It's worth noting that that screensaver was actually produced by Sysinternals, prior to their acquisition by Microsoft last year. So any sense of humour that Microsoft does have was purely purchased.
Which means there there are people out there who may not want their hardware requirements dictated by an OS they're not even going to install.
Erm, I haven't really used the Dell system configurator whatchamajingle very much, but just from reading this the gist of the OP seems to be that Dell are unnecessarily limiting your hardware options if you choose the no OS option. i.e. We want Dell to be reducing the limitations, not adding them as you seem to be implying. Yes, you're right that there are probably people who don't want their hardware requirements dictated by an OS they're not going to install. But the OS-that-isn't-being-installed doesn't try to limit our anonymous consumers hardware choices. Dell does. At least that's what I picked up from reading this thread.
Umm... because it would be wrong? The radiation symbol is for radioactive material. To start putting it on non-radioactive food, purely to indicate that it is bacteria-free would be scientifically wrong.
Suggesting that parents should make their own minds up about whether or not it's good for their children shows a lot of misplaced faith in humanity. Parents don't know what's good for their children, and they're far more willing to listen to bullshit propaganda and FUD than they are to scientifically factual information.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is this: People are stupid. We shouldn't have to step around them quietly and dress everything up with nice non-scary names, but until they stop being stupid, that's the price of progress. We can't let a few Luddites dictate our rate of scientific progress.
Blizzard already knew that Cedega is not a bot. This isn't a story about Blizzard becoming Linux-friendly, because Blizzard are already pretty Linux-friendly as it is. Blizzard had previously stated (before this unbanning) that they had tested their cheat-detection with Cedega, and had not encountered any problems. The fact that not all Cedega users got banned gives credence to this. So Transgaming did not need to convince Blizzard that their product is legit, because Blizzard was already well aware of that. What is more likely is that Transgaming worked with Blizzard to find out exactly what combination of circumstances were causing some Cedega users to be incorrectly flagged as cheaters, as it says in the summary.
One thing that I was surprised hasn't been mentioned so far (and which pretty much invalidates the entire article) is that WoW does have dynamic events. It's full of them. Think of the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, and the War Effort. Think of the Scourge invasion. Think of the Elemental Invasions, the Green Dragons and other outdoor bosses, the Darkmoon Faire, the Gurubashi Arena, the Midsummer Fire Festival, and the dozens of other dynamic events that I haven't listed. WoW is chock full of dynamic events, and TFA is utter tripe.
Oh, I dunno, it would be really great if someone developed a plugin that could work with a major email client, so you could use just one click to sign or encrypt emails, or import keys from a keyserver, or decrypt emails from others. I'm thinking they could call it something like "Enigmail". I think that name has a nice ring to it, don't you?
Thank you! At last, the voice of reason. Everyone has been so quick to criticise Blizzard for banning WoW players "because they use Linux"... despite there being absolutely no proof that this is what has happened. Kudos to you. And thanks for the link to the forums; as an EU player I don't normally check the US forums, so I completely missed that thread.
Perhaps if you'd read the numerous articles about the Warden (or the innumerable comments in response to any article about WoW) you'd know that the Warden does not send any information that it picks up from your PC. All that it sends is hashes, to be compared against hashes of known cheats or whatever. So, to throw your question back at you: What about CPAs or others with sensitive information? None of that information ever goes anywhere, so there is absolutely nothing to complain about. The comparison between the Warden and Task Manager is an entirely valid one, as neither sends out your information without telling you.
P.S. Entirely off-topic, but I absolutely loathe clueless mods who throw out "informative" moderations to the same sensationalist tripe that has been disproven time and time and time again.
Indeed. Greed and exploitation can never be considered civilised. The fact that the GP has somehow been modded "insightful" is an indication of just how fucked up the world is.
I remember much the same thing was said about FF9 on the first Playstation. And indeed, that game was visually stunning. But to be honest, I was a little disappointed in the gameplay. Still a worthwhile game, mind you, but apart from the graphics, it was not the best in the series, IMHO. Now if FFXII can pull off amazing graphics and good gameplay, then not only will I be impressed, I will be overjoyed.
