wonder if game developers have ever even considered that some piracy occurs because the gamers cannot afford the games themselves. Of course they do. And other piracy occurs because people like something for nothing. But why should the developers care? Their business is selling games to people who can afford it. They are under no obligation to provide cheaper games if they're maximizing their profits by selling them at a higher price.
Adding an encryption chip may prevent the piracy from those who can afford it, but like something for nothing. Now they'll be forced to pay up if they really want the game. It''s a no-brainer win situation for the developers.
There is no natural scarcity of ideas. I have an idea that will solve world hunger and eradicate disease. Contrary to what you say I believe this idea to be very scarce. It has taken me years of effort and heaps of money to formulate this idea. I really, really want to share this idea with you, but not unreasonably I don't believe I should have to shoulder all the cost of creating it on my own. I want paying, and until then it's going to remain my secret. Owning my secret is very similar to owning my property because you can't have it, but whether you want to call this "intellectual property" or not isn't important. The bottom line is if you want to know my idea we're going to have to make a deal that allows me to get paid, and that means you don't get to use my idea without paying me. You get my great idea, I get paid for it. How is this not fair?
To pretend that an idea can be owned as property suggests that one owns and has the right to exercise control over another's thoughts. This is absurd and unmanageable. Absolutely. But you can't think about my idea if I don't tell you it. Unless you come up with it yourself, which is unlikely because my idea is very scarce.
If a law regulating the free use and exchange of ideas cannot be proven to promote the progress of science and the useful arts it is wrong and unconstitutional. Define 'useful'. See that's usually a matter of taste and presently the value of art is usually defined as a matter of whether anyone is prepared to pay for it. Without "Intellectual Property" that's not possible. So who decides what's 'useful'?
And the consideration of something being 'unconstitutional' or not is immaterial. Intellectual Property works on a global basis (what with the interweb and all), ideas don't respect borders, and there's no constitution for the planet.
The people buying these 'lots' are paying for a fancy bit of paper that means nothing to anyone who may be either to recognise or enforce it. This guys business is treading the narrow ground between scam and worthless novelty items.
From what I can remember about this guy's inconsistent logic; it seemed to depend on a loophole in international law, plus application of 19th century US property claim laws. Exactly how any nation's property laws are applicable to the moon is never explained. Particularly when the international law he's using a loophole in specifically says no nation can own the moon. It simply doesn't add up.
Pity. At some point in infinity I see your two above sentence being a chick-lit blockbuster, selling well in spaceports in the lly language of sector 8662 in the year 2987622224.
Not enough sex though, and the ending is a bit rushed. But Simian Book Review of The Month said 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee', and reviews don't come any better than that!
Infinity being what it is; at some point their 'e' period would be translatable into a great work of fiction you'd be happy to publish. It may even translate into Shakespeare and Thicker Than Blood.
Stop RTFA and applying reasoned thought to the facts presented! The purpose of this article is to allow idiots an opportunity to get hot under the collar for ten minutes while on the train to work. By the time they reach work, this unconfirmed proposal by unnamed "officials" will have turned into a plot personally devised by Gordon Brown, to be implemented without further debate forthwith.
Back when Win95 was released you could not natively use long file names with 16-bit apps. However, there was a product called "Name-It!" which did allow that function. In other words it was possible and quite easy to enable the function, but Microsoft chose NOT to implement it. Why? Because long file names was a well liked feature among customers and denying it to customers would give incentive to upgrade to new 32-bit programs. Rubbish example and an even worse conclusion. The issue with long file names was related to old 3.x application that were developed prior to long names using the old 8.3 format. Unilaterally hooking into their file operation dialogs to update them to long file names could easily have unforeseen complications.
The over-riding principle, and something that MS would always concentrate on (sometimes too much), would have been backwards compatibility. Users require it, but they do not want an upgrade of their operating system to start mucking around with their application's functionality. Backward compatibility does not include upgrading old apps to using new features they are not equipped to deal with. Anyone demanding a new version of an operating system also upgrades their third-party applications is insane.
How "Name It!" worked exactly, I don't know. But I imagine that it didn't work with many apps and the user chose whether they wanted to use it or not.
