I have to concur. I too have a Razr and it has the most pathetic interface I could imagine for something that seemed to be so great at first. It works well as a phone, but the moment you dig deeper into using the accompanying software, the more badly designed it turns out to be.
Now, I also have a recently purchased Ipod Touch (I am in Canada, so no iPhones up here), and I am totally blown away by the utility and design. Its patently (no pun intended) obvious that the whole thing was extremely well designed.
Because of course, like pretty much every Canadian military innovation to come along, our Federal Government quashed it and there are no active ships in that line still in existence. The Bras D'Or is a Museum vessel now.
Still I take your point, a ship that can do 60knots/hr (110kmh) ought to make a pretty decent pirate chasing vessel for sure. Just get someone else to build it because my country seems patently incapable of actually producing the wondrous military innovations we produce. The Avro Arrow, the Bras D'Or, I am sure there must be more like them out there.
I am sure that this is the only reason that this lawsuit is being pursued. This gives MS more ammunition to promote their OS. "See, Linux is getting sued left right and center, are you sure you want to risk your enterprise on an operating system that is on that shaky a ground?". Never mind that they funded SCO for the first case, and now seemingly are pushing this lawsuit as well (and no doubt Acacia will turn out to have received major investments from some obscure company recently. That company will in turn have received money under the table from MS, just as SCO was backed).
This is such shady business shenanigans, I am amazed that a company can get away with it so consistently. But then I guess given the results of the DOJ investigations, MS has proven its above the law. Its too bad that MS wasn't broken up into baby-MSes the way some folks had speculated it might have been resolved. At least the cancer would be spreading more slowly.
Ah well, I am not that worried overall, I think this will do nothing to hurt Linux as a whole, although it will damage the Linux vendors like RedHat who have been targeted by this latest Redmond barrage.
Mandarin, hand's down I think. English will continue to be a good secondary language, but I don't think it will be the main means of communications. Actually the world shown in Bladerunner and Firefly is probably pretty accurate: the upper classes will speak English, and the lower classes will speak Mandarin. English will continue to be required learning for most people because the upper classes in world society will speak it. Of course other major languages will continue to survive for the foreseeable future, but their speakers will also learn English as a secondary language.
Mandarin has far more speakers than English at the moment I believe. If not, wait a few years. Those people represent a massive market for sales of consumer items, therefore businesses will want to advertise and communicate with them in a manner that encourages sales. As a result a lot of business will end up being expressed in Mandarin as well I am sure. China represents the largest single market that is most untapped for the Western world, as such we will pour a lot of time and effort into getting into that market lest we be left behind.
I would bet that for the next 50 years or so if you speak English or Mandarin you will be mostly okay, but after that you probably want to be able to speak both. Of course, the problem is that for English speakers, Mandarin is a very hard language to learn, but for Mandarin speakers, English is much easier to learn. We may become marginalized over time as English speakers:P
People nowadays may not be able to read Latin as the Romans did, but it is still readable.
It is readable only because we have recorded the language in endless grammars and dictionaries, and thousands of thousands of man-hours of research have gone into preserving and disseminating the language. There are still Latin speakers (members of the Catholic Church Hierarchy), and there are still languages which are closely descended from Latin to give us additional insights into the language.
Moreover, a translation is not the same as the original. There are inevitable nuances of meaning, poetry of style and expression etc, that cannot be translated in most cases. When you speak another language fluently - you know more than one way to think. Translation just isn't the same. As someone said somewhere in this discussion, "Languages are the OS of our brains"
That is not true for the majority of the world's languages. There are no dictionaries, no grammars, hell most of them probably don't even have a way to write them down because they lack an alphabet or other written system. There are no recorded examples of them to enable us to preserve the actual pronunciation of them. We have no data on what is dialectal and what is universal to the language. We don't have the cultural contexts required to let us understand why some terms mean what they do. In many cases, governments are actively attempting to suppress the use of these languages, rather than attempting to preserve them. Many are going to die out not because their existing speaking population wouldn't like to preserve them, but because it takes resources to preserve them and pass them on to the next generation that no one cares to make available.
It often boils down to the fact that the speakers of a language see virtually no value in the existence of another language at all. Most people couldn't care less so its no surprise they don't want to help preserve a language, or encourage other people to speak it. If I can't communicate with you - and you don't speak my language - what is the possible (selfishly viewed) value of your language to me? Overcoming that viewpoint is difficult for the most part, and its pretty prevalent.
There is no reason for the multitude of languages we have on Earth to all be reduced to just a handful. Yes, the major languages have proven useful to a large percentage of the world's populace, but don't think they have spread simply because they are *better* in some way. They have spread because of political and cultural pressure from the dominant cultures that promulgated them. We can, if we so choose, do a lot to preserve quite a few of these languages, but because it takes effort on the part of speakers of the major tongues to preserve the minor tongues they are supplanting, its hard to garner much support. Most people who speak a language see little purpose in someone else speaking a different language, period. Its usually only when forced to that we learn another language, at least here in North America. In Europe its quite common for people to speak 2 or even 3 languages. Here in NA, the most common attitude seems to be along the lines of "learn to speak English or go F**k yourself", because most of us are too lazy to put out any effort. If English was dying out, we would be the the first folks to be screaming that it should be preserved.
Ask a member of any small cultural group whose unique identity or existence is threatened by Western cultural pressure, whose way of life will shortly disappear, what they think about the extinction of their language and the response will probably be a bit different. There is a quote in the commentary on one of the books above that I posted a link to which is worth repeating perhaps:
"Chinese people don't learn English because they love it, but because Coca-Cola and Microsoft rule the world." - Li Yang
By extension, minority language speakers often end up being forced to adopt the language of the majority around them simply because the majority couldn't give a rats ass about the minority in any regard and simply insists that they learn the majority language or suffer the consequences. We may have lost our historical tribalism in many ways, but we still have our linguistic tribalism and its hale and hardy.
If we cared to make the effort we could preserve a lot of these languages, and encourage the people of their cultures to study and learn the languages. Most of these languages are not dying off because people aren't interested in learning them, but because no one has produced grammars and dictionaries so that they can be formally taught in schools. That takes time, effort, and money that its hard to garner support for, sadly.
I know when I was studying Linguistics at the University of Victoria 20 years ago, there were exactly 2 speakers of Northern Kwakiutl (I think it was that language) alive. Both were over 70, and both were likely to die sometime soon without passing on any of their language skills to the next generations. Why? because there was no budget to assemble the materials needed to teach it, and because for many generations here in British Columbia, the Government and the School system actively discouraged Native Americans from speaking their own languages (children were physically punished in school etc), so a few generations never learned to speak their own language. Even today only a percentage of most Canadian Indigenous peoples actually speak their own languages fluently, in large part because the ruling English and French speaking majorities actively discouraged them from doing so, rather than helping.
