I'm not saying I'm an MS-apologist, but shouldn't decisions based on taxpayer money usually be based on cost analysis? A Blanket policy against MS, without allowing for a competitive bidding process or even alternative analysis doesn't seem right.
I know you all want OSS to win, but not by cheating. Shouldn't all have to compete on a level field, especially when we're the ones paying for it?
Well, the article doesn't tell everything, but it's important to note the mandate doesn't just say open source, but open standards. This alone would cut Microsoft out of most things, as their implementation of "open" standards tend to change them to only work on Windows.
While I will agree we don't want OSS to win by cheating, we don't know what went into the decision, it very well may have been that they studied it and found that using MS software was costing more (trying to fix all those "features" that make MS products only work with other MS products for instance), and just simply decided it was time to stop wasting the taxpayer's money on that.
In any case it's hard to feel sorry for Microsoft here, they've been intentionally trying to stifle competition, and make it difficult (if not impossible) to use a homogenous OS solution for many years. Now it seems their time to pay the piper has come.
Just another example of legitimate users who are inconvenienced by additional copy protection.
I'm sure Adobe is trying to stem the casual copying of their products, as it will do absolutely nothing to stop hardcore hackers from breaking the protection in the course of a few hours and releasing a patch for everyone else.
I seriously doubt it'll discourage much casual copying either, as the newsgroups and IRC will likely be full of no-activation-required copies within days. It happened with Windows XP, XP SP1, and even last year's Turbotax. When are these companies going to learn all things like product activation do is annoy their legit users?
At the same time, each release gets more and more bloated and takes an increasing severe performance penalty. I have spent a lot of time in Photoshop, but it looks like 7.0 may be my last upgrade.
That's for sure, when I upgraded from Acrobat 5 to 6 (full version), the time to create a PDF increased 10-fold (literally, no exageration here), and it takes nearly 2 full minutes for the damned program to load, even to view a bloody PDF! Granted I don't have the world's fastest computer, but when a new, improved version works worse than an older one, there's something seriously wrong. In fact, I'm going to downgrade since I can't take it any longer.
On the graphics front, I gave up on Photoshop and went to Corel Photopaint about a year ago. It loads much faster than Photoshop ever has, and the interface makes more sense. (It seems that Adobe changes the interface in each version of Photoshop just enough to introduce a new learning curve.) Personally I think Adobe's gotten way too cocky about their software, and product activation might be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back. I wouldn't be surprised if their sales drop drastically.
While I can see your point, this is something many in the/. community are probably fairly used to, as many of us are anime fans. OVAs are basically feature-length to-be-continued movies. The only difference is they come out on tape/laserdisc/DVD instead of the theater.
Also, I must say, while it may seem to be just blatant consumerism to many, did you really want to sit in the theater and watch a 4 hour (or more) Matrix followup? I know I didn't, and most consumers wouldn't as well. That probably played more than a small roll in their deciding to split it up.
I also can't help pointing out that this if Matrix: Revolutions we're talking about, it's the final one, it won't be to-be-continued.
Seems to me the pirates, especially now that they're aware of it, will just carefully edit out those sections, or fiddle with the original video to reduce them so they dissapear in the encodings. All they're going to do is further annoy their legit customers, and lead them down the ol' piracy trail. After all, if you pay good money (and mortgage the house) to go to the theater to see a film and it's ruined on purpose, then who wouldn't come home and download an edited pirated copy without the added crap so they could watch what they paid for in the first place?
But of course we do, mine makes an excellent paper weight for all the stacked files in the floor, and when the neighborhood dogs get too rowdy/noisy it doubles as a very useful item to throw at them to scare them off. After all, it's not like anyone cares if it's damaged. Oh wait, nevermind, it was damaged when it was designed, my mistake.:)
I found the ruling to be strange, the judge seemed to go beyond what was requested in saying that Lexmark could basically do whatever they wanted, and restrict whatever they wanted with their patents. I'm sure it is meant to apply only to their printer/toner/ink cartridge patents, but it seems to leave a LOT of room for interpretation.
As I read it (and IANAL), it seemed all the summary judgement needed to address was if Lexmark could continue its Prebate program, and if the lockout chip could continue to be used/incorporated into the cartridges. Now again, IANAL, but it seems to me that the way that Lexmark sells the cartridges under the Prebate program makes this fall more under contract law than patent law. You're agreeing to sell only return the cartridge to them in exchange for a cheaper price. If you don't do so, then you've violated the contract, and (while I really hate to see Lexmark win), it definitely seems justifiable for them to put the lock-out chips in the Prebate cartridges. Again though, the judge went beyond just the question of the Prebate program and lock-out chips, or at least that's how I read it.