Another great example is Messenger, the chat program not the service. Microsoft originally made it nearly impossible to get rid of. Even if you edited your sysoc.inf file and uninstalled Messenger, it'll suddenly come back. Even if you deleted the subfolder under Program Files, it would mysteriously come back. Obviously Microsoft considered its chat war against AOL more important than ease of use for its customers. Sorry, but how does having Messenger installed affect the "ease of use for its customers"? Outlook Express has always done the same. It's annoying. But affecting ease of use???
Once again, the real purpose of product activation is to screw over the paying customer who wants to install the OS he paid for on both of his systems. Isn't it always amusing the hear examples about people who believe that just because they've paid Microsoft once for one licence, that makes them a valued paying customer who shouldn't have to pay anything further. Valued paying customers are the ones who abide by the terms of the sale. Customers who take more than they paid for are more of a liability. I'm not saying that product activation isn't a PITA, but Microsoft is perfectly within its rights to hold customers to the terms the software was sold on. This is not "screwing over the paying customer". If you don't like the terms the software is sold on; there are alternatives.
They do not 'believe' there is no God, they have NO belief. You're getting hung up on the word "believe". Let's make it it easier for you, let's call it "have personally reached the conclusion that" instead. Means much the same, but perhaps gets by that block you have.
Atheists have personally reached the conclusion that there is no god. Theists have personally reached the conclusion that there is a god. Agnostics have personally reached the conclusion that no-one can reach a evidence-based conclusion on the matter, so any conclusion must be based on faith or similar means.
Atheist cannot argue that they have NO personally reached the conclusion, because that would only be true if they have either;
- never given the matter the slightest consideration, ever. Or - not reached any conclusion as yet
The first case would make them fundamentally lacking in any imagination or human curiosity, the second; simply "undecided". But neither would make them Atheists.
My problem with agnosticism is that it promotes a certain hope or at least implies spiritual things exist...maybe. I don't see any "hope" or "implication" in agnosticism. Agnostics say "I can't know if there is a god and, just as importantly, neither can you." Belief in a god, and belief in there being no god are two sides of the same faith coin. Neither can be proved.
If I should ever encounter an entity with god-like powers I'll treat them with a sensible amount of respect, either to gain their favour or avoid their wrath. But god-like powers aren't proof of being creator of the universe. Quite simply I can't conceive of any kind of proof that would make this evident to anyone within the universe. It's an impossibility.
Not only did you get the opportunity to miss that program, but you didn't get to see any of the ads for their company promoting their products, sales, events, or anything else they were interested in letting you know about. Let me fix that sentence for you;
"but you didn't get to fast forward and skip over any of the ads for their company promoting their products, sales, events, or anything else they were interested in letting you know about."
Of course not one single cent would go to the arists and actors. As opposed to the money that otherwise would have gone to the artists and actors from BitTorrent.... oh... hang on..
I should have picked VC rather than VB for a lot of reasons You know, you could have just stopped your story there. You picked VB. VB is the coding environment for people who aren't programmers, but wished they were. It started out a horrible kludgy mess, it got a bit better, but not much. Any upgrading MS did to VB had to always take into consideration that the legacy apps would be 70% written by the cluesless in a kludgey environment.
Windows has always been annoying to develop on No it hasn't. Believe me, in the days when everything was done in C, the same language the OS was coded in, it was a joy to code.
But practically every move that Microsoft has done since then has been a mistake. Some of them sounded like good ideas, but they've still turned out crap. The point the article makes about the Vista GUI just illustrates it. The UI is a total freaking mess because it is a reflection of the chaos going on within Microsoft and within the OS.
I remember when there was such a thing as a Windows GUI guidelines manual and people followed it. Because it made sense and it made things easier for developer and user. And if you didn't follow it people complained, and rightly so. Now every idiot with a copy of Photoshop thinks they can design a new UI for every application, and it's up to the user to learn their new "skin". And more worryingly, many of these idiots work within Microsoft.
I must have read at least 3 news stories about backscatter in the last week. Why is this only getting attention now when it's been a problem for years? Is it just because someone has coined a word for it?
I can remember years back when some spammer decided to use my domain name in their spam run. Hundreds of bounced emails every day and I cursed everyone of the dumb mail servers that mailed them; complete with original html email, images and any other crappy attachment. ("Hundreds" may be small potatoes these days, but they were a big deal at the time.) Just the very idea that spammers would supply a genuine reply address seemed so incredibly stupid, yet there they were; dozens of carefully worded variants of the same "naughty spammer, don't email me" reply. I could just see some smug sysadmin configuring their system with this badly thought-out garbage, thinking "ha! that'll show them!"
