Yes, and that's what China says when you attempt to sell to them too. "You don't have to pay all the bribes and deal with all the corruption we put in place to prevent you from being able to compete with our own companies, you can just choose not to sell to us..."
For 'most' people who read Slashdot I would wager half the fun is building it, the other half is the bragging rights to having built it, and the remainder is towards actually using it.
And no I didn't make a math error in the above statement.
Kuwait does not need your tourism dollars, they have oil. They do need your help to keep their neighbors from ripping them a new a-hole now and then, but we pretty much took care of that problem recently enough they don't care much about that any more either.
More importantly, as not all copyright holders are corporations, violation of copyright protections is not theft. It is not stealing. It is not burglary, it is not piracy.
It is violating copyright protections.
And as far as that goes, neither the Copyright Acts or 'The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act' are permitted to run contrary to the First Amendment, regardless of it's purpose.
Microsoft can, and has, incorporate open sourced code into their products, and sometimes they've even done it legally.
A good portion of the original TCP/IP stack, and it's attendant utilities were based on BSD licensed code simply ported over. And while they later replaced the stack with their own code, the utilities for a long time were (and probably still are) essentially open source ports.
They are likely pissed because Microsoft is likely still in the "We are subsidizing this hardware to ensure a market footprint for the XBox" mode and every Kinetic sold today that isn't used to play Gears of Violence is money out of their pocket with zero 'return'.
The TSA will never be the KGB. The KGB was competent at what they did, and what they did 'needed' to be done.
The TSA is incompetent at what they do, and what they do is completely superfluous. They are the diametric opposite of the KGB and any organization like the KGB.
Copyright is broken, and the manner in which this company is acting is different than the manner in which most 'reasonable' Slashdotters defend when defending 'music pirates and other pro-piracy entities'.
There is no double standard, simply a nuance which you seem to be overlooking in your rush to proclaim everyone anti-corporate.
For one, Slashdot isn't a monolithic entity, it is possible for people to read this site and not share the exact same opinions and the people who are for the author aren't necessarily the ones also for the 'pirates'.
Two, those who 'defend' pirates are usually arguing about the lack of legitimate means to do the things they want to, or attempting to argue what they consider to be fine points of the law that 'legitimize' what they do. Or they argue about the 'vast unfairness' of how the media companies pursue the issue.
Whereas, this company pretty blatantly stole outright someone's work, and attempted to lie about the law when called out on it. There is no 'lack of legitimate means' here, there is no law behind them, and it's not unfair for an author to demand an apology and that the company donate a pittance to a charity to show their repentance for their activity.
TL;DR edition: Apples - Oranges.
Re:Why not run Boxee on the old Apple TV?
on
Apple vs. Google TVs
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· Score: 4, Interesting
No, it's as if you went out and bought a really expensive electric toothbrush and found out that half the cost was the extra gadgetry they've introduced to ensure that you can only use their brand replacement heads and toothpaste.
I don't mind closed boxes being closed. I mind extra effort being put into keeping the closed box closed, after I buy it, for no good reason and plenty of bad ones.
If I decide to turn my toothbrush into an electric buffer, I'll take the heat for the appropriateness of the task. If I can't decide to turn my toothbrush into an electric buffer, simply because the manufacturer has included a sensor that detects the surface being brushed and refuses to allow the motor to run if the composition is anything other than calcium, then that's not a problem with my expectations, that's a problem with the manufacturer.
No, there is no guarantee it's harder to get in, the guards are too busy watching to make sure you don't get out to pay attention to the other side of the walls. The articles that came out a few months ago about Android and iOS apps that were leaking your info all over prove that. And if you think that Apple is actually going over the code of the apps in the App Store, I'd remind you of how many times they've retroactively pulled an app when they suddenly find out that it does something that they've decided is verboten today.
What the walled garden really does is lull the unwary into thinking that the same amount of effort is being put into keeping them 'safe' as there is in keeping them 'in'. If you are lucky (and you aren't really with Apple) then it is true. If you aren't, then your false sense of security is just another reason why the walled garden is a horrible model to buy into.