That being said, I would think that if they are including those lock-out chips in the non-Prebate cartridges, then that should have been challenged, not the Prebate program.
For the record, I won't use Lexmark inkjets because of their lawsuits (and because I've been totally unimpressed with them in the past as well). I have an Epson printer, and am quite delighted at how cheap I can get generic cartridges for it.
Shall we start a voting pool on exactly how long it'll take the inkjet printer makers to figure out that practically giving away hardware and trying to make money on just the cartridges isn't a viable business plan? Thanks to our lovely economy, I've been working at a Wal-mart for the past year *grumble* (Anyone need a linux sysadmin?:), and have been in the electronics department much of that time. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who just toss their printers and buy a new one each time they run out of ink. They've all figured out it's cheaper to do that. If they don't do that, they buy the refill kits. While I don't have access to actual numbers, I wouldn't be surprised if our store alone ends up selling more Lexmark printers than new cartridges (Lexmark's prices also tend to be higher for a combined black/color set for whatever reason, I figure it's just greed).
Is there more to this? Is my sleep-deprived brain missing something? Or do I seem to be on target? Does anyone else feel that individual rights will have to be patented in the future or we'll lose them?:P
How could anyone ever arrive at the conclusion that Microsoft will not screw them?
Perhaps because gobs of money exchanged hands underneath the table at a really run-down bar & grill on the bad side of town. All in unmarked bills.....
Of course that's just purely hypothetical (I.E. Don't sue me Microsoft.:P)
I've used GMud for Windows for many years. It has full ansi support, multiple windows, triggers, aliases, and macros. You can set up custom sounds for events (for instance, make it play a certain.wav file when someone messages you), and can log your session if you so desire. It also allows you to have different aliases/macros/triggers for every MUD you use, which is quite nifty.
GMud isn't exactly freeware, but no-nags (abandoned) shareware. AFAIK, the address in the about section is no longer valid to send money to, and the "official" download URL contains a version last updated in 1995. You can find it at the "official" download URL or Google for other sites.
Somewhere along the way the source was released apparently. I saw custom versions of it out there when I last Googled to replace my lost copy.
Note, I'm not recommending using no-nag Shareware in place of freeware in general, but abandonware is a bit different, if you can't pay for it, there's not much you can do.
The console itself is purchased, not the right to *use* the console under a predetermined licensing agreement.
While this is true, I had a scary thought. What if MS did this for another "bug" and they screwed the patch up (as some Windows patches have been in the past), and all of a sudden, your Xbox will only give you a BSOD (or the Xbox equivalent). Unfortunately, your warranty has expired on it, and now you have a large paperweight because of this.
I suspect in this case it'd be bloody hard to get anything done about it. MS would most likely try to deny the patch caused any trouble, much less BSODing many Xboxes out there. With it out of warranty, returning it to the store would be totally out of the question.
So for all of you saying MS is perfectly within their rights to do this secret auto-updating, perhaps thinking about the above will change your mind. I dislike it solely because of the possibility above, nevermind the fact that I also wouldn't care for MS mucking with my console once I'd paid for it.
Sony and Nintendo have consistently sold console systems as loss-leaders with the plan to recoup costs primarily from game licenses.
There was an interview with a few of the top dogs for Nintendo USA in the latest GMR or Game Informer magazine one. They made it very obvious that Nintendo DOES make a profit on every Gamecube sold, and that this has been their strategy for every console. (Thus the slower innovation I suppose.) Basically Nintendo's conservative as can be and refuses to do anything unless they can make a profit on it. Not too surprising I guess, considering Nintendo has traditionally relied on in-house titles more than 3rd-Party ones.
Just one example, Nintendo won't bother with online yet, they feel there's no way to make money on it, and that it's a bad idea to lose money on it now in case it gets big. Of course this could backfire on them and leave them struggling to play catch-up to Sony and Microsoft if Online gaming really takes off on the consoles.
Nintendo's still trying to live down the fact they practically handed the console market to Sony. Sony had been working with Nintendo to make a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES. When Nintendo stopped their work (not entirely sure what happened there, only that Nintendo didn't let Sony go ahead with the idea in some way), Sony decided to take their work and make their own console, and thus the Playstation was born. As if that wasn't bad enough, then Nintendo insisted on sticking with cartridges for the N64, and many developers were sick of the high cost and low storage, so they flocked to Sony's CD-ROM based gaming platform.