None of my mail servers since then have ever bounced spam or mis-addressed emails.
You mean to say that a sales and marketing website is manipulating the facts in order to show their product in a better light than competing products?
I am honestly shocked! I commend you on your campaign and congratulate you on your inevitable victory. Microsoft can do nothing but shamefacedly admit their blatant bias here and comply with your demands.
You have got to be kidding. A self selecting sample of 22 individuals and this is proof?
Is it not just as likely that these 22 people have lousy connections, and so installed the plugin to 'prove' its their ISPs fault? Meanwhile, thousands of others have no problems, so have no need or desire to install the plugin.
it's a nervous person detector, just like the polygraph Exactly. And only idiots and talk show hosts believe in polygraphs. If you're highly strung or ill or prone to hot flushes or know how to deliberately raise your heart-rate then they won't work. If they don't work even for a small percentage of people then they are useless as lie detectors.
I'm not negative about it at all. So predicting a flop the very first time you hear anything about it isn't being negative?
Anything that learns from the mistakes of Vista is a good thing. Here's Microsoft doing exactly that, after much justified criticism, and making a bold move. And you're immediately written it off. Is there anything they can do that would be a positive move in your eyes?
I'm not a Microsoft fan-boy, but like it or not they are the primary mover in the IT sector, so everyone working in computers has to live with them. If this produces an improved OS then everyone wins. And if it doesn't, well, then they won't maintain their hold and everyone's efforts will go to working on some other OS (and not Vista or son-of-Vista). Either way it's all good.
I'll tell you why Win 7 will be a huge flop: since it breaks almost all compatibility between itself and previous windows releases, it has to compete on the same grounds as Linux, *BSD and OSX. Why all the negativity? This is a good thing. For the first time in a long time Microsoft will have to sell an OS on its own merits. If it doesn't deliver the goods it will lose out to others. Rather than being part of the crowd intoning "Doom, doom!" from the side-lines, I hope that this inspires/forces Microsoft to deliver a kick-ass operating system, and everyone involved in computing can forget about the nightmare that is Vista.
What Microsoft is doing here is a bold move. We all benefit if it pays off with an improved product.
We, the 'masses,' now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. I always thought that the main problem the RIAA had with downloaders was their reluctance to perform the first part of that process; (the "create") and their preference for copying someone else's work. But I guess that's the hard part, isn't it?
What about that Electrickery, man? No one knows how it really works, and it, like, leaks out of the cables if you don't plug something in at the socket. And then you have pools of it lying about your floor, except you can't see it. And everyone knows things you can't see are evil, man.
Turn that shit off back at the town limits. It's the only way to be safe.
All you're doing is proving what I said. Every generation has lots of reasons why they're something special, totally unlike everything else before. They're wrong. I'm not saying there's not been any progress, just that the way generations differ in their reaction to it is exactly the same. The new generation grasps it as their own (as if the previous one had played no part in it) and take it one step further.
Two generations ago you could have said everything you said, except about telephones;
"In this day and age, the telephone has very recently (generationally speaking) elevated Communication Technology to complete ubiquity. Therefore, those raised within a time frame/generation where they take the telephone for granted will inherently be more comfortable with it, with all that it entails, and with the possibilities for future applications that it offers.
An analogy or parallel might be those who grew up with automated exchanges vs. those who were around when telephone calls had to go through an operator: Those who grew up with automated exchanges say, "Let's call London, Sydney, New York!" Those who grew up without automated exchanges say, "Damn, what's the rush? Send a letter."
What's with the fuss? Every generation is like this.
The previous one thinks they're feckless and idle, the new one thinks they're god's gift. The previous one had radical and new ideas in their day, the new one has radical and new ideas of their own. So all this stuff about "different cos they grew up with technology" is nothing new. Every generation "grew up with technology" of their time, they're nothing special.
My bet is that in 30 years time we'll still be reading stuff about the latest generation "growing up with technology" and how this is overhauling the preconceptions of previous generations, whose own "growing up with technology" is apparently no longer good enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Adding an encryption chip may prevent the piracy from those who can afford it, but like something for nothing. Now they'll be forced to pay up if they really want the game. It''s a no-brainer win situation for the developers.