This is one of those games where you aren't holding the DS in the typical orientation of 'top screen - LCD - bottom screen - touch'. Instead you hold it so the lcd screen is vertical on the left hand side and the touch screen is vertical on the right hand side.
You are meant to hold the DS in the left hand and use the right hand to play. It becomes cumbersome to do it in the reverse.
Many games that have this layout are designed so that the you could swap the screen positions without particular issue (i.e. the touch screen is used soley as an input device/stats screen) and so include the option to flip it all 180 degrees so the touch screen can be on the left side and the right hand can hold the DS.
This game isn't designed in a manner that would allow that, even if they attempted to include that option. So it truly is a 'righty only' game.
And while I appreciate that many people are sufficiently ambidextrous that they can function using their right hand for some tasks, it is not a universal thing that everyone who is left handed can simply 'train' to use their right hand in place of it.
Yes, I am left handed. Yes, I spent the majority of my elementary school life being punished by teachers because the leading belief in child development at the time was that 'left handed children are really all ambidextrous and should use to learn their right hand as soon as possible.' Meaning when I consistently couldn't do what they asked of me for five straight years, it was assumed that I was either lazy, 'special', or obstinate.
Wish them luck but I doubt it'll make it through the approval process, especially given how A-hole-ish Apple comes off on today's '10 commandments' notice. Gonna be pretty hard to ever navigate those waters without having an 'in' to help you out.
We are talking about a Windows game, a Windows game that relied on libraries that Microsoft no longer distributes or supports.
We are talking about a man who took the time and effort to reimplement one of those libraries and open source his solution.
We are talking about someone then acting like an ass making as if this was a pointless endeavor because the game plays for HIM when he uses Wine in Linux.
We are talking about me pointing this out and this person calling me an idiot because the 'norm' to him was using emulators to play the specific games in question, specifically because he couldn't play them normally without them.
We are talking about me pointing out once again, that this didn't make his statement regarding the utility of this project any less false.
I'm sorry, but where do your points have relevancy to that conversation?
The best part was when your/their terminal emulator didn't understand the backspace key and every typo was followed by a string of "^h"s as they attempted to correct it.
People who like old games run emulators and virtual machines all the time, yes. They do so primarily because the code those games rely on is either missing or no longer works the same way in today's version of OS, not because it's the 'better way to play them'.
To suggest that someone putting forth effort to remake one of those missing portions of code such that you could play one of these games in a modern OS, rather than through an emulation or virtual machine, is somehow redundant or unnecessary is in itself idiotic.
This isn't the "How to do things the conventional way because new is different and different is bad" blog. It's "News for Nerds, News that Matters", and someone making an open source implementation of DirectDraw and releasing the source code is news for nerds, regardless of how often someone says 'oh, you can do that just as easy in X'
There were perfectly good alternatives to writing his own "Unix-like" OS back when Linus was first starting out too. That didn't make Linux any less awesome.
So you can run Wine in Windows now? How delightfully recursive.
Oh wait, you meant that Wing Commander ran great in a different OS that most people don't install by default just to play ancient games. Thus attempting to insinuate that someone doing a hobby project to 'fix' it so Wing Commander ran well in the current version of Windows is somehow wasting their time.
Ah yes, the cover art, the storyline communicated in an included comic book or short novella, the minimal attempt to tie either to the game itself. I remember the 80's console & computer game microcosm well.
And I sort of miss it.
After reading things like this, I've begun to realize that in many cases it's still the same setup (story tacked on after they decide what the game is going to be) but with far less effort put into attempting drawing the eye away from it.
At least back then the game didn't match the story for technical reasons, not because the developer didn't bother to involve the story writers till the game was almost already complete.
Isn't this like legislating that PI is 3.14 because some people have problems with the idea of irrational numbers? If programs have issues with leap seconds, it sounds like programs weren't written properly, not that the spec needs to be rewritten to accommodate this flaw. Would these same people have demanded that it be 1999 again to avoid all the costs of the Y2K fixes?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and that's what China says when you attempt to sell to them too. "You don't have to pay all the bribes and deal with all the corruption we put in place to prevent you from being able to compete with our own companies, you can just choose not to sell to us..."
If I can't convince my passengers that KITT is in the car with them, it's not worth doing.
