Remember people, Santa's payload and speed are nothing we haven't seen and debated at our bi-mon-sci-fi-cons before. These figures are quite close to those for the starship enterprise or a dozen other sci-fi show equilivilents entering the atmosphere. We've already debated these so I guess old St Nick is just a subset of these discussions. Replace Toys with Tritanium Hull and Reindeer with impluse engines and viola!
But if you changed "Valve" to "Microsoft" and "HL2" to "Windows XP", there would be ALOT more cries of foul-play.
This is all too true. I saw a troll making a very long post about this once. His basic point was that, unlike the rest of slashdot, the games section is populated by windows pc gamers, more so that regular tech heads. Most of these are young and innocent when it comes to IP issues. Kind of like a missing link between regular users and frequent slashdotters. Anyway, these gamers do love their games and the companies that make them and will brook no critisisms of them. They're also more likely to be confused by comments slamming windows XP, as they still regard it as "Way cool! I have a computer with XP!"
Steam is ridiculous. It's only working because half life 2 is huge. I really can't see it working for other games. The only reason consumers put up with it is because of the hype. the hype is also the reason comments critisising steam are modded as troll in the games section.
Paranoid people might consider the gamer influx into slashdot to be the forerunner of a mighty luser invasion. I consider it just a diversification of the slashdot ecosystem.
This sounds good, very good. I have to say, dispite all the other rubbish thrown into MS Office, the combination of Excel and especially Access is an amazingly powerful tool. Even lowly users with no programming expierience can organise their files into a simple database and play around with them. I've known plenty of quite large companies that still use Access as their main database. True the thing is slow, buggy, hoggy, and can only support 5 user connections at a time, but you can see the potential.
I must check out this new Open Office Database App. If it's got the (relative) ease of use of Access, and hopefully some way to hook out to a database like MySQL when things get too big, then this will be a really compelling reason for a LOT of companies to begin looking very seriously at Open Office. For some that I know, only their reliance on Access + Excel is keeping them hooked.
Not all databases need to be uber, high fidelity or military grade. Most database applications are fairly small scale and all people really need is a small Access type app to tinker with data when its needed. True it may not be able to handle 10,000 connections with 50 million records, but most back office Access computers will be lucky to see 1000 connections a day and won't usually see the 1,000,000 record mark before the next server upgrade anyway. Possible exageration, but Oracle and SQL-Server is just overkill for most applications out there. We need this. Go OOo!
This industry is ours. It's profits and technology will become one with our own. It's programmers will be hired and worked into mindless drones. Resistance is Futile. Surrender you IP and prepare to be bought out. Resistance is futile. People will buy our crappy games as long as we continue to pay retailers to promote them. Lower your morals and prepare to watch us take all of the billions that could have been yours. The comglomerate will prevail. Challenge Everything(TM), except our margins.
Begone foul troll!! Java is the work of the devil!! And eclipse is its dark whore, complete with multiple blasphemous plugins! Repent! Install perl and ye may yet be saved. Turn back now from the dark path of restricted languages and walk the path of the true believers.
In short, I disagree that Java is easier to teach to beginners. Not only must they immendiatly grasp object orientation and functions, they must also work with Java's quite restrictive language constructs. I do agree that C++ is not a very good languages for beginners. C maybe, with some STL added. I would still be of the opinion that beginners are best starting off with BASIC or perl(without mentioning regular expressions). They need a language that starts very simple so they can wrap ther heads around programming and start spitting out a few programs, without getting bogged down by advanced concepts.
This is yet more paranioa progaganda from the people who brought you Total Information Awareness, The colour coded terrorism threat meter and other such rubbish programmes, whose design has nothing to do with protecting people from terrorists and everything to do with maintaining the current status quo, i.e. increased nationalism and xenophobia. The current administration loves having people in a patriotic stupour, and ridiculous proposals like this just add to it.
I mean, lets look at this objectively. One Terrorist attack is thought to be imminent. Your telling me that the pentagon will just, at a moments notice, shut down their entire primary global location guidance system, because one terrorist might be planning to attack some obscure US station or embassy. Give me a break. Think of the lawsuits alone.
Yet more FUD to keep the critics quiet. The terrorist are coming to get you!! BOOO!! Yeah right. Here a gem for you. There are no terrorists. Noone is coming to get you. Al Qaeda doesn't exist. I plead daily to the cosmos that one day most americans will somehow awake from their collective coma and just fire their asses. However with the number of TV channels on the increase, and work days nudging up to thirteen hours, I'm afraid this seems unlikely.
This is probobly also a snipe at the Galileo programme. Not for patriotic reasons mind you. Simply because GPS had a monopoly on the market and the pentagon could charge what it liked with vendor lock in as a plus. Now that there's competition, they're getting the white house to do a little FUD pushing for them.