I am just stunned. I realize the majority of people here are probably monolingual and probably living in North America, but the majority of posts here seem to be along the lines of "Well it doesn't affect me, so who gives a f**k?" or "If they are dying out, they are just cruft". At least some people see the value in everyone having a common language - but thats the best argument for everyone to learn a SECOND language, not for us to just abandon all of the smaller languages out there.
You see, a lot of those languages are dying out because the speakers of the more monolithic languages have forced them into extinction. We have made speaking many Native American languages illegal in the past, abused the cultures and people involved and slowly strangled their native language speaking populations to the point where they have all died off or are doing so daily. We have marginalized many small linguistic groups by the overwhelming power of Western culture and advertising, by refusing to learn their languages and insisting they learn ours or suffer the consequences. Thats a tragedy, nothing less.
Each language is more than just a medium of communications between people, its the encapsulation of an entire way of thinking, of a cultural world-view. When a language dies out, a small piece of humanity and human achievement goes with it. We are all lessened by the death of each language, and with it each culture that dies out.
I would think the programmers here would be the first to get it: You can program some things in certain programming languages, express some concepts, much more effectively and efficiently than in others. You can do anything in any language certainly, but some lean one way or another, some are more expressive and some more rigidly defined. Luckily we rarely lose a programming language, they just go out of style for the majority of users, but as long as someone is willing to write a compiler, we can keep using one. That is not true of human languages. Once they are gone, they are gone completely, and with them a unique way of thinking, and a unique way of viewing the world and expressing ideas about it. Languages quite honestly give you a completely different way of thinking and its a shame to lose that.
New languages effectively don't happen, or at best rarely and I imagine its almost impossible for a new language to evolve in the modern day. Human linguistic evolution is essentially a living version of the Highlander maxim "there can be only one", or at best maybe 2. It doesn't have to be inevitable though, we can preserve dying languages, and with them the cultures they belong to. It just takes more effort than most people are willing to engage in, and sadly - like the majority of posters here - it doesn't seem to worry those who speak the major languages, particularly the world's piranha of a language English.
If Linux wins out in the end it will be in part for this reason. You can examine it for backdoors, concealed reporting etc, which you cannot do with a proprietary closed source OS. I have no doubt that if it was asked by the NSA to include that sort of thing in its product offerings to China, MS would be willing to comply. What company would be willing to rely on the goodwill of a foreign, potentially hostile or at least rival government's goodwill, when it can develop its own operating system and include these features itself and under its own control?
I am not litigious by nature. But as I am playing SWG heavily again right now - and it is massively plagued by Credit Spammers - I am hoping intensely that if Blizzard takes the lead the rest of the industry will follow suit (as they have in pretty much every other regard sadly, with some exceptions), and sue the living **** out of the gold sellers. I know I am casually condemning thousands of third world country workers to sudden unemployment, but I don't care. The ratbags that run these businesses are in direct violation of the TOS/ROC for MMORPGs, and I would dearly like to see them nailed to the wall - possibly literally.
They systematically end up ruining games. Ok, so SWG has suffered an awful lot from the ravages of inept developers and designers over the past few years - its actually getting better now and approaching playable once more - but the area that has alwasy interested me was the player-driven economy. Most of my characters have been crafters. Over the past few years its been subject to gross inflation, and I suspect that the gold farmers that infest the planets like cockroaches are largely to blame. Its gotten to the point where players who are currently subscribed have lost all feel for how the economy ran in the past, and just post random prices for things (always high mind you) because the economy is so whacked out (a common item can vary from 100k credits to 12m credits easily. Mediocre quality resources are priced at 10-50 times what they used to sell for etc).
I was mayor of 2 cities in SWG (on Tarquinnas server) and had to/cityban the gold farmers a few times. I still regularly report them to the CSRs. They come back like cockroaches.
Now I have to report the AFK spammers that stand in front Mos Eisley Starport and spam an advertisement for their website literally every 5 seconds. Yes, you can turn off seeing AFK chat (a nice improvement), and you can/ignore the individual but since they will be back with a different name in an hour the later accomplishes nothing. Reporting them is useful enough, but I have a feeling the CSRs can't keep up with the reporting and I bet they are spending a lot of their time just banning trial accounts containing spammers. I hope they are forced to follow the lead of Blizzard again here and restrict the ability to broadcast, send, whisper etc.
And thats the best way to do it I think. These are roleplaying games, so institute instanced prison cells, and stick the offending people in them. Vary the amount of time based on the offense, and with a few strikes you are out (ie the company deletes your account and all characters, thanks for playing). People will smarten up really quick.
Example: Offensive Language/Behaviour - your toon is locked in prison for X number of hours. 2nd Offense, its X *days*. Plus you get fined say 20% of your current bank account.
Racist Language/Harassment - your toon is locked in prison for X number of days, lose all current in game bank account.
Buying in game credits from a Credit spammer - Delete the entire account.
I think it would work well overall.
I think in Pirates of the Burning Sea they are planning on Hanging offending griefer types publically. I hope they do it, even if it encourages people to get hung, at least it will publically demonstrate that something is being done. I think in game pillories would be excellent as well. Spending the next 2 hours you are logged in with people abusing your toon in a public market might be annoying enough.
Sure, in RL this stuff doesn't work that well, but in game I think it might work quite well.
I think this is an excellent idea, set up a wiki, start listing the patent details then start adding in listings for prior art etc. Sure, thats the/. community doing the prior art research etc, but who better? If we can't find prior art, then we are alerting the OSS community of something that needs to be changed to ensure MS has no valid claim. If we can, then we are lessening/weakening Microsoft's collective IP that they use to bash other companies over the head with. We are striking back.
It would take some work to get started, and you would want a lawyer or two involved to ensure that opinions are valid when it comes to the details, but its certainly doable and exactly the sort of thing that an army of geeks is quite capable of accomplishing.
If you truely hate software patents - or the current patent system - why not help set this up?
A fine notion but it would restrict some religions that are not nefarious, pyramid criminal scams like Scientology is. I am Wiccan, moreover I am Wiccan and from a branch of Wicca (Alexandrian Wicca) that is part of what is called British Traditional Wicca, and focuses in part on being a mystery religion. The texts of the religion are kept secret from those who are not initiated as members, and various religious materials/teachings are related to people as they progress in learn the religion. Chief amongst these are the mysteries themselves which are not written down and must be experienced to be meaningful. Thus secrecy of a sort is considered essential to the practice of the religion so as to not lessen the experience of the mystery elements.
Wicca is a recognized religion, but your suggestion would see it suddenly reduced to lesser status because its texts are not published freely for all to read (The reality is much of this stuff has actually be published in one form or another by various people, despite their oaths not to do so). Wicca does not charge for membership or training (its considered morally wrong by most Wiccans).