And the consideration of something being 'unconstitutional' or not is immaterial. Intellectual Property works on a global basis (what with the interweb and all), ideas don't respect borders, and there's no constitution for the planet.
The people buying these 'lots' are paying for a fancy bit of paper that means nothing to anyone who may be either to recognise or enforce it. This guys business is treading the narrow ground between scam and worthless novelty items.
From what I can remember about this guy's inconsistent logic; it seemed to depend on a loophole in international law, plus application of 19th century US property claim laws. Exactly how any nation's property laws are applicable to the moon is never explained. Particularly when the international law he's using a loophole in specifically says no nation can own the moon. It simply doesn't add up.
Pity. At some point in infinity I see your two above sentence being a chick-lit blockbuster, selling well in spaceports in the lly language of sector 8662 in the year 2987622224.
Not enough sex though, and the ending is a bit rushed. But Simian Book Review of The Month said 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee', and reviews don't come any better than that!
Infinity being what it is; at some point their 'e' period would be translatable into a great work of fiction you'd be happy to publish. It may even translate into Shakespeare and Thicker Than Blood.
As indeed this will.
Stop RTFA and applying reasoned thought to the facts presented! The purpose of this article is to allow idiots an opportunity to get hot under the collar for ten minutes while on the train to work. By the time they reach work, this unconfirmed proposal by unnamed "officials" will have turned into a plot personally devised by Gordon Brown, to be implemented without further debate forthwith.
The over-riding principle, and something that MS would always concentrate on (sometimes too much), would have been backwards compatibility. Users require it, but they do not want an upgrade of their operating system to start mucking around with their application's functionality. Backward compatibility does not include upgrading old apps to using new features they are not equipped to deal with. Anyone demanding a new version of an operating system also upgrades their third-party applications is insane.
How "Name It!" worked exactly, I don't know. But I imagine that it didn't work with many apps and the user chose whether they wanted to use it or not. Another great example is Messenger, the chat program not the service. Microsoft originally made it nearly impossible to get rid of. Even if you edited your sysoc.inf file and uninstalled Messenger, it'll suddenly come back. Even if you deleted the subfolder under Program Files, it would mysteriously come back. Obviously Microsoft considered its chat war against AOL more important than ease of use for its customers. Sorry, but how does having Messenger installed affect the "ease of use for its customers"? Outlook Express has always done the same. It's annoying. But affecting ease of use??? Once again, the real purpose of product activation is to screw over the paying customer who wants to install the OS he paid for on both of his systems. Isn't it always amusing the hear examples about people who believe that just because they've paid Microsoft once for one licence, that makes them a valued paying customer who shouldn't have to pay anything further. Valued paying customers are the ones who abide by the terms of the sale. Customers who take more than they paid for are more of a liability. I'm not saying that product activation isn't a PITA, but Microsoft is perfectly within its rights to hold customers to the terms the software was sold on. This is not "screwing over the paying customer". If you don't like the terms the software is sold on; there are alternatives.
Atheists have personally reached the conclusion that there is no god.
Theists have personally reached the conclusion that there is a god.
Agnostics have personally reached the conclusion that no-one can reach a evidence-based conclusion on the matter, so any conclusion must be based on faith or similar means.
Atheist cannot argue that they have NO personally reached the conclusion, because that would only be true if they have either;
- never given the matter the slightest consideration, ever.
Or
- not reached any conclusion as yet
The first case would make them fundamentally lacking in any imagination or human curiosity, the second; simply "undecided". But neither would make them Atheists.
As a Jew, I doubt it was the Christian God that was foremost in his mind when criticizing the concept.
If I should ever encounter an entity with god-like powers I'll treat them with a sensible amount of respect, either to gain their favour or avoid their wrath. But god-like powers aren't proof of being creator of the universe. Quite simply I can't conceive of any kind of proof that would make this evident to anyone within the universe. It's an impossibility.
"but you didn't get to fast forward and skip over any of the ads for their company promoting their products, sales, events, or anything else they were interested in letting you know about."
There you go.
Doesn't bode well, does it?
