It's understandable why people are frustrated with outsourcing, though. Especially if the corporation just got a couple millions in subvention money for building up a local branch only to fire everyone shortly after.
And it's not like what Nielsen does is in any way new. Nokia just pulled a similar stunt in Germany and ended up making a multimillion Euro deal with the federal state as a penalty.
If the company you work for is big enough and you're not somewhere in the vincinity of upper management they can drop you for (perceived-)cheaper foreign workers at any time - and if the incentive is big enough they will do so. All it takes is one scumbag C?O.
This is a scandal, but just a very minor one because this is expected behavior with corporations.
\begin{reply}
Your format is \textbf{so} lame, man.\\
\LaTeX is obviously a {\it much} better standard for internet markup, especially if \it{} all \rm{} parts of it are implemented.
\end{reply}
Actually, burning alcohol doesn't release any heat; the heat comes entirely from the oxygen. That's why they're currently researching ways of burning alcohol without involving oxygen.
...we'll see documentaries about spam as a literary genre, comparing the early "na tural v|agra ci4lis" era to the wild post "World War III" years. Dissertations will be written about 419 in the context of contemporary popular culture. There will also be dissertations (as people tend to get things wrong after a while) about whether prolific spam artist DVD Jon really died from recreational abuse of aspirine generics.
True. The parent (and I, in a sibling post) incorrectly used "folded" where "got rid of its publishing branch" would be correct. However, given Interplay's history one could say that they have been in the process of slowly dying ever since 1998.
Lost Vikings was developed by Silicon & Synapse who changed their name to Blizzard Entertainment in 1994. Interlay was the publisher. When Interplay folded Blizzard essentially self-published.
Firstly, I merely wrote in a style I'd imagine Yahtzee to use. Secondly, he also uses punctuation. His punctuation is just too fast for the average listener to understand. It's also sugar free and contains more caffeine, hence the "Zero".
Blizzard is entirely unlike most game companies. Blizzard values its customers and wants them to have as good a time as possible. They don't just abandon products, they release no-CD patches. They allow their customers to enter their CD key on the website and download the entire game (useful if you bought the PC version and now want to play on a Mac), even if said game was released eleven years ago. Heck, they still have tech support subsites for Lost Vikings and Rock N' Roll Racing - titles they released back when the company was still called Silicon & Synapse.
Blizzard puts the customer first and only delivers polished products, release dated be damned. And that's why everyone loves them. Now compare that to, oh, just about everyone. It's a shame Looking Glass died, but the retail version of System Shock 2 was unbeatable for most people because a crucial window wasn't breakable. Piranha Bytes' The Gothic 3 gold master was so unready for production that they had to release the first patch on launch day. BioShock is a prime example of DRM gone bad^H^H^Hworse as many players are locked out of the game for too many reinstalls before they even played the game once - reinstalls which they accumulated trying to get the game to work.
To put it like Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee might: The video game industry is a sea of vomit and that's the qualitative standard against which new games are measured. The better ones are usually very nice and pretty examples of vomit but they're still vomit. The few gems people like Blizzard release can't change the fact that we're waist-deep in gastric acid.
"Copyright infringement" is arguably more correct but somewhat unwieldy. In Germany we use the term "Raubkopie", which would word-for-word translate to "robbery copy". Reverse the ordering and you get "copy robbery", which could be refined into "copy theft". While copyright infringement isn't theft, the term "copy theft" at least implies that the "stolen" object is still there.
The term is actually already being used by some people; it gets ~2000 Googles and most of the first-page hits seem relevant. However, apparently someone came up with a pseudo-license/copyleft workalike called CopyTheft, so there might be a conflict there.
Which, given the stories we hear about Geek Squad et al., applies to every single one of them. They WILL rifle through your hard drive looking for BitTorrent download directories containing porn. As copyright piracy theft is only a felony because the American legal system doesn't know anything even more serious, they will immediately report the results (after making a backup copy for themselves) to the DHS. Thus, they are actively looking for evidence of a crime.
Qued erat demonstrandum; ne bis in idem; pueri hodie avunculum visitare constituerunt.