Mmm, interesting... I had a beta of IE7 at some point. I say had, because it managed to uninstall itself without telling me. Ah well, I don't imagine I'm missing much.
Greedy? I have to say that I disagree about that. Blizzard are selling a CCG (Incidentally, it happens to be a very good one, from what I've heard), and with this CCG they've decided to give away some free in-game WoW item. Blizzard aren't forcing anybody to play or buy this CCG. If someone is dumb enough to buy the large number of stuff purely to get the reward, then quite frankly that's their own damned problem. Blaming Blizzard for producing and selling a damned fine CCG is just plain stupid.
As far as I can see, the only problem here is the same age old one that we've always faced: People are stupid. People are stupid, so when one troublemaker decides they want to kick up a storm over nothing, you get a whole crowd of them (most of whom won't know or care about the issue at hand, and absolutely none of whom will have actually done any research into the matter) screaming bloody murder. This entire thing is just a non-issue.
It's exactly as you say: Just a free little thing to reward those who decide to play this TCG. It certainly doesn't provide any decisive benefit.
Not justifiable ones though. Is it really ok to kill someone who is no threat to you (or anyone else), in cold blood, just because it will make you feel better? Even if that person might go on to do great works for society? No, it is not, and if you think that it is then you are worse than they are, because at least they accept the responsibility for their actions.
Ok, now I've been trying not to comment on this article, because I generally tend to avoid thinking about legal matters in general, but there are a number of things that I do have to ask.
Firstly, do you have to keep trumpeting that "EULA-like" argument in response to everything? It's starting to wear a little thin. Fair enough, it's a very interesting argument to make, and the first time I read it I did so with great curiosity. Even the second time, I listened to the argument, just in case there was anything I missed. Now, as I said, I'm no lawyer, but having read through the section in question, I really don't see what the problem is. The GPLv3 is, as previous versions have been, a license to distribute software. It does not restrict usage by the end user in any way whatsoever (that I can see). Other people have posted a more thorough rebuttal of your argument already. Your repetition of it at every possible oppurtunity really does leave me wondering...
Secondly, the way I see things, your first and last points are effectively stating the same thing. (Or at the very least they have the same root cause.) And what they're stating is something that I can't see any way around. Yes, the GPLv3 is incomprehensible to anyone without a law degree. Yes, it's extremely long. Yes, it's a legal document, and any incomprehensibility in it is merely an unfortunate reflection of the nature of the legal system. I see all sorts of people here going on and on about how the GPL ought to be shorter, and I wonder how they fail to realise that attempting to make it so would run the risk of making it either open to abuse or so vague as to be unenforceable. And I can guarantee, lawyers would love that.
So in summary, the four points that you list are reduced to only three, one of which (I believe) is not valid, and one of which (again IMHO) is unavoidable.
If this turns out to be true, then it's a pretty big deal. I remember studying this kinda stuff a few years ago... suffice to say that it really makes my head hurt, even now. Having had a quick look at the article, it does promise to be a very interesting read, at the very least.
I have the cart, "manual" (it's really a strategy guide), and box, all in good condition.
Y'know, it's funny you should say that about the manual, cos (with regards to games in general) I've always thought of that the other way around... The "strategy guides" you get these days quite often contain stuff that really should be part of the manual. So by shipping sub-standard manuals with the games these days, they're often forcing you to buy one of these strategy guides just to work out how to play, and maximising the amount of cash they can get from you. Now sure enough, the strategy guides generally have a full walkthrough as well, but if they didn't have to include all the very basic stuff, think how much more space could be given over to all the really detailed bits. Or possibly they're just trying to make the strategy guides as big as possible, again to maximise the price at which they can be sold.
Heh, I wish I had mod points right now. Not sure whether it'd be funny or insightful though.:/
That's one of the big problems with society today: The expectation to conform. It's like they (whoever "they" are) expect everyone to act identically, in their music tastes, purchasing habits, lifestyle... It's absolutely ridiculous.
