Well of course they can't resurrect Xenix. The last known version of it was 2.3.4.
Well...unless of course, you count the fact that it's been disseminated into SCO Unix. And I think we've all learned a lot from SCO: There are worse things in the night than Microsoft ^_^
Lower your torches please. I don't feel like igniting a flame war about whose responsibility it is to protect 'the children', but I just had to point this out. He says that they have a duty 'as a community' to protect children. (I could go on for days ranting about problems in parenting, that aside) Couldn't they 'as a community' protect thier children without passing laws, if they are indeed acting as a community?
Funny, but I've been an avid table-top gamer for about 12 years now (just over half my life! damn I'm a nerd), so I don't think that reference works on me. Then again, from the way your post is written, I'm not entirely sure if it would apply to you either...
That's the beauty of PnP games: they never died, and they never will. Just wait until we're old and embarassing our grandkids while we huddle around the table yelling "c'mon 20s! Daddy needs a crit to kill!"
No jokes here. I know several senior citizens who have some clunker of a peoplePC computer that's just good enough to run simple internet games and their only bookmarks are Yahoo! Games and Popcap. Then again, when the the current gamers get older, this trend won't seem so out of the ordinary because we haven't shown any signs of 'growing out of gaming'.
More bugs found (who can honestly predict every issue?) = more bugs fixed by (team|community) More fixes = more patches released without some stupid schedule
I think of this more as a way of saying "Go us!" and by 'us', I mean the users, supporters, contributors. We're smarter with our security practices and more active in making a good thing better. Not every FF user fits that mold, but it's more typical than IE. That's worth a little more than bugs in my opinion. Nobody can make something COMPLETELY error-free, but we do something about it. Those downloads reflect community efforts.
One thing that, while rare, is still quite aggravating is when a studio alpha tests with next to no features and then charges for the beta. I still can't find out how this does anything but alienate users, but somehow people manage to pull it off.
Are you kidding? I remember reading about a few PC games of distinctly christian slant and my observations were staggering. Either the games were rather deluded (I don't just mean that from a non-christian perspective. I asked for opinions from some rather devout believers) or horrifically violent. There are a few christian games that are actually pretty good out there, but a lot of them are relatively offensive on more than one level.
As far as protecting kids from them, (while this isn't the ultimate law, I know) most retailers of video games try not to carry explicitly religious titles.
Actually, if I remember correctly, you play as the father of a boy that was killed by some other child brainwashed by violent games. Hence the vengeance idea.
Sadly, I don't think it's that simple with Jackie T. He changes his crusades with the times and finds new, unknowing people to buy into his scam. The sad thing is that, in the past, he got some of his goals accomplished. But after a point, he started to lose it; first professionally, then mentally.
I don't like the idea of torture, but I think this man will ever leave us alone is to let him fume (while we refute his nonsense) until he's nothing but a shell of a man sitting a clean, white, sterile and monitored environment. At least that's the way he seems to be headed.
Some of what he's been doing for several years now has had its share of effects. He was involved in the case against 2 Live Crew in which some of the members were actually arrested! If I'm not mistaken (though, I could be) I do believe that's the lawsuit that started the famous Parental Advisory labels on CDs. He was the lawyer who went against Ice-T's (or was it Ice Cube?, please correct if you know) infamous song "Cop Killer".
He's been the rallying general in almost all the lawsuits against RockStar games for GTA titles, but I'm not sure if the Seattle cops are going to give him the time of day if they know that he called them while claiming that NIMF was bought out by Best Buy and is claiming to be suing Best Buy and Target for pre-ordering Bully before it even comes out.
Witness the complete and total meltdown of a mind, and I'm not joking at all.
I think Microsoft could actually take OpenDocument support in one of two directions:
1. Basically, how you put it. They would only support it enough so that it would be that extra bullet point at the bottom of the feature list "(blah blah, marketing drivel)...now with OpenDocument support!"