Great! More NetBEANS bloat. Joy. Look, collapsing code is nice and all, but seriously, I really can't wait five minutes to spot check one app.
Just use crimson editor. Set java compile to F5, java run to F6 then '56' it! Get it! F5,F6!... Never mind. Suffice to say that Crimson Editor is the closest thing to EMACS for Windows developers.(except for EMACS obviously, but windows minds tend to melt when faced with the Meta Paradigm)
All I have to say is that a good investment in Bose noise canceling headsets have been one of the best investments ever and appear to possibly become a necessity when flying.
Your plug sir, is masterful. Truely, Truely breathtaking.
Don't let the rather informal nature of their letter fool you. These guys are trying to dress up a lone shark operation with smiles and sunshine. In reality, they're two shades above spammers and malware writers. Like them, these guys are abusing the system to extort profit for free off the backs of others.
We wrote this letter to make our thoughts as clear and open as possible We're pulling a good smilely PR stunt. You already look like old sour pusses. Pay up.
We believe that we are an important part of the futures industry we serve, that our position in this industry is unique, and that our value is growing. We're big. You need us. We're getting bigger. Big enough to take you on. Pay up.
We believe this 2.5 cent solution is in the best interest of the futures industry. We believe you forking over you cash, hand over fist to us in exchange for squat is in the best interests of the futures industry. Pay up.
Over the past several years, the futures industry has had no better friend than TT. Remember all that buggy software we installed. Your locked in now pal. Pay up.
Protecting the results of TT's consistent innovation is a priority. Beyond the MD Trader patents that were recently received, another eighty patent applications have been filed, and TT continues to file more. You will never get rid of us. The USPTO patent factory will just keep churing out juicy gravy trains for us. Pay up.
We believe in capitalism and what it does for the world. We believe in capitalism and what it does for the world. Pay up.
Whenever we desire, TT, as a stand alone company, could raise the price of the patent-protected portion of our software and immediately have enormous cash-flow. This would be a last resort, but we would go this route if forced to. Even if we lose we can still make you pay through the nose. Pay up.
On the other hand, various traders, FCMs, etc. have told us that they agree that TT's status is an urgent matter and that the 2.5 cent solution would be in the industry's best interest, yet they can't publicly support the solution. It would seem to us that they would be kicking, screaming, and speaking out as loud as possible. Lots of your people who own our stock will be heckling you about this. Pay up.
Summarry of the Open letter HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! YOU IDIOTS!! You've let a upstart IT company become virtually the sole supplier of your lynchpin applications. We practically run the entire futures market by proxy. Now fork over the cash pops, before we hit the big red 'disconnect' button and let you get back to pen and paper! Pay up!! It's the American consumers way!!
It would seem that only a LAMP solution can save the futures market now! But can they mobilise their legions of laywers to bust the Patentzilla before it tramples Wall Street underfoot?!? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of 'USPTO Wars!!',filmed in 'Unobviousvision'.
This guys was not a hacker. He was a cracker. A criminal hacker. I'm sick of this public misconception. Whenever I talk about software to non tech people and I mention hackers, and the good work they do, people automatically assume I'm talking about some uber geek, crypto cyber punk, virus writing, terrorist whos out to gain control of as many nukes as he can before he downloads copious amounts of porn into their bank accounts.
Seriously, where the hell did this misconception arise from? It's tempting to blame hollywood, but it's more likely to have been some self proclaimed "landmark" NY Times article written by some clueless reporter who knew next to nothing about computer or the net in general outside of what some equally misinformed 133t script kiddies spluttered out to him when he asked them on IRC( The devils internet dungeon!!).
This misnomer of hackers used in the media at large has got to be tackled somehow. Otherwise other FUD might creep in, and pretty soon FOSS apps might be classed as warez by another bumbling journalist looking to rise ranks by jumping for the businees pages to the spanking new IT suppliment section by writing the next domesday tech article, complete with teenage (cr/h)acker masterminds.
Only an AC would come out with such a idiot statistic. Of course rates of sexual crime are higher in cities. They're cities. Crime is higher there anyway.
We won't have to wait very long. We ARE those kids remember. Majority of slashdotters are 15~30 years old I should think(Aplogies in advance to the legions of outrages 0-14 and 31-127 age groupers). Most of us grew up on gameboy, SNES, Genesis and Playstation. And guess what! Society isn't falling apart after all.
Or is it? Video games, TV, porn, drugs, education, emancapation, the vote, tolerence, cars, secularism and the internet have all failed, despite all doomsday predictions to the contrary, to tear the fabric of society apart. However I personally fell that our new found 14 hour day work ethic could have a fair stab at bringing about an Escape From New York or Mad Max type senario. The reason people are turning to Gameboys and Riddlin as babysitters is because they're exhausted after slogging for corperate masters all day so they don't lose their job to offshoring.