Are you suggesting that the Palestinian government should let Israel, who openly wants to destroy Palestine, do whatever they want with regard to these sensitive issues? I'm not saying you don't have a point, but these arguments work both ways.
No you don't. Please provide a site for this foolish idea.
Ok, I know you're a troll, but I'll bite. Here's your cite: Common Sense.
If Person A goes around using Company B's copyright, and giving it away for free, why would Customer C later be willing to pay for that copyright, when they can get it for free elsewhere? Answer: They wouldn't. The copyright would have been devalued by the efforts of Person A.
Much as I would have loved to see this Halogen project work, if MS had decided to make a Halo RTS later, having competition from Halogen would have been of no benefit to them, and so I can see why they felt the need to shut it down.
Heh, this reminds me of something a friend pointed out to me yesterday. If you create a program and name it csrss.exe, task manager will refuse to kill it. I'm surprised more virus/malware writers haven't taken advantage of this.
And that bit about academics who look down on contributions from amateurs just frosts me
I suspect that part of the problem may be caused by the small minority of amateurs who simply refuse to listen to those who know better. I remember one article about wikipedia had a quote from some sort of expert in some particular field. He rewrote the wikipedia article about something or other that he had been directly involved with. Within a month, pretty much everything he had contributed had been replaced by stuff that was inaccurate, or in some cases outright lies. I wish I could be more specific as to the details, but alas my memory fails me once again.
On the contrary, I don't believe that there is a quandary. People that make use of power-levelling services (almost) by definition can never be the best, because they lack the knowledge and skill that they would have been picked up during the levelling progress. Add to this the fact that other players will often shun those who make use of power-levelling services (partly because of the lack of skill, and partly just because of the power-levelling) and you find that there are very few sensible reasons for power levelling. The only conclusion that I can draw is that people who make use of power-levelling services simply have more money than sense.
I completely agree, and it's not just about earning your level, it's about learning your class. In my experience, people who haven't gone through the levelling experience for themselves invariably do not know how to play their class competently. In some cases I've met people who were ignorant of some of the most basic aspects of the game.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth noting that that screensaver was actually produced by Sysinternals, prior to their acquisition by Microsoft last year. So any sense of humour that Microsoft does have was purely purchased.
Erm, I haven't really used the Dell system configurator whatchamajingle very much, but just from reading this the gist of the OP seems to be that Dell are unnecessarily limiting your hardware options if you choose the no OS option. i.e. We want Dell to be reducing the limitations, not adding them as you seem to be implying. Yes, you're right that there are probably people who don't want their hardware requirements dictated by an OS they're not going to install. But the OS-that-isn't-being-installed doesn't try to limit our anonymous consumers hardware choices. Dell does. At least that's what I picked up from reading this thread.
Umm... because it would be wrong? The radiation symbol is for radioactive material. To start putting it on non-radioactive food, purely to indicate that it is bacteria-free would be scientifically wrong.
Suggesting that parents should make their own minds up about whether or not it's good for their children shows a lot of misplaced faith in humanity. Parents don't know what's good for their children, and they're far more willing to listen to bullshit propaganda and FUD than they are to scientifically factual information.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is this: People are stupid. We shouldn't have to step around them quietly and dress everything up with nice non-scary names, but until they stop being stupid, that's the price of progress. We can't let a few Luddites dictate our rate of scientific progress.
Blizzard already knew that Cedega is not a bot. This isn't a story about Blizzard becoming Linux-friendly, because Blizzard are already pretty Linux-friendly as it is. Blizzard had previously stated (before this unbanning) that they had tested their cheat-detection with Cedega, and had not encountered any problems. The fact that not all Cedega users got banned gives credence to this. So Transgaming did not need to convince Blizzard that their product is legit, because Blizzard was already well aware of that. What is more likely is that Transgaming worked with Blizzard to find out exactly what combination of circumstances were causing some Cedega users to be incorrectly flagged as cheaters, as it says in the summary.