2. (Please don't correct me with a torch, I'm not an expert on this topic) but I don't doubt that MS would find some tiny loophole to sneak their own proprietary crap into OpenDocument formatted Office files which would have an adverse effect upon openning in any non-office program. I just wouldn't be surprised when I've seen two identical machines with identical software on the same network transfer a Word file from one computer to come out garbled on the other end.
Oh I know, actually Gabe told Jack that $10,000 is pretty weak from a famous Miami lawyer when their charity has already raised half a million (in money, toys, etc.) in two years from the gamer community. That's what pissed off Jack. Then Jack accused their charity of being hollow because they're supposedly some flush-with-cash game company and that Jack's donations mean more in the ethical sense. When Gabe (Mike) emailed him back to clarify that they are not flush-with-cash at all, Jack called back and spent the entirety of the conversation screaming because Gabe asked him if Jack would have to sue himself for proposing such a horrifically malevolent game. Part of the way in the conversation, Jack hung up.
Check out the transcripts of emails between Jackie T. and Scott from VG Cats. It's even worse.
If this guy wants to play with fire, I suggest somebody put up a site to publish all of Jack's threats and verbal abuse (plus nonsense) and see if he gets institutionalized. I seriously think that man is pathologically violent.
That's the thing about Jack's fantasy: He's already trying to live it. Whether he really does despise game(r)s that much or he's that much more of a power monger, he needs to see this come to fruition that he probably couldn't care if someone died to complete his vision. Given the gravity and senselessness of the violence in his proposal, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he's really pathologically violent. Read about his conversation with Mike Krahulik (Gabe) from Penny-Arcade, or even worse, read the transcript of his emails with Scott from VG Cats.
Personally, I still think the Postal2 team could have made his game and sold millions on it because everyone would accept it as a joke like the rest of thier work. People aren't supposed to take games this seriously, and even one of the institutes he frequently cites for research told him to stop referencing them in every way because he distorts thier studies, and gives them a bad name.
It wasn't satire. If you read half the things he writes (by the way, his site www.stopkill.com looks severely cripple lately. Any explanation?), you'd understand that this man could actually be quite violent given the way he reacts to intelligent defense of game(r)s.
I honestly thought the guys who made Postal2 would make his game and put on the box 'Jack Thompson's (insert title)' just to call him out. It wasn't a joke to him, he wanted to know if the game industry would make itself the target instead of cops, hookers and other gangs/inmates to see if gamers would start killing eachother instead of a second grader bringing a gun to kill a fellow student. The man is honestly sick and twisted in a very bad way.
No, they're not all bad. Then again, I think people should start paying more attention to things like Linux, if for nothing more than to catch the eye of a developer that can really help make some Windows alternative shine to desktop and enterprise users alike, and maybe things like this are to help get the attention of users and future contributors.
Each platform has their pros and cons, and trust me, as much as I absolutely love running openSUSE 10 right now, I still have plenty of gripes about Linux. The only problem that I have with the preachy anti-ms drivel is that it reminds me of why so many people don't try Linux or OSS alternative to MS apps: Be an advocate, not a fantatic.
(PS - I am aware that there is more than just Linux as an alternative to Windows and I've used a few myself. I'm just using it for the classic example)
I'm not quite sure if I would go with the Google/Sun-Ray machines idea, to possibly err on the side of economics. Maybe (and this is giant maybe) but maybe still, Sun could provide hardware resources to run Google's local Wi-Fi locations is my guess to start the partnership.
And still, some of me wonders if this is just hype only for the fact that Google did partner with Sun for something yet to be disclosed and so investors assume that whatever they're going to do must be good.
Honestly, the evil hackers got smarter. Not all of them mind you (most of the famed worming script-kiddies still get caught). But all those malevolent 'hackers' know that cracking the world's browsers is too easy to trace or not worth the effort to keep under the radar.
You know all those "Prescriptlon RXc dirugs 4for l0w coest!" emails? That just came specially delivered to you courtesy of the former uber-hacker of unknowable enormity. They're even worse that telemarketers that scam the elderly, and they're hoping you're the next $50 bill in their offshore account.