Naturally of course free market economics will eventually solve this problem. So goes the prevailing theory anyway. It's more likely however that kids and teenagers will just have to make to with Super Mario and Gordon Freeman as role models while their parents spend most of their free time sleeping or driving. But hey! We beat the commies right!?...Right?
These guys have done nothing wrong! (If they play their cards right)
Modding consoles is not a crime, dispite what chewbacca defense wielding game industry lawyers would have you believe. It's my Xbox, I bought it, I can do whatever I danm well please with it, including ripping the danm thing open and soldering on whatever chip I feel like(Or paying someone to do this for me). If I actually go and play a copyed game then "maybe" I've done something wrong. Maybe. Fair use can still justify this.
Which is where these guys might fall down. They've been loading games onto the Xbox hard drive. This is NOT a crime in itself. Note game EULAs are not in any way legally binding as they violate the principle of first sale. What MIGHT be a crime(I conceed nothing), is loading these games onto the hard disc and not giving the customer the actual copy of the disc. If these guys have been giving people the game discs and mearly loading the games on as a matter of convience(game on HDD==less hassle), while still giving over the games themselves, then they are completely in the clear.
If however they've been selling Xboxes with multiple copies of the same games and not handing over the disc, then they are, I grant you, grade A morons.
This can be a legit businees model, no matter how many wookies live on endor('s moon). My biggest concern is that legit console modders will suffer a chilling effect and close down. Or that the industry cease and desist letter will carry mugshots of these guys when they're sent out to perfectly legal business. Or of course that clueless judges take it into consideration when awarding SLAPP victories to chewbacca confusians.
If I want to play import games, then I damn well will. The only crime here is the region locking of games and DVDs imposed by the industry(...and of course copyright theft if these guys really have been that stupid)
I'll take this oppertunity to complain about GNOME's current love affair with spatial browsing, in the hope that it will get noticed.
Please, please take away spatial browsing. Noone I know wants it. Every time someone talks to me about their first foray into Linux(avec GNOME) they complain about it. They all hated it in Win95 and they don't want it now. They all leave with the impression that Naultilus( and by extendtion Linux) is, well, unusable. (They're only lusers, bless them.)
Seriously leave spatial browsing as an option from now on. Not the default.
All replys, comments and links to points of view in favour of spatial browsing are welcome, as I am genuinely facinated and bemused by this point of view. Who exactly like spatial browsing and why?!
What's the harm in a game that has Taiwan listed as a country?
The problem for the communist party is that if Joe Chinese finds out that people across the water are giving the mainland dictatorship the two fingers, and getting away with it, he may become tempted to ask for "subversive" and "unpatriotic" things like "free speech" and "democracy". Better to quash such rumours in the bud, rather than let them chip away at your iron grip.
Communist Party Spokesman: "We cannot allow external forces, such as reality, to break into the completely perfect society we have here. Our dearest wish is that the chinese people be happy with their new found cash from foreign investement, and use their educations to slave away mindlessly for the good of the state. Not waste time debating the rights and wrongs of a single party, militartistic, undemocratic, cronyist government. I mean, just how long do you think we'd last if the average man on the street realised what exactly is going on? If only there was some way of getting money and education, but keeping, you know, the autocracy. We've got our best minds working on it right now, but the situation is not helped by games, books and movies proclaiming nonsense like Taiwan being independant, individuals having rights and so on. I mean, the Party says otherwise, Duuh! We will succeed in using the media, paranoia, and hi-tech surveillance in creating a completely obeidient populace. We're taking great heart from the recent American expierience in this endevour. If only we had the Bush Administrations balls! Long live the Repub^H^H^H^H^H^HParty!... are we live by the way?"
Hmmm... On previewing that, if whiffs of a masterful troll. Sorry if it sounds like that, but the hypocracy and lies coming from the chinese government disgusts me. I find it sickening that a dictatorial few can deny one fifth of the world's population their basic human rights. The day China become a real democracy will be a great day.
Amen. EA destroyed Command and Conquer. Red Alert 2 was still is the greatest of all strategy games. For every move, there was a countermove. For every unit, there was a weakness, for every strategy, there was a counterstrategy. The game was fast, fun, frantic and solid. Contrast to Generals. Slow, glitchy, uncustomisable. And stragtey? Just build tanks, tanks, tanks. No brain required. And the racism! I think this game has to be the most racist gae ever made. It's the only game I've ever seen with a ELSPA "Discrimination" rating. They whored the game on the back of 9/11 paranoia, clash of civiliations crap. Thanks EA, thanks a lot.
This is just data rape, pure and simple. This company is gathering vasts amounts of your personal, public and private dealings over several years and then peddling that information to souless private companies.
This is wrong pure and simple.