I do hope Nintendo is taking Sony's PSP announcement seriously though, would hate to see them go under or anything. I like several of their games, although not enough to buy a Gamecube so far. I have heard they'll be dropping to $99 US, so I may pick one up then, if only just to play Zelda.:)
Slashdot Mirror
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I'm not saying I'm an MS-apologist, but shouldn't decisions based on taxpayer money usually be based on cost analysis? A Blanket policy against MS, without allowing for a competitive bidding process or even alternative analysis doesn't seem right.
I know you all want OSS to win, but not by cheating. Shouldn't all have to compete on a level field, especially when we're the ones paying for it?
Well, the article doesn't tell everything, but it's important to note the mandate doesn't just say open source, but open standards. This alone would cut Microsoft out of most things, as their implementation of "open" standards tend to change them to only work on Windows.While I will agree we don't want OSS to win by cheating, we don't know what went into the decision, it very well may have been that they studied it and found that using MS software was costing more (trying to fix all those "features" that make MS products only work with other MS products for instance), and just simply decided it was time to stop wasting the taxpayer's money on that.
In any case it's hard to feel sorry for Microsoft here, they've been intentionally trying to stifle competition, and make it difficult (if not impossible) to use a homogenous OS solution for many years. Now it seems their time to pay the piper has come.
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Just another example of legitimate users who are inconvenienced by additional copy protection.
I seriously doubt it'll discourage much casual copying either, as the newsgroups and IRC will likely be full of no-activation-required copies within days. It happened with Windows XP, XP SP1, and even last year's Turbotax. When are these companies going to learn all things like product activation do is annoy their legit users?I'm sure Adobe is trying to stem the casual copying of their products, as it will do absolutely nothing to stop hardcore hackers from breaking the protection in the course of a few hours and releasing a patch for everyone else.
- At the same time, each release gets more and more bloated and takes an increasing severe performance penalty. I have spent a lot of time in Photoshop, but it looks like 7.0 may be my last upgrade.
That's for sure, when I upgraded from Acrobat 5 to 6 (full version), the time to create a PDF increased 10-fold (literally, no exageration here), and it takes nearly 2 full minutes for the damned program to load, even to view a bloody PDF! Granted I don't have the world's fastest computer, but when a new, improved version works worse than an older one, there's something seriously wrong. In fact, I'm going to downgrade since I can't take it any longer.On the graphics front, I gave up on Photoshop and went to Corel Photopaint about a year ago. It loads much faster than Photoshop ever has, and the interface makes more sense. (It seems that Adobe changes the interface in each version of Photoshop just enough to introduce a new learning curve.) Personally I think Adobe's gotten way too cocky about their software, and product activation might be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back. I wouldn't be surprised if their sales drop drastically.
Also, I must say, while it may seem to be just blatant consumerism to many, did you really want to sit in the theater and watch a 4 hour (or more) Matrix followup? I know I didn't, and most consumers wouldn't as well. That probably played more than a small roll in their deciding to split it up.
I also can't help pointing out that this if Matrix: Revolutions we're talking about, it's the final one, it won't be to-be-continued.
Great, now Keanu can suck in much larger than life size!! Whoah....
Seems to me the pirates, especially now that they're aware of it, will just carefully edit out those sections, or fiddle with the original video to reduce them so they dissapear in the encodings. All they're going to do is further annoy their legit customers, and lead them down the ol' piracy trail. After all, if you pay good money (and mortgage the house) to go to the theater to see a film and it's ruined on purpose, then who wouldn't come home and download an edited pirated copy without the added crap so they could watch what they paid for in the first place?
- Beacuse nobody on
/. uses lexmark rubbish?
But of course we do, mine makes an excellent paper weight for all the stacked files in the floor, and when the neighborhood dogs get too rowdy/noisy it doubles as a very useful item to throw at them to scare them off. After all, it's not like anyone cares if it's damaged. Oh wait, nevermind, it was damaged when it was designed, my mistake.As I read it (and IANAL), it seemed all the summary judgement needed to address was if Lexmark could continue its Prebate program, and if the lockout chip could continue to be used/incorporated into the cartridges. Now again, IANAL, but it seems to me that the way that Lexmark sells the cartridges under the Prebate program makes this fall more under contract law than patent law. You're agreeing to sell only return the cartridge to them in exchange for a cheaper price. If you don't do so, then you've violated the contract, and (while I really hate to see Lexmark win), it definitely seems justifiable for them to put the lock-out chips in the Prebate cartridges. Again though, the judge went beyond just the question of the Prebate program and lock-out chips, or at least that's how I read it.