I'm not just being a curmudgeon here, but when it comes to 'real fixes', it looks like most of them would require a radically different codebase in order to prevent more knots down the rope when one is loosened, thus nesessitating a new version of Windows. And not just a marginally tightened service pack like Vista, but something entirely new. Microsoft realizes that with about 90'ish percent of the desktop market at their doorstep, treatment is much more lucrative than a cure. After all, what have they got to lose? A market they will always own as far as their concerned.
I thank you and the others that agree with me on this. That and I get tired of the false cries of dupe (some are legit) when the story is really a follow-up or an update.
This is partially based on my programming prefs, but I listen to TWiT, CradCast, Pro PHP, and WebDevRadio (and I'm still looking for more good ones with more frequent updates). Though I've been meaning to check out http://www.techpodcasts.com/
These '/. is slow and stupid' kind of posts just need to stop. But I listen to 4 different tech podcasts and hadn't heard about this yet. Think about the people who check/. for news while they're at work and most likely away from iTunes and their bookmarks, and (god-forbid) without a readily accessible aggregator. Realize this site for what it is: for the majority of it, other techies posting news they've heard about to a community they might think will care to hear it. This isn't "news as it happens updated every second" so stop treating it like it is.
The problem with that approach is that the big companies are harder to pin down in court due to the wealth of legal resources they have. The idea the RIAA had worked pretty well: Go after the little guys enough times to set a legal precedent. Then, that precedent makes it easier to take on the generals.
In any case, if it's not us bitching about selling services to help an oppressive government, then it's an oppressive government bitching about us forcing our ethics on them by restrcting the software we sell them. Think about that for a second;)
Slashdot Mirror
Well of course they can't resurrect Xenix. The last known version of it was 2.3.4.
Well...unless of course, you count the fact that it's been disseminated into SCO Unix. And I think we've all learned a lot from SCO: There are worse things in the night than Microsoft ^_^
as consumers demand ever higher bandwidth
The puns that could flow from this topic are too numerous for the mind to fathom without exploding ^_^
Lower your torches please. I don't feel like igniting a flame war about whose responsibility it is to protect 'the children', but I just had to point this out. He says that they have a duty 'as a community' to protect children. (I could go on for days ranting about problems in parenting, that aside) Couldn't they 'as a community' protect thier children without passing laws, if they are indeed acting as a community?
This just proves who's fooling who.
Funny, but I've been an avid table-top gamer for about 12 years now (just over half my life! damn I'm a nerd), so I don't think that reference works on me. Then again, from the way your post is written, I'm not entirely sure if it would apply to you either...
That's the beauty of PnP games: they never died, and they never will. Just wait until we're old and embarassing our grandkids while we huddle around the table yelling "c'mon 20s! Daddy needs a crit to kill!"
No jokes here. I know several senior citizens who have some clunker of a peoplePC computer that's just good enough to run simple internet games and their only bookmarks are Yahoo! Games and Popcap. Then again, when the the current gamers get older, this trend won't seem so out of the ordinary because we haven't shown any signs of 'growing out of gaming'.
Then again, think of it this way:
More bugs found (who can honestly predict every issue?) = more bugs fixed by (team|community)
More fixes = more patches released without some stupid schedule
I think of this more as a way of saying "Go us!" and by 'us', I mean the users, supporters, contributors. We're smarter with our security practices and more active in making a good thing better. Not every FF user fits that mold, but it's more typical than IE. That's worth a little more than bugs in my opinion. Nobody can make something COMPLETELY error-free, but we do something about it. Those downloads reflect community efforts.
One thing that, while rare, is still quite aggravating is when a studio alpha tests with next to no features and then charges for the beta. I still can't find out how this does anything but alienate users, but somehow people manage to pull it off.