I don't question someone's right to have access to "specific" data about me. i.e my GP needs to know my blood type, the taxman needs to know my income, the pizza delivery boys needs to know my address. But the wholesale collection and amalgamation of every possible facet of my life by people who have no business knowing anything about me, disgusts me to my very core. No doubt Mr Patel wets himself over the prospect of getting access to embedded RFID telemetry as well.
Stalking is a crime. When stalkers are caught with pictures, diaries and details of people's whereabouts and dealings, this is usually used against them in a court case. why shouldn't the same apply to Mt Patel and his kind?
This behaviour is inexcusable. Noone needs to know this much about anyone else and those that do should be prosecuted. Persons and Companies should have the minimum amount of data possible on any one person. Data is on a need to know basis, and they don't need to know.
Of course, these dirty data raping fiends will argue on grounds of civil liberty(which they threaten), free speech(which they help to chill) and of course they play the happy smiley, "Our motives are purely innocent, you have nothing to fear" PR card, that will fool so many people.(That whole three week marraige story is probobly just a PR stunt).They'll also bitch about how we have no right to privacy(while keeping their own records out of the public eye).
Well guess what. I have a right to dignity. And if some private company starts selling off every minutes detail about me, every action I have ever done, every rumour, everything I've said or been remotely involved in, be it happy, sad, embarrassing, glad, hopeful, disparing or just plain private, to every slobbering data hungry slimeball that comes looking for it, I consider that a pretty big dent in my personal dignity pal! See you in court!
There's no silver bullet for licences either. The OpenBSDers want their system licenced under their rules, and more power to them. They have to remove all GPL code to do this beacuse the GPL is a more or less all or nothing free software licence. It's got nothing to do with evangelism, and all to do with practicality. You can't have bits and pieces of code GPLed and some not.
Other licences are more flexible, but are less precise. I'll still be using the GPL for most of the code I write, because I want as many people as possible to use it, and be fully secure in doing so.
I think that the Ps1 existed in a golden age when games really innovated and 3D was just coming in. There was a LOT of shite on the playstation, but I think in the lastest generation the signal to noise ratio on gamestore shelves has decreased a lot. I guess now crap games can sell better on their increased polygon counts, so more crap is available. Playstation sits between the restricted, yet highly innovative 16bit console game, and the humoungously powerful, yet often just that, 128bit console games.
This isn't to say that one format is better than another mind. It's just to say that 128bit has lead to a lot of companies(EA) churning out high res crap that sell to bits for some ungodly reason. i think it's damaging to the indudtry myself.
Oh, and your right Symphony of the night WAS that danm good.
I'm sorry RedHat, but your method of converting Linux to Several Indian Languages has already been covered by pat No 8U11541T " A system for converting software string data in one language into a second language, related or unrelated to the first, in order to promote increased uptake of product in a foreign market, using a computer"
All complaints can be sent to the USPTO, and will be rigorously examined and then past to Homeland Security for Subversive Threat Examination.
Absolutly. I completely agree. In fact Spyware Filters should be held to an even higher standard as they install very malicious, subversive and damaging programs, almost like someone sneeking up to your car and messing with the engine so it leave a trail of drops they can follow(best analogy i could come up with). Also 99% of spyware is very intrusive and damaging 99% of porn is just pictures of naked people.
if a porn filter company were susceptible to the same sort of "temptation" should there be any consequences at all? Why or why not should the same consequences be applied to a "spyware" filter intentionally allowing certain things through? What's the difference?
Eh? I don't fully follow. Obviously if your porn filter is allowing porn through intendtionally, then you should just dump it. I suppose the same goes for spyware. However I will say that spyware is much more permanent and damaging than porn. Porn is usually just for a day. Spyware is for life.
The fundamental difference between freeware and proprietry anti-malware software is that the freeware are doing it for the love of the game, or in this case their hatred for spyware in all its daemonic forms.
Commerical anti-spyware vendors on the other hand are in in for the $$$ and that means they are susseptable to temptation, i.e allow malwarez who give them money to get through, use malwarez tactics to get money and do things other than what it says on the tin while users aren't looking.(read, kazaa)
I suppose commerical vendors are just more idealogically close to the spammers, who are also in it for the money. In any case, if you need an 'infrastructural' type software program, your nearly always better off going FOSS anyway. That's my 2c.
kids still have access to the pornography and no amount of "education" is really going to block them or persuade them from accessing it.
Your point being?
Who cares if kids,(and of course were talking about pubesent teenagers here), go looking for porn. It's not going to turn them into drooling, trenchcoated Ken Keniffs, hungry for porn day and night. This will only happen to those destined for that path anyway.
Internet porn today is exactly the same as porn mags in the fifties.
Again I say, if you want to look after your kids, don't crush my freedoms to do it.
P.S. Anyone who bans their child from the net over porn, without having ever talked with them about the birds and the bees, needs to have their gaurdianship revoked.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember people, Santa's payload and speed are nothing we haven't seen and debated at our bi-mon-sci-fi-cons before. These figures are quite close to those for the starship enterprise or a dozen other sci-fi show equilivilents entering the atmosphere. We've already debated these so I guess old St Nick is just a subset of these discussions.
