There is one way to get back at Blizzard for this. Don't buy Warcraft III. It's tough for some I know, but that's what you've got to do. If buying a game from someone means selling your freedoms then don't buy it. I like that the EFF has gotten involved, but unless there's some associated pain for this Blizzard will keep pulling stunts like this in future, and in the mean time the courgts offer insufficient protection for the digital rights of consumers.
The policy wonks when they get it right manage to tune into the right people. They don't always make it up as they go along, so there's no need to be so contemptuous. Alarm bells like this have been sounding for ages and some of the right people have clearly been listening. Despite this yet the/. story dismisses their opinions with casual contempt. They deserve more credit than that for their efforts in the vanguard.
Re:poster boy not so impressive
on
Andreesen "Grows Up"
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Rubbish, from a few geek proposal meetings you can't judge someone like this. Besides, the original post seethed with personal animosity and informed us of the exact source of that animosity.
No I get the point, but go ahead and pretend I don't all you like. The film was very true to the book, the main plot was laid out decades ago. I don't buy the claim that them all being all filmed at once makes a significant difference in this case, especially when the person making the claim has only seen the first movie. Thank goodness they DIDN'T make attack of the clones decades ago, it'd be more like attack of the clone, besides Lucas almost bust the bank making the first film and was told it would flop. The time between films has allowed the Star Wars universe to grow and mature and gives Lucas something to build upon (not that I really give a shit). The Tolkein books were not all written instantly either.
Because you're a damned fool that's why. The trouble is people like you can't see the fact that these guys would and will use nukes on us if & when they get them.
What's hypocritical is ignoring the uncomfortable truth while pretending to take the moral high ground. It is not an acceptable position to do nothing about this until after it happens. That's what led to Sept 11th. We should have been in Afghanistan after the embassy bombings or the Cole, but your ilk sapped us of the political will. Now you want to wait until a nuke goes off in Manhattan before you pull your head out your ass and deal with other pending problems. Already you've forgotten the recent trip to the woodshed. Well I don't want those lives (and the lives of countless Arabs who'll be toast in the inevitable retalliation) on our collective conscience. You're empty prep school debating points won't bring any of the millions of victims back to life. We need to act now. It's called responsibility, it's rarely comfortable but "hypocrisy" doesn't have a damned thing to do with it.
Because they want to drive planes into buildings killing thousands to get out attention. Because they have irrational world views which paint America as the villain in everything and they want to kill us for it. Because they cannot be reasoned with and are not content to live their lives in a progressive way, instead they insist on a backward culture which blames us for their troubles and they want to kill us for it. Because they are not rational secular humanists like you and they would stone you for promoting the views you just have in their country and they want to kill us for it.
It's not about who started what or where or when, it's just unfortunately that there is no reasonable meeting of minds, every time the USA gives an inch it is taken without concession and the claims get wilder, weakness is read into the US position and all manner of evil accusations are leveled. Heck, drop food aid and these folks accuse the US of dropping poison and the dim bulbs in the media ask if we might injure someone on the ground by hitting them with a food parcel, then the US is accused of dropping food aid on mine fields, then it's accused of dropping food aid the same color as cluster bomb submunitions. The sad part is none of this shit is made up. Our enemies have a truly deep seated irrational hatred of us which does not listen to the kind of reason you espouse. We need to cut through the crap and stop pretending that all sides are equal here. There's only so many times you can draw the line half way between your position and the other guys before you have to push back. You SHOULD only do this once, but we've been doing this in debates for too long. In the mean time these cave men have gotten used to the view that their arcane world view is more valid than a secular democracy... and they want to kill us... well, you get the idea.
Well said. The fruit cakes around here may not mod you up but I strongly agree. There are domestic political issues which caused this turd to float onto the cover of the Times but to anyone with a clue the hysterical rantings of the girls blouses in the media merely serve to show how underqualified and incapacitated they are outside their fabricated media reality warp field. This is not news.
This is really excellent, because as you cheat yourself out of enjoying the film because you're foolish enough to prejudge this, the rest of us will probably love it because it's bigger and better than any of the other movies. I loved Ep. 4 when I was a kid, and my nephew loved Ep.1 and so did I. I'm really looking forward to Ep. 2, and your opinion won't matter an iota when the tidalwave of this movie arrives. So go ahead gripe and bitch, it says more about you than the film. Some people are just spoiled, they get Star Wars and it ain't enough they still find room to bitch and moan. Don't tell us how bad it is, nobody cares, just don't go and see it, I dare you. Of course there's no chance of that, you WILL see this movie. At least I'll get my moneys worth when I go see the film because I'll have a chance of enjoying it.
err... the LOTR story was written decades ago. Get a grip.
