickly, the task of making a good Quidditch game would fall to mod devlopers for UT2k3/4, q3, d3, or hl2. Thank god trademarks will prevent a good movie game from ever being made.
When did we start calling programming hacking? Am I missing something. You took an XML feed and made an aplet to manipulate it. OOOOOOH. It's ccalled programming. Hacking implies that it is forbidden, agressive, or both. Stupid mainstream press with their coopting of our phrases.
My ex-girlfriend had a book of proverbs and crap that she gave me (makes for very smug e-mail sigs). I was reminded of this man.
An old man and a young man go out fishing together in seperate boats. After a while, a storm comes along. A large wave appears and grows larger as it approaches the two boats. The young man throws everything he can at the wave, hoping to break it. The old man calmly rows his boat into the wave. The wave capsizes the young man's boat but not the old man's. The old man pulls the young man from the sea. The young man asks why his boat did not capsize.
"If I didn't fight it like an enemy, it wouldn't treat me like one either."
I'm shocked. Not that this legislation is being put forth (which is a good idea btw), but rather I'm surprised that a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering exists to begin with. The fact that a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorists have meetings and offices baffles me.
I very much doubt there will be any sort of court challenge here. Patents on this subject are notorious for having a limited scope of enforcement. As long as Walmart's rental plan varies in the slightest degree from what is explicitly stated on the patent, it is fair game. It's similar to how there is a patent for one click purchasing of good over the internet. So now we have 2 clicks. Brand new idea!
But I'm forced to agree with the overall sentiment that these apatents do little to help the world and are designed only for triggy happy lawers.
How will I ever get my Turok fix?! Any game that manages to have that many sequels getting exponentially worse over time had to have some pact with Satan. Them and Home Alone.
It's called Lexan. Measure your monitor, go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy a piece. The store will cut it for free. It's very thin and you can keep it in your laptop bag or somehow affix it to your screen casing.
I'm not lazy and my LCD is still experiencing burn-ins. The problem is that in a given day of work I use maybe 3 programs, of which I use one of them about 6 hours a day with little interruption. When I leave my desk to go to anywhere for more than a few minuts, I turn off my monitor. I do the same thing at home. I was raised to conserve power, too. The problem is that when the monitor is on all day with the same static framing (menu bars, close/minimize buttonn) on all my programs, eventually there is burn in, regardless of me being good and turning it off when I'm gone. It's not an issue of me being lazy and leaving crap on all night, its a prodcut defect that annoys the piss out of me because the industry acts like its no problem, when the same "stress" on my CRT monitor at home over years of work hasn't produced any burn-in. My thought is that somewhere along the line, manufacturers figured just the number of corners they could cut to make cheap LCDs and cut one too many resulting in this new wave of defects. Hopefully, somebody will have to guts to admit they goofed and quality will come out again.
Now if Opencraft makes a board game first, can they sue Blizzard for trademark infringement?
Yeah, we'll just go on Microsoft's long standing reputation of fair business practices, looking out for consumers, and sense of right and wrong. Oh... wait...
I'd rather him grow up with better hand-eye coordination, logic skills, an reflexes. Oh but wait, too much Tetis is going to turn little Timmy into a homicidal maniac.
In other news, Kraft foods has issues a Cease and Desist order to Blizzard claiming games like StarCraft and WarCraft might be confused with their yummy, delicious cheese products. Film at 11.
Seriously folks, the DHD has huge assets and the ability to get away with shit left and right. Let them spend a few billion on finding the actual spammers, arresting their asses with the PATRIOT Act and holding them for a few months without charges and let them get sodomized by some nice gentelmen at Guantanamo Bay. That should decrease the urge to spam or program spamming tools.
The last software job I had was a fairly fun working environment (the owner got us two Segways and a Rascal to have office races) and there was zero dress code. We had some guys come in with cammo pants and tank tops, some guys wore suits, and one guy had a mohawk that he kept up with a vat of glue he kept in his desk. Tattoos were faily common, especially since after completing a project a few years before I got there, a bunch of the guys had OS symbols tattooed on them depending on their preferences (I'm not claiming that will be as cool when they're 40 or 50). But I guess the point of my whole rant is that it really depends on what kind of jobs you're looking at and who hires you. I wouldn't want to work for anybody that judged or penalized people based on tatoos or how thye looked, but you are in a much better position to make that call than any of us. But still, think about your tatoo you're getting and where you're getting it (mine is on my lower back, which sucked when I had to sit in a car for 10 hours the next day, that thing was fuggin sore).
It's going to be hard for EA/Dice to compete with this.
No it's not. The team of highly paid professional game designers will most likely win out against modders of their own game. Unless the team of modders suddenly aquires a professional PR department and publisher that is..
It's like my childhood is coming back, only swankier. I was so pissed off when my sister finalyl returned my NES to me after 5 years only to find out that she lost/sold/damaged most of my games. SMB3 had a huge crack running through it because it was eventually used to steady her dinner table. I think this is finally going to drive me to get an SP when the Black version comes out. Man, I've waited years to play SMB3 again. Now I jsut need to grab a copy of The Wizard somewhere.
Yeah, except for the fact that the more negative media file swapping gets, the bigger it becomes. I remember scouring websites and ftps trying to download mp3s not 5 years ago. Then people figured out network sharing at colleges was a good idea and the press got wind of it. The next thing you know, other college students set up networks because they heard about it through "bad" press. Then Napster came along and a whole new group jumped on the bandwagon. The Napster got shut down (which was supposed to be the ultimate in "bad" news for mp3 sharing) and the whole situation blew up with hundreds of Napster-spawns hitting the internet. Even through bad publicity that happens today, mp3 file sharing is getting larger, not smaller. So I more than welcome Rosen talking about it everyday on TV, it might get the last stragglers onto it.
Sure enough, with a little bit of digging, I found my carmageddon 2 cd. I tried to install it, but sadly it doesn't seem to play nicely with win2k. oh well. Those were some good old days of using the pedestrian magnet powerup and then the omni-directional pedestrian launching springs to send hundreds of peds skywards.
Only the DVD-Audio was listed to be rip-proof. I'm not so bothered by that as I am by th notion that there is a hoard of Steely Dan fans waiting outside of Best Buy trying to get their coveted copy on DVD-Audio. What's next, rip-proof Mariah Carey on MiniDisc?