For 'most' people who read Slashdot I would wager half the fun is building it, the other half is the bragging rights to having built it, and the remainder is towards actually using it.
And no I didn't make a math error in the above statement.
Kuwait does not need your tourism dollars, they have oil.
They do need your help to keep their neighbors from ripping them a new a-hole now and then, but we pretty much took care of that problem recently enough they don't care much about that any more either.
More importantly, as not all copyright holders are corporations, violation of copyright protections is not theft. It is not stealing. It is not burglary, it is not piracy.
It is violating copyright protections.
And as far as that goes, neither the Copyright Acts or 'The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act' are permitted to run contrary to the First Amendment, regardless of it's purpose.
Clarification from the story summary:
It's not one password, it's a file full of password hashes.
If it takes 49 minutes to crack a single password of six characters length, you need to upgrade from the ZX81 you must be using.
I guess that means I should turn it off when we start Orgy Fridays back up.
Microsoft can, and has, incorporate open sourced code into their products, and sometimes they've even done it legally.
A good portion of the original TCP/IP stack, and it's attendant utilities were based on BSD licensed code simply ported over. And while they later replaced the stack with their own code, the utilities for a long time were (and probably still are) essentially open source ports.
They are likely pissed because Microsoft is likely still in the "We are subsidizing this hardware to ensure a market footprint for the XBox" mode and every Kinetic sold today that isn't used to play Gears of Violence is money out of their pocket with zero 'return'.
The TSA will never be the KGB. The KGB was competent at what they did, and what they did 'needed' to be done.
The TSA is incompetent at what they do, and what they do is completely superfluous. They are the diametric opposite of the KGB and any organization like the KGB.
I bet you have a rock you carry around to keep tigers away.
Copyright is broken, and the manner in which this company is acting is different than the manner in which most 'reasonable' Slashdotters defend when defending 'music pirates and other pro-piracy entities'.
There is no double standard, simply a nuance which you seem to be overlooking in your rush to proclaim everyone anti-corporate.
For one, Slashdot isn't a monolithic entity, it is possible for people to read this site and not share the exact same opinions and the people who are for the author aren't necessarily the ones also for the 'pirates'.
Two, those who 'defend' pirates are usually arguing about the lack of legitimate means to do the things they want to, or attempting to argue what they consider to be fine points of the law that 'legitimize' what they do. Or they argue about the 'vast unfairness' of how the media companies pursue the issue.
Whereas, this company pretty blatantly stole outright someone's work, and attempted to lie about the law when called out on it. There is no 'lack of legitimate means' here, there is no law behind them, and it's not unfair for an author to demand an apology and that the company donate a pittance to a charity to show their repentance for their activity.
TL;DR edition: Apples - Oranges.
No, it's as if you went out and bought a really expensive electric toothbrush and found out that half the cost was the extra gadgetry they've introduced to ensure that you can only use their brand replacement heads and toothpaste.
I don't mind closed boxes being closed. I mind extra effort being put into keeping the closed box closed, after I buy it, for no good reason and plenty of bad ones.
If I decide to turn my toothbrush into an electric buffer, I'll take the heat for the appropriateness of the task. If I can't decide to turn my toothbrush into an electric buffer, simply because the manufacturer has included a sensor that detects the surface being brushed and refuses to allow the motor to run if the composition is anything other than calcium, then that's not a problem with my expectations, that's a problem with the manufacturer.
No, there is no guarantee it's harder to get in, the guards are too busy watching to make sure you don't get out to pay attention to the other side of the walls. The articles that came out a few months ago about Android and iOS apps that were leaking your info all over prove that. And if you think that Apple is actually going over the code of the apps in the App Store, I'd remind you of how many times they've retroactively pulled an app when they suddenly find out that it does something that they've decided is verboten today.
What the walled garden really does is lull the unwary into thinking that the same amount of effort is being put into keeping them 'safe' as there is in keeping them 'in'. If you are lucky (and you aren't really with Apple) then it is true. If you aren't, then your false sense of security is just another reason why the walled garden is a horrible model to buy into.
Have you ever seen either device? The Segway is much larger than an insulin pump regardless of it's profitability.