I think its more reasonable to say that a religion cannot gain charitable status if it charges its members a fee to receive instruction. A tithe to the church is another matter, but a pyramid scheme of ever increasing payments as you progress up the levels of training should be sufficient to make a church not receive Charitable status.
It doesn't seem all that long ago that scientists were merely *inferring* the presence of planets in other solar systems, now we are able to derive a map of one from IR data? Thats an amazing amount of progress for so short a time period. It would be interesting to know how far away this system is, and how large the planet is. If that data was in the article I seem to have missed it...
Off topic, but its generally only the "people of the book" that engage in proselytization and feel compelled to defend their religion to the exclusion of all others. ie, its "monotheistic" religions that incorporate the view that *only* their religion can be true, ergo the rest are erroneous and possibly evil. Polytheistic religions generally seem to take the view that while their Gods and Goddesses exist, so do everyone else's more than likely, although they may differ over details. The reason being I suppose that if you can accept more than one deity as existing (ie you don't have the viewpoint that your deity is omnipowerful and therefore must be the only one), you can accept that others might have their religion and that its true for *them* as much as yours is true for *you*. Religions like Hinduism, Wicca, Buddhism, Asatru etc don't tend to have missionaries, religious wars etc, although anything is possible I am sure. Religions such as Christianity, Islam, etc do have missionaries, because they feel compelled to bring others to their one truth.
If I play Counterstrike with the intention of having some fun in a video game, its perfectly acceptable. If I play Counterstrike with the intention of using it as a training sim for a hostage taking incident (probably with my own map designed after the targeted area and with a team of individuals who will be present in the real life situation), then I think I am guilty of planning to commit a crime, which is most likely illegal.
If I engage in underage sex acts with a virtual avatar because thats my thing, and its voluntary on both participants parts and both are of legal age where they live (and most likely of legal age whereever the server happens to be located with the bizare possibilities of internet court cases), then it shouldn't be seen as a crime. If I do so, with the intent of doing so in real life, ie the victim is a model of a potential victim I know, or if the victim is in fact not of legal age, then it could be seen as criminal activity and dealt with accordingly.
It has to be the intent. I can plan murders all day long and have it be totally legal - if for instance I am a crime novel writer - but its illegal if it can be shown that I intended to commit one of those murders in real life.
Except that Scientology is really a pyramid-scam masquerading as a religion to hide its true nature. As such I fail to see how it warrants protection as a religion. If I recreate the ancient Indian cult of Thugee in the modern day, is it suddenly okay for me to murder innocent people because its a religious activity? Why is it okay for Scientology to defraud people of their money using an elaborate criminal scam just because they are masquerading as a religion?
While I can't comment on the Age of Conan portion of that article, the section discussing Star Wars Galaxies is completely misleading. It suggests that Lucas Arts has "tweaked" the game on a few occasions. What they have actually done is effectively redesigned the entire core mechanics, not once, but twice, and each instance made the game simpler, less challenging, less innovative, and less engaging. The playerbase has responded with its feet and left the game en masse.
SWG is *THE* textbook example of how not to make changes to a game, and the perfect example to show exactly how badly a company can mismanage one of the largest provenances in a game. There is no reason - other than lack of design skill - that World of Warcraft should be more successful than a game based on Star Wars, probably the best recognized storyline in the history of Cinema.
The original design was ambitious and as it says in the article there was no manual on design, WOW has the advantage of having been built after all the first generation MMOs and thus can incorporate all of the essential features found in those games. It does so very well IMHO, even if I think its a mostly derivative and unchallenging game overall. What WOW does though, is do all the essential things very well, even if it introduces very little in the way of new elements overall. SWG at the moment, does NOTHING well at all in any area of the game, and has lost all of the new and innovative features that once made it a great, if flawed, game. With SWG its like they identified all of the great and interesting points in the game then cut them out of the game one by one until the only thing left was a pathetic FPS/MMO hybrid that has nothing worthwhile left.
The bit about adding the Beastmaster skills completely ignores the fact that up until the last massive rewrite of the game (so for the first few years) there was a highly popular profession called Creature Handler. When they came out with the New Game Enhancement (NGE in SWG parlance), they removed that profession. Now, a year later or so they are reintroducing it as a shell of its former presence like its something new and innovative. In fact just about every new feature added to the NGE has turned out to be something that used to be in game and has only now been revived.
The notorious quote by some Lucas Arts Executive, named Nancy McIntyre I believe is "Players just want to kill, loot, repeat". Thats the basis of the NGE, which has replaced a combat system that forced players to pick the appropriate options from their abilities during a fight, to a system where you point your weapon with your mouse, then hold down the left mouse button until the target is dead (no exaggeration, thats the sum of weapon combat). Previously we had special shots, special effects, etc that were all conditional during combat, now its point and hold. Oh, sure there are some specials you can fire off by clicking the right mouse button as well, but there are only a few of them, and you more or less click them when they come up.
No, SWG is a completely gutted game, and honestly not worth considering. Lucas Arts has taken the most promising provenance available in gaming and produced a complete laughing stock of a game. They couldn't have made a single worse decision than they have throughout its history. What was once, innovative and cutting edge, is now bland, unchallenging and suited for an audience of 6-8 year olds.
Well, no. These coins were in regular circulation, they printed thousands of them at the mint. The "Souvenir" that appears on the coin is the french for "Remember", so its just saying "Remember" in both national languages up here in Canada. These are regular Canadian coins, its just that we have an innovative mint up here in Canada, and we print a variety of new coins, bills etc on a regular basis.
It would be an extremely *poor* plan to make a coin intended for espionage, then plunk a massive bright red flower on it to make it easily identifiable. It would be extremely poor design to use a coin for this purpose, something that would naturally be spent in the course of the day.
This is just another brick in the foundation of the American Empire. The US has more weapons, and the ability to project force anywhere in the world, so it has abrogated to itself the *right* to do so whenever its Corporate^H^H^H National Interests seem threatened. It doesn't matter if it violates international law, commonly accepted moral conduct of civilized nations, or even its own internal laws. The US has a long history of invading countries for economic reasons (see the invasion of the Dominican Republic to save US Sugar interests etc). Despite the high purpose of its founding fathers, and the inspired contents of the US Constitution, the US is currently no more than the biggest baddest asshole on the block who feels he can do whatever the fuck he wants because no one will fuck with him for fear of being killed. US Military Personnel can be accused of warcrimes, yet the US will not let them be tried in an International Court, while simultaenously insisting that members of other countries be so tried. In complete violation of the US Constituation, people are being held without trial, without legal representation, and undoubtedly in a few cases, without reason in the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. If US personnel don't want to engage in torture that is so extreme it violates the shredded US laws, they simply send the prisoner to some CIA camp in a country that does permit it.