Are you kidding? I remember reading about a few PC games of distinctly christian slant and my observations were staggering. Either the games were rather deluded (I don't just mean that from a non-christian perspective. I asked for opinions from some rather devout believers) or horrifically violent. There are a few christian games that are actually pretty good out there, but a lot of them are relatively offensive on more than one level.
As far as protecting kids from them, (while this isn't the ultimate law, I know) most retailers of video games try not to carry explicitly religious titles.
Actually, if I remember correctly, you play as the father of a boy that was killed by some other child brainwashed by violent games. Hence the vengeance idea.
Sadly, I don't think it's that simple with Jackie T. He changes his crusades with the times and finds new, unknowing people to buy into his scam. The sad thing is that, in the past, he got some of his goals accomplished. But after a point, he started to lose it; first professionally, then mentally.
I don't like the idea of torture, but I think this man will ever leave us alone is to let him fume (while we refute his nonsense) until he's nothing but a shell of a man sitting a clean, white, sterile and monitored environment. At least that's the way he seems to be headed.
Some of what he's been doing for several years now has had its share of effects. He was involved in the case against 2 Live Crew in which some of the members were actually arrested! If I'm not mistaken (though, I could be) I do believe that's the lawsuit that started the famous Parental Advisory labels on CDs. He was the lawyer who went against Ice-T's (or was it Ice Cube?, please correct if you know) infamous song "Cop Killer".
He's been the rallying general in almost all the lawsuits against RockStar games for GTA titles, but I'm not sure if the Seattle cops are going to give him the time of day if they know that he called them while claiming that NIMF was bought out by Best Buy and is claiming to be suing Best Buy and Target for pre-ordering Bully before it even comes out.
Witness the complete and total meltdown of a mind, and I'm not joking at all.
I think Microsoft could actually take OpenDocument support in one of two directions:
1. Basically, how you put it. They would only support it enough so that it would be that extra bullet point at the bottom of the feature list "(blah blah, marketing drivel)...now with OpenDocument support!"
2. (Please don't correct me with a torch, I'm not an expert on this topic) but I don't doubt that MS would find some tiny loophole to sneak their own proprietary crap into OpenDocument formatted Office files which would have an adverse effect upon openning in any non-office program. I just wouldn't be surprised when I've seen two identical machines with identical software on the same network transfer a Word file from one computer to come out garbled on the other end.
I give my sincere gratitude ^_^
I think we should make a domain to counter his www.stopkill.com
We'll make www.stopjack.com
Okay, now did I leave that soapbox...?
Oh I know, actually Gabe told Jack that $10,000 is pretty weak from a famous Miami lawyer when their charity has already raised half a million (in money, toys, etc.) in two years from the gamer community. That's what pissed off Jack. Then Jack accused their charity of being hollow because they're supposedly some flush-with-cash game company and that Jack's donations mean more in the ethical sense. When Gabe (Mike) emailed him back to clarify that they are not flush-with-cash at all, Jack called back and spent the entirety of the conversation screaming because Gabe asked him if Jack would have to sue himself for proposing such a horrifically malevolent game. Part of the way in the conversation, Jack hung up.
Check out the transcripts of emails between Jackie T. and Scott from VG Cats. It's even worse.
If this guy wants to play with fire, I suggest somebody put up a site to publish all of Jack's threats and verbal abuse (plus nonsense) and see if he gets institutionalized. I seriously think that man is pathologically violent.
That's the thing about Jack's fantasy: He's already trying to live it. Whether he really does despise game(r)s that much or he's that much more of a power monger, he needs to see this come to fruition that he probably couldn't care if someone died to complete his vision. Given the gravity and senselessness of the violence in his proposal, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he's really pathologically violent. Read about his conversation with Mike Krahulik (Gabe) from Penny-Arcade, or even worse, read the transcript of his emails with Scott from VG Cats.
Personally, I still think the Postal2 team could have made his game and sold millions on it because everyone would accept it as a joke like the rest of thier work. People aren't supposed to take games this seriously, and even one of the institutes he frequently cites for research told him to stop referencing them in every way because he distorts thier studies, and gives them a bad name.