But practically every move that Microsoft has done since then has been a mistake. Some of them sounded like good ideas, but they've still turned out crap. The point the article makes about the Vista GUI just illustrates it. The UI is a total freaking mess because it is a reflection of the chaos going on within Microsoft and within the OS.
I remember when there was such a thing as a Windows GUI guidelines manual and people followed it. Because it made sense and it made things easier for developer and user. And if you didn't follow it people complained, and rightly so. Now every idiot with a copy of Photoshop thinks they can design a new UI for every application, and it's up to the user to learn their new "skin". And more worryingly, many of these idiots work within Microsoft.
I must have read at least 3 news stories about backscatter in the last week. Why is this only getting attention now when it's been a problem for years? Is it just because someone has coined a word for it?
I can remember years back when some spammer decided to use my domain name in their spam run. Hundreds of bounced emails every day and I cursed everyone of the dumb mail servers that mailed them; complete with original html email, images and any other crappy attachment. ("Hundreds" may be small potatoes these days, but they were a big deal at the time.) Just the very idea that spammers would supply a genuine reply address seemed so incredibly stupid, yet there they were; dozens of carefully worded variants of the same "naughty spammer, don't email me" reply. I could just see some smug sysadmin configuring their system with this badly thought-out garbage, thinking "ha! that'll show them!"
None of my mail servers since then have ever bounced spam or mis-addressed emails.
What, too long a word for you?
Seriously, I don't think he's looking for a date from you.
You mean to say that a sales and marketing website is manipulating the facts in order to show their product in a better light than competing products?
I am honestly shocked! I commend you on your campaign and congratulate you on your inevitable victory. Microsoft can do nothing but shamefacedly admit their blatant bias here and comply with your demands.
You have got to be kidding. A self selecting sample of 22 individuals and this is proof?
Is it not just as likely that these 22 people have lousy connections, and so installed the plugin to 'prove' its their ISPs fault? Meanwhile, thousands of others have no problems, so have no need or desire to install the plugin.
Anything that learns from the mistakes of Vista is a good thing. Here's Microsoft doing exactly that, after much justified criticism, and making a bold move. And you're immediately written it off. Is there anything they can do that would be a positive move in your eyes?
I'm not a Microsoft fan-boy, but like it or not they are the primary mover in the IT sector, so everyone working in computers has to live with them. If this produces an improved OS then everyone wins. And if it doesn't, well, then they won't maintain their hold and everyone's efforts will go to working on some other OS (and not Vista or son-of-Vista). Either way it's all good.
What Microsoft is doing here is a bold move. We all benefit if it pays off with an improved product.
What about that Electrickery, man? No one knows how it really works, and it, like, leaks out of the cables if you don't plug something in at the socket. And then you have pools of it lying about your floor, except you can't see it. And everyone knows things you can't see are evil, man.
Turn that shit off back at the town limits. It's the only way to be safe.
Now where's my tinfoil bandana?
All you're doing is proving what I said. Every generation has lots of reasons why they're something special, totally unlike everything else before. They're wrong. I'm not saying there's not been any progress, just that the way generations differ in their reaction to it is exactly the same. The new generation grasps it as their own (as if the previous one had played no part in it) and take it one step further.
Two generations ago you could have said everything you said, except about telephones;
"In this day and age, the telephone has very recently (generationally speaking) elevated Communication Technology to complete ubiquity. Therefore, those raised within a time frame/generation where they take the telephone for granted will inherently be more comfortable with it, with all that it entails, and with the possibilities for future applications that it offers.
An analogy or parallel might be those who grew up with automated exchanges vs. those who were around when telephone calls had to go through an operator: Those who grew up with automated exchanges say, "Let's call London, Sydney, New York!" Those who grew up without automated exchanges say, "Damn, what's the rush? Send a letter."
What's with the fuss? Every generation is like this.
The previous one thinks they're feckless and idle, the new one thinks they're god's gift. The previous one had radical and new ideas in their day, the new one has radical and new ideas of their own. So all this stuff about "different cos they grew up with technology" is nothing new. Every generation "grew up with technology" of their time, they're nothing special.
My bet is that in 30 years time we'll still be reading stuff about the latest generation "growing up with technology" and how this is overhauling the preconceptions of previous generations, whose own "growing up with technology" is apparently no longer good enough.