Under Bush and his cronies, the US has lost all credibility internationally I think. Its hard to claim to be the bastion of the free world and democracy, when you violate your own laws, routinely violate human rights, have a mercenary army numbering in the tens of thousands (or PMCs, ie Private Military Contractors in official parlance) in the country you violently attacked and occupied for no valid reason other than one that was concocted for the purpose of justifying that invasion etc. How can the US expect to be validated as the banner holder for Freedom and Democracy when they no longera adhere to the very virtues they claim to promote?
No, I like the US, I like those US citizens that I have met, and I think it wass once a noble and daring effort in democratic representation, now its just a nation in the process of decaying into another totalitarian state - albeit one that preserves at least the facade of supporting its ideals internally, while externally projecting the worst aspects of a Fascist Dictatorship. Its sad to see a nation like Australia kowtow to the Pitbull on the block.
I sincerely hope you can toss Bush out on his ass, preferably after impeaching him for gross misconduct and violation of his countries laws, and then begin work on repairing the reputation of the US internationally. In about 20 years you might undo some of the damage. If you care to try that is:(
I have no desire to legislate people's morality. I have no desire to have anyone apply such legislation to my personal conduct either.
I do have an interest in seeing online game conduct a bit more closely controlled, as it is in real life. In real life if a guy followed my wife around and constantly commented on her ass and whether she wanted to fuck him (in so many words), I could make my opinion known, verbally or physically in her defense. She could do so likewise, possibly involving the police. It would constitute harassment and is a recognized offense under the law. This has happened to her in a few games a long time ago, and almost discouraged her from playing them which would be a real shame. Now, she reported him to the CSRs and we didn't see him again - but she has no way of knowing what happened as a result, and that individual may well continue the same offensive behaviour on some other server or in some other game because the most likely result was a stern talking to by a CSR, end of story. Now, its not a big thing, my wife was pissed off and told him where to go thats fine, but she was offended and so was I.
Online I had a guy send to me and tell me that he thought was wrong with DAOC. I told him my opinion and he informed me that what was really wrong was all the "n***ers". Now, I have no idea what this guys problem was but he kept sending to me along this line until I/ignored and sent a post to the CSRs. He got dealt with but I have no idea what happened, nor do I really care. I don't need to listen to rascist bullshit though, there's enough of that in the world already.
Online activity like gaming allows people to act like real flaming assholes with no consequences. RL doesn't give them as much lattitude. I would just like to see a bit more rigorous application of the EULAs and ROC for the various online games so that people get the idea that they should act a bit more like they do in real life hopefully. I am not making any moral judgements, just saying I prefer conduct online to be a bit more civil. In reality posting something in a chat window or sending it in game to an individual is probably already covered under the law, say the wrong thing and it could possibly be construed as a form of slander, although I am not sure on that since it wouldn't involve a person's real name, just their reputation in a community under an alias.
I could care less about ganking and all that - that game related stuff and not germane - I am speaking to online harassment specifically.
Then right a manual for that program as if you were explaining it to your mother/grandmother etc. I think its important that you understand the subject, or the use of the program very clearly yourself, in order to adequately explain its use and features. As well, understanding or enjoying the program will undoubtedly lead to a greater motivation when it comes to completing the documentation.
Bravo to you for even asking about getting involved. I find most companies I have worked for are remarkably disinclined to write adequate documentation. One of the places I am currently working at seems to view the lack of documentation for their softeware as a form of security from competitors, and since they also train clients in the use of it (very necessary mind you) its added encouragmeent for clients to pay for training. Overall though I think its a rediculous stupid attitude but they don't seem inclined to budge.
While I think calling this "rape" is patently rediculous, it would seem to be classic online harassment. Yes, the victim could have logged off to avoid the experience, but the action would still remain harassment. I have witnessed a lot of online harassment in MMORPGs, and 99% of it goes completely unpunished - or at least due to privacy rules you never find out of it was punished. It would be great to see some sort of mechanism that discourages that behaviour.
I would heartily support strict rules to discourage and punish online harassment in games or other forums, but the problem of enforcement probably makes that impossible. In something like Second Life, the victim has the ability to contact the CSRs and lodge a complaint. With luck the resolution of that complaint would be the permanent cancellation of the offender's account. Thats about as far as it can go, unless Linden were to choose to prosecute the offender under civil law for abuse of their account for purposes of online harassment. IANAL but if thats possible then it would be a good next step towards curbing abusive online behaviour. I doubt any company would go to the bother though, unless it would prove advantageous somehow.
Personally, I would love to see game companies add a "Page of Shame" that lists the Character names for online accounts that have been banned, and the reason they have been so banned. I think that would go a long ways towards encouraging people to play inside the rules, and act as socially responsible as they do in real life at least. Some people are simply ignorant fuckwads and nothing is going to change that, but at least in RL when they act offensively there is occasionally someone around to make it clear to them that that won't do. Virtually, no one has that option, so behavioural offenses are unrestricted. I am sure game companies could simply add some text into their EULAs that outline the fact that your character names and offenses can and will be posted to the web. This in no way violates someone's privacy IMHO, since its just character names.
It's called XP. If you think for one second that users who migrated from XP to vista and hated vista are more willing to go to an "unknown" OS versus going back to XP you are out of your mind. And frankly, aside from what's been posted here I don't know many people who have a problem with vista. I have a few friends running it and the only complaint I've heard at all is that one guy can't run an eight year old game on it. He's admitted to not really looking into getting it working outside of the standard install.
Ah but doesn't Vista disable your installation key for XP when you upgrade to Vista? That kinda makes it a one-way path. If you want to go back you need to buy a whole new copy of XP and not simply the upgrade edition presumably. If this is the case, I can see Joe Sixpack getting mightily pissed off to discover that he can't simply go back to XP when he discovers how badly Vista sucks.
There is no possible intelligent reason that a developer would choose such an outdated and ill-reputed database engine when so many completely viable options exist at the moment. The *only* reason I can contemplate is that it was a deliberate choice for exactly the reasons you stated. Using this tool would make the fact that the Diebold systems were being actively used to rig an election much harder to trace. No one can be so stupid as to deliberately choose an unreliable DB engine like Jet, knowing its unreliable, can't handle large numbers of transactions, is subject to massive corruption etc. It has to be deliberate.
I worked at a company that used this engine for their software, but it was 9 years ago. Once they realized that their software was coming up against the wall of the engine's performance on a regular basis, the number one priority in development was integrating a different db system. I worked in Tech Support and easily 50% of our calls related to corrupt databases.
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I have to concur. I too have a Razr and it has the most pathetic interface I could imagine for something that seemed to be so great at first. It works well as a phone, but the moment you dig deeper into using the accompanying software, the more badly designed it turns out to be.