Replace Toys with Tritanium Hull and Reindeer with impluse engines and viola!
But if you changed "Valve" to "Microsoft" and "HL2" to "Windows XP", there would be ALOT more cries of foul-play.
This is all too true.
I saw a troll making a very long post about this once. His basic point was that, unlike the rest of slashdot, the games section is populated by windows pc gamers, more so that regular tech heads. Most of these are young and innocent when it comes to IP issues. Kind of like a missing link between regular users and frequent slashdotters. Anyway, these gamers do love their games and the companies that make them and will brook no critisisms of them. They're also more likely to be confused by comments slamming windows XP, as they still regard it as "Way cool! I have a computer with XP!"
Steam is ridiculous. It's only working because half life 2 is huge. I really can't see it working for other games. The only reason consumers put up with it is because of the hype. the hype is also the reason comments critisising steam are modded as troll in the games section.
Paranoid people might consider the gamer influx into slashdot to be the forerunner of a mighty luser invasion. I consider it just a diversification of the slashdot ecosystem.
This sounds good, very good. I have to say, dispite all the other rubbish thrown into MS Office, the combination of Excel and especially Access is an amazingly powerful tool. Even lowly users with no programming expierience can organise their files into a simple database and play around with them. I've known plenty of quite large companies that still use Access as their main database. True the thing is slow, buggy, hoggy, and can only support 5 user connections at a time, but you can see the potential.
I must check out this new Open Office Database App. If it's got the (relative) ease of use of Access, and hopefully some way to hook out to a database like MySQL when things get too big, then this will be a really compelling reason for a LOT of companies to begin looking very seriously at Open Office. For some that I know, only their reliance on Access + Excel is keeping them hooked.
Not all databases need to be uber, high fidelity or military grade. Most database applications are fairly small scale and all people really need is a small Access type app to tinker with data when its needed. True it may not be able to handle 10,000 connections with 50 million records, but most back office Access computers will be lucky to see 1000 connections a day and won't usually see the 1,000,000 record mark before the next server upgrade anyway. Possible exageration, but Oracle and SQL-Server is just overkill for most applications out there. We need this. Go OOo!
This industry is ours. It's profits and technology will become one with our own. It's programmers will be hired and worked into mindless drones. Resistance is Futile. Surrender you IP and prepare to be bought out. Resistance is futile. People will buy our crappy games as long as we continue to pay retailers to promote them. Lower your morals and prepare to watch us take all of the billions that could have been yours. The comglomerate will prevail. Challenge Everything(TM), except our margins.
Begone foul troll!! Java is the work of the devil!! And eclipse is its dark whore, complete with multiple blasphemous plugins! Repent! Install perl and ye may yet be saved. Turn back now from the dark path of restricted languages and walk the path of the true believers.
In short, I disagree that Java is easier to teach to beginners. Not only must they immendiatly grasp object orientation and functions, they must also work with Java's quite restrictive language constructs. I do agree that C++ is not a very good languages for beginners. C maybe, with some STL added. I would still be of the opinion that beginners are best starting off with BASIC or perl(without mentioning regular expressions). They need a language that starts very simple so they can wrap ther heads around programming and start spitting out a few programs, without getting bogged down by advanced concepts.
This is yet more paranioa progaganda from the people who brought you Total Information Awareness, The colour coded terrorism threat meter and other such rubbish programmes, whose design has nothing to do with protecting people from terrorists and everything to do with maintaining the current status quo, i.e. increased nationalism and xenophobia. The current administration loves having people in a patriotic stupour, and ridiculous proposals like this just add to it.
I mean, lets look at this objectively. One Terrorist attack is thought to be imminent. Your telling me that the pentagon will just, at a moments notice, shut down their entire primary global location guidance system, because one terrorist might be planning to attack some obscure US station or embassy. Give me a break. Think of the lawsuits alone.
Yet more FUD to keep the critics quiet. The terrorist are coming to get you!! BOOO!! Yeah right. Here a gem for you. There are no terrorists. Noone is coming to get you. Al Qaeda doesn't exist. I plead daily to the cosmos that one day most americans will somehow awake from their collective coma and just fire their asses. However with the number of TV channels on the increase, and work days nudging up to thirteen hours, I'm afraid this seems unlikely.
This is probobly also a snipe at the Galileo programme. Not for patriotic reasons mind you. Simply because GPS had a monopoly on the market and the pentagon could charge what it liked with vendor lock in as a plus. Now that there's competition, they're getting the white house to do a little FUD pushing for them.
Great! More NetBEANS bloat. Joy. Look, collapsing code is nice and all, but seriously, I really can't wait five minutes to spot check one app.