Re:poster boy not so impressive
on
Andreesen "Grows Up"
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
His sales staff aside, to call him shallow because of your clear personal animosity towards him reflects badly on you, not him. If you're pitching to replace the IT function of a company then you're going to piss of their IT department, and it looks like they did. We have no way of knowing if they were right or wrong, for all we know you could have been a bunch of dolts, it's impossible to tell, but your emotive attack gives us a hint at your capacity for rational decision making.
Today the Sioux Nation officially announced the successfull return of their recent expedition across the Atlantic Ocean lead by Soaring Eagle. Declaring the expedition an incredible success the tribal elders announced the discovery of a vast continent previously unrecorded in their tribal folklore. The continent is populated by by large tribes who live in surprisingly advanced cities for such an unexplored area. Tribal elder Chief Running Water declared "this is a great achivement, Soaring Eagle will go down in history for this incredible discovery".
The consulates of several major European countries had not returned our calls at the time this story went to press.
So are RIAA now going to sue AOL Time Warner and force them to stop distributing this subversive Instand Messenger software? This is absolutely delicious and shows just how foolish some of the earlier hysteria has been. Unfortunately instead of seeing the truth, that people will find a way using the tools available to them, they lie about their findings and misrepresent which software was used in an attempt to demonize a whole class of applications.
Re:You are not anal enough either. (IAAL)
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 2
You have just demonstrated some of the wisdom of Solomon here. The company would win and then be hoist by their own petard, absolutely delicious. What concerns me is why is this guy working for these sleaze bags.
I know it increases the sharpness of the characters, unfortunately the fools who implement this miss the point that to do so it moves the fonts by subpixel ammounts and when you mess this up it looks abominable.
I know the issues about subpixel positioning etc, I'm a graphics programmer and have been for about 15 years. I am gurrently working full time on image processing software.
The imprecision in the shape is awful and get's worse the smaller you go. GO look at the results instead of banging your sharpness drum. What good is sharpness if your edge is in the wrong place? This attempt to defeat Nyquist is an abomination and produces incorrect and ugly results, this has just been proven in spectacular fashion.
This is great stuff, well done. It is also a perfect illustration of the dangers of using a misunderstood technology; hinting. Hinting was originally designed to help non antialiased fonts shift character vectors to align with discrete pixels for a more recognizable character description. It's application to antialiased fonts was foolish and never worked because the antialiasing is perfect for displaying the subpixel hint shifts being applied and makes the fonts look extremely ugly. Hinting on antialiased fonts was a complete misapplication of an earlier display kludge.
This work illustrates this perfectly. No need for debates, look at the images and learn. Well done and kudos for an awesome and simple piece of work.
Someone else's acts of theft should not prevent my legal use of legitimately owned products. This is a fundamental principal. It should supercede all other issues and has in similar situations. You didn't see tape decks banned or their record button disabled in the past when you were stealing LPs. We should not see the digital equivalent now, especially when you cannot even purchase the digital product from the corporate dinosaurs who are trying to transfer the burden of their failure to adapt to our shoulders.
The fact that I can rip my friends CDs but choose not to, should not restrict me from ripping my own legal purchased CDs. I could walk down the street and break windows but I choose not to, the fact that I might doesn't have shopkeepers lobbying congress to close the sidewalk.
How is someone supposed to "Rip" if they don't "Own" first? Someone needs to put these companies in their place and protect us from their unbridled greed. We have fair use rights, if we have paid for the music then we are legally allowed to make copies for our own enjoyment. You cannot "Rip" unless you have already purchased the product. Apples rip, mix, burn ads do not encourage theft, they encourage fair use. It is Disney who is encouraging theft by trying to persuade congress to restrict our freedoms for their unfair desire to charge us all multiple times for the same product. Now THAT would be theft.
Think of is as a valuable civics lesson for the kiddies. They learn about the copyright law and how they can't simply steal the images and intellectual property created by others. Doesn't it just warm the cockles of your heart?
Seriously though, at least the kids get the chance to take their site down before the judgement arrives on their doorstep, and the law is such that if Rowling doesn't protect her copyright she will lose it. This is the same reason Linus Torvalds gives when he charges companies six figure sums to use the Linux logo. He HAS to do it because if he doesn't the Linux trademark will enter the public domain and be abused.
I agree, but I don't see how this has anything to do with my post. Feel free to take issue with something I've written, but please inform me whet points we disagree on. Do you really thing anyone reading this article would not arrive at similar conclusions by the end. As for firm opinions on this, we don't have the full facts, that's why we have courts.
Why would have they had a case? If you make a statement, and support it with undisputable facts, wouldn't it be a lot harder for the company to win any suits they might file against you?