Now, I also have a recently purchased Ipod Touch (I am in Canada, so no iPhones up here), and I am totally blown away by the utility and design. Its patently (no pun intended) obvious that the whole thing was extremely well designed.
Because of course, like pretty much every Canadian military innovation to come along, our Federal Government quashed it and there are no active ships in that line still in existence. The Bras D'Or is a Museum vessel now.
Still I take your point, a ship that can do 60knots/hr (110kmh) ought to make a pretty decent pirate chasing vessel for sure. Just get someone else to build it because my country seems patently incapable of actually producing the wondrous military innovations we produce. The Avro Arrow, the Bras D'Or, I am sure there must be more like them out there.
I am sure that this is the only reason that this lawsuit is being pursued. This gives MS more ammunition to promote their OS. "See, Linux is getting sued left right and center, are you sure you want to risk your enterprise on an operating system that is on that shaky a ground?". Never mind that they funded SCO for the first case, and now seemingly are pushing this lawsuit as well (and no doubt Acacia will turn out to have received major investments from some obscure company recently. That company will in turn have received money under the table from MS, just as SCO was backed).
This is such shady business shenanigans, I am amazed that a company can get away with it so consistently. But then I guess given the results of the DOJ investigations, MS has proven its above the law. Its too bad that MS wasn't broken up into baby-MSes the way some folks had speculated it might have been resolved. At least the cancer would be spreading more slowly.
Ah well, I am not that worried overall, I think this will do nothing to hurt Linux as a whole, although it will damage the Linux vendors like RedHat who have been targeted by this latest Redmond barrage.
Mandarin, hand's down I think. English will continue to be a good secondary language, but I don't think it will be the main means of communications. Actually the world shown in Bladerunner and Firefly is probably pretty accurate: the upper classes will speak English, and the lower classes will speak Mandarin. English will continue to be required learning for most people because the upper classes in world society will speak it. Of course other major languages will continue to survive for the foreseeable future, but their speakers will also learn English as a secondary language.
:P
Mandarin has far more speakers than English at the moment I believe. If not, wait a few years. Those people represent a massive market for sales of consumer items, therefore businesses will want to advertise and communicate with them in a manner that encourages sales. As a result a lot of business will end up being expressed in Mandarin as well I am sure. China represents the largest single market that is most untapped for the Western world, as such we will pour a lot of time and effort into getting into that market lest we be left behind.
I would bet that for the next 50 years or so if you speak English or Mandarin you will be mostly okay, but after that you probably want to be able to speak both. Of course, the problem is that for English speakers, Mandarin is a very hard language to learn, but for Mandarin speakers, English is much easier to learn. We may become marginalized over time as English speakers
People nowadays may not be able to read Latin as the Romans did, but it is still readable.
It is readable only because we have recorded the language in endless grammars and dictionaries, and thousands of thousands of man-hours of research have gone into preserving and disseminating the language. There are still Latin speakers (members of the Catholic Church Hierarchy), and there are still languages which are closely descended from Latin to give us additional insights into the language.
Moreover, a translation is not the same as the original. There are inevitable nuances of meaning, poetry of style and expression etc, that cannot be translated in most cases. When you speak another language fluently - you know more than one way to think . Translation just isn't the same. As someone said somewhere in this discussion, "Languages are the OS of our brains"
That is not true for the majority of the world's languages. There are no dictionaries, no grammars, hell most of them probably don't even have a way to write them down because they lack an alphabet or other written system. There are no recorded examples of them to enable us to preserve the actual pronunciation of them. We have no data on what is dialectal and what is universal to the language. We don't have the cultural contexts required to let us understand why some terms mean what they do. In many cases, governments are actively attempting to suppress the use of these languages, rather than attempting to preserve them. Many are going to die out not because their existing speaking population wouldn't like to preserve them, but because it takes resources to preserve them and pass them on to the next generation that no one cares to make available.
It often boils down to the fact that the speakers of a language see virtually no value in the existence of another language at all. Most people couldn't care less so its no surprise they don't want to help preserve a language, or encourage other people to speak it. If I can't communicate with you - and you don't speak my language - what is the possible (selfishly viewed) value of your language to me? Overcoming that viewpoint is difficult for the most part, and its pretty prevalent.
There is no reason for the multitude of languages we have on Earth to all be reduced to just a handful. Yes, the major languages have proven useful to a large percentage of the world's populace, but don't think they have spread simply because they are *better* in some way. They have spread because of political and cultural pressure from the dominant cultures that promulgated them. We can, if we so choose, do a lot to preserve quite a few of these languages, but because it takes effort on the part of speakers of the major tongues to preserve the minor tongues they are supplanting, its hard to garner much support. Most people who speak a language see little purpose in someone else speaking a different language, period. Its usually only when forced to that we learn another language, at least here in North America. In Europe its quite common for people to speak 2 or even 3 languages. Here in NA, the most common attitude seems to be along the lines of "learn to speak English or go F**k yourself", because most of us are too lazy to put out any effort. If English was dying out, we would be the the first folks to be screaming that it should be preserved.
Ask a member of any small cultural group whose unique identity or existence is threatened by Western cultural pressure, whose way of life will shortly disappear, what they think about the extinction of their language and the response will probably be a bit different. There is a quote in the commentary on one of the books above that I posted a link to which is worth repeating perhaps:
"Chinese people don't learn English because they love it, but because Coca-Cola and Microsoft rule the world." - Li Yang
By extension, minority language speakers often end up being forced to adopt the language of the majority around them simply because the majority couldn't give a rats ass about the minority in any regard and simply insists that they learn the majority language or suffer the consequences. We may have lost our historical tribalism in many ways, but we still have our linguistic tribalism and its hale and hardy.
If we cared to make the effort we could preserve a lot of these languages, and encourage the people of their cultures to study and learn the languages. Most of these languages are not dying off because people aren't interested in learning them, but because no one has produced grammars and dictionaries so that they can be formally taught in schools. That takes time, effort, and money that its hard to garner support for, sadly.
I know when I was studying Linguistics at the University of Victoria 20 years ago, there were exactly 2 speakers of Northern Kwakiutl (I think it was that language) alive. Both were over 70, and both were likely to die sometime soon without passing on any of their language skills to the next generations. Why? because there was no budget to assemble the materials needed to teach it, and because for many generations here in British Columbia, the Government and the School system actively discouraged Native Americans from speaking their own languages (children were physically punished in school etc), so a few generations never learned to speak their own language. Even today only a percentage of most Canadian Indigenous peoples actually speak their own languages fluently, in large part because the ruling English and French speaking majorities actively discouraged them from doing so, rather than helping.
I think thats a real shame...