Just use crimson editor. Set java compile to F5, java run to F6 then '56' it! Get it! F5,F6!... Never mind. Suffice to say that Crimson Editor is the closest thing to EMACS for Windows developers.(except for EMACS obviously, but windows minds tend to melt when faced with the Meta Paradigm)
All I have to say is that a good investment in Bose noise canceling headsets have been one of the best investments ever and appear to possibly become a necessity when flying.
Your plug sir, is masterful. Truely, Truely breathtaking.
Wow.
*chomp*
Your Right!! I should support President Bush!
*pttuuii*
Don't let the rather informal nature of their letter fool you. These guys are trying to dress up a lone shark operation with smiles and sunshine. In reality, they're two shades above spammers and malware writers. Like them, these guys are abusing the system to extort profit for free off the backs of others.
We wrote this letter to make our thoughts as clear and open as possible
We're pulling a good smilely PR stunt. You already look like old sour pusses. Pay up.
We believe that we are an important part of the futures industry we serve, that our position in this industry is unique, and that our value is growing.
We're big. You need us. We're getting bigger. Big enough to take you on. Pay up.
We believe this 2.5 cent solution is in the best interest of the futures industry.
We believe you forking over you cash, hand over fist to us in exchange for squat is in the best interests of the futures industry. Pay up.
Over the past several years, the futures industry has had no better friend than TT.
Remember all that buggy software we installed. Your locked in now pal. Pay up.
Protecting the results of TT's consistent innovation is a priority. Beyond the MD Trader patents that were recently received, another eighty patent applications have been filed, and TT continues to file more.
You will never get rid of us. The USPTO patent factory will just keep churing out juicy gravy trains for us. Pay up.
We believe in capitalism and what it does for the world.
We believe in capitalism and what it does for the world. Pay up.
Whenever we desire, TT, as a stand alone company, could raise the price of the patent-protected portion of our software and immediately have enormous cash-flow. This would be a last resort, but we would go this route if forced to.
Even if we lose we can still make you pay through the nose. Pay up.
On the other hand, various traders, FCMs, etc. have told us that they agree that TT's status is an urgent matter and that the 2.5 cent solution would be in the industry's best interest, yet they can't publicly support the solution. It would seem to us that they would be kicking, screaming, and speaking out as loud as possible.
Lots of your people who own our stock will be heckling you about this. Pay up.
Summarry of the Open letter
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! YOU IDIOTS!! You've let a upstart IT company become virtually the sole supplier of your lynchpin applications. We practically run the entire futures market by proxy. Now fork over the cash pops, before we hit the big red 'disconnect' button and let you get back to pen and paper!
Pay up!! It's the American consumers way!!
It would seem that only a LAMP solution can save the futures market now! But can they mobilise their legions of laywers to bust the Patentzilla before it tramples Wall Street underfoot?!? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of 'USPTO Wars!!',filmed in 'Unobviousvision'.
This guys was not a hacker. He was a cracker. A criminal hacker. I'm sick of this public misconception. Whenever I talk about software to non tech people and I mention hackers, and the good work they do, people automatically assume I'm talking about some uber geek, crypto cyber punk, virus writing, terrorist whos out to gain control of as many nukes as he can before he downloads copious amounts of porn into their bank accounts.
Seriously, where the hell did this misconception arise from? It's tempting to blame hollywood, but it's more likely to have been some self proclaimed "landmark" NY Times article written by some clueless reporter who knew next to nothing about computer or the net in general outside of what some equally misinformed 133t script kiddies spluttered out to him when he asked them on IRC( The devils internet dungeon!!).
This misnomer of hackers used in the media at large has got to be tackled somehow. Otherwise other FUD might creep in, and pretty soon FOSS apps might be classed as warez by another bumbling journalist looking to rise ranks by jumping for the businees pages to the spanking new IT suppliment section by writing the next domesday tech article, complete with teenage (cr/h)acker masterminds.
Only an AC would come out with such a idiot statistic. Of course rates of sexual crime are higher in cities. They're cities. Crime is higher there anyway.
Let's see what these kids are like as adults.
...Right?
We won't have to wait very long. We ARE those kids remember. Majority of slashdotters are 15~30 years old I should think(Aplogies in advance to the legions of outrages 0-14 and 31-127 age groupers). Most of us grew up on gameboy, SNES, Genesis and Playstation. And guess what! Society isn't falling apart after all.
Or is it? Video games, TV, porn, drugs, education, emancapation, the vote, tolerence, cars, secularism and the internet have all failed, despite all doomsday predictions to the contrary, to tear the fabric of society apart. However I personally fell that our new found 14 hour day work ethic could have a fair stab at bringing about an Escape From New York or Mad Max type senario. The reason people are turning to Gameboys and Riddlin as babysitters is because they're exhausted after slogging for corperate masters all day so they don't lose their job to offshoring.