The distinction is between information presented as fact and simple rhetoric and opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
There is one way to get back at Blizzard for this. Don't buy Warcraft III. It's tough for some I know, but that's what you've got to do. If buying a game from someone means selling your freedoms then don't buy it. I like that the EFF has gotten involved, but unless there's some associated pain for this Blizzard will keep pulling stunts like this in future, and in the mean time the courgts offer insufficient protection for the digital rights of consumers.
Just say no to WC III.
The policy wonks when they get it right manage to tune into the right people. They don't always make it up as they go along, so there's no need to be so contemptuous. Alarm bells like this have been sounding for ages and some of the right people have clearly been listening. Despite this yet the /. story dismisses their opinions with casual contempt. They deserve more credit than that for their efforts in the vanguard.
Rubbish, from a few geek proposal meetings you can't judge someone like this. Besides, the original post seethed with personal animosity and informed us of the exact source of that animosity.
No I get the point, but go ahead and pretend I don't all you like. The film was very true to the book, the main plot was laid out decades ago. I don't buy the claim that them all being all filmed at once makes a significant difference in this case, especially when the person making the claim has only seen the first movie. Thank goodness they DIDN'T make attack of the clones decades ago, it'd be more like attack of the clone, besides Lucas almost bust the bank making the first film and was told it would flop. The time between films has allowed the Star Wars universe to grow and mature and gives Lucas something to build upon (not that I really give a shit). The Tolkein books were not all written instantly either.
Because you're a damned fool that's why.
The trouble is people like you can't see the fact that these guys would and will use nukes on us if & when they get them.
What's hypocritical is ignoring the uncomfortable truth while pretending to take the moral high ground. It is not an acceptable position to do nothing about this until after it happens. That's what led to Sept 11th. We should have been in Afghanistan after the embassy bombings or the Cole, but your ilk sapped us of the political will. Now you want to wait until a nuke goes off in Manhattan before you pull your head out your ass and deal with other pending problems. Already you've forgotten the recent trip to the woodshed. Well I don't want those lives (and the lives of countless Arabs who'll be toast in the inevitable retalliation) on our collective conscience. You're empty prep school debating points won't bring any of the millions of victims back to life. We need to act now. It's called responsibility, it's rarely comfortable but "hypocrisy" doesn't have a damned thing to do with it.
Because they want to drive planes into buildings killing thousands to get out attention. Because they have irrational world views which paint America as the villain in everything and they want to kill us for it. Because they cannot be reasoned with and are not content to live their lives in a progressive way, instead they insist on a backward culture which blames us for their troubles and they want to kill us for it. Because they are not rational secular humanists like you and they would stone you for promoting the views you just have in their country and they want to kill us for it.
It's not about who started what or where or when, it's just unfortunately that there is no reasonable meeting of minds, every time the USA gives an inch it is taken without concession and the claims get wilder, weakness is read into the US position and all manner of evil accusations are leveled. Heck, drop food aid and these folks accuse the US of dropping poison and the dim bulbs in the media ask if we might injure someone on the ground by hitting them with a food parcel, then the US is accused of dropping food aid on mine fields, then it's accused of dropping food aid the same color as cluster bomb submunitions. The sad part is none of this shit is made up. Our enemies have a truly deep seated irrational hatred of us which does not listen to the kind of reason you espouse. We need to cut through the crap and stop pretending that all sides are equal here. There's only so many times you can draw the line half way between your position and the other guys before you have to push back. You SHOULD only do this once, but we've been doing this in debates for too long. In the mean time these cave men have gotten used to the view that their arcane world view is more valid than a secular democracy... and they want to kill us... well, you get the idea.
Well said. The fruit cakes around here may not mod you up but I strongly agree. There are domestic political issues which caused this turd to float onto the cover of the Times but to anyone with a clue the hysterical rantings of the girls blouses in the media merely serve to show how underqualified and incapacitated they are outside their fabricated media reality warp field. This is not news.
This is really excellent, because as you cheat yourself out of enjoying the film because you're foolish enough to prejudge this, the rest of us will probably love it because it's bigger and better than any of the other movies. I loved Ep. 4 when I was a kid, and my nephew loved Ep.1 and so did I. I'm really looking forward to Ep. 2, and your opinion won't matter an iota when the tidalwave of this movie arrives. So go ahead gripe and bitch, it says more about you than the film. Some people are just spoiled, they get Star Wars and it ain't enough they still find room to bitch and moan. Don't tell us how bad it is, nobody cares, just don't go and see it, I dare you. Of course there's no chance of that, you WILL see this movie. At least I'll get my moneys worth when I go see the film because I'll have a chance of enjoying it.
err... the LOTR story was written decades ago. Get a grip.