Yeah, that's going to go over rel well with a lot of computer-illiterate people. "Sorry gramps, I can't fix your computer because I'm not a state-approved private investigator."
This should also drive the cost of computer repair up as the companies have to recoup the losses they made on PI licenses.
In your case, there is another "something else" at work: The ability to actually get the program. Your business model would work as long as you kept the user base exclusive. It would stop working once you distribute it like regular software. The software is essentially an extension of your tax consultant business.
Of course you're still right; your software is legally commercial and works, but it also doesn't fit a cookie-cutter "commercial software" business model.
To coin yet another catchprase:
BSD is about making my code available to everyone.
GPL is about everyone making my code available.
Both aim to encourage code sharing; BSD tries to reach more people with the same amount of code and GPL tries to increase the total amount of shared code. Both have their uses, neither is a silver bullet and sometimes neither is appropriate.
People often confuse "commercial" with "proprietary".. including the good people at Trolltech.
Because a proprietary app that can be freely copied doesn't have much potential to be successful, unless it's tied to something else. You can just take the code and build your own version. See RHEL and CentOS - RedHat can sell RHEL because it's tied to support contracts; everyone who doesn't want to purchase a contract can freely use CentOS.
You could do something like a commercial FOSS game (free program but closed data), but that kind of model doesn't work for every kind of program. So most commercial apps are going to stay closed.
Yup. If they came from a geek angle they'd have the security definition of "social engineering". Their current entry defines social engineering as either "management of human beings in accordance with their place and function in society" or applied social science.
Although, of course, the latter could be used as a cynical way of describing what social engineering is...
Slashdot Mirror
But drivers do support benchmark programs.
It's understandable why people are frustrated with outsourcing, though. Especially if the corporation just got a couple millions in subvention money for building up a local branch only to fire everyone shortly after.
And it's not like what Nielsen does is in any way new. Nokia just pulled a similar stunt in Germany and ended up making a multimillion Euro deal with the federal state as a penalty.
If the company you work for is big enough and you're not somewhere in the vincinity of upper management they can drop you for (perceived-)cheaper foreign workers at any time - and if the incentive is big enough they will do so. All it takes is one scumbag C?O.
This is a scandal, but just a very minor one because this is expected behavior with corporations.
...find the kingdom of Hades; then the pipes won't be as lifeless as stone anymore and it can return home.
Ulysses, Ulysses
Soaring through all the galaxies
In search of Earth
Flying into the night...
The devs have played MMORPGs - in Warhammer Online, players automatically type all-caps.
They have more titles; they just don't have more active titles. Not that I'd mind a second^Wthird Rock N' Roll Racing or a second Blackthorne.
Actually, I was joking. I am aware that oxidation doesn't mean that the oxygen magically releases heat. And I'm not American. ;)
Also, I'm pretty sure that combustion requires a redox reaction to happen by definition. But IANAchemist, so I might be wrong there.
\begin{reply}
Your format is \textbf{so} lame, man.\\
\LaTeX is obviously a {\it much} better standard for internet markup, especially if \it{} all \rm{} parts of it are implemented.
\end{reply}
My steam engine does use the heat from the combustion and it's perfectly normal, thankyouverymuch.
Actually, burning alcohol doesn't release any heat; the heat comes entirely from the oxygen. That's why they're currently researching ways of burning alcohol without involving oxygen.
Probably because it also run Windows.
...we'll see documentaries about spam as a literary genre, comparing the early "na tural v|agra ci4lis" era to the wild post "World War III" years. Dissertations will be written about 419 in the context of contemporary popular culture. There will also be dissertations (as people tend to get things wrong after a while) about whether prolific spam artist DVD Jon really died from recreational abuse of aspirine generics.
True. The parent (and I, in a sibling post) incorrectly used "folded" where "got rid of its publishing branch" would be correct. However, given Interplay's history one could say that they have been in the process of slowly dying ever since 1998.
Try making an account on http://www.blizzard.com/account and giving them your CD keys. It should have StarCraft and Brood War.
On a related notice, I'm really pissed I can't find my copies of SC and BW anymore.
Lost Vikings was developed by Silicon & Synapse who changed their name to Blizzard Entertainment in 1994. Interlay was the publisher. When Interplay folded Blizzard essentially self-published.