I am just stunned. I realize the majority of people here are probably monolingual and probably living in North America, but the majority of posts here seem to be along the lines of "Well it doesn't affect me, so who gives a f**k?" or "If they are dying out, they are just cruft". At least some people see the value in everyone having a common language - but thats the best argument for everyone to learn a SECOND language, not for us to just abandon all of the smaller languages out there.
You see, a lot of those languages are dying out because the speakers of the more monolithic languages have forced them into extinction. We have made speaking many Native American languages illegal in the past, abused the cultures and people involved and slowly strangled their native language speaking populations to the point where they have all died off or are doing so daily. We have marginalized many small linguistic groups by the overwhelming power of Western culture and advertising, by refusing to learn their languages and insisting they learn ours or suffer the consequences. Thats a tragedy, nothing less.
Each language is more than just a medium of communications between people, its the encapsulation of an entire way of thinking, of a cultural world-view. When a language dies out, a small piece of humanity and human achievement goes with it. We are all lessened by the death of each language, and with it each culture that dies out.
I would think the programmers here would be the first to get it: You can program some things in certain programming languages, express some concepts, much more effectively and efficiently than in others. You can do anything in any language certainly, but some lean one way or another, some are more expressive and some more rigidly defined. Luckily we rarely lose a programming language, they just go out of style for the majority of users, but as long as someone is willing to write a compiler, we can keep using one. That is not true of human languages. Once they are gone, they are gone completely, and with them a unique way of thinking, and a unique way of viewing the world and expressing ideas about it. Languages quite honestly give you a completely different way of thinking and its a shame to lose that.
New languages effectively don't happen, or at best rarely and I imagine its almost impossible for a new language to evolve in the modern day. Human linguistic evolution is essentially a living version of the Highlander maxim "there can be only one", or at best maybe 2. It doesn't have to be inevitable though, we can preserve dying languages, and with them the cultures they belong to. It just takes more effort than most people are willing to engage in, and sadly - like the majority of posters here - it doesn't seem to worry those who speak the major languages, particularly the world's piranha of a language English.
If you want to have some good insight into this issue, I would suggest reading this book: Spoken Here and perhaps: When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge The steady extinction of our world's languages is a human crisis in my opinion, and we all lose when another language dies, even if we don't realize it."Five Minutes a Day" can at least be assured that the Shaolin Temple won't be sending Ninjas after them...
:P
You might not be able to beat a Shaolin Master, but at least you will be likely to see them first
If Linux wins out in the end it will be in part for this reason. You can examine it for backdoors, concealed reporting etc, which you cannot do with a proprietary closed source OS. I have no doubt that if it was asked by the NSA to include that sort of thing in its product offerings to China, MS would be willing to comply. What company would be willing to rely on the goodwill of a foreign, potentially hostile or at least rival government's goodwill, when it can develop its own operating system and include these features itself and under its own control?
I am not litigious by nature. But as I am playing SWG heavily again right now - and it is massively plagued by Credit Spammers - I am hoping intensely that if Blizzard takes the lead the rest of the industry will follow suit (as they have in pretty much every other regard sadly, with some exceptions), and sue the living **** out of the gold sellers. I know I am casually condemning thousands of third world country workers to sudden unemployment, but I don't care. The ratbags that run these businesses are in direct violation of the TOS/ROC for MMORPGs, and I would dearly like to see them nailed to the wall - possibly literally.
/cityban the gold farmers a few times. I still regularly report them to the CSRs. They come back like cockroaches.
/ignore the individual but since they will be back with a different name in an hour the later accomplishes nothing. Reporting them is useful enough, but I have a feeling the CSRs can't keep up with the reporting and I bet they are spending a lot of their time just banning trial accounts containing spammers. I hope they are forced to follow the lead of Blizzard again here and restrict the ability to broadcast, send, whisper etc.
They systematically end up ruining games. Ok, so SWG has suffered an awful lot from the ravages of inept developers and designers over the past few years - its actually getting better now and approaching playable once more - but the area that has alwasy interested me was the player-driven economy. Most of my characters have been crafters. Over the past few years its been subject to gross inflation, and I suspect that the gold farmers that infest the planets like cockroaches are largely to blame. Its gotten to the point where players who are currently subscribed have lost all feel for how the economy ran in the past, and just post random prices for things (always high mind you) because the economy is so whacked out (a common item can vary from 100k credits to 12m credits easily. Mediocre quality resources are priced at 10-50 times what they used to sell for etc).
I was mayor of 2 cities in SWG (on Tarquinnas server) and had to
Now I have to report the AFK spammers that stand in front Mos Eisley Starport and spam an advertisement for their website literally every 5 seconds. Yes, you can turn off seeing AFK chat (a nice improvement), and you can
And thats the best way to do it I think. These are roleplaying games, so institute instanced prison cells, and stick the offending people in them. Vary the amount of time based on the offense, and with a few strikes you are out (ie the company deletes your account and all characters, thanks for playing). People will smarten up really quick.
Example:
Offensive Language/Behaviour - your toon is locked in prison for X number of hours. 2nd Offense, its X *days*. Plus you get fined say 20% of your current bank account.
Racist Language/Harassment - your toon is locked in prison for X number of days, lose all current in game bank account.
Buying in game credits from a Credit spammer - Delete the entire account.
I think it would work well overall.
I think in Pirates of the Burning Sea they are planning on Hanging offending griefer types publically. I hope they do it, even if it encourages people to get hung, at least it will publically demonstrate that something is being done. I think in game pillories would be excellent as well. Spending the next 2 hours you are logged in with people abusing your toon in a public market might be annoying enough.
Sure, in RL this stuff doesn't work that well, but in game I think it might work quite well.
I think this is an excellent idea, set up a wiki, start listing the patent details then start adding in listings for prior art etc. Sure, thats the /. community doing the prior art research etc, but who better? If we can't find prior art, then we are alerting the OSS community of something that needs to be changed to ensure MS has no valid claim. If we can, then we are lessening/weakening Microsoft's collective IP that they use to bash other companies over the head with. We are striking back.
It would take some work to get started, and you would want a lawyer or two involved to ensure that opinions are valid when it comes to the details, but its certainly doable and exactly the sort of thing that an army of geeks is quite capable of accomplishing.
If you truely hate software patents - or the current patent system - why not help set this up?
A fine notion but it would restrict some religions that are not nefarious, pyramid criminal scams like Scientology is. I am Wiccan, moreover I am Wiccan and from a branch of Wicca (Alexandrian Wicca) that is part of what is called British Traditional Wicca, and focuses in part on being a mystery religion. The texts of the religion are kept secret from those who are not initiated as members, and various religious materials/teachings are related to people as they progress in learn the religion. Chief amongst these are the mysteries themselves which are not written down and must be experienced to be meaningful. Thus secrecy of a sort is considered essential to the practice of the religion so as to not lessen the experience of the mystery elements.