That being said, I would think that if they are including those lock-out chips in the non-Prebate cartridges, then that should have been challenged, not the Prebate program.
For the record, I won't use Lexmark inkjets because of their lawsuits (and because I've been totally unimpressed with them in the past as well). I have an Epson printer, and am quite delighted at how cheap I can get generic cartridges for it.
Shall we start a voting pool on exactly how long it'll take the inkjet printer makers to figure out that practically giving away hardware and trying to make money on just the cartridges isn't a viable business plan? Thanks to our lovely economy, I've been working at a Wal-mart for the past year *grumble* (Anyone need a linux sysadmin? :), and have been in the electronics department much of that time. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who just toss their printers and buy a new one each time they run out of ink. They've all figured out it's cheaper to do that. If they don't do that, they buy the refill kits. While I don't have access to actual numbers, I wouldn't be surprised if our store alone ends up selling more Lexmark printers than new cartridges (Lexmark's prices also tend to be higher for a combined black/color set for whatever reason, I figure it's just greed).
Is there more to this? Is my sleep-deprived brain missing something? Or do I seem to be on target? Does anyone else feel that individual rights will have to be patented in the future or we'll lose them? :P
-Maestro
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How could anyone ever arrive at the conclusion that Microsoft will not screw them?
Perhaps because gobs of money exchanged hands underneath the table at a really run-down bar & grill on the bad side of town. All in unmarked bills.....Of course that's just purely hypothetical (I.E. Don't sue me Microsoft. :P)
- The moral is, these guys make boatloads of money on each new hire, which is why they were not particularly bothered by giving me that money.
Still, kudos to them for making up for their goof (telling you incorrectly about the moving expenses), and not leaving you hanging out to dry.GMud isn't exactly freeware, but no-nags (abandoned) shareware. AFAIK, the address in the about section is no longer valid to send money to, and the "official" download URL contains a version last updated in 1995. You can find it at the "official" download URL or Google for other sites.
Somewhere along the way the source was released apparently. I saw custom versions of it out there when I last Googled to replace my lost copy.
Note, I'm not recommending using no-nag Shareware in place of freeware in general, but abandonware is a bit different, if you can't pay for it, there's not much you can do.
While this is true, I had a scary thought. What if MS did this for another "bug" and they screwed the patch up (as some Windows patches have been in the past), and all of a sudden, your Xbox will only give you a BSOD (or the Xbox equivalent). Unfortunately, your warranty has expired on it, and now you have a large paperweight because of this.
I suspect in this case it'd be bloody hard to get anything done about it. MS would most likely try to deny the patch caused any trouble, much less BSODing many Xboxes out there. With it out of warranty, returning it to the store would be totally out of the question.
So for all of you saying MS is perfectly within their rights to do this secret auto-updating, perhaps thinking about the above will change your mind. I dislike it solely because of the possibility above, nevermind the fact that I also wouldn't care for MS mucking with my console once I'd paid for it.
There was an interview with a few of the top dogs for Nintendo USA in the latest GMR or Game Informer magazine one. They made it very obvious that Nintendo DOES make a profit on every Gamecube sold, and that this has been their strategy for every console. (Thus the slower innovation I suppose.) Basically Nintendo's conservative as can be and refuses to do anything unless they can make a profit on it. Not too surprising I guess, considering Nintendo has traditionally relied on in-house titles more than 3rd-Party ones.
Just one example, Nintendo won't bother with online yet, they feel there's no way to make money on it, and that it's a bad idea to lose money on it now in case it gets big. Of course this could backfire on them and leave them struggling to play catch-up to Sony and Microsoft if Online gaming really takes off on the consoles.
Nintendo's still trying to live down the fact they practically handed the console market to Sony. Sony had been working with Nintendo to make a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES. When Nintendo stopped their work (not entirely sure what happened there, only that Nintendo didn't let Sony go ahead with the idea in some way), Sony decided to take their work and make their own console, and thus the Playstation was born. As if that wasn't bad enough, then Nintendo insisted on sticking with cartridges for the N64, and many developers were sick of the high cost and low storage, so they flocked to Sony's CD-ROM based gaming platform.
I do hope Nintendo is taking Sony's PSP announcement seriously though, would hate to see them go under or anything. I like several of their games, although not enough to buy a Gamecube so far. I have heard they'll be dropping to $99 US, so I may pick one up then, if only just to play Zelda. :)