Firstly, I merely wrote in a style I'd imagine Yahtzee to use. Secondly, he also uses punctuation. His punctuation is just too fast for the average listener to understand. It's also sugar free and contains more caffeine, hence the "Zero".
Blizzard is entirely unlike most game companies. Blizzard values its customers and wants them to have as good a time as possible. They don't just abandon products, they release no-CD patches. They allow their customers to enter their CD key on the website and download the entire game (useful if you bought the PC version and now want to play on a Mac), even if said game was released eleven years ago. Heck, they still have tech support subsites for Lost Vikings and Rock N' Roll Racing - titles they released back when the company was still called Silicon & Synapse.
Blizzard puts the customer first and only delivers polished products, release dated be damned. And that's why everyone loves them. Now compare that to, oh, just about everyone. It's a shame Looking Glass died, but the retail version of System Shock 2 was unbeatable for most people because a crucial window wasn't breakable. Piranha Bytes' The Gothic 3 gold master was so unready for production that they had to release the first patch on launch day. BioShock is a prime example of DRM gone bad^H^H^Hworse as many players are locked out of the game for too many reinstalls before they even played the game once - reinstalls which they accumulated trying to get the game to work.
To put it like Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee might: The video game industry is a sea of vomit and that's the qualitative standard against which new games are measured. The better ones are usually very nice and pretty examples of vomit but they're still vomit. The few gems people like Blizzard release can't change the fact that we're waist-deep in gastric acid.
"Copyright infringement" is arguably more correct but somewhat unwieldy. In Germany we use the term "Raubkopie", which would word-for-word translate to "robbery copy". Reverse the ordering and you get "copy robbery", which could be refined into "copy theft". While copyright infringement isn't theft, the term "copy theft" at least implies that the "stolen" object is still there.
The term is actually already being used by some people; it gets ~2000 Googles and most of the first-page hits seem relevant. However, apparently someone came up with a pseudo-license/copyleft workalike called CopyTheft, so there might be a conflict there.
Which, given the stories we hear about Geek Squad et al., applies to every single one of them. They WILL rifle through your hard drive looking for BitTorrent download directories containing porn. As copyright piracy theft is only a felony because the American legal system doesn't know anything even more serious, they will immediately report the results (after making a backup copy for themselves) to the DHS. Thus, they are actively looking for evidence of a crime.
Qued erat demonstrandum; ne bis in idem; pueri hodie avunculum visitare constituerunt.
Yeah, that's going to go over rel well with a lot of computer-illiterate people. "Sorry gramps, I can't fix your computer because I'm not a state-approved private investigator."
This should also drive the cost of computer repair up as the companies have to recoup the losses they made on PI licenses.
In your case, there is another "something else" at work: The ability to actually get the program. Your business model would work as long as you kept the user base exclusive. It would stop working once you distribute it like regular software. The software is essentially an extension of your tax consultant business.
Of course you're still right; your software is legally commercial and works, but it also doesn't fit a cookie-cutter "commercial software" business model.
Given how long Vista has taken them I think that's quite likely.
Exactly.
To coin yet another catchprase:
BSD is about making my code available to everyone.
GPL is about everyone making my code available.
Both aim to encourage code sharing; BSD tries to reach more people with the same amount of code and GPL tries to increase the total amount of shared code. Both have their uses, neither is a silver bullet and sometimes neither is appropriate.
Because a proprietary app that can be freely copied doesn't have much potential to be successful, unless it's tied to something else. You can just take the code and build your own version. See RHEL and CentOS - RedHat can sell RHEL because it's tied to support contracts; everyone who doesn't want to purchase a contract can freely use CentOS.
You could do something like a commercial FOSS game (free program but closed data), but that kind of model doesn't work for every kind of program. So most commercial apps are going to stay closed.
Yup. If they came from a geek angle they'd have the security definition of "social engineering". Their current entry defines social engineering as either "management of human beings in accordance with their place and function in society" or applied social science.
Although, of course, the latter could be used as a cynical way of describing what social engineering is...
syn. "use Gentoo Linux"