Wicca is a recognized religion, but your suggestion would see it suddenly reduced to lesser status because its texts are not published freely for all to read (The reality is much of this stuff has actually be published in one form or another by various people, despite their oaths not to do so). Wicca does not charge for membership or training (its considered morally wrong by most Wiccans).
I think its more reasonable to say that a religion cannot gain charitable status if it charges its members a fee to receive instruction. A tithe to the church is another matter, but a pyramid scheme of ever increasing payments as you progress up the levels of training should be sufficient to make a church not receive Charitable status.
It doesn't seem all that long ago that scientists were merely *inferring* the presence of planets in other solar systems, now we are able to derive a map of one from IR data? Thats an amazing amount of progress for so short a time period. It would be interesting to know how far away this system is, and how large the planet is. If that data was in the article I seem to have missed it...
Off topic, but its generally only the "people of the book" that engage in proselytization and feel compelled to defend their religion to the exclusion of all others. ie, its "monotheistic" religions that incorporate the view that *only* their religion can be true, ergo the rest are erroneous and possibly evil. Polytheistic religions generally seem to take the view that while their Gods and Goddesses exist, so do everyone else's more than likely, although they may differ over details. The reason being I suppose that if you can accept more than one deity as existing (ie you don't have the viewpoint that your deity is omnipowerful and therefore must be the only one), you can accept that others might have their religion and that its true for *them* as much as yours is true for *you*. Religions like Hinduism, Wicca, Buddhism, Asatru etc don't tend to have missionaries, religious wars etc, although anything is possible I am sure. Religions such as Christianity, Islam, etc do have missionaries, because they feel compelled to bring others to their one truth.
The key as I see it is the intention
If I play Counterstrike with the intention of having some fun in a video game, its perfectly acceptable. If I play Counterstrike with the intention of using it as a training sim for a hostage taking incident (probably with my own map designed after the targeted area and with a team of individuals who will be present in the real life situation), then I think I am guilty of planning to commit a crime, which is most likely illegal. If I engage in underage sex acts with a virtual avatar because thats my thing, and its voluntary on both participants parts and both are of legal age where they live (and most likely of legal age whereever the server happens to be located with the bizare possibilities of internet court cases), then it shouldn't be seen as a crime. If I do so, with the intent of doing so in real life, ie the victim is a model of a potential victim I know, or if the victim is in fact not of legal age, then it could be seen as criminal activity and dealt with accordingly. It has to be the intent. I can plan murders all day long and have it be totally legal - if for instance I am a crime novel writer - but its illegal if it can be shown that I intended to commit one of those murders in real life.
Except that Scientology is really a pyramid-scam masquerading as a religion to hide its true nature. As such I fail to see how it warrants protection as a religion. If I recreate the ancient Indian cult of Thugee in the modern day, is it suddenly okay for me to murder innocent people because its a religious activity? Why is it okay for Scientology to defraud people of their money using an elaborate criminal scam just because they are masquerading as a religion?
While I can't comment on the Age of Conan portion of that article, the section discussing Star Wars Galaxies is completely misleading. It suggests that Lucas Arts has "tweaked" the game on a few occasions. What they have actually done is effectively redesigned the entire core mechanics, not once, but twice, and each instance made the game simpler, less challenging, less innovative, and less engaging. The playerbase has responded with its feet and left the game en masse.
SWG is *THE* textbook example of how not to make changes to a game, and the perfect example to show exactly how badly a company can mismanage one of the largest provenances in a game. There is no reason - other than lack of design skill - that World of Warcraft should be more successful than a game based on Star Wars, probably the best recognized storyline in the history of Cinema.
The original design was ambitious and as it says in the article there was no manual on design, WOW has the advantage of having been built after all the first generation MMOs and thus can incorporate all of the essential features found in those games. It does so very well IMHO, even if I think its a mostly derivative and unchallenging game overall. What WOW does though, is do all the essential things very well, even if it introduces very little in the way of new elements overall. SWG at the moment, does NOTHING well at all in any area of the game, and has lost all of the new and innovative features that once made it a great, if flawed, game. With SWG its like they identified all of the great and interesting points in the game then cut them out of the game one by one until the only thing left was a pathetic FPS/MMO hybrid that has nothing worthwhile left.
The bit about adding the Beastmaster skills completely ignores the fact that up until the last massive rewrite of the game (so for the first few years) there was a highly popular profession called Creature Handler. When they came out with the New Game Enhancement (NGE in SWG parlance), they removed that profession. Now, a year later or so they are reintroducing it as a shell of its former presence like its something new and innovative. In fact just about every new feature added to the NGE has turned out to be something that used to be in game and has only now been revived.
The notorious quote by some Lucas Arts Executive, named Nancy McIntyre I believe is "Players just want to kill, loot, repeat". Thats the basis of the NGE, which has replaced a combat system that forced players to pick the appropriate options from their abilities during a fight, to a system where you point your weapon with your mouse, then hold down the left mouse button until the target is dead (no exaggeration, thats the sum of weapon combat). Previously we had special shots, special effects, etc that were all conditional during combat, now its point and hold. Oh, sure there are some specials you can fire off by clicking the right mouse button as well, but there are only a few of them, and you more or less click them when they come up.
No, SWG is a completely gutted game, and honestly not worth considering. Lucas Arts has taken the most promising provenance available in gaming and produced a complete laughing stock of a game. They couldn't have made a single worse decision than they have throughout its history. What was once, innovative and cutting edge, is now bland, unchallenging and suited for an audience of 6-8 year olds.
Well, no. These coins were in regular circulation, they printed thousands of them at the mint. The "Souvenir" that appears on the coin is the french for "Remember", so its just saying "Remember" in both national languages up here in Canada. These are regular Canadian coins, its just that we have an innovative mint up here in Canada, and we print a variety of new coins, bills etc on a regular basis.
It would be an extremely *poor* plan to make a coin intended for espionage, then plunk a massive bright red flower on it to make it easily identifiable. It would be extremely poor design to use a coin for this purpose, something that would naturally be spent in the course of the day.
This is just another brick in the foundation of the American Empire. The US has more weapons, and the ability to project force anywhere in the world, so it has abrogated to itself the *right* to do so whenever its Corporate^H^H^H National Interests seem threatened. It doesn't matter if it violates international law, commonly accepted moral conduct of civilized nations, or even its own internal laws. The US has a long history of invading countries for economic reasons (see the invasion of the Dominican Republic to save US Sugar interests etc). Despite the high purpose of its founding fathers, and the inspired contents of the US Constitution, the US is currently no more than the biggest baddest asshole on the block who feels he can do whatever the fuck he wants because no one will fuck with him for fear of being killed. US Military Personnel can be accused of warcrimes, yet the US will not let them be tried in an International Court, while simultaenously insisting that members of other countries be so tried. In complete violation of the US Constituation, people are being held without trial, without legal representation, and undoubtedly in a few cases, without reason in the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. If US personnel don't want to engage in torture that is so extreme it violates the shredded US laws, they simply send the prisoner to some CIA camp in a country that does permit it.