It wasn't satire. If you read half the things he writes (by the way, his site www.stopkill.com looks severely cripple lately. Any explanation?), you'd understand that this man could actually be quite violent given the way he reacts to intelligent defense of game(r)s.
I honestly thought the guys who made Postal2 would make his game and put on the box 'Jack Thompson's (insert title)' just to call him out. It wasn't a joke to him, he wanted to know if the game industry would make itself the target instead of cops, hookers and other gangs/inmates to see if gamers would start killing eachother instead of a second grader bringing a gun to kill a fellow student. The man is honestly sick and twisted in a very bad way.
Like I said, I'm not an expert on this, but that was just my thought. Thanks for the info ^_^
No, they're not all bad. Then again, I think people should start paying more attention to things like Linux, if for nothing more than to catch the eye of a developer that can really help make some Windows alternative shine to desktop and enterprise users alike, and maybe things like this are to help get the attention of users and future contributors.
Each platform has their pros and cons, and trust me, as much as I absolutely love running openSUSE 10 right now, I still have plenty of gripes about Linux. The only problem that I have with the preachy anti-ms drivel is that it reminds me of why so many people don't try Linux or OSS alternative to MS apps: Be an advocate, not a fantatic.
(PS - I am aware that there is more than just Linux as an alternative to Windows and I've used a few myself. I'm just using it for the classic example)
I'm not quite sure if I would go with the Google/Sun-Ray machines idea, to possibly err on the side of economics. Maybe (and this is giant maybe) but maybe still, Sun could provide hardware resources to run Google's local Wi-Fi locations is my guess to start the partnership.
And still, some of me wonders if this is just hype only for the fact that Google did partner with Sun for something yet to be disclosed and so investors assume that whatever they're going to do must be good.
Honestly, the evil hackers got smarter. Not all of them mind you (most of the famed worming script-kiddies still get caught). But all those malevolent 'hackers' know that cracking the world's browsers is too easy to trace or not worth the effort to keep under the radar. You know all those "Prescriptlon RXc dirugs 4for l0w coest!" emails? That just came specially delivered to you courtesy of the former uber-hacker of unknowable enormity. They're even worse that telemarketers that scam the elderly, and they're hoping you're the next $50 bill in their offshore account.
I'm not just being a curmudgeon here, but when it comes to 'real fixes', it looks like most of them would require a radically different codebase in order to prevent more knots down the rope when one is loosened, thus nesessitating a new version of Windows. And not just a marginally tightened service pack like Vista, but something entirely new. Microsoft realizes that with about 90'ish percent of the desktop market at their doorstep, treatment is much more lucrative than a cure. After all, what have they got to lose? A market they will always own as far as their concerned.
I thank you and the others that agree with me on this. That and I get tired of the false cries of dupe (some are legit) when the story is really a follow-up or an update.
This is partially based on my programming prefs, but I listen to TWiT, CradCast, Pro PHP, and WebDevRadio (and I'm still looking for more good ones with more frequent updates). Though I've been meaning to check out http://www.techpodcasts.com/
These '/. is slow and stupid' kind of posts just need to stop. But I listen to 4 different tech podcasts and hadn't heard about this yet. Think about the people who check /. for news while they're at work and most likely away from iTunes and their bookmarks, and (god-forbid) without a readily accessible aggregator. Realize this site for what it is: for the majority of it, other techies posting news they've heard about to a community they might think will care to hear it. This isn't "news as it happens updated every second" so stop treating it like it is.
The problem with that approach is that the big companies are harder to pin down in court due to the wealth of legal resources they have. The idea the RIAA had worked pretty well: Go after the little guys enough times to set a legal precedent. Then, that precedent makes it easier to take on the generals.
;)
In any case, if it's not us bitching about selling services to help an oppressive government, then it's an oppressive government bitching about us forcing our ethics on them by restrcting the software we sell them. Think about that for a second