His sales staff aside, to call him shallow because of your clear personal animosity towards him reflects badly on you, not him. If you're pitching to replace the IT function of a company then you're going to piss of their IT department, and it looks like they did. We have no way of knowing if they were right or wrong, for all we know you could have been a bunch of dolts, it's impossible to tell, but your emotive attack gives us a hint at your capacity for rational decision making.
REUTERS: dateline 8 March 2002.
Headline:
Native North Americans discover Europe.
Today the Sioux Nation officially announced the successfull return of their recent expedition across the Atlantic Ocean lead by Soaring Eagle. Declaring the expedition an incredible success the tribal elders announced the discovery of a vast continent previously unrecorded in their tribal folklore. The continent is populated by by large tribes who live in surprisingly advanced cities for such an unexplored area. Tribal elder Chief Running Water declared "this is a great achivement, Soaring Eagle will go down in history for this incredible discovery".
The consulates of several major European countries had not returned our calls at the time this story went to press.
So are RIAA now going to sue AOL Time Warner and force them to stop distributing this subversive Instand Messenger software? This is absolutely delicious and shows just how foolish some of the earlier hysteria has been. Unfortunately instead of seeing the truth, that people will find a way using the tools available to them, they lie about their findings and misrepresent which software was used in an attempt to demonize a whole class of applications.
You have just demonstrated some of the wisdom of Solomon here. The company would win and then be hoist by their own petard, absolutely delicious. What concerns me is why is this guy working for these sleaze bags.
I know it increases the sharpness of the characters, unfortunately the fools who implement this miss the point that to do so it moves the fonts by subpixel ammounts and when you mess this up it looks abominable.
I know the issues about subpixel positioning etc, I'm a graphics programmer and have been for about 15 years. I am gurrently working full time on image processing software.
The imprecision in the shape is awful and get's worse the smaller you go. GO look at the results instead of banging your sharpness drum. What good is sharpness if your edge is in the wrong place? This attempt to defeat Nyquist is an abomination and produces incorrect and ugly results, this has just been proven in spectacular fashion.
Get a life.
This is great stuff, well done. It is also a perfect illustration of the dangers of using a misunderstood technology; hinting. Hinting was originally designed to help non antialiased fonts shift character vectors to align with discrete pixels for a more recognizable character description. It's application to antialiased fonts was foolish and never worked because the antialiasing is perfect for displaying the subpixel hint shifts being applied and makes the fonts look extremely ugly. Hinting on antialiased fonts was a complete misapplication of an earlier display kludge.
This work illustrates this perfectly. No need for debates, look at the images and learn. Well done and kudos for an awesome and simple piece of work.
My equation is the accurate legal interraction that Apple is promoting.
Someone else's acts of theft should not prevent my legal use of legitimately owned products. This is a fundamental principal. It should supercede all other issues and has in similar situations. You didn't see tape decks banned or their record button disabled in the past when you were stealing LPs. We should not see the digital equivalent now, especially when you cannot even purchase the digital product from the corporate dinosaurs who are trying to transfer the burden of their failure to adapt to our shoulders.
The fact that I can rip my friends CDs but choose not to, should not restrict me from ripping my own legal purchased CDs. I could walk down the street and break windows but I choose not to, the fact that I might doesn't have shopkeepers lobbying congress to close the sidewalk.
How is someone supposed to "Rip" if they don't "Own" first? Someone needs to put these companies in their place and protect us from their unbridled greed. We have fair use rights, if we have paid for the music then we are legally allowed to make copies for our own enjoyment. You cannot "Rip" unless you have already purchased the product. Apples rip, mix, burn ads do not encourage theft, they encourage fair use. It is Disney who is encouraging theft by trying to persuade congress to restrict our freedoms for their unfair desire to charge us all multiple times for the same product. Now THAT would be theft.
"Common useage."
Think of is as a valuable civics lesson for the kiddies. They learn about the copyright law and how they can't simply steal the images and intellectual property created by others. Doesn't it just warm the cockles of your heart?
Seriously though, at least the kids get the chance to take their site down before the judgement arrives on their doorstep, and the law is such that if Rowling doesn't protect her copyright she will lose it. This is the same reason Linus Torvalds gives when he charges companies six figure sums to use the Linux logo. He HAS to do it because if he doesn't the Linux trademark will enter the public domain and be abused.
It'll be a cold day in hell before I boycott a company based on some flamebait kneejerk paragraph posted by CmdrTaco.
I agree, but I don't see how this has anything to do with my post. Feel free to take issue with something I've written, but please inform me whet points we disagree on. Do you really thing anyone reading this article would not arrive at similar conclusions by the end. As for firm opinions on this, we don't have the full facts, that's why we have courts.
Why would have they had a case? If you make a statement, and support it with undisputable facts, wouldn't it be a lot harder for the company to win any suits they might file against you?
The distinction is between information presented as fact and simple rhetoric and opinion.