One thing that I was surprised hasn't been mentioned so far (and which pretty much invalidates the entire article) is that WoW does have dynamic events. It's full of them. Think of the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, and the War Effort. Think of the Scourge invasion. Think of the Elemental Invasions, the Green Dragons and other outdoor bosses, the Darkmoon Faire, the Gurubashi Arena, the Midsummer Fire Festival, and the dozens of other dynamic events that I haven't listed. WoW is chock full of dynamic events, and TFA is utter tripe.
Oh, I dunno, it would be really great if someone developed a plugin that could work with a major email client, so you could use just one click to sign or encrypt emails, or import keys from a keyserver, or decrypt emails from others. I'm thinking they could call it something like "Enigmail". I think that name has a nice ring to it, don't you?
Thank you! At last, the voice of reason. Everyone has been so quick to criticise Blizzard for banning WoW players "because they use Linux"... despite there being absolutely no proof that this is what has happened. Kudos to you. And thanks for the link to the forums; as an EU player I don't normally check the US forums, so I completely missed that thread.
Perhaps if you'd read the numerous articles about the Warden (or the innumerable comments in response to any article about WoW) you'd know that the Warden does not send any information that it picks up from your PC. All that it sends is hashes, to be compared against hashes of known cheats or whatever. So, to throw your question back at you: What about CPAs or others with sensitive information? None of that information ever goes anywhere, so there is absolutely nothing to complain about. The comparison between the Warden and Task Manager is an entirely valid one, as neither sends out your information without telling you.
P.S. Entirely off-topic, but I absolutely loathe clueless mods who throw out "informative" moderations to the same sensationalist tripe that has been disproven time and time and time again.
Ah, nothing like the good old trick of "cat /dev/urandom > /proc/kmem"... Why is my computer not working?
Indeed. Greed and exploitation can never be considered civilised. The fact that the GP has somehow been modded "insightful" is an indication of just how fucked up the world is.
I remember much the same thing was said about FF9 on the first Playstation. And indeed, that game was visually stunning. But to be honest, I was a little disappointed in the gameplay. Still a worthwhile game, mind you, but apart from the graphics, it was not the best in the series, IMHO. Now if FFXII can pull off amazing graphics and good gameplay, then not only will I be impressed, I will be overjoyed.
Mmm, interesting... I had a beta of IE7 at some point. I say had, because it managed to uninstall itself without telling me. Ah well, I don't imagine I'm missing much.
Greedy? I have to say that I disagree about that. Blizzard are selling a CCG (Incidentally, it happens to be a very good one, from what I've heard), and with this CCG they've decided to give away some free in-game WoW item. Blizzard aren't forcing anybody to play or buy this CCG. If someone is dumb enough to buy the large number of stuff purely to get the reward, then quite frankly that's their own damned problem. Blaming Blizzard for producing and selling a damned fine CCG is just plain stupid.
As far as I can see, the only problem here is the same age old one that we've always faced: People are stupid. People are stupid, so when one troublemaker decides they want to kick up a storm over nothing, you get a whole crowd of them (most of whom won't know or care about the issue at hand, and absolutely none of whom will have actually done any research into the matter) screaming bloody murder. This entire thing is just a non-issue.
It's exactly as you say: Just a free little thing to reward those who decide to play this TCG. It certainly doesn't provide any decisive benefit.
Not justifiable ones though. Is it really ok to kill someone who is no threat to you (or anyone else), in cold blood, just because it will make you feel better? Even if that person might go on to do great works for society? No, it is not, and if you think that it is then you are worse than they are, because at least they accept the responsibility for their actions.
Ok, now I've been trying not to comment on this article, because I generally tend to avoid thinking about legal matters in general, but there are a number of things that I do have to ask.
Firstly, do you have to keep trumpeting that "EULA-like" argument in response to everything? It's starting to wear a little thin. Fair enough, it's a very interesting argument to make, and the first time I read it I did so with great curiosity. Even the second time, I listened to the argument, just in case there was anything I missed. Now, as I said, I'm no lawyer, but having read through the section in question, I really don't see what the problem is. The GPLv3 is, as previous versions have been, a license to distribute software. It does not restrict usage by the end user in any way whatsoever (that I can see). Other people have posted a more thorough rebuttal of your argument already. Your repetition of it at every possible oppurtunity really does leave me wondering...