Naturally of course free market economics will eventually solve this problem. So goes the prevailing theory anyway. It's more likely however that kids and teenagers will just have to make to with Super Mario and Gordon Freeman as role models while their parents spend most of their free time sleeping or driving.
But hey! We beat the commies right!?
These guys have done nothing wrong! (If they play their cards right)
Modding consoles is not a crime, dispite what chewbacca defense wielding game industry lawyers would have you believe. It's my Xbox, I bought it, I can do whatever I danm well please with it, including ripping the danm thing open and soldering on whatever chip I feel like(Or paying someone to do this for me). If I actually go and play a copyed game then "maybe" I've done something wrong. Maybe. Fair use can still justify this.
Which is where these guys might fall down. They've been loading games onto the Xbox hard drive. This is NOT a crime in itself. Note game EULAs are not in any way legally binding as they violate the principle of first sale. What MIGHT be a crime(I conceed nothing), is loading these games onto the hard disc and not giving the customer the actual copy of the disc. If these guys have been giving people the game discs and mearly loading the games on as a matter of convience(game on HDD==less hassle), while still giving over the games themselves, then they are completely in the clear.
If however they've been selling Xboxes with multiple copies of the same games and not handing over the disc, then they are, I grant you, grade A morons.
This can be a legit businees model, no matter how many wookies live on endor('s moon). My biggest concern is that legit console modders will suffer a chilling effect and close down. Or that the industry cease and desist letter will carry mugshots of these guys when they're sent out to perfectly legal business. Or of course that clueless judges take it into consideration when awarding SLAPP victories to chewbacca confusians.
If I want to play import games, then I damn well will. The only crime here is the region locking of games and DVDs imposed by the industry(...and of course copyright theft if these guys really have been that stupid)
I'll take this oppertunity to complain about GNOME's current love affair with spatial browsing, in the hope that it will get noticed.
Please, please take away spatial browsing. Noone I know wants it. Every time someone talks to me about their first foray into Linux(avec GNOME) they complain about it. They all hated it in Win95 and they don't want it now. They all leave with the impression that Naultilus( and by extendtion Linux) is, well, unusable. (They're only lusers, bless them.)
Seriously leave spatial browsing as an option from now on. Not the default.
All replys, comments and links to points of view in favour of spatial browsing are welcome, as I am genuinely facinated and bemused by this point of view. Who exactly like spatial browsing and why?!
What's the harm in a game that has Taiwan listed as a country?
... are we live by the way?"
The problem for the communist party is that if Joe Chinese finds out that people across the water are giving the mainland dictatorship the two fingers, and getting away with it, he may become tempted to ask for "subversive" and "unpatriotic" things like "free speech" and "democracy". Better to quash such rumours in the bud, rather than let them chip away at your iron grip.
Communist Party Spokesman: "We cannot allow external forces, such as reality, to break into the completely perfect society we have here. Our dearest wish is that the chinese people be happy with their new found cash from foreign investement, and use their educations to slave away mindlessly for the good of the state. Not waste time debating the rights and wrongs of a single party, militartistic, undemocratic, cronyist government. I mean, just how long do you think we'd last if the average man on the street realised what exactly is going on? If only there was some way of getting money and education, but keeping, you know, the autocracy. We've got our best minds working on it right now, but the situation is not helped by games, books and movies proclaiming nonsense like Taiwan being independant, individuals having rights and so on. I mean, the Party says otherwise, Duuh! We will succeed in using the media, paranoia, and hi-tech surveillance in creating a completely obeidient populace. We're taking great heart from the recent American expierience in this endevour. If only we had the Bush Administrations balls! Long live the Repub^H^H^H^H^H^HParty!
Hmmm... On previewing that, if whiffs of a masterful troll. Sorry if it sounds like that, but the hypocracy and lies coming from the chinese government disgusts me. I find it sickening that a dictatorial few can deny one fifth of the world's population their basic human rights. The day China become a real democracy will be a great day.
Amen.
EA destroyed Command and Conquer. Red Alert 2 was still is the greatest of all strategy games. For every move, there was a countermove. For every unit, there was a weakness, for every strategy, there was a counterstrategy. The game was fast, fun, frantic and solid.
Contrast to Generals. Slow, glitchy, uncustomisable. And stragtey? Just build tanks, tanks, tanks. No brain required. And the racism! I think this game has to be the most racist gae ever made. It's the only game I've ever seen with a ELSPA "Discrimination" rating. They whored the game on the back of 9/11 paranoia, clash of civiliations crap. Thanks EA, thanks a lot.
This is just data rape, pure and simple. This company is gathering vasts amounts of your personal, public and private dealings over several years and then peddling that information to souless private companies.
.They'll also bitch about how we have no right to privacy(while keeping their own records out of the public eye).
This is wrong pure and simple.