Chuck Norris wouldn't need a bomb.
This is one of those games where you aren't holding the DS in the typical orientation of 'top screen - LCD - bottom screen - touch'. Instead you hold it so the lcd screen is vertical on the left hand side and the touch screen is vertical on the right hand side.
You are meant to hold the DS in the left hand and use the right hand to play. It becomes cumbersome to do it in the reverse.
Many games that have this layout are designed so that the you could swap the screen positions without particular issue (i.e. the touch screen is used soley as an input device/stats screen) and so include the option to flip it all 180 degrees so the touch screen can be on the left side and the right hand can hold the DS.
This game isn't designed in a manner that would allow that, even if they attempted to include that option. So it truly is a 'righty only' game.
And while I appreciate that many people are sufficiently ambidextrous that they can function using their right hand for some tasks, it is not a universal thing that everyone who is left handed can simply 'train' to use their right hand in place of it.
Yes, I am left handed. Yes, I spent the majority of my elementary school life being punished by teachers because the leading belief in child development at the time was that 'left handed children are really all ambidextrous and should use to learn their right hand as soon as possible.' Meaning when I consistently couldn't do what they asked of me for five straight years, it was assumed that I was either lazy, 'special', or obstinate.
You do understand that in many places normal food crops are still fertilized by feces?
Wish them luck but I doubt it'll make it through the approval process, especially given how A-hole-ish Apple comes off on today's '10 commandments' notice. Gonna be pretty hard to ever navigate those waters without having an 'in' to help you out.
We are talking about a Windows game, a Windows game that relied on libraries that Microsoft no longer distributes or supports.
We are talking about a man who took the time and effort to reimplement one of those libraries and open source his solution.
We are talking about someone then acting like an ass making as if this was a pointless endeavor because the game plays for HIM when he uses Wine in Linux.
We are talking about me pointing this out and this person calling me an idiot because the 'norm' to him was using emulators to play the specific games in question, specifically because he couldn't play them normally without them.
We are talking about me pointing out once again, that this didn't make his statement regarding the utility of this project any less false.
I'm sorry, but where do your points have relevancy to that conversation?
The best part was when your/their terminal emulator didn't understand the backspace key and every typo was followed by a string of "^h"s as they attempted to correct it.
People who like old games run emulators and virtual machines all the time, yes. They do so primarily because the code those games rely on is either missing or no longer works the same way in today's version of OS, not because it's the 'better way to play them'.
To suggest that someone putting forth effort to remake one of those missing portions of code such that you could play one of these games in a modern OS, rather than through an emulation or virtual machine, is somehow redundant or unnecessary is in itself idiotic.
This isn't the "How to do things the conventional way because new is different and different is bad" blog. It's "News for Nerds, News that Matters", and someone making an open source implementation of DirectDraw and releasing the source code is news for nerds, regardless of how often someone says 'oh, you can do that just as easy in X'
There were perfectly good alternatives to writing his own "Unix-like" OS back when Linus was first starting out too. That didn't make Linux any less awesome.
So you can run Wine in Windows now? How delightfully recursive.
Oh wait, you meant that Wing Commander ran great in a different OS that most people don't install by default just to play ancient games. Thus attempting to insinuate that someone doing a hobby project to 'fix' it so Wing Commander ran well in the current version of Windows is somehow wasting their time.
Man, glad you weren't around to advise Linus...
Ah yes, the cover art, the storyline communicated in an included comic book or short novella, the minimal attempt to tie either to the game itself. I remember the 80's console & computer game microcosm well.
And I sort of miss it.
After reading things like this, I've begun to realize that in many cases it's still the same setup (story tacked on after they decide what the game is going to be) but with far less effort put into attempting drawing the eye away from it.
At least back then the game didn't match the story for technical reasons, not because the developer didn't bother to involve the story writers till the game was almost already complete.
Isn't this like legislating that PI is 3.14 because some people have problems with the idea of irrational numbers? If programs have issues with leap seconds, it sounds like programs weren't written properly, not that the spec needs to be rewritten to accommodate this flaw. Would these same people have demanded that it be 1999 again to avoid all the costs of the Y2K fixes?