:(
Under Bush and his cronies, the US has lost all credibility internationally I think. Its hard to claim to be the bastion of the free world and democracy, when you violate your own laws, routinely violate human rights, have a mercenary army numbering in the tens of thousands (or PMCs, ie Private Military Contractors in official parlance) in the country you violently attacked and occupied for no valid reason other than one that was concocted for the purpose of justifying that invasion etc. How can the US expect to be validated as the banner holder for Freedom and Democracy when they no longera adhere to the very virtues they claim to promote?
No, I like the US, I like those US citizens that I have met, and I think it wass once a noble and daring effort in democratic representation, now its just a nation in the process of decaying into another totalitarian state - albeit one that preserves at least the facade of supporting its ideals internally, while externally projecting the worst aspects of a Fascist Dictatorship. Its sad to see a nation like Australia kowtow to the Pitbull on the block.
I sincerely hope you can toss Bush out on his ass, preferably after impeaching him for gross misconduct and violation of his countries laws, and then begin work on repairing the reputation of the US internationally. In about 20 years you might undo some of the damage. If you care to try that is
I have no desire to legislate people's morality. I have no desire to have anyone apply such legislation to my personal conduct either.
/ignored and sent a post to the CSRs. He got dealt with but I have no idea what happened, nor do I really care. I don't need to listen to rascist bullshit though, there's enough of that in the world already.
I do have an interest in seeing online game conduct a bit more closely controlled, as it is in real life. In real life if a guy followed my wife around and constantly commented on her ass and whether she wanted to fuck him (in so many words), I could make my opinion known, verbally or physically in her defense. She could do so likewise, possibly involving the police. It would constitute harassment and is a recognized offense under the law. This has happened to her in a few games a long time ago, and almost discouraged her from playing them which would be a real shame. Now, she reported him to the CSRs and we didn't see him again - but she has no way of knowing what happened as a result, and that individual may well continue the same offensive behaviour on some other server or in some other game because the most likely result was a stern talking to by a CSR, end of story. Now, its not a big thing, my wife was pissed off and told him where to go thats fine, but she was offended and so was I.
Online I had a guy send to me and tell me that he thought was wrong with DAOC. I told him my opinion and he informed me that what was really wrong was all the "n***ers". Now, I have no idea what this guys problem was but he kept sending to me along this line until I
Online activity like gaming allows people to act like real flaming assholes with no consequences. RL doesn't give them as much lattitude. I would just like to see a bit more rigorous application of the EULAs and ROC for the various online games so that people get the idea that they should act a bit more like they do in real life hopefully. I am not making any moral judgements, just saying I prefer conduct online to be a bit more civil. In reality posting something in a chat window or sending it in game to an individual is probably already covered under the law, say the wrong thing and it could possibly be construed as a form of slander, although I am not sure on that since it wouldn't involve a person's real name, just their reputation in a community under an alias.
I could care less about ganking and all that - that game related stuff and not germane - I am speaking to online harassment specifically.
Then right a manual for that program as if you were explaining it to your mother/grandmother etc. I think its important that you understand the subject, or the use of the program very clearly yourself, in order to adequately explain its use and features. As well, understanding or enjoying the program will undoubtedly lead to a greater motivation when it comes to completing the documentation.
Bravo to you for even asking about getting involved. I find most companies I have worked for are remarkably disinclined to write adequate documentation. One of the places I am currently working at seems to view the lack of documentation for their softeware as a form of security from competitors, and since they also train clients in the use of it (very necessary mind you) its added encouragmeent for clients to pay for training. Overall though I think its a rediculous stupid attitude but they don't seem inclined to budge.
While I think calling this "rape" is patently rediculous, it would seem to be classic online harassment. Yes, the victim could have logged off to avoid the experience, but the action would still remain harassment. I have witnessed a lot of online harassment in MMORPGs, and 99% of it goes completely unpunished - or at least due to privacy rules you never find out of it was punished. It would be great to see some sort of mechanism that discourages that behaviour.
I would heartily support strict rules to discourage and punish online harassment in games or other forums, but the problem of enforcement probably makes that impossible. In something like Second Life, the victim has the ability to contact the CSRs and lodge a complaint. With luck the resolution of that complaint would be the permanent cancellation of the offender's account. Thats about as far as it can go, unless Linden were to choose to prosecute the offender under civil law for abuse of their account for purposes of online harassment. IANAL but if thats possible then it would be a good next step towards curbing abusive online behaviour. I doubt any company would go to the bother though, unless it would prove advantageous somehow.
Personally, I would love to see game companies add a "Page of Shame" that lists the Character names for online accounts that have been banned, and the reason they have been so banned. I think that would go a long ways towards encouraging people to play inside the rules, and act as socially responsible as they do in real life at least. Some people are simply ignorant fuckwads and nothing is going to change that, but at least in RL when they act offensively there is occasionally someone around to make it clear to them that that won't do. Virtually, no one has that option, so behavioural offenses are unrestricted. I am sure game companies could simply add some text into their EULAs that outline the fact that your character names and offenses can and will be posted to the web. This in no way violates someone's privacy IMHO, since its just character names.
It's called XP. If you think for one second that users who migrated from XP to vista and hated vista are more willing to go to an "unknown" OS versus going back to XP you are out of your mind. And frankly, aside from what's been posted here I don't know many people who have a problem with vista. I have a few friends running it and the only complaint I've heard at all is that one guy can't run an eight year old game on it. He's admitted to not really looking into getting it working outside of the standard install.
Ah but doesn't Vista disable your installation key for XP when you upgrade to Vista? That kinda makes it a one-way path. If you want to go back you need to buy a whole new copy of XP and not simply the upgrade edition presumably. If this is the case, I can see Joe Sixpack getting mightily pissed off to discover that he can't simply go back to XP when he discovers how badly Vista sucks.
There is no possible intelligent reason that a developer would choose such an outdated and ill-reputed database engine when so many completely viable options exist at the moment. The *only* reason I can contemplate is that it was a deliberate choice for exactly the reasons you stated. Using this tool would make the fact that the Diebold systems were being actively used to rig an election much harder to trace. No one can be so stupid as to deliberately choose an unreliable DB engine like Jet, knowing its unreliable, can't handle large numbers of transactions, is subject to massive corruption etc. It has to be deliberate.
I worked at a company that used this engine for their software, but it was 9 years ago. Once they realized that their software was coming up against the wall of the engine's performance on a regular basis, the number one priority in development was integrating a different db system. I worked in Tech Support and easily 50% of our calls related to corrupt databases.