Secondly, the way I see things, your first and last points are effectively stating the same thing. (Or at the very least they have the same root cause.) And what they're stating is something that I can't see any way around. Yes, the GPLv3 is incomprehensible to anyone without a law degree. Yes, it's extremely long. Yes, it's a legal document, and any incomprehensibility in it is merely an unfortunate reflection of the nature of the legal system. I see all sorts of people here going on and on about how the GPL ought to be shorter, and I wonder how they fail to realise that attempting to make it so would run the risk of making it either open to abuse or so vague as to be unenforceable. And I can guarantee, lawyers would love that.
So in summary, the four points that you list are reduced to only three, one of which (I believe) is not valid, and one of which (again IMHO) is unavoidable.
If this turns out to be true, then it's a pretty big deal. I remember studying this kinda stuff a few years ago... suffice to say that it really makes my head hurt, even now. Having had a quick look at the article, it does promise to be a very interesting read, at the very least.
Y'know, it's funny you should say that about the manual, cos (with regards to games in general) I've always thought of that the other way around... The "strategy guides" you get these days quite often contain stuff that really should be part of the manual. So by shipping sub-standard manuals with the games these days, they're often forcing you to buy one of these strategy guides just to work out how to play, and maximising the amount of cash they can get from you. Now sure enough, the strategy guides generally have a full walkthrough as well, but if they didn't have to include all the very basic stuff, think how much more space could be given over to all the really detailed bits. Or possibly they're just trying to make the strategy guides as big as possible, again to maximise the price at which they can be sold.
Heh, I wish I had mod points right now. Not sure whether it'd be funny or insightful though. :/
That's one of the big problems with society today: The expectation to conform. It's like they (whoever "they" are) expect everyone to act identically, in their music tastes, purchasing habits, lifestyle... It's absolutely ridiculous.
Are you suggesting that the Palestinian government should let Israel, who openly wants to destroy Palestine, do whatever they want with regard to these sensitive issues? I'm not saying you don't have a point, but these arguments work both ways.
Ok, I know you're a troll, but I'll bite. Here's your cite: Common Sense.
If Person A goes around using Company B's copyright, and giving it away for free, why would Customer C later be willing to pay for that copyright, when they can get it for free elsewhere? Answer: They wouldn't. The copyright would have been devalued by the efforts of Person A.
Much as I would have loved to see this Halogen project work, if MS had decided to make a Halo RTS later, having competition from Halogen would have been of no benefit to them, and so I can see why they felt the need to shut it down.
Heh, this reminds me of something a friend pointed out to me yesterday. If you create a program and name it csrss.exe, task manager will refuse to kill it. I'm surprised more virus/malware writers haven't taken advantage of this.
I suspect that part of the problem may be caused by the small minority of amateurs who simply refuse to listen to those who know better. I remember one article about wikipedia had a quote from some sort of expert in some particular field. He rewrote the wikipedia article about something or other that he had been directly involved with. Within a month, pretty much everything he had contributed had been replaced by stuff that was inaccurate, or in some cases outright lies. I wish I could be more specific as to the details, but alas my memory fails me once again.
On the contrary, I don't believe that there is a quandary. People that make use of power-levelling services (almost) by definition can never be the best, because they lack the knowledge and skill that they would have been picked up during the levelling progress. Add to this the fact that other players will often shun those who make use of power-levelling services (partly because of the lack of skill, and partly just because of the power-levelling) and you find that there are very few sensible reasons for power levelling. The only conclusion that I can draw is that people who make use of power-levelling services simply have more money than sense.
I completely agree, and it's not just about earning your level, it's about learning your class. In my experience, people who haven't gone through the levelling experience for themselves invariably do not know how to play their class competently. In some cases I've met people who were ignorant of some of the most basic aspects of the game.