I don't question someone's right to have access to "specific" data about me. i.e my GP needs to know my blood type, the taxman needs to know my income, the pizza delivery boys needs to know my address. But the wholesale collection and amalgamation of every possible facet of my life by people who have no business knowing anything about me, disgusts me to my very core. No doubt Mr Patel wets himself over the prospect of getting access to embedded RFID telemetry as well.
Stalking is a crime. When stalkers are caught with pictures, diaries and details of people's whereabouts and dealings, this is usually used against them in a court case. why shouldn't the same apply to Mt Patel and his kind?
This behaviour is inexcusable. Noone needs to know this much about anyone else and those that do should be prosecuted. Persons and Companies should have the minimum amount of data possible on any one person. Data is on a need to know basis, and they don't need to know.
Of course, these dirty data raping fiends will argue on grounds of civil liberty(which they threaten), free speech(which they help to chill) and of course they play the happy smiley, "Our motives are purely innocent, you have nothing to fear" PR card, that will fool so many people.(That whole three week marraige story is probobly just a PR stunt)
Well guess what. I have a right to dignity. And if some private company starts selling off every minutes detail about me, every action I have ever done, every rumour, everything I've said or been remotely involved in, be it happy, sad, embarrassing, glad, hopeful, disparing or just plain private, to every slobbering data hungry slimeball that comes looking for it, I consider that a pretty big dent in my personal dignity pal! See you in court!
There's no silver bullet for licences either. The OpenBSDers want their system licenced under their rules, and more power to them. They have to remove all GPL code to do this beacuse the GPL is a more or less all or nothing free software licence.
It's got nothing to do with evangelism, and all to do with practicality. You can't have bits and pieces of code GPLed and some not.
Other licences are more flexible, but are less precise. I'll still be using the GPL for most of the code I write, because I want as many people as possible to use it, and be fully secure in doing so.
I think that the Ps1 existed in a golden age when games really innovated and 3D was just coming in. There was a LOT of shite on the playstation, but I think in the lastest generation the signal to noise ratio on gamestore shelves has decreased a lot.
I guess now crap games can sell better on their increased polygon counts, so more crap is available. Playstation sits between the restricted, yet highly innovative 16bit console game, and the humoungously powerful, yet often just that, 128bit console games.
This isn't to say that one format is better than another mind. It's just to say that 128bit has lead to a lot of companies(EA) churning out high res crap that sell to bits for some ungodly reason. i think it's damaging to the indudtry myself.
Oh, and your right Symphony of the night WAS that danm good.
I'm sorry RedHat, but your method of converting Linux to Several Indian Languages has already been covered by pat No 8U11541T " A system for converting software string data in one language into a second language, related or unrelated to the first, in order to promote increased uptake of product in a foreign market, using a computer"
All complaints can be sent to the USPTO, and will be rigorously examined and then past to Homeland Security for Subversive Threat Examination.
All Your Languages are belong to us!
Absolutly. I completely agree. In fact Spyware Filters should be held to an even higher standard as they install very malicious, subversive and damaging programs, almost like someone sneeking up to your car and messing with the engine so it leave a trail of drops they can follow(best analogy i could come up with).
Also 99% of spyware is very intrusive and damaging
99% of porn is just pictures of naked people.
if a porn filter company were susceptible to the same sort of "temptation" should there be any consequences at all? Why or why not should the same consequences be applied to a "spyware" filter intentionally allowing certain things through? What's the difference?
Eh? I don't fully follow.
Obviously if your porn filter is allowing porn through intendtionally, then you should just dump it. I suppose the same goes for spyware.
However I will say that spyware is much more permanent and damaging than porn.
Porn is usually just for a day.
Spyware is for life.
The fundamental difference between freeware and proprietry anti-malware software is that the freeware are doing it for the love of the game, or in this case their hatred for spyware in all its daemonic forms.
Commerical anti-spyware vendors on the other hand are in in for the $$$ and that means they are susseptable to temptation, i.e allow malwarez who give them money to get through, use malwarez tactics to get money and do things other than what it says on the tin while users aren't looking.(read, kazaa)
I suppose commerical vendors are just more idealogically close to the spammers, who are also in it for the money.
In any case, if you need an 'infrastructural' type software program, your nearly always better off going FOSS anyway. That's my 2c.
kids still have access to the pornography and no amount of "education" is really going to block them or persuade them from accessing it.
Your point being?
Who cares if kids,(and of course were talking about pubesent teenagers here), go looking for porn. It's not going to turn them into drooling, trenchcoated Ken Keniffs, hungry for porn day and night. This will only happen to those destined for that path anyway.
Internet porn today is exactly the same as porn mags in the fifties.
Again I say, if you want to look after your kids, don't crush my freedoms to do it.
P.S.
Anyone who bans their child from the net over porn, without having ever talked with them about the birds and the bees, needs to have their gaurdianship revoked.